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Rehearsal Notes: 8
This is Edward's eighth and final blog entry for the 2005 production of The Tempest, where he talks about previews, press night and responses to the production.
Previews
We’ve had our previews and our press night; we’re only doing a few performances at the moment because Pericles has just opened, and we’ll be doing even fewer shows as we get into more of a rep season with The Winter's Tale. We rehearsed all day every day before evening performances during the previews, just refining scenes and making changes. One of the scenes that's changed a lot is Act 3, scene 3, when the banquet appears in front of the lords. Initially the dancers walked through the yard with trays of food that they put on stage. Now we get pots of food like the ones you can buy on the piazza and plant them at the edge of the stage then use the audience as the islanders: we suddenly see 1500 people all around us. Alex as Gonzalo refers to them directly as ‘such islanders’ of ‘monstrous shape.’ He basically calls them ugly and they seem to love it! When he gets to the line about ‘gentle manners,’ he picks up one of the pots and it looks like he's stealing it from someone in the audience. I think the audience definitely feel more involved in the scene.
Every day there are little changes. Because the Globe audience is so present, their energy can really change a show: if an audience is very giving, you tend to experiment more. For example, last night Alex tried some different things as Ferdinand and it meant I didn’t fall in love with him at all! When Prospero says to Ferdinand ‘Take my daughter,’ Alex clapped his hands and rubbed them together, so it looked like I was a feast that he was about to tuck into (he claims he didn’t mean it to come out like that!). The whole relationship between Miranda and Ferdinand changed because he clapped his hands together; Miranda became quite coy instead of being completely love-struck. It's as if she was thinking ‘What?! Who does this man think he is?’ The Trinculo scenes tend to change almost every night; they feel very flexible. I’ve added in one or two lines of my own. Tim [Master of Play] says that's OK in prose scenes as long as you don’t do it too much. To be honest, the lines Shakespeare wrote in those scenes are so silly that unless people know the play very well, nobody really notices that I’ve added ‘It's more like a baby eel’ after ‘A man or a fish?’ when I’m feeling around under the gabardine. If they do know the play, they like things being added in – it's alive. I think that's the kind of thing that comes out of playing in front of an audience.
Other things… after bothering about my voice sounding too gruff, Miranda's voice drops very low when she says her name for the first time in the lovers’ scene. I think that was one of the things I did to stop worrying - I did it for the first time to make Alex laugh during a dress rehearsal! It worked and we kept it in, so my dulcet tones have got lower and lower. It brings the play back to the reality that three men are playing all the parts, rather than a boy pretending to be a girl with a high voice. All of a sudden it acknowledges that men play those parts and it's not real, which releases the audience in a way and also makes them more affectionate towards Miranda, I think. She's got a sense of humour that brings them on-side. That's one of my favourite bits of the play.
Responses
I think the audience do follow our character changes. I think of the play as a series of moments and scenes: you don’t have to understand every little bit of each one. I know I don’t understand every little bit of Shakespeare that I’ve seen… it's impossible. Even if you’re seeing a play for the tenth time, there are bits of a production that will go over your head. You have to take from it what you want to take from it, and I think that's what the majority of people who come to see The Tempest do. One of the wonderful things about the Globe is that it's the kind of theatre that allows you to move out and come back in if you want to.
Kathryn Hunter, Master of Play for Pericles, came to see a performance the other day. She's an incredible actor and director who's worked at the Globe a lot. She loved the show and this makes you feel great; you know that you’re doing something right somewhere. One of her comments was that we used the whole stage; often the tendency is to push forward but Mark and Tim were very aware of the depth of the stage in rehearsals, and they encouraged Alex and me to use the sides and all four corners as well. The Globe is deceptive in that it feels like a natural proscenium arch when you’re on stage, because the two pillars mean you tend to push forward and play out front. But Tim and Mark helped us think about the whole space and now it just feels like a big playground.
These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.
