Globe Education Online

This is Geraldine's third blog entry for the 2000 production of The Tempest, in which she talks about the Globe audience and The Tempest, the effects of the weather upon a performance, and playing Emilia in The Two Noble Kinsmen.

Ariel and the Audience

I am really enjoying playing Ariel in The Tempest. The audiences love it. I have never been in a production like it. The whole play seems to have taken on a life of its own over and above the actors who are in it. It still feels very fresh and I still get nervous every time I make my first flying entrance in Act 1 Scene 2. I get ‘butterflies’ just like the first time I performed The Tempest. My only problem seems to be that my body is becoming unaligned. This is because I hold onto the rope in the Heavens (waiting for my cue to fly) with my right arm. When I went for a costume fitting the other day for The Two Noble Kinsmen, the designer said that she could see how much higher my right shoulder is than my left. The costume department has suggested that I try alternating my arms for each of my flying entrances, but as yet I don’t have the courage to hold on just with my left hand.

Ariel's relationship with the audience is not as close as some of the other characters in the play. There are only one or two moments in the play where she directs lines out to them. The rest of the time Ariel doesn’t look at the audience. She looks out, but she looks through them. It isn’t until the end of the play, once she is free, that she does look at them and acknowledges their presence as she walks through them. I think that this is in keeping with her journey through the play. As far as I am concerned the audiences are not spectators, they are the scenery, the island, maybe even spirits. I spend most of my time listening and learning from the other characters on stage. It is only when you see the play that you really understand just how often Ariel is present on stage. In this production she is on stage even more than the text suggests.

Playing Ariel can be quite tiring as she is on stage so much in frozen positions. She listens to what is being said. The Globe is an interesting theatre because only one person can have the focus at any time and everybody else on stage has to know who has it. The whole experience of playing on the Globe stage is a more like a sporting event than a theatre event because of the audience's involvement and intense concentration. Brecht said that theatre should be like watching a boxing match, where you see something happen and react instantly to it. I feel that The Globe conforms to that in many respects. Audiences at a boxing match are completely alive, as audiences are at The Globe.

The Weather

I am finding that the damp weather is having a dampening effect on the show. The water seems to seep into the wood and you lose a lot of the energy that you get from the space in dry weather. The audiences also seem to get dampened by the weather and are never as responsive and alive as they are in better conditions. It is also hard for the actors as the voice tends to sound flat and does not resonate through the theatre in the way that it normally does. It can be a bit like working inside a damp drum.

Since The Tempest has opened I have learnt to simplify my thoughts and actions. If things are simple they are clear to the audience. I get lots of letters from the public, from all sorts of different types of people who all seemed to relate to Ariel. I used to get very bogged down thinking about all their different theories before I realised that people were reacting to her like that because she is a spirit and could therefore can be defined by the individuals own wants or needs. I had to learn to play Ariel as a spirit rather than trying to portray the many different characters that people see in her. In many ways she can be interpreted in any way you want to. I really don’t think that any two actors or even any two people have the same ideas about Ariel.

Playing Emilia

We are currently rehearsing The Two Noble Kinsmen as well. I am playing Emilia. It is a difficult part as two writers (Shakespeare and Fletcher) wrote the play, and there are some contradictions within her character. The play is quite ritualised and would not have been played naturalistically in Elizabethan times. We are not following the Elizabethan ideas about it and are trying to perform the play with as much naturalism as possible. This is quite hard because the character has so many contradictions. But, I suppose in some ways this makes Emilia quite realistic as we all have contradictions inside us. It just makes it harder for me to get to know and understand her. I’m a long way from figuring her out.

I already have my costume for Emilia, which is rather girly. I have to let this influence how I play the role. For both The Tempest and The Two Noble Kinsmen the costumes were designed before I got to know the characters. This is due to the short rehearsal periods. That doesn’t mean that I can’t change the costume to more accurately represent the character that I have developed, however the basic designs have to remain the same. I generally like to have the costumes designed and made once I have a clear idea of the character. I don’t like to see my costume until the last week or so of rehearsal. But, time has been a factor here.

These comments are the actor's thoughts and ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretation and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

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