Globe Education Online

This is Geraldine's fourth and final blog entry for the 2000 production of The Tempest, in which she talks about performing The Two Noble Kinsmen alongside The Tempest, and making the most of the unique space at Shakespeare's Globe.

The Two Noble Kinsmen

We have begun performances of The Two Noble Kinsmen now. Time is moving very quickly and we are almost at the end of the Globe season.

Putting The Two Noble Kinsmen on the Globe stage has been a very different process from putting The Tempest on the stage. The Tempest went through many great changes once we started to work on the stage. Ideas that worked in rehearsal didn’t work in the Globe space – all the acrobatic ideas were eliminated. With The Two Noble Kinsmen it has been more of a progression. We kept adding to ideas rather than changing them.

I have found that Emilia is quite a difficult character to play, as there are a lot of inconstancies in her character. I found that yet again the space has been teaching me a lot about performance. In order to make things work on the Globe stage, you have to have very clear ideas about your character in your head. The audience is a very important guide to an actor at the Globe. In rehearsal I had thought that Emilia is a very fake character who pretended a lot. I have learnt that you have to appear genuine on the stage. You can’t act false. If you do the audience will stare at you in disbelief. It will not come across clearly and the actor will appear unbelievable. I had to look for a different way of portraying her. The stage doesn’t take pretence very well. You have to be real.

I like The Two Noble Kinsmen a lot, as it is a good example of excellent storytelling. It is very important to have a good story at the Globe in order to engage the audience. I don’t however think that it is a very easy play to work with as an actor, because there are two separate stories that don’t meet or interact. This seems to force an audience to take sides. I also think that a lot of the complexities and inconsistencies that the play faces an actor with are due to the influence of its two separate writers, Shakespeare and Fletcher. Sometimes I wonder if they conferred. I find the parts written by Shakespeare much easier to work with. His verse seems to fit the mood of a scene more effectively than Fletcher’s. It also tends to be more rhythmical.

Using the Space

In The Two Noble Kinsmen we use the yard during the performance. I think that this may arouse debate, as it is not considered ‘authentic’ to do so. Of course there are many reasons why actors probably would not have used it 400 years ago. For one thing it would have been dangerous. Today, of course, the atmosphere in the yard is very different. I really enjoy using the yard. It is such an opportunity to experiment. I find that it stirs the audience up. I don’t think, however, that Shakespeare wrote any of his plays with intention of using the yard.

The groundlings don’t seem to know where to look when we use the yard. They are intimidated by having actors walk amongst them. Sometimes they seem to think that by looking at one person they may be missing something elsewhere, so they look around. This can be quite disconcerting when you are speaking to an audience member and they look everywhere else except at you. However, I do think that using the yard works extremely well and I really enjoy it.

We are not performing The Tempest as often as we were at the beginning of the season. I do miss playing Ariel and I know that I will be very sad after the last performance next week. Ariel is a unique character to play. She allows me to perform in my own little world. I listen, but react very little. Recently I have been finding her harder to play because I have spent so much time away from her thinking about Emilia, who is very different. I have my own method of focusing myself on the character I am playing. I think of the animal that each character represents and use the characteristics of that animal to refocus. To me, Ariel is a bird, representing her free nature. Emilia is more like a deer, always ready for any action.

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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