Globe Education Online

In his final blog post, Trystan discusses the second week of rehearsals, his thoughts about the Globe stage and the difficulties of performing in two plays at once.

Week two rehearsals

In week two of rehearsals we carried on reading the play around the table. Then we started acting it out, if you like, but still around the table. We were working on clarity, so that everybody understands what everybody is saying, the intentions and the intensity behind it. Then we came and sat in a circle in the space and read the play. Then we read it sitting further out, but still in a circle and then we stood up and walked around the space reading it, to see how it gels and see what takes you. I think that’s a lovely way of working.

The Globe Stage

I have been on the Globe stage once before. I have never done a play, but I was part of the William Pole festival. I did a scene from Rule a Wife and Have a Wife with Sinead Mathews. We only rehearsed for the day and then went out there and performed it.

I am an avid fan of the Llanlli Scarlets Rugby team and I go home whenever I can to the Stadium. The Globe stage has a Stadium feel to it, more than any other theatre. It has the same sort of atmosphere. When you are rehearsing on it, it feels like modern stadiums, which are built like amphitheatres, like the Coliseum. Inside the theatre is a, kind of, deep pool of tranquillity, like when you are in an empty leisure centre. That’s how I felt rehearsing on the Globe stage. There is that serenity that you don’t get in other theatres, well I haven’t anyway.

I know it was only that one day, but I did feel (I don’t know whether it’s the colour of the building) serenity in this empty wooden space. And then when the audience are there it becomes like a bear pit. It is just like training inside a rugby ground. When it is filled up with people, it totally changes. That’s what I got from my five minutes of fame on the Globe stage.

Two shows at once

My second week was a relief because in my first week of rehearsal I was performing in the evenings at the Soho Theatre in Philip Ridley’s new play Leaves of Glass.

There’s no filter on Philip Ridley’s writing, that’s what I like about it. Philip Ridley writes about people when they are in their comfort zones. Somebody, in a talk back, said to Philip Ridley: ‘Your take on life is horrible!’ His response, and I absolutely agree with him, was that if his play has been about two brothers and their father had died, but their father was a king and the story was set back in ancient Greece then it would be acceptable, but because his play is set in contemporary London people have a problem with it.’

Philip Ridley’s plays are like Shakespeare’s. In Romeo and Juliet people are killing each other. We [the audience] are willing Romeo to kill Tybalt, because he killed Mercutio. Is that right? We are wiling people to kill each other! In King Lear Gloucester has his eyes gouged out and you know there are some people coming out of the theatre going: ‘Oh did you see that, that was a brilliant scene, that was fantastic!’ and they get really excited about it, like they are seeing some horror film.

It was really tough rehearsing Shakespeare all day and then performing a different play in the evening. Because the texture, the language is so rich in Love’s Labour’s Lost and it is a play that thrives on its linguistic tricks. The play in the night Leaves of Glass was so intense that it demands all of your energy. You have to be there in the moment, focus, focus, focus! It did sharpen my intensity (doing both plays) that was good, I am grateful for it, but I would not have wanted to have done it for more than a week.

Also, doing a part like Berowne, which is linguistically challenging, is quite daunting and I wanted to get cracking. But my head was somewhere else. Both plays demand that you are there all the time with it, and you can’t be in two places at once so it did require a lot of energy to come to the Globe in the day and do Loves’ Labour’s Lost and then put it to one side in the evening. You don’t want to, because whenever you open a script you fall in love with it, you become obsessed. It is your life’s work for those, however many, months you are doing it. But I couldn’t do that because I had to go back to the other theatre, because I was in something else.

But I was blessed and I feel really honoured that I got to work with two amazing writers, two amazing directors and two amazing casts, doing two amazing parts. It was like a dream. But a very hard one, the reality of that dream is a lot of hard work.

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.

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