Globe Education Online

This is Jasper's first blog entry for the 2000 production of The Tempest, in which he talks about coming to perform at the Globe for the first time, playing Caliban, and getting to grips with Shakespeare's text.

First Time at the Globe

I was apprehensive about coming to the Globe because I've spent so much time in one building recently, working at the Royal National Theatre. At the 'Meet and Greet' on the first day, I felt really welcomed by Mark (Rylance, the Globe's Artistic Director) and everyone at the Globe. I thought that Mark gave a particularly great speech in the afternoon to the acting company, in which he conveyed the sense of acting at the Globe. After the speech I felt very excited about being here. I also felt a responsibility I hadn't expected to feel about performing Shakespeare at the Globe.

The first weeks of rehearsal are always difficult. We are still getting to know each other. The company is reading the play, discussing every line to make sure everyone knows what it means. I want to stand up and start performing.

Playing Caliban

I recently researched Caliban on the Internet. I've found pictures of past productions, mostly from America. I've also found essays from high schools or universities in the States, many of them talking about the relationship between Prospero and Caliban. There are great sites about what Caliban might be-the animals and creatures that were thought to have existed in the 17th century.

The company read the scene where Prospero and Miranda first meet Caliban (Act I Scene 2). Someone suggested that Caliban should be in chains. I resisted the idea. I tried finding references in the text to prevent my character from being in chains.

I want the parameters to be as wide as possible for as long as possible. I often find that the real work starts once I start to play on the stage. When I'm up there and really concentrating, there are many choices that appear to me that I don't necessarily see in rehearsal. As the performances go on, I realise I have more options. I learn more and see more in the text with every performance.

A challenge for me is finding what Caliban looks like, what he sounds like, and how he moves. I have to make him funny and at the same time sympathetic.

I often seem to play parts where a transformation is required during the course of the performance. I've just finished playing a cat (for the musical The Honk!). For me, it requires both an external as well as an internal transformation. I have to find the rhythm of the character.

At the moment my key word for Caliban is 'earth'. He's heavy but I don't want him to be slow. I also want to show that English is his second language. I've looked vainly in the text for anything that can 'back that up'-but he's really quite articulate. I may try speaking with an accent or have a broken way of speaking-but he speaks mainly in verse. I have strong feelings about how to speak verse. I think speaking verse is a discipline so I don't want any accent I might use to interfere with the structure and rhythm of the verse.

Getting to Grips with Shakespeare's Words

For two years I've worked with Giles (Block, Master of Play for Hamlet and Master of Verse for The Antipodes). I first worked with Giles in a workshop session and have used his techniques ever since. I've introduced the idea to other people, including Mark (Rylance, who is playing Hamlet this season at the Globe). Giles is brilliant verse teacher and director.

Sometimes people look at Shakespeare and think, where do I start? Giles' technique is simple, but it's like having an X-ray of the words. All I have to do is look at the page. It might be a verse speech that takes up an entire page. Right away I can see a pattern to it. I just take it line by line by line. I look at the punctuation. I look at the second word of the line and the last word of the line.

Shakespeare's verse is like music. There are bars. There are beats. There are rests.

Before working with Giles, I didn't pay much attention to the differences between verse and prose. Now I see that Shakespeare wrote verse for a particular reason, that it meant something to his audience. They would have been able to hear the difference when an actor is speaking verse or prose.

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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