Globe Education Online

This is Alex's fourth blog entry for the 2005 production of The Tempest, where he talks about working through the scenes and finding real-life parallels for the characters, amongst other things.

Scene by Scene

We’re still going through each scene in detail. We start by tapping out the iambic pentameter of the lines – we’re spending quite a lot of time on the verse because so many clues about what a character is thinking or feeling are embedded in the structure and rhythm of the lines, especially in later plays like The Tempest. A pause in a line might suggest a character who is trying to pick the next words carefully, or that the following thought in the line is more important than the preceding one, because it's been placed second on the same line which seems to suggest that it overwhelms the first thought. The verse structure sometimes signposts the place you’re driving to with characters. After we’ve tapped out the rhythm, we get up and skip or gallop it. When you stop skipping and start to speak, the rhythm remains in you.

Last week we concentrated on the way a character might emerge through another character during a scene. Now we’re exploring just playing one character until a ‘crunch point’ at the end of the scene when you have to change character; a different character or the Fates might influence you in a way that means that you have to become a new character. That led us to explore ideas of causality – why and how one scene leads into another. We might revisit characters growing out of each other during scenes, but at the moment it feels right to explore character changes between scenes.

The dancers have been with us for three weeks now, and we’re working together to devise a common language of movement. We had a great time doing the second drunk scene [III.ii] when Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo are really drunk. The three of us were completely at the mercy of the dancers or the Fates; each dancer held one of us up and moved our limbs and heads whilst we were really floppy and just talked. The great thing was that the dancers weren’t as familiar with the lines in the scene, so they were slightly behind with all our moves which made it absolutely hilarious! I kept corpsing. It's a really interesting way of expressing drunkenness because it gives a slight delay between lines and the gestures without our actually have to do anything apart from perhaps lowering our voices a little bit. That idea really helped me get into the situation and feel drunk – I hope we keep it in performance.

Visitor

Yesterday Noel Cobb came into rehearsals. He wrote Prospero's Island, which is the book we’ve drawn on a lot (it explains in detail why there are only three of us in this production). We ran some scenes, though on reflection it would probably have been better just to chat with him, because the scenes are in a rather confused state at the moment! We ran together about a third of the play – the section that Mark calls ‘the Valley.’ There's a Lords’ scene, a Drunk scene, the Lovers’ scene in the middle (where they declare their love), then a second Drunk scene and a second Lords’ scene so there's a kind of symmetry in the structure that is valley-like and it leads into the masque. It's nice amount to explore and it includes about four or five changes of character and scene, but it was the first time we had put that much together so it did feel a bit like a performance.

Noel found it really interesting. He was worried that perhaps it might be difficult for the audience to understand which characters we play at different moments. That's ok, because it would be easy for us to establish those distinctions very quickly by giving each character a distinctive physicality, for example… Gonzalo stands in this way and Caliban stands in that way, so as soon as I stand in this way, everyone knows I’m Gonzalo. At the moment we’re exploring the way ambiguity could be useful or interesting: if you don’t necessarily know who is who at certain points (is it Caliban or Ferdinand?) and if we ourselves seem not to know which character we’re going to play. I think it will be a case of balancing ambiguity with understanding .

Does Caliban want to be free? Recently we discussed each of our characters with Tim [Carroll, Master of Play] and we struck upon something very helpful for Caliban.I think I’ve been labouring under the misconception (well, it's a choice rather than a misconception) that Caliban wants to be free. I had always assumed that he wants freedom, which makes it really awkward when he immediately offers to serve Stephano! I tried thinking of strange and complicated reasons why that might be so, but that offer makes more sense if he simply wants to serve someone; I don’t think he does want to be free to do his own thing. What we seem to have struck upon is that he actually wants to serve someone and have job satisfaction, for lack of a better phrase.

He thinks that Stephano represents an opportunity to achieve his ideal situation, which is to serve someone who loves him, as he says Prospero did when he first arrived on the island. Prospero stroked Caliban and gave him water with berries in it and showed him the sun and the moon and taught him language. Caliban says in the same speech ‘and then I showed thee all the qualities of the isle, I showed you the brine pits and the barren place infertile’ – it's as though he's explaining the importance of give-and-take: ‘You gave me this stuff, and then I really wanted to show you this and this, and I wanted to get you wood and fish for you.’ Caliban likes the master-servant relationship as long as it's just and loving. Then allegedly he tried to rape Miranda so Prospero changed the relationship: Prospero takes everything that Caliban would do and give, and gives him nothing in return at all. Caliban comes to loathe all the work he used to love, because it's completely unjust – he's not getting anything in return, and he doesn’t feel loved or appreciated. His being appreciated is extremely important.

Caliban meets Stephano, and Stephano immediately gives him something to drink and asks how he is. The way we’re playing it at the moment, Stephano strokes him and seems to care about him, which is a revelation for Caliban, who's been an abhorred monster slave for twelve years. Caliban responds by offering to show Stephano exactly the same things that he showed Prospero: ‘I’ll show thee springs, I’ll pluck thee berries’ [II.ii]. Stephano gives him things – he allows him to carry the bottle (that's a great honour in Caliban's mind) and appoints him lieutenant [III.ii] – so Caliban thinks their relationship will be fantastic, but it all goes wrong as he realises that Stephano is a selfish, drunken fool.

I thought back to Caliban's mother, Sycorax – I feel that she was probably someone else whom he served; he served his mother, and she showed him the man in the moon and taught him things. That's his idea of a fulfilling relationship, that's the pattern he tries to follow – that's all he's after actually.

Possibility of Reconciliation

We were talking about the end of the play yesterday and I said ‘I wonder if Caliban gets left on the island?’ Tim doesn’t like to talk about what happens after a play; I think that's wise because it's really just conjecture which you can’t play... it should be left open. What does happen in the final scene is that Prospero says ‘You will have my pardon’ which is a giving thing and Caliban says ‘I try to be wise hereafter and seek your grace.’ Then Prospero says ‘You can go into my cell and trim it handsomely’ i.e. clear up, and Caliban says ‘Yes’ so it seems like their relationship is perhaps returning to that of a master and a servant – the pardon sounds like give-and-take. Whereas Ariel is released at the end – I think that's one of the most important differences between Ariel and Caliban. Ariel wants to be free to live entirely in the present. He can’t be tied to service.

Finding Parallels

During another discussion with Tim, we thought about people we know or people in films who remind us of our characters, as well as stories from our lives which are similar to situations in the play. I always seem to refer to films but I do think The Incredible Hulk is a really useful parallel for Caliban; this huge, angry beast meets a person who seems able to see the fragility within – that person is the only one who can ease their rage and help them towards a healthier balance.

In terms of real-life parallels for Ferdinand and Miranda, I find it very useful to think about how I met my girlfriend. We didn’t know each other at all but once we’d looked at each other we couldn’t stop looking; it seemed very obvious how things should continue from there. That's the way I think it is for Ferdinand and Miranda – they can’t stop looking at each other. Real-life references help you identify with a situation or character – that's particularly useful for Ferdinand and Miranda, because often their meeting is played in a very high-flueting way. You can forget that they’re just a girl and a boy who meet and need to find out whether the other person likes them. That happens in exactly the same way today and I think that's what makes their meeting magical, rather than any sort of incredible purity.

Prospero's Power

I’m not sure about how far Prospero actually engineers the situation with Ferdinand and Miranda. Lots of productions decide that his magic and control are all-pervading. Obviously he does have some magic because Ariel is a sprite in his power, and he also gets the spirits to perform the masque… but there are other things that could be played as mind-games rather than magic, like filling Caliban with old cramps or when Ferdinand is unable to lift his sword. If Prospero really makes Caliban believe that he’ll be filled with old cramps if he does something wrong, then Caliban will assume that every little thing that happens to him – like a splinter or a paper cut – was actually Prospero's doing. Obviously, in Caliban's mind, there's no doubt that Prospero is full of magic. There could be a similar situation with Ferdinand: if an old man told you with absolute confidence ‘I can disarm you with this stick’, you would think ‘Yeah, yeah… but what if he can?! There's no one on the island, he might be a ninja or something!’ Doubts would creep in. I don’t mean to say there's no magic in the play – I do think there's magic – but at the moment it's interesting to explore the mind-games rather than hocus-pocus stuff.

Gonzalo

I’ve been thinking a lot about Gonzalo lately. He's a curious character, and the one that I’m the least sure of right now. When I talked to Tim about finding parallels, I mentioned that Gonzalo was quite like my dad in many ways. My dad's a vicar and he's very logical and calm and thoughtful and helpful and loyal… I think he shares those qualities with Gonzalo, so I’ve been borrowing my dad's way of saying things! Gonzalo also seems like Giles Block, our Master of Words, in that he's very giving and supportive – he's very intelligent and has no arrogance at all. I won’t necessarily play them as imitations of these people, but drawing parallels does helps to identify and solidify what you think about a character.

Gonzalo as Odd Lord Out

Another curious thing about Gonzalo is that he's this very virtuous man yet he works for Alonso who he believes killed Prospero. Certainly, Gonzalo knew about the plan because he was master of design; he had to organise the boat and everything. Although he very charitably put Prospero's books on board (along with everything else that Prospero now has on the island), he still did it. You could argue that he can’t be that good because he's still working for Alonso and Antonio and Sebastian, although he may not approve of what they’re doing. I think it's more likely that he recognises that if he wasn’t within the establishment, it would be totally rotten – he feels it's better to try and change things slowly from the inside than to quit completely. In those days maybe he would be killed if he didn’t follow orders, though he's strangely loyal to Alonso. I feel that he's someone who sees the good in people and wants to nurture that rather than castigate people for the bad in them. I haven’t fully explored how he feels about having to be nice to these people when he strongly disagrees with their ways of thinking. Gonzalo's speech about the commonweal is interesting.

In the first Lords’ scene, he explains how he would run the island if he could:

I’th’ commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty.
[II.i.142-51]

Some people say the whole speech is pretty much nonsense to draw fire from Alonso and Sebastian, but I think there's more to it than that. Although what he says does seem very naive, I said in rehearsal that it was very like John Lennon's song ‘Imagine.’ That song seems to recognise that most people will think the idea is ridiculous and impossible, but it also says that if everyone went ‘Hang on, why don’t we try it?’ then it might actually work. Maybe Gonzalo is saying ‘I genuinely wouldn’t have any of this stuff because look where it's got us… it's not productive or helpful; it's destructive to one's soul and nature.’ I don’t think he's being preachy about it (although I am sort of playing with being preacher at the moment); he just offers you these ideas to consider, throws them into the air and sees if you want to take anything away.

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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