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This is Alex's seventh blog entry for the 2005 production of The Tempest, where he talks about technical rehearsals, singers in the production, and open rehearsals.

Technical rehearsals

Things are getting really exciting – we’re putting it on the stage. Our first day of technical rehearsal was quite frightening, because the dynamics of the play completely change when you move from the rehearsal room to the stage. Although I’ve worked here before and I know what it's like to be on the stage with an audience who are very much a part of the play, it's impossible to take all that into account in the rehearsal room. I don’t think you should worry about that until the end of the rehearsal period anyway, because you need six weeks’ rehearsal to work on what's happening in the scenes and the play as a whole – after that you feel ready to turn it out to the audience.

Some speeches seem quite obviously intended for the audience, like Ferdinand's first two speeches about the music [I.ii], and Gonzalo's Commonwealth speech [II.i] – and there are certain Caliban bits… I’m experimenting with the speech when he's talking about all the spirits torturing him – obviously that's for the audience, but it could also be about trying to get the audience on your side. That's especially important as Caliban is villainised by Prospero throughout the play; I think that part of Caliban's job is to counterbalance that by suggesting that Prospero's the bad guy. In my opinion, Caliban really hasn’t done anything wrong: allegedly he attempted to rape Miranda, but I think of that as Prospero's interpretation of what happened. Perhaps Caliban was just looking at her or stroking her hair, or maybe she was complicit in it and Prospero reacted in this way? I think it's important to play your character from a point of innocence: not many people out there actually believe that they’re bad people. That's what's interesting about playing so-called villains – to try and discover their logic and how they feel about the way they’re treated.

So the first day of tech was a bit nerve-wracking, but we’re working long days at the moment and by the next day I felt as if we’d been on the stage for a week! It's starting to come much more naturally – using the space with its particular merits and challenges to my advantage. When we did our first (and last!) run in the rehearsal room, we were very much focussed on each other – the three of us and the dancers – and we didn’t really turn any of it out. Afterwards I realised that I’d hardly looked out to the audience at all. Now it's starting to make sense which bits might be said to or through the audience, and which bits really need to be focussed on the other actors.

Open rehearsals

I’m excited just to be on stage in costume with the rope (I’m sure I’ve mentioned the rope before: our ‘set’ consists of a long rope that hangs from the heavens, the seventh member of our cast!). We had a rope set up in the rehearsal room, but now we can experiment with the full swing because the rope's at its proper length. The reactions from people on the tours that go round the theatre have been encouraging, and for the past couple of days, we’ve had ‘open’ technical rehearsals: people paid to come and sit in the upper gallery and watch the rehearsals. We made it clear at the beginning that we weren’t putting on a show for them and that it might all look terribly boring, but their feedback was very helpful… we did a Voice session with Stewart [Pearce, Master of Voice] where we tried speaking very, very quietly and we asked the people if they could hear us, to help us judge the distances and the volumes. Hearing people laugh is also really helpful, because when you’re in show, you have no idea if the audience will laugh at the things that you hope are funny in a show.

Generally, the people who stick their heads into the theatre and see what's going on seem to be really excited. After six weeks of rehearsal, I think I’d forgotten how different our production is – that there are only three of us, for a start, and there's always the challenge of ‘Who are they? Why did they change?’ We have no set apart from the rope, which is quite exciting in terms of what it can represent and how it can divide the space. I’d also forgotten very basic things about there being three of us [actors] in a certain type of Jacobean costume, three dancers in modern dress and six singers in classical-style dress. Getting into the space has reminded me of all these things and helped me look at it afresh; I was nervous last week just before the run but now I just can’t wait to see what people think of it. It could be ground-breaking or it could be too confusing for anyone to follow…

Singers

It's been great to work with the singers this week. The music is beautiful and makes such a difference to the dynamic of the play. I especially like the sound of counter-tenors because it's somehow eerie and angelic at the same time. I find it very emotional – there are times in the play when my character is going through emotional changes and they’re often underscored by the music. Those moments are quite easy at the moment because the music is so beautiful and touching… I don’t know if I’ll still be saying that by the end of the run though!

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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