Globe Education Online

This is Laura's bulletin about Tech week, she discusses costume, hair and music for the production.

Tech week

We’ve been coming in at 10 o’clock most days to get into costume, then tech starts at half ten, during the day we’ll have a tea break and then a lunch break. Actually it’s been quite a light schedule compared to a lot of theatres. Here they have to get our set down and the next set up for the evening show.

We’re going through entrances and exits to the scenes as well, some more than others. We really worked on the wedding scene and did that over and over again, that’s a big group scene. Other scenes we’ve literally just run through once. We’ll have to see how it all fits together in the dress rehearsal.

Tech week seemed to go pretty smoothly, much easier than I expected. It was nice to suddenly be on the stage because it doesn’t feel like the real thing in the rehearsal room. It was good to have the actual pillars to work around, and the yard to know where you’re going to direct everything. It’s lovely to have the costumes on, and to work out how long it takes for a quick costume changes or to get from one side of the yard to the other. But even in tech week you can’t really gauge the show. Tech week is for all the timings and everything, but obviously it changes again when you’ve got audience in. You’re not going to be able to run through the yard as quickly when there are six hundred people standing there! So although it has been a big transition, the other big one will be when we get to full performance.

Direction

Tech week was when the detail started happening, because Thea [Sharrock, director], Rob [Icke, assistant director] and Fin [Walker, choreographer] would sit in different areas of the theatre to find out who could see what, or who was missing what. Then they would move us downstage or upstage. So the play really did move on into a completely different place, because there was certain blocking that we had chosen before that was not the best choice for the space. That’s when all the detailed work starts to happen and things get changed. Even into the previews we were making changes.

Costume

The costumes are beautiful! But obviously even in the rehearsal room, wearing rehearsal skirts and a bum roll, you can’t get any idea of how the actual thing is going to feel. My costume is particularly massive: all the under-garments are so heavy just by themselves and then I’ve got stockings and layers and layers of under-garments and then this beautifully ornate dress over the top that I’m completely laced into. It’s about four groundlings-wide when I’m in the yard! I think I might need to have one of those heavy vehicle “Beep, beep, beep” reverse sounds!

It is a hugely different feeling being n full costume, so I basically had to learn to walk again. It is very tempting to walk as you normally would, but I have to take a lot smaller steps and the movement shouldn’t be as swingy – it’s a lot more elegant – so that took a bit of getting used to. Breathing is different too; you’re not as free as the costume does restrict you. So my movements have been dictated by my costume but now I don’t really feel them at all.

Hair

The whole process of getting ready takes about an hour. I get my hair put in little pin curls and then a stocking cap is clipped over my head, so that there is no hair at all to be seen, then I get the beautiful wig on, that’s all pinned in, it is almost like Elizabeth I. Then obviously the costume goes on last. The whole look is completely different to me in real life! I saw myself in the mirror and at first I thought, “Oh no!” but I’ve got used to it now. The look from that period is obviously very different to today.

Luckily we’ve only had one rainy show, but there have been had some boiling hot matinees, so it is such a relief to get that first costume off! I have to concentrate just on the show, because if I thought about how hot I was I’d probably have a panic attack, and I’m pretty sure you can’t have a panic attack when you’re laced into a dress on the Globe stage!

Music

We had had run through with the musicians in the rehearsal room but not necessarily all the musicians were part of it; sometimes we’d just have a drummer to keep a beat, so it was great to hear the whole lot. Also the interval music was something new that we hadn’t heard; how the music plays into the second half of the show with Touchstone coming on and rousing the audience. So it has been coming alive now that we’ve added the music in, particularly the wedding scene at the end - standing in the open air with the beautiful music that Stephen Warbeck has created is wonderful. All the ends are being tied up, we’re all in couples with the right people and it is very moving. Then the whole thing comes alive again with the jig at the end. I think that is one of my favourite moments – it is brilliant! You can just see the audience completely baffled by what we’re doing because they’re not expecting this Slumdog Millionaire-style routine at the end of As You Like It!

Set Design

The set is very basic; behind the two main pillars that are always on the stage, they’ve added more pillars in. They are trees in the forest but just pillars and columns in the court. At the court they are covered in black silk which is then taken off when we get into the forest. That’s how it is at the moment, but we don’t know whether it will stay or not because we’re still in Tech week. There are two walkways out from the stage. We are currently exploring entrances and exits from those walkways and strong positions, so we’re still working with the space to see what works and what doesn’t.

Knowing the Stage

I think once you know the pitfalls of that stage you remember them for the future. But obviously this time we’ve got the extra pillars that haven’t been there before. So there are more obstacles but they can also help. I absolutely love the space, it’s so brilliant! There are so many hiding places and places where you can’t hide, places of power and places of vulnerability - although those places are not necessarily where you expect them to be. You think perhaps the most powerful place might be centre stage because in most theatres that is the case, but in this space centre stage is right between the pillars, where there is bad visibility from a lot of areas in the audience. So we’re always told not to stand there. That’s quite difficult to get used to as an actor, so it’s a learning curve.

Drastic Changes

I think a lot of it has changed actually because the stage is a completely different space to the rehearsal room. It was never really hugely set in the rehearsal room, because Thea [Sharrock, director] wanted to keep us free, so it’s still playtime really. Some things are more blocked now than others but I think it’s still a free for all, to really test out the space and see what it allows you to do.

 

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 interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsals progress.

 

 

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