Globe Education Online

In his second blog post, Tim discusses his character's motivation, his costume and beginning to stage the play.

Rehearsals this week

This week the company read through the play and discussed relationships between characters in order to find out what we knew and what we didn't know! We explored the different ideas we all have about the play. These discussions help us to set down the intentions of each character. This is extremely helpful for me, as Claudius has a very difficult first scene. He has many different intentions - a strong desire to move the courtiers to be on his side, to show that he is a strong man and to make Hamlet feel more comfortable. I think that I need to learn the lines in a basic form before we begin to explore them.

In the first scene I don't think that Claudius is particularly concerned about Hamlet. As each scene unfolds, he becomes more and more worried until he sets out to destroy Hamlet. I feel it's a slow progression. At first Hamlet is an inconvenience rather than a real threat.

I have been talking to Jenny (Tiramani, designer) about my costume. I think that costume is vitally important, even in rehearsal. Your clothes control the way you move. Shoes are especially important.

In these very early weeks of rehearsal, the process you go through often seems to complicate things as you realise that there is more in the play than you thought there was. But things become more enlightened when you begin to stand up and rehearse the play. It's a very challenging moment when you first stand up and you find you don't know what you're doing with your limbs and you can't even remember any of the lines that you thought you knew!

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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