Globe Education Online

This is Tim's fourth blog post. This week he discusses moving onto the Globe stage, how rehearsals have progressed, and learning lines.

The stage

Today was the first day that we worked on stage. I liked it. It was quite liberating to find out that the space wasn’t actually too daunting or frightening. It was also useful to find out that you could be heard.

We were also able to get an idea of moving around the space. It was quite helpful in a way to have the tours coming in and out. This is obviously quite unusual. I don’t suppose that anyone who has not worked at the Globe before has experienced anything like that. It was definitely a constructive experience.

I actually found the space very cold today. I mean the weather, not the actual space! I know today will help when we move back into the rehearsal space. We will all feel a lot freer.

We have mock up pillars in the rehearsal room. We are getting more and more used to working with the pillars, and that’s why it was so important to rehearse on the stage. We are now able to either work around the pillars or use them, as they are extremely useful for fight scenes or for hiding from other parties.

Rehearsals

This week has been quite busy, as we have been away to an Elizabethan Manor house in Suffolk. This gave us a sense of what it would be like to be in a castle which is something we can bring back to the stage as we have limited set and props. I enjoyed this experience.

We were also able to work on some improvisations of scenes that do not appear in the text. Starting from the beginning, we improvised the killing of old Hamlet, the election of Claudius, the wedding of Claudius and Gertrude. We also improvised a scene where old Hamlet’s body is found, and I had to pretend I had gone to Copenhagen for the day, and act very upset and weepy when finding out the news, to convince the other characters that I was upset about my brothers death.

Such improvisations have definitely been useful, as they filter through into rehearsals. It stops you over emphasising things as you reach a state of knowing that you are secure with the events that have just happened. It allows you to know what you have just been thinking. At the beginning of the play, for example in Claudius’ speech, one can play the character very worried or apologetic. However, after our improvisations, I realised the speech is very genuine. It is also helpful that all the other characters at the court had been present at the improvisations, so, they all have the same ideas, thoughts and images as you do.

Learning lines

I’m not off the book yet with my lines, I’ve got the last three scenes to learn. I feel that I am in the middle of the rehearsal progress at the moment. People are always at different stages. Some people like to learn lines very quickly. However, I like to learn them as we rehearse.

When it comes to the rehearsal process, we are not going over everything every day. We do one or two scenes a day, which I usually prepare for the night or day before.

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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