Globe Education Online

This is John’s second season at the Globe and he is looking forward to performing at the theatre again this year. He feels that the character of Jaques should not develop too clearly in his head until he has learnt the lines and can act on the stage without being encumbered by the text. John is trying to keep the character of Jaques as close to himself as possible at the moment, in order to not obfuscate the line of the character. It is really a case of getting to grips with what the text means. Jaques is quite an obscure character, he is an outsider, a party pooper! – but the Duke likes him. John feels that the Duke likes to have Jaques there to present the counter argument to that of his other companions in exile.

By the second week of rehearsal John is moving from work based on improvisation to work which centres around exploration of a specific scene. The actors involved in that scene first discuss the scene and then on the rehearsal floor try to experiment with moves and physical relationships, exploring the best way to place that particular scene on the stage. It is very much experimental at this stage.

John feels that Jaques should make his first entrance through the groundling audience in the yard; the forest is going to extend beyond the stage – there will be trees in the yard. The notion the company is aiming for is that the forest is everywhere in the theatre, not just in the discovery space. Nobody knows where Jaques is at the beginning of the play – when Amiens finishes his song Jaques will enter clapping from the audience and at the end of the song he will return to the yard.

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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