Globe Education Online

This is Tim's final bulletin, he talks about performing at the Globe: the stage, the audience and changing the play.

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I don’t know what it would be like doing a tragedy or a history play here at the Globe, but doing a comedy is great because the audiences buoy you along. The first night here was a bit hysterical; they just laughed at anything! But at the same time I found myself evaluating a lot of things that I was doing and realising that things I thought would work, didn’t … or at least not in the way that I thought they would. The audience do inform you as you go along, about what you can do and what you can’t do and what does and doesn’t work. 

So there were subsequent questions, going through and trying to adjust everything to make it work in the space, but what you get from the audience is great. Jaques does talk to the audience quite a lot which makes perfect sense, for example, when I do the ‘seven ages of man’ speech – well, here they all are! With “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players”, the whole audience immediately feel included in what I was saying. It is quite funny starting that speech, because as soon as I say “All the world’s a stage…” you can hear the audience gasp and they think “Oh, it’s that speech”. A lot of people listen to it with their eyes closed, or just smile. They really want to hear it so it feels like a real privilege to be saying it.

Character

Jaques talks a lot to the audience but he is not as open-hearted as he appears to be. He can be very generous in the things that he says and very self-revealing, but it’s done in a slightly sideways way. He can turn away from them and shut them out too, so preview week is about trying to find how to do that and I think that’ll be an on-going thing, I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I’ve quite mastered it. He is sort of revealing things and hiding things at the same time. He wouldn’t be interesting if he was too self-revealing. There is something about him which is quite withdrawn at the same time as being giving.

Sometimes I find myself getting angrier at particular bits, not because the audience haven’t reacted in the way that I’ve wanted, but just because of the flow of the play. As an actor you try to be as open as possible to whatever is happening, so sometimes something strikes you in a different way or gets a particular reaction that makes you feel something different. Again, with the “All the world’s a stage” speech, it can come out quite bitterly, because it’s sort of futile: you’re born, you live, you die, that’s all there is to it.   At other times it is more playful. I’ve discovered that Jaques is such a complex character that you can never do it quite the same if you want to feel your way through it. So how I react in different scenes does change from night to night. That is partly to do with what I’ve been through during the day, but also how the audience is responding and what the atmosphere is like in the theatre.  

I think there are so many references in the play that make you realise that Shakespeare was writing for a particular place – the Globe itself – for example, the “To call fools into a circle” (2.5.52) line. I’ve no idea if that’s the way it’s written, but as soon as I read it and I was imagining the theatre I thought, well, that must be it!

Development

Recently, I suddenly had this realisation, it was something that dawned on me while we were previewing, that Jaques – it’s partly to do with that thing I was talking about what he gives and conceals –  I think he’s got, or has to have a tremendous empathy for the audience. He is someone who sees very clearly how difficult life is and so understands sorrow and pity as well as joy and laughter. He feels those things very keenly and so when he talks to the audience, it is with a tremendous empathy for them and a love for humanity, yet it is also slightly ambivalent. So with that in mind, part of the challenge of performance, (particularly when you don’t really feel like doing it some days) is to really think about all the people who are watching and listening to what you are saying and to include everybody. That is something I’ve thought about before, in the past, about theatre, I think it’s a very true thing, but particularly with this character it seems paramount.

Another thing that I have noticed but haven’t really got to grips with yet is his spirit of inquiry and what drives him to particular things. Obviously Jaques leaves at the end – he’s got other fish to fry – he wants to go off and talk to this person that has converted the Duke. He is the only hermit at the end; maybe he discovers something new because he is on an inward journey.

I think the more I do it, the more I think that Jaques is actually a really difficult part and I think there are all sorts of aspects of him that I haven’t quite got to yet. So hopefully if I have the mental discipline to do that, I can try and move forward with him, we’ve got enough performances!


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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