Globe Education Online

This is Mark's blog post for the 2002 production of Twelfth Night, in which he talks about playing a female role, Olivia's relationship with Malvolio and moving a production to the Globe stage.

Playing a Female Role

I first played Olivia when we took this production of Twelfth Night to Middle Temple Hall earlier this year, but the character is very different now to how I played her then. At the moment, I am playing her as a much more melancholy character. The last time I played a woman on this stage was in 1999, when I played Cleopatra. Cleopatra is a very wild character, she's coquettish and difficult. Olivia is much more refined, but after her father's death, she is very sad and could almost be in hiding, both from herself and from other people. Characters have to fight (in a way) to gain access to her; Cesario has to confront first Toby Belch and Aguecheek, then Malvolio before he meets the countess.

Oliva and Malvolio

One of the things I explored with the Middle Temple Hall company, and which I’m still exploring with the new company, was Olivia's relationship with Malvolio. I am more and more aware that Malvolio is a very observant character; he's watching Olivia the whole time. They spend a great deal of time together, but I don’t think Olivia's aware that he fancies her. When family members die, there is a lot of work to be done; settling accounts and so on. I think that Olivia's father was a little bit on the wilder side, like Toby Belch, and probably didn’t leave his affairs in order. All the problems that her father would have dealt with, as head of the household, now come to Olivia. Malvolio could have done a lot of that work for her, but because he loves her, and wants to be near her, he uses it as an excuse to have regular meetings with her. He is the assistant who has fallen in love with his boss. Still, Malvolio is very important to Olivia, though not in the way he would wish. In act iii scene 4, when Olivia exits, she states that she "would not have him miscarry for the half of [her] dowry." This is because Malvolio knows everything about how the household is run – to lose him would be a catastrophe.

What I’m especially struck with, this time around, is Shakespeare's use of separate realities in Twelfth Night. For example, in iii.4, Olivia is desperately waiting for her potential lover (Cesario) to return, wondering how to welcome him and how to act when he arrives. Malvolio is in a completely separate reality, which lets him interpret her confusion and her actions as signs of her love for him. The comedy of the scene comes out of the disparities between these two realities. Situations such as this one are a real challenge for the actor, as you have to develop the differences between the two realities for the audience without undermining the reality your character inhabits.

Moving to the Globe Stage

When taking a production onto the Globe stage, the whole issue of movement and positioning comes into play. You certainly don’t want to stand in one place forever, instead, you want to move around a lot and always position yourself on a diagonal with some of the audience. We’re not actually blocking the production. Sometimes, Tim [Carroll, Master of Play] will ask us to try specific movements and placements, but nothing's ever set in stone. What guides our movements is our character's objective. Tim talks a lot about football, comparing the actors to players. It's a useful comparison, especially on that stage, where one needs to be aware of your "team-mates." Passing a ball is similar to passing the story around the stage; you have to be careful not to crowd around it, and use it to open up the space for the other players. There are so many times in Twelfth Night when the ball is shot out into the audience, then recovered by various characters. Having said all this, the ball/story is not necessarily always with the person who is speaking, which leads to further complications.

When playing the Globe space, you need to ensure that you can be seen and heard by those sitting at the back of the theatre. I am using a slightly stronger, more resonant voice than I used in Middle Temple Hall. This is simply so that it can be heard; sometimes the wind and the rain make it hard for the audience to hear the actors. Although I am playing a woman, I am not altering the tone of my voice. I have been listening to tapes of Dame Judi Dench, who speaks in a fairly low register, and whose voice is not much higher than mine. The pitch of her voice never gets significantly "higher," instead it sometimes gets slightly lighter, more airy at certain moments. This is something I hope to use in performance.

In a similar vein, I have been watching Sian [Williams, Master of Movement] and Tamara [Harvey, Assistant to the Master of Play] to get an idea of how women move. It seems that women's movements are much smaller and daintier than men’s; just a small movement can illustrate a great deal. I believe that stillness is one of the best movements an actor can use on any stage, and you need to carefully consider every movement you make. This is especially true in the Globe space, with the audience watching you from many different angles. Whether a movement "works" on that stage depends on the particular moment in the story. If the story is hanging on the next thing that your character says, to the extent that all the other characters on stage are looking at you, the slightest movement can be very telling. If the focus is not quite so tight, and the audience are not being held in suspense as to what you’re going to do, you have to make your movement a bit more dynamic. I don’t worry about making my movements "bigger" to fit the Globe space; instead, I worry about making unnecessary movements such as shuffling around. Ultimately, I try to be as natural as possible.

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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