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This is Penny's fifth blog post. This week she discusses the journey her character goes through in the play, the meaning behind her first song and difficulties she has discovered in the 'nunnery scene'.

Ophelia's journey

I’m finding that its becoming more and more difficult to be objective about the play. This always tends to happen to me as rehearsals come to an end. I’ve really enjoyed this week as we’ve been pulling out detail. We’ve decided that I don’t know what’s been happening which is good as it was my gut instinct. Tomorrow we’re running the whole play. I’m very interested to see what happens. We’ve only been running each act, so it won’t be until the run that I really get to see whether or not I have charted my journey correctly – I hope that it will all make sense to me.

We ran Act 4 this morning, Ophelia’s mad scene. I instinctively started to play it with her being concerned why people are treating her so strangely. She thinks that she is normal. That seemed to work well.

The first song

We worked on the first song yesterday a lot. The song is about a pilgrim going off and dying. We examined the meaning of the song, but the question is why is she singing it at that time. Why does she want to see the queen? We discovered through discussion that she has to talk to the queen as the only other woman. Its about true love verses love. We decided if the stakes are so high, I think if I can get to the queen I can tell her that true love is dead it all seems to about lust. If we could get it back then perhaps we’d be able to save the world. It is that important. We’re using the songs in that way which will hopefully be very interesting and have some sort of sense to it. Its very difficult to rehearse. Normally when I get confused in the scene I go back and think what’s happening in this scene, what is said, normally I am working with a partner. But I can’t here as there is no logical through line. You can make one up but there isn’t one already there.

The 'nunnery scene'

We tried the nunnery scene a couple of days ago. It wasn’t a great rehearsal because I hadn’t been well. We were talking about it and think that there is a problem with how early in the scene the gifts being handed back. We have been trying to think of why. But we think that its offering a negative to encourage a positive. She gives him the gifts back hoping that he will say ‘oh no please don’t give them back, keep them, I gave them to you because I love you’. This will work in terms of playing it, but it seems a bit manufactured. So we thought that maybe its just her being honest. She feels like he doesn’t love her any more so feels that she should give these things back to him. I’ll probably try that in the run. I constantly seem to be discovering and the play seems to be getting richer and richer.

I am very excited about the opening, but not altogether confident. There is one bit that I’m really shy of which is the small soliloquy at the end of the nunnery scene. I’ve just been doing it without ever thinking about it. We’ve never been through it. It has begun to be the bit that I’m very nervous about.

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 rehearsal process progresses.

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