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In her final blog post, Michelle discusses the technical rehearsals, lessons learnt from performances and the impact of the hunting scene on the audience.

Technical Rehearsals

The show didn’t change much during the tech. A lot of it was getting used to our costumes. I soon realised that the clothing we’d been rehearsing in – like tracksuit bottoms – don’t quite work when you’re strapped into a corset! I was so unused to my costume that I ripped some of the seams of my dress! But as far as the show was concerned, because we’d had such a good mark up in the rehearsal room, not a lot changed. So the tech rehearsals and the dress were alright. It was scary getting out there in front of an audience - but in terms of the play – it did translate well. It was only when the audience came that we started to realise that some things didn’t quite work. There were things that we’d found funny that were not quite translating. There are moments in the script where we thought the plot was very loose but in performance you realise that actually it isn’t as loose as you thought with an audience there to help drive it along. There are other moments when you can really tighten it up and tweak it to make it a bit more accessible and people understand it better. But all that was when the audience came in really.

Costume

I’m getting used to my hooped skirt now but in rehearsal, because there was no dress on top of it to weigh it down, it would kind of swing everywhere. It’s a huge costume but I’m enjoying wearing it now – although I think I’m showing a bit too much bloomer when I lift my skirt up!

The First Performance

The first performance was just pure fear because the space is so unknown – its so exposing and there is no-where to hide. Not many people know this play, so you haven’t got that to rely on, but that’s also brilliant because there’s not four hundred years of pre-conceived ideas about it. Fear was the biggest factor though - fear about ‘will I be heard? Will things work?’ Lots of it is just ego and vanity!

Learning a Lesson

In the previews, I have learnt one of the best lessons of all. Even after three years of training and three years of being in the business – being on the stage is nothing to do with you. It is all about 1500 people saying ‘if you give, we will receive.’ If you try and internalise and try and be a bit ‘TV’, they switch off.

The Audience

I’ve been here to watch shows and I know the policy of listening here is really special but its not until you face it - where you’ve literally got 1500 pairs of hands just kind of carrying you along – that you realise how important the audience is - as long as you’re generous enough with it. It was an amazing night. People are really forgiving on the first night because they know its your first night. They are so willing and lovely. It is only afterwards when you can begin to gauge where the play is at - what really works and what doesn’t - because the subsequent audiences are not so generous.

Understanding the Play

I’ve been amazed at the things younger members of the audience have picked up on. Its amazing how timeless certain things are. The play doesn’t have to be completely understood for them to understand. They really do get it. What’s bizarre on matinee days is that in the yard you’ve got all these kids and the galleries are filled with older people. The audience are so polarised, in terms of who you are playing to. It gives you a different kind of focus – not that you have to change anything - it just makes you aware of the really rude bits! The kids are getting the really physical jokes and the older people are waiting for the intellectual language to come back.

I think even if people don’t understand every part of the language, they’re laughing at people’s display of how they manage language. Things like the rhyme are really nice to listen to. My dad came to see it at the weekend and even though he didn’t understand everything he really got a sense of what the play was about.

Shooting the Deer

The response to this is a little bit different each night. It is not in the text that she shoots the deer, its just talked about. In this production, you actually see me shooting the deer. Its quite sad and people don’t quite know why its there until the end. The audience then suddenly piece everything together and get the meaning: you can hunt and the lover’s can hunt each other, but at the end of the hunt is death. At the end of the play the Princess’s father has died, so by making the act of the hunt clear, it plants a seed to say to the audience that something isn’t quite right.

Making this moment visual to the audience has helped me with the hunting speech. The deer that they bring on stage after I have supposedly shot it is a real stuffed one - so its very realistic! I realise now why the speech is there. I’ve become consumed with the idea that you speak to affect other people, but sometimes the reason you speak is to affect yourself. She is the princess - she has to do a lot of that for herself. By playing it to an audience you realise that they’re listening to it and they’re working it through. The problem I’ve had has been to do with me. You have to trust Shakespeare, he does know what he’s doing. It did seem so random to have this big major piece of philosophy in the middle of the scene but actually it feels fine in performance. Amidst all the hilarity in the play Shakespeare is plotting in the seeds of death, which can seem strange when they happen, yet by the end they all make sense.

Playing for Truth

We've only done a few shows so far and what’s funny is that with each new audience it changes. Some audiences decide, on masse, the kind of audience that they are going to be. The last two nights we’ve had really quiet audiences. They can be quite discerning at the beginning, but completely with us at the end. Its just been such a big lesson. You have to do everything for truth. You have to play it for truth. In this space, you can get pulled into thinking that you just want a laugh and that’s certainly not the Princess’s role and its certainly not the girls role to have the big laugh. Their function is to provide the heart and soul of the play. The women in the play don’t really have any ‘holiday fever’ until the second half so I find the build up quite difficult sometimes, but I just have to trust it – trust that they want to listen and trust Shakespeare and trust the truth of her and the girls – its really hard!

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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