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History ensemble member Nick Asbury on getting in the groove...
Things happen to you
There's a point that musicians get to when after many years of practice - in my case, hours and hours of sitting twiddling away at the piano as a teenager - they say that the piano begins to 'play itself'.
 As a jazz musician, it's certainly the case. You don't think of what you're going to play next, how the expression of a bar or phrase will go, how it will sound. You just play. And the piano 'plays itself' because the brain doesn't get in the way. That filter that judges things as a performer starts to switch off and you become very present. It's why at rock and jazz gigs that 'presence' is commuted to the audience and they feel able (and should) whoop out and holler and scream when said rock god is up and strutting his stuff - i.e. playing - up on stage.
One of the very many great things about doing an Octology is that performers and audiences alike, either through tiredness and concentration, or a combination of both, become over the course of eight plays locked into each other in the very present. The plays start 'playing themselves'. Only what is happening on stage and what the character (and therefore the audience) is feeling matters at that point. That is true play. The ability to lose oneself in a world full of imagination and without a care for anything else apart from what happens in that moment. The plays and the performers have to be good, of course. Imagine sitting through some turkey of a show for four days. Well, the answer is, you wouldn't, and it wouldn't last very long. But maybe because we've been together for so long and worked so hard to be better, hopefully we're doing ok and we start having that relationship with the audience. This, surely, is best practice. And it's not just restricted to a publicly funded theatre company. There are ensembles all over the country doing great work from Dundee Rep to Colchester with many others in between. (I'd love to experiment somehow with doing the same with film. The only example I can think of that has a similar ensemble feel, where actors continuously appeared in differing roles in a succession of films are the Carry On films. Maybe it's time to try.)
But if there is one abiding memory I will take from the Octology we did last week it is the woman in the second row, stage left, (and was later pointed out to me by Lex's brother who was two rows behind her), who at the Curtain Call for Richard III was standing, tears streaming from her face smiling, clapping and cheering, covered from her right shoulder to her left hip in a furious line of blood, spurted from Richard (Jon) as he was killed by Richmond (Lex). I love that. It's from little moments like that that convince me in my fonder moments that we're about to enter a Golden Age of theatre over the next forty or so years. As the world becomes ever more virtual and the computer and television break into every thread of our lives, so the thrill of someBODY actually standing there in front of you, sweating, muddied and bloodied, crying over the death of his son can become even more of an event than it already is. Things happen to you in a theatre - from getting covered in a Zorro-like trail of blood to seeing people fling themselves at each other on ropes; to people actually speaking AT you.
It is so wondrous to see the faces of people during the shows - and especially at the curtain call after eight shows - lit with delight, wonder and joy. Clapping. Cheering. God knows what our faces must look like. Similar, I think. We've all of us in that room been on a journey and we've played. It is humbling, joyous and emotional - the release of so much love and appreciation. And, for a second, only for a silly second, I start feeling like a rock god... Only joking, actually I feel the proudest actor alive. And with only one more set of eight to go, that decision I made to be an actor and not a musician has borne more fruit than I could possibly imagine. I'm very very lucky.
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Watch extracts from the Histories
 View scenes from Henry V and behind the scenes in rehearsals.
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Latest blog posts
- Listen. Time passes. Listen.
- I feel alive
- Things happen to you
- Sleeping on ladders
- Battle of Barnet
- Buckets of blood
- Hamming
- Three and a half weeks
- Letting go
- Unforgettable
- Lighting grids
- A new stage
- Gloriously
- The men in black
- Really listening
- Making history
- Happy birthday!
- Bleeeuurghhh!
- Dead weight
- Card sharks
- Tomorrow I scalded myself with tea
- You stink
- Turning to slush
- The threshold point
- Holidays!
- All change
- Strange things in the bath
- Back to school
- Corpsing
Other blog posts
About blogger Nick
Likes: Cricket and music. Fields and dark pubs with no music
Dislikes: Lager, crowded streets and light bars with music |
