As Shakespeare intended
March 16, 2012
David Farr is often telling us how Shakespeare has his characters turning on a sixpence. We can fall into the trap of not moving with the changes fast enough because of decisions we have made about our characters mood and objectives.
But Shakespeare's characters often enter a scene with an objective and find it continually overhauled as they progress through it. The characters think so much quicker than we do in real life. So we must beware of not acting what the text requires just because the right feeling has not readily come to us.
We can take time working out our emotional journey in rehearsal but we must get used to the idea of speedy delivery of an attitude in performance, together with a way of expressing ourselves that might seem inappropriate for how we saw the overarching ethos of our character.
We find ourselves having to say something that is inconsistent with what we said, or how we said, it a moment ago. We have to be cautious before we render up the familiar and irritating complaint – 'my character wouldn't do that'. Think of funerals that you have been to where people have genuinely laughed for a moment when they found something irresistibly funny.
The plain fact is that we cannot feel nor play two things at once, and we have to get used to the idea that the story demands something from us that we hadn't expected or prepared for. Best to let the story drive us, really, and not be seduced into letting our planned manner be more important than our learned matter.
All this comes from some thinking I was doing yesterday in a rehearsal for Comedy of Errors (we've done three previews of Twelfth Night now and are launched into another tech week).
I realised something which is pretty fundamental and very much in line with the need to change as the script directs you and not as one thinks one's character ought to.
In the last scene Egeon finds his lost wife and his two sons. They are all on stage together, within arm's reach, and moments after the revelation Egeon asks his wife 'where is the son that floated with you on that fatal raft?' She doesn't point out that son to him, but goes into a narrative of how that son was lost. Egeon asks not 'which', but 'where'. Had he asked 'which', his wife would not have been prompted to offer the narrative that explained the intervening years.
But I've been trying to make the question sound right for a man who is confronted by a choice of sons – the sort of question one might expect him to ask, more of a 'which is that son' question. Yesterday I decided I must just ask the question simply as if I didn't know where he is. And, of course, it just works.
I could construct a psychological reason for why Egeon asks not quite the right question, but frankly it's easier just to do it and ask it as Shakespeare seems to have intended. The moment is quickly over and I suspect this choice will leave the audience with less speculative wondering that will obstruct their getting the story.
I do hope this makes sense. I look forward to your comment if you have anything to add.
Photo: Jon Clark (Lighting Designer) checking his shots
by Nick Day
| 1 comment
Share this