Emotional crevasses
January 12, 2012
Yesterday we had a run-through of Twelfth Night before we put it onto the back burner to concentrate on Comedy and Tempest for a bit.
It's odd doing a run at this stage, because it's more normal to have run-throughs towards the end of the rehearsal period in the big push toward the opening night.
There's usually a kind of apprehensive hush in the rehearsal room as the stage management set everything in place for the whole play and all the actors get their bits together. Everybody is expected to rather come up with the goods. There's an inescapable air of judgement about what is about to ensue.
By yesterday, however, we're still a long way off, and I feel that what I'm doing in rehearsal remains very much an experiment. It's still a bit wild and unspecific. I might normally be more cautiously underpowered at this stage of rehearsals while I work out what to commit myself to, but that won't do it for Sir Toby. He has to have a deal of drive and energy. Greg Doran once told me he was 'the engine for the play'. Hmmm. No pressure.
Sir Toby is engaged in relentless and deliberate carelessness. He's leaping over emotional crevasses through which he might otherwise fall into the trough of his pain. This indiscipline has to be communicated on stage by a disciplined actor. That's the nature of the game we're in.
You may gather from the bleating anxiety between the lines here that the run didn't go well for me. I think I was boorish and boring. Well, we're on a journey. I think I know where we are on the map and I'm journeying hopefully. Toby says, 'I'm sure care's an enemy to life'. Well, I'm sure anxiety is enemy to an actor.
Photo: Careless abandon? Bruce (Sir Andrew Aguecheek) cutting a caper!
(The What Country Friends is This? plays are; The Tempest, Twelfth Night and The Comedy of Errors, and are part of the RSC's World Shakespeare Festival)
by Nick Day
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