What Country Friends is This?

Nick
Am loving the blog - really enjoying the insight into your world.
To stoke some controversy (as requested) - I'd be interested in your views on the new RST from an actor's point of view.
I've attended many plays at both The Swan and the RST and although they have similar layouts, I find that they couldn't be more different from an audience experience perspective.
I absolutely love The Swan - I can't think of a bad experience I've had there - productions seem to glow somehow and are enlivened by the space. The current King John being a great example of this - the production is quite superb and it soars in The Swan.
The new RST however, is an entirely different matter. I've sat in many different locations and seen many different plays, but I'm yet to have a wholly satisfactory experience there. Somehow voices get swallowed in the space, particularly when the actors turns away, there are strange fluttery echoes that detract from the sense of the words, there are too many sightlines that get blocked, particularly with any action away from the centre of the stage, and often the actors seem almost to be fighting with the space.
I don't expect you to bite the hand that feeds you, but I would be interested in how the new RST feels to an actor.
Perhaps the fault lies with me?
Best, Keith

Nick
As a follow up to my previous comment (which depending on moderation may appear after this one), I'd be interested to know how the physical space in which you perform affects your performance.
I can understand how an audience might affect performance, or at least I can guess how it might as I've never performed on stage, but do the physical boundaries or surfaces of a space play a part, either in terms of an individual's performance or how a production might be formed. How do different shapes affect performance, or different types of stage, the height or depth of an audience? Do you expect the plays to change at the Roundhouse compared with the RST performances? Finally - what in your view is the single most important external factor for an actor? Or should external factors be immaterial?
Best, Keith

Hmm . . . Well . . . Keith, thank you so much for those comments. Looks like some interesting debate here. My response is entirely personal and will be somewhat judgmental, but here goes . . .
There is certainly a big difference between the two theatres, and one that perhaps we don't take sufficient account of. Like all actors I know that have played it, I love the Swan. It feels warm and intimate to performers and spectators alike. But I also love the RST and think it is a wonderful, more epic yet intimate, playing space. It is, though, a trap for the unwary. Like the Olivier and the Memorial Theatre that preceded it, the RST makes significant demands on an actor's skill and technique. Richard Eyre used to describe playing the Olivier as the theatrical equivalent of scaling the north face of the Eiger. I remember, from having played the NT and the old RSC myself, that those stages posed big challenges for actors. But, in my opinion, the current RST is a great improvement on the last one because, at least when we're treating it right, we can all feel -- audience and actors alike -- that we're in the same universe together. But we do have to treat it right, and include our audience in our dialogues, know where the focus is, take that focus and hand it on with supreme care and efficiency, shift about a bit if we know we're masking and find the right comfortable pitch for our voices. There is real and complex technical awareness involved.
I strongly suspect, on the evidence, that drama schools nowadays just don't put enough emphasis on technique -- perhaps because it's considered old-fashioned so to do. But it's all too easy, with the apparent intimacy of the thrust stage, for actors to forget -- when they are addressing their fellows upstage -- that they are really talking to a whole bunch of people who are some distance behind their heads.
Vitality is essential on the RST stage -- more essential than volume. The RST has a tendency to suck the energy out of its actors, and we have to enter fast, exit fast, speak hard on the cue, just to keep the thing alive. If we take breaths too often, we undermine the intention and impetus that drives what we feel and say. Terry Hands used to remind actors that in real life people always seem to have enough breath for what they want to say.
So, basically, we have to considerably up the game when we're paying the bigger of the two theatres. Cicely Berry is consistently reminding us about end-consonants, and I believe we have to sort of over-speak the syllabic consonants at the ends of words to make what we're saying quickly clear. But you can see, from the spray of saliva against the light, when an actor properly explodes his/her "p"s and aspirates her/his "t"s!
I'm convinced that many young actors today have not been taught how to differentiate, say, "mettle" and "metal"; that they haven't been shown the value of avoiding a schwa in the pronunciation of words like "to"; that nobody has told them what a syllabic consonant even is, let alone how it can help them.
Drama schools are turning out some wonderful actors -- I've just watched some truly affecting and emotionally connected work in the understudy run of Twelfth Night. But actors are being left with too much technique to acquire in too short a time when they come to face the exigencies of a theatre like the RST.
Keith asks how the shape of the playing space affects performance. I think my favourite playing spaces have been the Cottesloe and the old T.O.P. where there's less need to "act" and one's behaviour is more easily read. The big challenge for us in the RST is making unnatural speech and super-real behaviour sound and look natural and human.

Nick
Thank you for such a full and well thought-out answer.
I'm intrigued by the difference in technique between young and not so young actors; recent plays I have seen at the RSC seem to provide some substance to this.
I thought Paola Dionisotti owned the stage in King John, exuding control and calm authority in her role. She didn't seem to be speaking particularly loudly but all of her lines seemed to just cut through. Susie Trayling's Constance was deeply affecting too.
You also, in the understudy run of Comedy of Errors that I saw a couple of weeks ago, exuded an authority in delivery that, in my eyes (and ears) set you apart (although without wishing to undermine my positive impression of your performance, you had the presumably significant benefit of playing a role that you play regularly, whereas the majority of the cast did not).
As a demanding space, are the differences in technique exaggerated at the RST compared to other theatres and are there enough rehearsals in the theatre itself to assist with developing the technique to meet the demands of the space?
The difference in technique is presumably something that cures itself with age and experience, as with so much else in life...
Best, Keith

Hello again, Keith. Yes, maybe it is a question of authority. I liked to use the word vitality. I am also much impressed by economy when I am watching an actor. And I guess all these things come with experience. Young actors today have a very different path into the business than actors of my age had. I talked about that earlier in this blog. I've just totted up the plays I can remember, off the top of my head, in which I had performed professionally by the time I was the same age as the youngest member of our cast here. I counted to over thirty, ranging from Shakespeare through Pinter to Agatha Christie. And I'm sure I left a lot out. I was fortunate to be playing continuously in provincial theatre for the first few years of my career, where a Darwinian principle meant only those who performed with authority survived into the next season!
That is a chance denied to actors today, and the stage-craft we were taught in some hard lessons on the job has now to be taught at drama school, I guess. I was on the faculty of a drama school for a time and found myself continuously asking my young actors what on earth they were doing as they explored their character's story while diverting focus from where the story was actually being told. A simple principle, but of course they'd never had a more experienced actor pin them to the wall with a withering look and ask if they were "REALLY going to be doing that while I am speaking?"
The RST is -- in my view -- a wonderful, but unforgiving, playing space. It is very exposing.
I think I would advise a less experienced actor, facing the understudy run, to go for -- and be content with -- the emotional connection and truth. After all that is what they are used to exploring in their training. We will be on the edge of our seats, willing them on.
There is, perhaps, another way, which is to do it technically right with good pitch, diction and focus, respecting the tropes and figures Shakespeare has given us and trust that the feelings, and emotional connections will come -- or APPEAR to come. But it's a gamble.
I've heard young actors complain they "can't do it" if they "don't feel it". For a jaded old ham, like me "feeling it" before I do it is a rare luxury. The job is to make you believe I'm feeling it. It isn't easy, though, to do that while doing all the other technical things an actor must do to ensure the authority over the stage that pleases Keith. But that is the fun of the challenge before us here.
Thanks, Keith, you're helping me work out the mystery of what I'm sure I will never fully understand.

Nick
Once again, thank you so much for such a full and considered response.
I would like to wish you and the cast the very best with the transfer to the Roundhouse.
I look forward to reading more of your adventures as the summer progresses.
Best, Keith