Week 23: Vomit - verbal and otherwise
September 24, 2012
6 April 2012
The stage can be a very vulnerable place. It is made more so when your body turns traitor and slips out of your control.
In Act 5 of Twelfth Night, I arrive on stage as part of Orsino's entourage and support the action. In one unlucky show, this task proved too difficult for me as I started to feel light headed. I couldn't even afford to think of an appropriate time for my character to depart, but dizzily wandered offstage, stumbled into the backstage toilet, and threw up. Still queasy, I only returned to stage for the curtain call.
As a Spirit, I spend Act 3 Scene 2 of The Tempest in one fixed position. I sit statuesque on a rock, holding a rope that is meant to be still — like a fence suspended in midair — throughout the scene.
As Ferdinand and Miranda confessed their love for each other during a matinee performance, I felt a twitch in my nose: the mucus slowly working its way down my right nostril. Just the right one (they rarely work in tandem). Finally, with reckless abandon, my nose was in free flow. Drip, drip, drip fell on my leg. I couldn't even swipe my nose with my sleeve, because no matter how subtle I kept the movement, the rope I was holding would magnify it for the whole theatre to see. So, a puddle formed on my leg until I could leave stage for the end of the scene, and spent the interval with a hair drier against my trousers.
The same sense of helplessness is felt when your tongue gets away from you. Having thrown up and snotted during performances, it seems only fair that I've been getting my words right. This has not been true for all the actors in the company, especially during The Comedy of Errors.
In one unlucky performance Nick Day (playing Egeon) exclaimed, 'But tell me you are my son, Antonio!' provoking nervous chuckles, gasps, and choking sounds from all the actors onstage. Egeon's son is called Antipholus; The Comedy of Errors is the only play in our season that doesn't have a character called Antonio.
Felix Hayes also suffered a similar slip of the tongue when he was being carried off as Dromio of Syracuse. The line should be, 'Be mad, master, cry "The Devil"!' but Felix made the speech significantly more contemporary by saying, 'Be mental master, be mad!.' Luckily, this bit of speech is said as everyone is leaving the stage, so we could all break out of character and chuckle in the wings.
by Ankur Bahl
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