David Bradley plays the title role in the current production of Titus Andronicus.


Titus has given his whole life to the empire and the idea of Rome and he has lost 22 sons in battle. He takes great pride in the fact that his sons have died with honour, for Rome. It's a glorious way to die - the way he'd choose for himself. But he also knows that the gods must be displeased or they wouldn't have killed so many Andronici. Then his eldest son, Lucius, reminds him of an archaic belief that the only way for the dead to pass over to the other side, to cross the River Styx and find peace in death is through the sacrifice of a prisoner. Titus sacrifices Alarbus, the eldest son of his defeated enemy Tamora, Queen of the Goths, because it's the most honourable thing to do. But this act sets off the cycle of tragic events.


Honour and duty are Titus's watchwords at the start of the play but very quickly he changes his mind, and the watchword becomes revenge. He chose Saturninus for Emperor however unsuitable Saturninus may be, because he was the eldest son of the late emperor. He believes that once Saturninus is endowed with the Emperor's crown he will justify the choice and perform his duty. He is also astute enough to realise that if he chooses the Emperor's second son, Bassianus, such a break in tradition might lead to civil war. But Titus backs the wrong horse - he's blinkered and a firm traditionalist, the way some military people can be. One of his downfalls is his political naivety. The fog soon lifts from his eyes and he realises that Rome is a wilderness of tigers.


I believe Titus has been respected and loved by his men over the years, otherwise he wouldn't have had such great military success. We've been reading Tacitus' Annals of Ancient Rome which I suspect influenced Shakespeare when writing Titus - particularly the story of Germanicus, a well-respected general who fought against the Goths. He was an honourable man who had to do ruthless things, like punish his own soldiers as well as the enemy, despite which you feel he was respected by his men. Life was brutal: In a 10-year period, Titus marched over the Alps 5 times. At the start of the play, he is covered in glory but within 20 minutes, he is on his knees, begging for his sons' lives. I don't think Titus is a monster - he feels he has to sacrifice Tamora's eldest son, because it is the only way his sons' souls can find peace. It's what happens to Titus that makes him monstrous.


We've cut the death of Mutius. The director, Bill Alexander, quite rightly suggested early on that the death of Mutius is probably part of the first act that is written by another playwright - most probably George Peele. We felt that the death of Mutius not only added too many minutes to Act 1 scene 1 but also somehow dehumanised Titus as a character. If you leave it in, Titus kills his son and about 10 minutes later he saying to the Emperor, "I can't tell you how happy I am about the way things have turned out. Will you come hunting with me my Lord?" I'm sure the audience would think "What kind of a prat is that? How are we supposed to follow his story and go with him?"

We also felt that the sacrifice of Alarbus and Tamora's desire for revenge was getting lost by including the death of Mutius and the long discussion about where to bury him. In cutting it, we give the revenge story much greater clarity and pace.


I was aware of the stage history of of Titus at the RSC: Laurence Olivier, Colin Blakely, Patrick Stewart and Brian Cox. They all look as though their heads would fit nicely on a Roman coin. Titus has travelled over the Alps 5 times in the last 10 years and I just knew he wouldn't travel in a carriage whilst his men marched, he'd march with them. So at the start of the play he's absolutely knackered. When Titus is offered the crown, he says: "A better head her glorious body fits / Than his that shakes in age and feebleness" [1.1.190-1]. As he offers up his hand to Aron to chop off, he says: "Such withered herbs as these / Are meet for plucking up "[3.1.178]. And in Act 4 scene 3 he says to Marcus "we are but shrubs, no cedars we, / No big-boned men framed of the Cyclops' size, / But metal, Marcus, steel to the very back" [lines 46-8].


There is a key line when Marcus brings in Lavinia sans hands, tongue and virginity: "Prepare thy aged eyes to weep / I bring consuming sorrow to thine age" and Titus replies: "Will it consume me? Let me see it then." [3.1.59-62]. There is only so much one can take. At that point, when two of his surviving sons have been executed, he has been cast out, his whole family dishonoured and his daughter mutilated, I think madness appeals to him as a refuge, a way of escaping the abyss where things don't matter any more. At that moment madness seems such an inviting prospect, he wants to be consumed by it. And just as a tidal wave of darkness is enveloping him, he realises he has to avenge the wrongs done to his family, in particular, to his daughter. So he laughs, because there are no more tears and creeps into a kind of madness but at the same time his military instincts tell him he should be on the ball because he has got to fulfil his quest. It is not as though he goes mad or doesn't go mad it's something he seems to drift in and out of. And at the same time he uses madness because he knows it will lull Tamora, Saturninus and her sons into some kind of trap. Titus thinks he's pretending to be mad. So he's a bit madder than he thinks he is.


What I like about the development of Titus, is the journey he makes from a traditional, blinkered military figure to someone more humane I assume he wasn't around during Lavinia's formative years. I suspect she was educated and brought up by her uncle, Marcus, who taught her to love and honour her father and kept her on the straight and narrow. Only when she looses her limbs and her tongue does he start to communicate with her. He tries to learn how to read her signs when she can no longer speak. During the second half of the play, they find a kind of love for each other. That awareness of other people and the importance of family gives Titus his humanity, which hitherto I suspect he probably had but hadn't allowed to enter his life or mind. Before that, his focus was his men and war. He also develops an ironic sense of humour, an awareness of irony, a self-deprecating comedy - like in the fly scene when he keeps talking about their hands [see Act 3 scene 2]. I'm sure the fly scene was written for light relief, to prepare the audience for the darkness and horrors to come. It's like the Clown scene at the end of Antony and Cleopatra - I saw Richard Griffiths play the Clown and he brought the house down. It's a release that prepares the audience for the last for the last tragic movement of the play. The humour in that fly scene also serves to give Titus a bit more breath as a character - he's no longer just a broken, mad freak or whatever.


Bill wanted to invite laughter at certain times and then chop it. He wanted to be in control of the laughter and thought it would be rather sad if, having taken an audience through that whole story, the play ended in some kind of Gothic horror, Hammer House of Horror, or Taratino-esque laughter. Sometimes during previews, the audience were laughing and we weren't sure if they laughing at us or with us, for example during the 3 deaths at the end, when Titus kills Tamora, Saturninus kills Titus, and Lucius kills Saturninus. The rhythm at that point was the old rule of 3. It's one politicians always use for effect: "education, education, education" - a very powerful statement. But it can also be used in comedy and we realised we were getting laughs at the 3 deaths. The audience are stunned and shocked into a gasp by the death of Lavinia, which is wonderfully exciting to hear and then they laugh at the pie, which is good. That's welcome laughter but then you want to stop it. So we found that if we broke up the rule of 3 and had Lucius slowly walking over to a trapped Saturninus and stabbing him, there was total silence.


I would like an audience to think they've seen a really good play and make them wonder, as we do, why it is not revived more often. There are parallels with what is happening now and what's happened in recent history and that's why I think the play becomes more and more relevant the more it is revived. We just have to switch on our televisions to see that it is happening all the time. I find it very gratifying when people pick up on the play's relevance without having it rammed down their throats. I'd like the audience to be touched by the play and to see its relevance to their own lives.


Maureen Beattie plays Tamora in the current production of Titus Andronicus.


I saw the production Gregory Doran directed in at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg (South Africa) with Anthony Sher and Sello Maake ka Ncube when it played briefly at the National's Cottesloe Theatre a few years ago.


To be absolutely honest I really don't know who Tamora is. When they heard I was going to meet the director Bill Alexander about Titus Andronicus, everyone said "well you've got to play Tamora". But when I read the play, I said "Why? Why would I want to play Tamora?" I want to stress this is entirely my problem. The rehearsal period and working with Bill has been fantastic - Bill's done a brilliant job with this production and I know I am surrounded by fine people who are deeply excited about the play and who love it and believe in it passionately and David Bradley's both a man of genius and one of the nicest people on the planet - but playing Tamora is a leap of faith. I haven't found her and I don't know if I ever will but I am surrounded by fantastic people who I trust implicitly and I simply make the leap of faith each night.


I did very little research because Bill had done so much, which he shared with us at the start of rehearsals. The play is not set in the real world - it is a concocted mixture of Shakespeare's (well-informed) perception of Roman values and ancient traditions of the gods mixed with Shakespeare's own, real, Roman Catholic background. This season I am also playing Queen Elizabeth in Richard III who did exist and I did do a lot of research about her. But in the made-up world of Titus Andronicus I didn't really feel it would help. Instead, I felt it was my job to make the play come alive and to play what was on the page for each scene and each situation that Tamora finds herself in. With Bill's consent, I invented a back story for Tamora, in which she didn't have a husband and that all her sons were by different men, whom she hand-picked for their genes!


The Goths were pagan in origin, though they did later become Christian Romans and I wanted to find a goddess for Tamora. I chose Lilith because I read something once which said you had to be very careful when you invited Lilith to dinner because she always came with apocalyptic tragedy! That's why I have a snake tattoo on my neck. We think of snakes as being a bit sly and you've got to watch them because you never know when they might strike next. But they're also associated with wisdom and of course with Eve and the Garden of Eden.


Aron is there as the archetypical cruel man who leads the others into terrible acts of vengeance, so I suppose you could argue that Tamora is there as the catalyst. In the first scene, she says to Saturninus, "you let me alone and one day I'll find a way to massacre the Andronici." But the next time we see her, it's Aron who's hatched the plan and is about to set it in motion because he loves Tamora. He is completely devoted to her (in rather a spaced way) and determined to do something to assuage her. So oddly, although you would think she is somebody who makes things happen, she is really a catalyst I suppose to Aron, who does actually makes things happen. I think she would eventually come up with something but I think she would probably do something like invite them all to a big banquet and poison all their dinners and once they'd cleared their plates she would have said, "By the way, just to let you know that in half an hour you will all be dead."


Whilst Tamora has a specific purpose in the play, there is no fulfilment for her. A really dreadful, appalling, terrible thing happens to Tamora at the beginning of the play when her eldest son Alarbus, her son and heir, is sacrificed and mutilated. After that, she comes the villain of the piece - and it's hard not to play her like Cruella De Vil or the Wicked Witch of the West. I think the fact that Tamora is a woman makes the part particularly difficult. Her cruelty is the more abhorrent because she's female and a mother. I couldn't find someone to model her on: the Myra Hindleys of this world for instance tend to be led - they're not the perpetrators. That's not an excuse and it doesn't make them nice people. But there is no exposition for her and I can't think of anyone I know who would behave as Tamora does.


That said, you can understand what motivates her and understand her desire for revenge but I do find the part hard because her story - I think - is so unfulfilled. There's the odd hint in the piece to remind you why she's doing what she does and there's her lover Aron, whom I think she genuinely loves - but they only have one scene together. Shakespeare doesn't explore Tamora fully (but then the play is called Titus Andronicus). Tamora comes on in the first scene and then she's off for an hour. I find it hard to find something to love in her - she loved her sons but Myra Hindley would have loved her sons too if she'd had any. As an actor you always search to find the reason behind why the character you are playing does what they do and why they say what they say. Sometimes it is difficult to get hold of the reason and really make it your own but you have to if you're going to play it night after night and make it real. Perhaps I'm too much of a rationalist for Tamora. The task is to reconcile all the elements - who said it was going to be easy!


Tamora is the ruling monarch of another country. In her first big speech ("Stay, Roman brethren"), she hopes that if she keeps talking, her enemies won't kill her son. She's not an intellectual, but she has a fierce animalistic intelligence. She's a queen and she doesn't plead with Titus - she tries to persuade him to allow Alarbus to live. She doesn't beg or prostitute herself, she just presents Titus with some very good arguments as to why he should rethink his decision. I think it's vitally important to establish that. She's a queen and she uses language. If she is just a wee scrubber who's been captured by the Goths then you have a problem.


I think Tamora is really rather fond of Saturninus. I think once her plan to kill all the Andronici had been carried out successfully, she and Aron would rule - or whatever plan it is that she has got in her head. She marries Saturninus because that will enable her to massacre the Andronici and I think she's fond of him, the way one is fond a recalcitrant child. I love the way John Lloyd Fillingham plays Saturninus - it is fantastic, like a wee baby or a puppy. I think Tamora finds him delightful, if petulant - but a bit of petulance is hardly a hanging crime is it? She is not infatuated with him, nor does she love or lust after him. He is palpably incapable of running a corner shop let alone an empire. I think she finds him harmless and when it was all over, she'd keep him as a pet, make him nice things to wear and pop sweetmeats into his mouth.


Tamora's attitude to Titus is one of total loathing. Absolute loathing. I think she thinks he is just the worst possible kind of human being. War is one thing and death in battle you can accept. But what Titus does to Alarbus is appalling [in order to appease the gods for the spirits of the 22 sons Titus has lost in battle, he sacrifices Alarbus and cuts off his limbs]. The Romans prided themselves on not allowing human sacrifice, so what Titus does is way out of order, ultra-barbaric and it also means that Alarbus' soul will never rest. His soul will for ever wander in perpetual limbo or purgatory if you like, between Hades and this world. There is no more heinous crime.


The whole revenge scene is crazy but revenge is incredibly important to Tamora. She's a very good manipulator - she wants to capture Lucius and disperse the Goths (or at least turn them around). We used to play the scene as though the whole thing was quite good fun - we'll dress up in fancy clothes and go and see the old mad guy and have a bit of a laugh. But actually it's not a laugh at all despite the bizarre situation. For Tamora and the boys, it is absolutely essential that they pull it off. Actually what happens is that she helps Titus to do what he wants and she falls into his trap.


The manacles (chains) we wear in the first scene are very hard work and it's really difficult to deliver a big speech wearing the collar around my neck because it sits on my Adam's apple. But then it would be hard work if you were a prisoner - you have to find the balance between what would be real in that situation and what happens in terms of being an actor. I'm now so covered in bruises I look like the victim of domestic violence! Thank goodness the audience don't know - they shouldn't know what you go through. We did a lot of work on the chains because they make such a lot of noise and at one point Bill thought we'd have to cut them but I was really, really passionate that we should have chains and we're all glad now we kept them.


The sackcloth I wear at the beginning is fantastic - when we all turned up on stage we looked like a catwalk show for Nicole Farhi! It's a lovely dress, rough linen, figure-skimming, very flattering. What a shame they had to take it away and break it down. When I'm dressed as a Roman, I have a corset made out of two boards or planks of wood, like a medieval corset which is painful if you have a bit of a bust! In the final scene, when I die slumped over the table, it dug into me so badly I had welts on my stomach. The people in wardrobe are so fantastic though and they very kindly made me a completely different corset which does the same job, only it's boned and has a bit of give in it. The costume has changed since the first preview - the colours I wear are darker and bloodier, so now the skirt is a deep Goth red, the peplum and the inset sleeves are now a slightly less deep red. The whole thing is much less 'girly' than it was - much more sophisticated and womanly. It sets up a wonderful contrast to the lovely pale pastel shades Lavinia wears.


When I first met Bill he said just use your own voice and see what happens. I think using my own accent marks Tamora out as someone different and makes her somehow more earthy. My other role this season is Queen Elizabeth in Richard III and I play her with an English accent. She wears a tight bodice, has to hold herself upright, has to batten down her emotions - at first at least - and not allow people to see how she feels, which is very right for the period and right for the character. But Tamora is much more untrammelled and even though I wear a corset, which is Romanesque, the skirt is very free and I have bare feet in sandals. Queen Elizabeth wears her hair up and five hair pieces which weigh a ton but Tamora's hair is all over the place, her neck is bare and it is much easier to move around. I have a big placket in my sleeve which means I can move my arms freely - Tamora is flexible and it just seemed right with all that to use my own accent.


Eve Myles plays Lavinia in the current production of Titus Andronicus.


I did an episode of Eastenders, playing Auntie Gwen - the lady who adopted Dot Cotton when she was an evacuee during the war - when my agent 'phoned and asked if I could go and meet the director Gregory Doran at the RSC. I went along and auditioned for Bianca in Tamer Tamed first and then he asked me to read Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew. A couple of days later I had a 'phone call asking me to meet more directors (because all of the plays are cross-cast) and then they offered me Lavinia in Titus Andronicus.


I didn't want Lavinia to be a pretty, ornamental made-up doll. I wanted her to be a studious, innocent young girl, incredibly intelligent, well-educated and respectful. She's not by any means all glowing purity - she's got a naughty streak like any teenage girl and her uncle talks of her "babbling tongue". Lavinia is one of Shakespeare's problematic characters - she's such a vulnerable part. You've got to sit up there and dribble and look ugly and show people that you've been raped and brutally beaten. That's something you can't be afraid of, either in yourself or on stage. Every night the audience stares back at you, which terrifies me. I try to make eye contact with the audience when I'm playing Lavinia and break down that fourth wall - maybe Lavinia is the only character in Titus who can do that.


I find the Swan (where we do Tamer Tamed) quite a difficult house to play in because the audience are so high up and almost on all four sides. The Main House [the Royal Shakespeare Theatre] pushes you further as an artist. Here it's more about articulation than volume and at the RSC you get fantastic support from experts in the voice department - Cicely Berry, Jeanette Nelson, Andrew Wade and Lyn Darnley. If you've got a problem with anything, whether you feel you are straining your voice, starting to lose your voice or you don't feel like you're connecting with anyone on stage or in the audience, they'll address the problem until it's sorted out and you feel comfortable. They really are fabulous.


Lavinia thinks she can talk her way out of a situation. In the wood she appeals to Tamora and tries to get the Queen of the Goths to feel pity for her ("O Tamora, thou bearest a woman's face - " (2.2.136). When Lavinia's husband Bassianus is slaughtered in front of her, she sits down and says, "O have I heard / The lion, moved with pity, did endure / To have his princely paws pared all away." (2.2.150-3). She comes out with such extraordinary, articulate language at a moment of unbearable grief. It's almost like a swan - you see a beautiful swan gliding across the lake and underneath, its legs are going ten to the dozen. But after Act 2 scene 2, Lavinia has no lines so I had to imagine and read the lines around my character - what the boys (Chiron and Demetrius) say after raping and mutilating her and Marcus's lines when he finds her: he tries to bandage her wounds with language. I tried to be attentive to all the information Lavinia is given from other characters. Shakespeare gives you stage directions and you have to take as much information as you can from the text and use them liberally and try to feel them for yourself.


At the start of the play, Lavinia is reconciled with her father, who has been pretty much absent throughout her childhood (she was brought up by her uncle, Marcus). Then there's the tremendous excitement of seeing Titus and of marrying the man she loves and in an instant it's all gone and she's left with the terrible shame of the rape. I wanted her at that point just to be a little girl, coming to terms with what has happened to her. It's all swimming inside her, in her mind and her memory and in flashbacks. Key words for Lavinia are honour and respect and shame but the key to it all is shame. I've got a billion things running round in my mind when I'm playing Lavinia, but I play the shame more than anything.


I keep my wedding ring in my stumps, because night after night you have to keep images inside your head and realise (as Lavinia):

where I am and why I'm crouching over

where the pain is coming from

why I want to speak at this moment and why I don't speak at
that moment

why I don't gurgle at this moment

why I don't shake my head back and forth at certain time -
she doesn't always do it.

Lavinia carefully chooses her moment to say that she has been raped. She takes a long time to tell them - a good long while, in part because she's worried her father would kill her if he knew she'd lost her chastity. So it's the fear of telling him and then realising that there is no way out of it. Though in fact, as soon as Titus has killed Chiron and Demetrius, Lavinia knows she is going to go to a better place and when her father breaks her neck it is a longed-for relief.


I went to Rape Crisis for counselling and read case files and books about rape. They are extraordinary women, the counsellors. You walk in and they make you feel at home straight away. They'll help you with whatever they can and they are so kind that you don't feel bad about asking them things. They gave me a fantastic piece of advice: they asked how I would bring myself out of the part every night, after each performance. I said, "Well, I'll just do what I do with my other characters and get on with things and take my make up off and put my shoes on and get out." But they told me that if I ever found that difficult, there's a thing called disassociation, which sounds ridiculous, but if I didn't have that piece of advice, I don't know what I'd do. It's about sitting and taking deep breaths and listening to the noises all around you and the movement of things and feeling the clothes against your skin. Basically all you're doing is getting in tune with yourself, calming down and realising what's behind you and bringing you into the here and now. It's one of the best pieces of advice that I've had for this character. It does take a lot out of you, but playing a mutilated victim of rape is something that you've got to do 100% or not do at all, because it can look naff.


A man came to see us from the Limbless Association who'd lost his arm in the Falklands War. He told us about what happens after you lose a limb, which was tremendously useful; for example after a clean cut there is hardly any blood because the arteries close down straight away with the shock. Many people have phantom limbs - for example there was a case where a lady had lost her leg and for months afterwards, the leg she'd lost was itchy. The Falkland's veteran said it's only in the last two years or so that his fingers have stopped feeling numb and he'd lost his entire arm more than 20 years ago. He still has a mental block and tries to pick things up with his missing arm. He still feels pain and has to grab the end of his stump and squeeze it to stop the burning sensation. Although the pain is psychological, it's still there.


I read some medical books to find out what happens if your tongue is cut out. Apparently gagging follows and because there is nothing to hold saliva in, there's constant dribbling and you make terrible gurgling noises because you don't have any control. And there is swelling in the mouth though the mouth is the quickest thing to heal, so the bleeding would have stopped within a few hours. The Wigs and Make-up department pack my mouth with dental roll, which gives an impression of swelling and helps me keep my mouth closed. They also make my mouth look like it has been slit and colour the inside of my mouth to make it look more like a hole. I consciously try to hide my tongue but you suddenly realise how often you lick your lips or that when you cough, you stick your tongue out. I've never had to concentrate so hard in all my life!


I would like audiences to go away thinking what amazing creatures humans are. I don't want them to think that Titus is a bloodbath but I want them to think about the consequences of revenge and war. The power of suggestion is so masterfully handled in this production by the director that people do leave the theatre feeling sickened, but not because we've used gallons and gallons of blood. We show the effects of violence through eye contact and movement and stillness. When I'm on stage, I'm thinking about the pain derived from the things the brothers have done to me - broken ribs, a painful back. I sit there worrying about being pregnant and about sexually transmitted diseases. I don't want to make people faint in the auditorium or make them feel ill. In a subtle way, I want them to think about acts of violence that happen every day.


John Lloyd Fillingham plays Saturninus in the current production of Titus Andronicus.


Julie Tamar's film Titus was on the telly when we were rehearsing but I didn't watch it. I like not knowing a play before working on it, so it feels like a new piece of writing and I come to it fresh, with no preconceptions. That way there's no worrying about what other actors and directors have done.


This production was meant to be my tiny spear-carrying part so I only read the play really quickly before I met Bill Alexander, thinking in another universe I'd like to play Saturninus but perhaps they'll give me the Clown. When I met Bill, he told me the Clown had been cast and I thought Damn! He said Saturninus hasn't been cast then he stopped speaking for about 4 minutes: he just sat there looking a bit worried. I was just about to say "thanks for letting me come" and go because my dad was waiting outside and I thought I had better nip off. Only for some reason it didn't come out like that, and I said "oh shall I read?" and he said "Why don't you read Saturninus?"


My first thought was that Saturninus looked childish and that he hadn't got any boundaries. I was interested in the idea of someone with no moral compass being put in a position of power. I learn my lines before rehearsals so I can go in any direction quickly but I'm loathe to make decisions before I turn up in a rehearsal room because I might think "Well, he's ambidextrous" or something and the director will go "No, he's left handed" and you end up not quite getting each other. So I prefer to wait and see what approach the director is going to take and whether he's the sort who's very hands-on in creating character.


Bill kept hinting towards the Emperor Nero (Emperor of Rome from 54-68AD] and I did some research about him. I picked up on details like he was massively fat and spotty and didn't wear any clothes apart from a dressing gown which he wore open with no belt, his tackle hanging out and no shoes on! Apparently he was really smelly - but I've not managed to convince anyone to let me go on stage like that. He also liked to think of himself as an actor and is rumoured to have said when he died "What an artist dies in me". I'd like to make Saturninus a real attention-whore shouting "Look at ME!" all the time. I try to play around with the conceit and keep running to the front of the stage, talking to the audience who can be lots of things - Rome; specific people; gods; an abstract concept of Rome. That's me being a hammy actor but it's okay because that's Saturninus, who has a very weird, egotistical view of the world.


I was also reminded of Uday Hussein, who had a lot of power from an early age but not enough parental control or guidance. It's a frightening thought that a little kid could say to a bodyguard, "Kill him" and whoever it was would be dead because the bodyguards would be too frightened to disobey or contradict. There are all sorts of terrible stories about Uday, for example you read things like he would find out that his brother had slept with a woman and then he would have her brought to him and sleep with her and brand her with the letter 'U'. In the first minute of being made emperor, Saturninus tells his brother he's going to marry his brother's fiancé. It's as though, because he's the first born, he thinks he can do what he likes. I imagined him sitting alone in his room as a child saying "I hate them all" and "Just wait till it's my turn" and listening to Marilyn Manson or New Order and suddenly he finds out that he may not be in the line of succession and you can imagine him going ballistic because that's what he's been waiting for. In the second line of the play he says "Defend the justice of my cause with arms" and then he says "Plead my successive title with your swords" (1.1.2 & 4). He's not interested in talk - he wants those who oppose his succession stabbed. I really wanted the play to explode into an opening. I didn't want any of that whispered "My lord, I hear there's some trouble over in the castle" kind of thing. I just wanted to frighten everybody into thinking "Oh right, we can't sit back in this one, then" and make everyone implicit in the whole thing straight away.


My first choice was Lavinia but that was all to do with hating my brother because he tried to impede my line of succession. It is nothing to do with Lavinia. But Saturninus has never seen anything like Tamora and with a horrible sick mind he wants a mother-lover. She says she will be "a handmaid to his desires,/ A loving nurse, a mother to his youth" [1.1336-7]. I think there is a real gut reaction to the way she looks: powerful and majestic. It's intensely sexual - he wants to consummate his marriage straight away but I think he's also terrified. When she says in an aside to Saturninus [1.1.454-5] "Let me alone [i.e. leave it to me]; I'll find a day to massacre them all" [i.e. Titus's entire family], I think he sees in her everything he has ever dreamt of: a sexy, powerful, magical woman (somebody told me the other day that Goth women had magical properties - I like that!). She has total power over him, though I think her power wanes later on and she has to work to keep him under her influence. I think she's rather like Agrippina. Even though Tamora's influence wanes, I think a kind of feral instinct is aroused at the end when he kills Titus, who's just killed Tamora. She was his mother, his lover, his everything and his gut reaction, his instinct, is to kill. He doesn't think about it - it is instinctive.


Titus was a hero, a great military general and during last night's show, I suddenly thought Saturninus had posters of Titus on his wall when he was growing up and perhaps he looked at them, thinking "oh I wish you were my dad"! But when Titus rejects the crown and insists that Saturninus is made emperor of Rome, adoration immediately turns to hate (hero worship can so easily be turned on its head) and Saturninus twists or distorts what Titus says because he feels that he, the old emperor's eldest son, has had to beg for what should, by rights, be given to him.


Saturninus actually has nothing to do with the revenge plot- that's really the story of Titus and Tamora. Choosing Saturninus for Emperor is Titus's first big mistake in the play - part of the "hero's fatal flaw", I suppose. In real terms, Saturninus doesn't do anything wrong. He's responsible for the deaths of Titus's sons Quintus and Martius but he honestly believes they killed Bassianus and he's worried that anyone who kills the Emperor's brother, might try to kill the Emperor - Saturninus's blood runs through Bassianus's veins so by killing him, that's almost tantamount to killing Saturninus. It is not that he cares about Bassianus, he cares about himself. What Saturninus represents is a withered, inbred offshoot - something rotten in the Roman Empire which will cause the Empire's downfall. It's very important that he's the thing that has to be corrected, because he's what's gone wrong from the Rome's perspective. Lucius and the Andronici are Rome's ideal and they all look fabulous with their breastplates and their curly hair. When Lucius becomes Emperor, he will heal the state.


The Emperor of Rome ruled most of what to the Romans was the known world but in this production, Saturninus doesn't look particularly like the king of the world. He sheds clothes as the story progresses so by the last scene he looks pretty scruffy, just in a T-shirt, trousers, blue sash and crown - a hint at degradation and disintegration: Saturninus disintegrates as the play progresses. By the end, he's nothing - he's scruffy, a child, a baby and Tamora has to shore him up for those few minutes more until her plan reaches fruition. He has wanted to be Emperor all his life but he lacks the actual political skills for the job. Perhaps he imagined that when he became Emperor he would also become a deity, just as Caligula considered himself a deity.


Joe Dixon plays Aron the Moor in the current production of Titus Andronicus.


I found the reasons why the character had been called Aaron for a few hundred years very unsatisfactory. Academic thought is that it was fashionable in Shakespeare's time to give a biblical name to a villainous character. Aaron was Moses' brother in the Old Testament - when Moses protests to God that he is slow and hesitant in speech, God gets Aaron to do the talking (Exodus 4, 10-16). In the months leading up to rehearsals, I discovered there is a plant called Aron. The descriptions of the Aron plant (sometimes called Cuckoopint) in Gerard's 'Herball' in The General Historie of Plants (1597) are the same as the description of Aron in the play. I find it really useful to go back to Renaissance dictionaries to look up words whose meanings or pronunciations might have changed over the years. I managed to convince our director, Bill Alexander to reinstate the character's name, which is spelt 'Aron' in the First Quarto (an early printed version of the play) and in the Folio, where the prefix for the character is always 'Aron'.


The Aron plant has spots of diverse colours like those of an adder. It grows in England, Africa and Egypt in shadowy places - in woods and ditches, under hedges. It is associated with shade and darkness and is a member of the DRAGON plant family, which were sometimes referred to as the devil, as is Aron. Aron is from North Africa, where the plant is found but what I really liked was a cautionary passage in Gerard's Herball which said that the most pure and white starch is made from the plant's roots "but it is most hurtful for the hands, for it choppeth, blistereth and maketh the hands rough". Aron chops the hand too! And at the end of the play, Aron is left to die, buried up to his neck in the earth, rather like a plant.


I am a great procrastinator and can spend months reading and researching. When I did finally read the play, a whole list of questions leapt out at me. I wanted to know why Aron does what he does. I wanted to know what his relationship was with the other characters. There is this great phrase in Stanislavksi's book, Creating a Role that a character should walk on stage almost like he is wearing a huge train which is his character's history and he knows where he has been and what has happened to him. It is equally important when that character leaves the stage to have a reason for leaving and to know where he is going. You also need to work out for each scene why you say what you say, why you do what you do, what you are trying to achieve, what your motivation is. It is detective work really, going through every line of the play looking for clues. Cicely Berry (Director of Voice) also said something incredibly helpful - she told us not to skim over the horrors in the play but to feel how shocking everything is, to feel the enormity of what happens to people in the play.


Aron, who came from North Africa, seems to have has abandoned his origins and his faith and become an atheist. He quite often says he doesn't believe in anything but I think the reasons for that are probably complex, based on his own, personal tragedy. In the 15th century, Moors were expelled from the North of Spain but some stayed, conquered by the Spanish who forced them to forgo their Muslim religion and be baptised as Christians - though in secret many continued to practice Islam and retained their Muslim beliefs. Lots of families were torn apart - some of the Moors who left Spain decided that rather than take them on perilous journeys into the unknown, it would be safer to leave their young children in monasteries, to be brought up by the monks as Christians. I'm not saying that is Aron's background - but I found it useful to know something about the history of the Moors in Europe.


There is a lot of nobility about Aron. Although he is technically Tamora's slave, they are lovers and we didn't want to show him as being subservient. Tamora's sons look up to him and take his advice - he has a kind of patriarchal relationship with them. We had a notion that he may have tutored them. He is a clever man and very well read. When Titus sends Chiron and Demetrius a letter in Latin citing Horace (Odes 1.22.1-2), the boys don't get the irony Titus intends, but Aron does. He is endowed with fantastic qualities and an extraordinary, quick mind.


Aron's deep love for Tamora is a hugely important factor - he calls her the empress of his soul (see 2.2.40). I think that's one of the most beautiful lines in the play - and it comes from Aron, who seems so evil. I see Aron as a good man and it has been an interesting journey to find what makes a good man do the things that he does in the play. Audiences tend to skate over the fact that at the start of the play Titus kills Tamora's eldest son, Alarbus. The Andronici not only kill but mutilate him, hack off his limbs and burn him. And yet we don't think "Titus, what a monster!" And yet that act is the very potent engine of the whole play. Titus kills Tamora's child and because Aron loves Tamora, he wants to exact revenge for her. From that point, Aron is intoxicated by evil and surprised by the effects his acts of villainy have. Aron seems to be totally unrepentant right to the very last moment and how you view him is a question of perspective. When talking about acts of revenge today, people often ask the question, "Terrorist? Or freedom fighter?" I think it would be very boring to play an evil person - it's far more interesting to find antitheses (opposites) in the character.


Aron's function in the play is to instigate revenge. He motivates the Goths to get revenge on the Andronici.


Aron is on stage for about 20 minutes at the start of the play and then Tamora, the woman he loves, agrees to marry the Emperor Saturninus - and off she goes to consummate her marriage! How do you react when the empress of your soul, someone whom you love passionately, goes gone off to sleep with the most powerful man in the world'? Aron calls Tamora his 'Semiranus' (she was an Assyrian queen noted for beauty, opulent voluptuousness and cruelty). Suddenly Aron recognises what she is doing and thinks, yes, of course this is a ploy. I think one of the key phrases in the first speech for Aron is: "Then, Aron, arm thy heart" (1.1.511 Arden) - he has to focus on what has happened rather than let his insecurities run away with him. He admires her brilliant capacity to think on her feet and end up being Empress of Rome having come on in shackles. In the second half of that speech, he boasts about her love for him. Generally speaking, people who boast are feeling uncertain, insecure.


The director Bill Alexander and I have been experimenting with the idea that Aron plays with the Roman's worst nightmares: they have an idea of what a black person is, of what a Moor does, they think he is the bogeyman and so he acts like the bogeyman. Does the audience really believe that Aron has dug up dead men from their graves and set them upright at their friends' doors? Or is he simply playing to their worst fears? In Shakespeare's day there was certainly a suspicion and fear of people from ethnic minorities, as there is today. When Aron is asked if he repents or will "blush" to think of his crimes, he says "Ay, like a black dog, as the saying is" (a proverbial saying for having a shameless expression on your face). It's a brilliant piece of writing. I'm sure Shakespeare was putting a mirror on stage to reflect the prejudice and ignorance, not just of his day but of today. At a time when the world was yet to open up, when it was still unusual to see people from other parts of the globe, Shakespeare plays with the association of black with evil, with the idea that black people are evil. The weird feelings he's writing about still exist - just think of our cross-cultural anxiety and suspicion of asylum seekers.


The birth of Aron's son is a big turning point for him. When he is confronted with his child, he sees the bigger picture - he and Tamora are no longer the centre of the universe. He becomes a satellite revolving around this creature and it is as much a surprise and a shock for him as it is for everybody else. Suddenly Arons displays humanity and wants to protect this little innocent Aron sees himself as a Goth and when his child is born, his first thought is to send him back to the Goths to become a warrior.


Before rehearsals started I had several conversations with Bill and toyed with the idea of shaving my head because I like the idea of the brutality that kind of look has. Aron does talk about his woolly mane uncurling like an adder about to strike - the idea being that he is so gripped by vengeance and rage that his hair uncurls, an image he likens to an adder uncurling before it strikes. Originally I had this idea of using my beard and physicalising an adder using my beard. Then I grew some hair down the middle and because of the references to Aron being spotted like an adder, I thought I would have adder markings, a V shape like an adder.