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Bottom
Paul Hunter plays Bottom
Paul’s theatre credits include Rapunzel for Kneehigh, Under the Black Flag at Shakespeare’s Globe, The Water Engine at the Young Vic, Physick Lies A-Bleeding at the Apothecaries’ Hall, Oliver Twist at the Hammersmith Lyric Theatre, Playing the Victim at the Royal Court, The Play What I Wrote at the Wyndham Theatre, Into Your Dreams at the Almeida, Richard III for the English Shakespeare Company, Twelfth Night for Northern Stage, Les Enfants du Paradis for the RSC and Servant of Two Masters at the Sheffield Crucible Theatre. His work for television includes roles in After You’ve Gone, Mitchell and Kenyon, Black Books and My Family. For Radio he has played parts in A Million Different People, My Family and Other Animals, and The Newbury Arms.
Bulletin 1
These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.
Beginnings
Acting is certainly not in my family. No one was in the theatre at all. I was always interested in English. An English teacher directing the school play said that there were auditions. I said: ‘There is no point in going to the auditions. It’s always the same people in it.’ She called my bluff and I went and I got a small part in this play. To my surprise I found that I really, really enjoyed it. I would have been about sixteen at the time. I wanted to see more plays. I’d never really seen anything, apart from pantomimes at Christmas. I was born in Birmingham which isn’t far from Stratford so I badgered my older sister to take me there and see some Shakespeare. It was around that time that I started to think: ‘Why not? Why can’t I do that?’ So once I was doing my ‘A’ Levels I started to think about drama school. I became quite determined that I wanted to have a go at it and that if it didn’t work, it didn’t work. Like lots of parents they tried to persuade me maybe it would be better to go to university first. And I actually thought, for better or for worse, ‘No, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to have something to fall back on.’ I wanted to see if I could do it. I went to what was then Middlesex Poly but is now Middlesex University and did a two-year acting training there which was interesting. I didn’t know much about theatre. Because I’d been to Stratford a lot, I had an image of theatre as being a certain type of classical theatre. It was only by going to Middlesex and encountering, an inspirational teacher that changed that. His teaching was not from a traditional drama school training. He had trained at the Le Coq School in Paris and his was a much more European outlook. So suddenly I was going ‘Ooh well, theatre could be this.’ It was much more about empowering the actor and the performer - improvising and a lot of mask work. So suddenly I found myself interested in stuff I didn’t know existed, which is what training should be.
Shakespeare
We did Shakespeare at drama school and at the end of our first year we did a Shakespeare play. Fantastically, we did Richard III and I played Richard III! I am sure I was terrible but as a first experience of doing it it couldn’t have been more exciting. I had that wonderful thing of going ‘Gosh, I’m going to play a really big part and a fantastic part.’
First week
The first week has been wonderful, a really exciting start. I have been at the Globe before but I not to do Shakespeare. There is something different about doing Shakespeare here. It felt very exciting coming in on the first day and being welcomed in by Dominic (Droomgoole, artistic director). We were the second company, because the King Lear company had already started rehearsing, but you can feel the excitement in the building, as it gets close to the season beginning. In 20 years of acting that first day of rehearsals still feels like the first day at school. You are looking at people thinking, ‘Do I know you? Have I worked with you?’ hoping you remember people’s names. The first day follows the pattern of most first days. You are welcomed and then there is a read through of the script. Often in a read through everyone reads their own part. I thought Jonathan (Munby, the director) did a really good thing, which took the pressure off the read through, which was that no one was allowed to read their own part. We literally just passed the script around. One person in the circle would read a line and the next character would be spoken by the next person and literally kept going round the circle. It was good. It meant that you listened to the play. We all heard the play for the first time. The play is easily broken down into different groups – mechanicals, the fairies, the lovers, until at the end it is a very group dominated play. Very quickly Jonathan decided he wanted to start straight away breaking these groups down. So quite quickly, almost on the second day, we were into different calls and different times of meeting.
Text
We started with Giles (Block, the text expert), as a full company, looking at rhyme and the language, which was really useful. Since then we have had separate group sessions where initially, we did a session with the mechanicals, we looked at the first scene where they all come together to find out what play they are doing and Bottom wants to play every single part. It is crucial when you are doing any play, but particularly with Shakespeare, to get to grips with the context of the situation, not just the language but what is happening here and what is the relationship between these people. We spent a lot of time doing the fundamental stuff so that hopefully when you get on your feet – not that you have nailed everything down and things can’t change – but you are clear about certain fundamental things. In the next session, which I really enjoyed, the director did a thing where he wanted to look at how we might as a group put a play on or tell a story. It was really good. Rather than looking at the story Pyramus and Thisbe he took The Knights Tale from Chaucer. We looked at lots of different ways of improvising and spent the whole afternoon improvising around The Knights Tale. It was great to take something that we knew we will never perform because there was no pressure on us. We just improvised all afternoon in different ways.
Meta-theatre – the mechanicals commenting on the process of putting on play.
One of the things that really appealed to me about the part of Bottom and being part of the mechanicals was that you are commenting what it is to put a play on. I think there is a sense of having fun with that. But it is important when you are playing it that you treat it very seriously, that the play really matters to this group of people. And hopefully that is where the comedy lies. I think the stakes have got to be very high. For them it is a huge thing to perform this play in front of the Duke. And the more serious they are about it, particularly Bottom, the more he sees himself as this really heroic actor, the bigger the gap between how he sees himself and how the world sees him is hopefully where the comedy lies. They don’t want to be bad. They want to be really good – it is just that they don’t quite have the wherewithal to be good!
Rehearsals
I always find it interesting being in plays when you do discussions after the show, particularly with younger students, when one of the questions they are always intrigued by is how long you had to put it all together. And then when you tell them I am always not sure whether they think that it is a long time or not a long time. How long have we got? Six weeks and it is fairly intensive for that period of time. It is interesting for me because I think sometimes, not all the time, the instinctive choice you make – this isn’t a rule – but I think often the instinctive choice you make is often the strongest choice. You might not know it at the time. You might obviously have to go right away from it and do something else. But I often think as an actor you go back to something that you did very, very early and say, ‘You know what, I think that is the best choice about that’. Of course you must challenge it and try different things but sometimes that first thing you think, ‘You know, I think that was in the right area.’
Comedy
Comedy often comes out of people who maybe aren’t up to something, wanting to do well and trying to do it well. At the Globe the great thing is the proximity of the audience. The fact that they can interrupt, that they are right there, they can shout things out. It forces you to be very present. The worst thing you can do is try to ignore them. It also means you have to make sure that you are very clear. The shows that I have really enjoyed at the Globe are the ones when there has been a real clarity in the performances. The second it becomes a bit vague or a bit woolly I don’t think it reads so well. Having played quite a lot of comic stuff - there are differences of course because the space is so unique - I think certain fundamental things I would always come back to, like the situation and respecting that situation and treating it seriously and be committing to that situation. And then you rely on certain things about how you might time something, things which emerge in rehearsal, how you might play certain moments. But the most exciting thing is the relationship with the audience, and you only find that when you are on stage. We are rehearsing in a disused office room round the corner. It is massive. I think certainly the biggest gap I have found between a rehearsal room and the theatre than anywhere else is here.
Bulletin 2
These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.
Week two
We’ve carried on going through the play working in quite a lot of detail on the scenes, we tend to spend one rehearsal looking at the text in detail, in terms of making sure we know what’s happening in the scene, and being very clear about all of the language. And then in the next rehearsal session we go back to the scene, and put it up on its feet. That’s always the exciting time, as even if you’re not quite getting the text you suddenly have to make choices physically, and you’re sort of thinking how this is this going to pan out? So we’ve done that through the whole play really. At the same time all the possible other elements of the production are coming into play, like the sort of movement side of the production that Sian [the choreographer] has been working on. For instance we’ve been playing with the idea that second half will begin with Titania and Bottom doing a tango together. So I’ve been learning the tango which has been great fun! And then also various other bigger movement type things like the mechanicals’ Bergamask dance, which is in the text. Yesterday we got through to the end of the play and had great fun having a go at Pyramus and Thisbe for the first time and actually doing the play. That was my highlight of the week, playing at playing an actor, and even though it’s very rough at the moment, if we commit to it in the right way I hope it will be a lot of fun for the audience. It feels like we’re in quite an exciting place as we’ve made some discoveries and now its time to take it a bit further.
Movement
I always enjoy the physical side of the work partly because of my background. Beginning the day with some physical work with Sian, such as a warm up and then a movement exercise, really helps me. I’m not saying that it’s the same for everybody, but personally I find that now when we come to look at the scene in terms of the text I find myself more engaged with it because I’m physically engaged. Also I’m a big fan of Sian’s work, as a dancer and a choreographer, so when I was asked to do the show and Jonathan [Munby] told me she was going to be doing the choreography and be in it I was very excited to be working with her. She’s great, we tend to work quite quickly so even if you’re not quite grasping everything by the end of a session you’ve got a rough idea of what it might be like. I enjoy the way we don’t get too bogged down by the detail, but look at the broader thing, and then when you come back to it you can start to figure it out. I like any show that’s got a dance in, I think all plays should have a dance! I’ve never done tango before, I directed a play in Northern Spain where two of the actors performed a tango and they were very good, but I have to block that out of my mind and not worry about it, this is Bottom doing the tango, it doesn’t have to be like some great South America Lothario. Sian’s working from the Argentinian tango which she says is much sexier than the European tango, so hopefully it will look quite ludicrous, as Siobhan is much taller than me. It will be a very fun way of opening the second half, to get the audience back into the world of the play, and it works well with Oberon’s line: ‘I wonder if Titania be awak’d’ (3.2.1).
Text Work
Text work with Giles [Block] has been really fascinating, I’ve really enjoyed that. One of the great things about being at the Globe is you’re aware of the resources available to you, not wanting to describe Giles as a resource exactly but he is very useful! It’s a great way to discover things, as he’ll unlock something that makes you think about how you might play something. For instance within the rehearsal of Pyramus and Thisbe there’s a line I’ve been struggling with, a line from Quince’s play. Giles suggested that it might be the case that Bottom had got the punctuation of the line wrong, and I thought of course, that makes sense, Bottom’s got it slightly wrong and that’s what gives it such a strange meaning, and I hadn’t really seen it like that. Then that unlocked something between Michael [Matus, playing Quince] and myself, and so now Michael shows Quince’s frustration at that point.
Costume
The transformation of Bottom is something that has to be considered early on, and even before rehearsals started I came in to meet Jonathan and Mike [Britton, the designer] to have an initial discussion about it, and I was excited to hear that rather than adding a mask or full head they were going to transform my own features. We were talking about some sort of Mohican which will go on top my own hair and then become like a donkey’s mane, and then lots of incredible hulk type hair coming out from my shirt and sleeves which I quite like, and a tail. We’re also toying with the idea of false teeth, and I went last week to a place in town to have some fitted, so that I can have some to rehearse with. I want to make sure you can still hear me, and that it doesn’t suddenly sound like I’m talking gibberish. I like some of the ideas for when we do Pyramus and Thisbe, again I won’t really know until we’ve had the fitting, but they’re talking about us being maybe quite an experimental looking company, so we might be in black tights and short shirts looking like some sort of avant-garde movement company, all very exciting.
Blocking
Jonathan hasn’t done much blocking with us, again that’s partly what I’ve really enjoyed about this rehearsal experience as its not been formalized in that way. We’ve been given the freedom to experiment quite a lot which is always great as an actor. You’re quite restricted in TV, as you have to be in particular places for the shots. But in theatre, especially somewhere like the Globe, it’s different and it feels like we’ve been given a lot of freedom to explore the space. Of course there are certain moments when Jonathan may want us to enter in a particular way or through a particular door, but once we’re actually in the scene and we’re playing, he tends to let it play. He might suggest you break down stage at a certain point, but his direction tends to come from what he sees us doing, making it more of a mutual process, which I always think is really nice, rather than him imposing his ideas on us. I’m sure that when we do the technical rehearsal there will be a lot of changes, so I’m trying not to hold on to things too much in case we get in there and they go: ‘no, that doesn’t work, we’ll change that.’ I’m constantly coming in and having a look at the space, its easy just to come into work and go into the rehearsal room and stay there for five weeks and then come into the actual performance space. I’m going to try and see King Lear so I can see a play performed in the space before we go in, as seeing how people use it is always a good exercise.
Voice Work
Voice work with Jan [Haydn Rowles] has been interesting. Jonathan had this idea which we’re still exploring, that the mechanicals are all from South London, so we’ve been working on developing the same South London accents to show that the mechanicals work together and know each other really well, and are a united group. Initially I had some concerns about this, as particularly in comic roles accents can interfere with your instinct, as the brain is to busy thinking about the accent. But you’ve got to give it a go. Actually I’ve quite enjoyed it because it has changed quite a lot of how I might play things which is good. The one-to-one sessions with Jan are fantastic because she’ll be so specific about those things you’re doing in relation to your own accent and the accent you’re trying to do, to get it all just right. Obviously for it to work you need to get to the stage where you’re not thinking about it at all and it’s just second nature.
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Bulletin 3
These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.
Costume
I’ve had my first costume fitting, and I’m quite surprised that it looks so smart; it’s not all rough and ready. The other mechanicals are similarly quite well dressed. At the end, when we do the play, the idea is that we will be in black tights and white shirts giving it a sort of experimental mime troupe feel.
My costume for the transformation interlude is coming along nicely. I’m having false teeth. I have had a fitting for the teeth, and I’ve been rehearsing with some from a joke shop to get used to it. They’re not too extreme; people still need to be able to hear me. And then of course I’ve had the big ears fitted, though at the moment one feels very secure and the other one doesn’t, which I’m sure will get sorted. I don’t want to lose one mid-scene. Then I had a fitting for the wig which will be added to my own hair, it’s a big mohican, like a donkey’s mane. There’s not much time for the change into the donkey, it’s actually quite quick, there’s only a small exchange between Flute and Quince before I’m back on, so we’re going to have certain things already on. For example, I’ll already be wearing the mohican and I’ll have a hat over it, when I come off stage they can just take the hat off; and the same with the false chest hair. If it all works, I think it will be great. The thing that I’m most pleased about, and I talked about this with Jonathan and Mike [the designer] before we started, is that we haven’t gone down the route of a big false head. I’m still able to play. The audience can still see me, and I think that for me is more interesting then being masked.
I love wearing costumes, where possible I like to be dressing up as early as possible in rehearsals. I like that sense of something that transforms or changes you.
Week four
We haven’t run the whole thing together yet, yesterday we started watching some of the other scenes that we’re not in, which we haven’t seen before because it’s been a very private process, but I think that’s been really good to see it at a later stage. I have to say I’ve been really impressed and excited by the stuff I’ve seen.
Dancing
The tango’s going well, we’ve pared it down to its essence, and then added this part where we hold a particular move. At the moment the other characters enter and you see their journey through the wood. Because the tango starts the second half it’s a little movement montage that gets the audience back into where we left off at the end of the first half.
We’ve been rehearsing our bergamask. That’s fun; it’s sort of strange because we’re doing the Pyramus and Thisbe part and then suddenly you finish that and go straight into this bergamask, so I don’t quite know how they sit together. It’s hard to tell what it looks like, it’s good fun to do, but I don’t know how they are next to each other so we’ll have to see.
We haven’t had the real music yet. We’re going to do some work with the musicians on Friday and that will be very different to working with a CD. I love doing the jigs at the end of the play, it’s something that you get at the Globe that you don’t get in other places. It’s really interesting how cathartic that is, to round off the production in that way. I like it because it really declares the act of theatricality, it literally says “we were just performing this”, and there’s something quite celebratory about it – I think that’s really good to be reminded of. It declares the artifice of theatre, and I think that’s more interesting than maintaining the illusion, you get the same thing in Balinese theatre where after something dramatic happens they have a comic chorus come on, to remind the audience that it is just a play.
The director
What I find very satisfying about Jonathan’s direction is that while he has very clear ideas about the play and about the situations, he gives you a lot of freedom as a performer to experiment and play, and that for me is the best combination. What I wouldn’t want is for everything to be decided for you by the director, like they’ve directed the play already at home and then just tells you what to do. I think the challenge for the director is to take the ideas that the actors come up with, which don’t necessarily get used, but for there to be more of a balance between the actor and director. I think rehearsing, when it is truly rehearsing, should not be about repeating but should be about trying new things. I think the danger is that sometimes, through a combination of factors, whether it’s fear or lack of time, we tend to reduce our options early on and go ‘oh that’s what it is, now I’m going to repeat that’. Whereas I think that rehearsing and performing should be about trying something different.
The set
We saw a model of the set right at the beginning of rehearsals, and we’ve got replicas of certain things in the rehearsal room, so we know quite a bit about the set design. I think the set looks great, especially the transformation into the forest and those elements which become bigger than life. The flowers are not trying to be realistic; they’re distorted in some way when you move from Athens to the wood and when I’m carried away to Titania’s bower I go into a giant flower and there’s something slightly, surreal is too strong a word, but certainly bigger than life. It’s like going into a distorted world when they go into the woods, which is of course should be what the play’s about.