- back to Home »
- Adopt an Actor »
- A Midsummer Night's Dream »
- Titania
Titania and Hippolyta
Siobhan Redmond plays Titania and Hippolyta
Siobhan’s theatre credits include Les Liaisons Dangereuses for PW Productions, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at the Lyceum Theatre, Spanish Tragedy and Much Ado About Nothing for the RSC, An Experienced Woman Gives Advice at the Manchester Royal Exchange, and Mary Stuart for the National Theatre of Scotland. On television she has played parts in The Smoking Room, Sea of Souls, Ed Stone is Dead, Holby City, Wokenwell, and Between the Lines. Her film credits include Beautiful People, Karmic Mothers, Captives, and Duet for One.
Bulletin 1
These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as she goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.
Becoming an actor
I don’t know when I first got interested in acting – as far back as I can remember I always wanted to be an actress. My mother was a very gifted amateur actress and director, and my father was an academic who taught English and Drama at Strathclyde University. They were always involved in things, there were always play texts lying about, they took me and my sister to the theatre and to the cinema and the ballet – so they have only themselves to blame really for this. There are a lot of people in my family who talk too much and who love the sound of their own voice, but I’m the first to have done it professionally. I didn’t do much acting at school, but I did go to classes outside school, which I enjoyed. The summer of my last year at school I went to the Scottish National Youth Theatre, which was then in its inaugural year, and had a whale of a time. I didn’t go to drama school; I went to university first, because my parents perhaps were hoping I would change my mind about being an actress. My father persuaded me that I’d get the parts there that I might not get at drama school, and also that drama school was better when you had more life experience. Actually that was right for me, at seventeen I really was every bit as green as I was cabbage looking, and I would have been devastated if they had said no. A degree in Scotland takes four years, and I went to St. Andrews and got a degree in English. Of course I stopped reading as soon as I went to university, sang in a band, discovered boys and all that. Then I went to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School as a postgraduate. I went on the two-year course, but the way things fell out, I had an Equity card, and by the end of the first year I was starting to be offered work, so I didn’t do the second year, which was mostly putting on productions. I thought if I was going to be spending most of the year acting I might as well be doing it professionally.
Beginnings
I was cast as Titania and Hippolyta back in February. I came and met Jonathan [Munby, the Director] and we had a wander about on the stage. He offered me the part there and then, and I was delighted, and said yes. It’s quite a tall order, I’m not in the first flush of my youth, and if you are playing a fairy queen you have to be able to play it in a certain kind of way. I have to find a way to play the part that overlaps with most people’s idea of what a fairy queen might be, and I’m delighted to be given the opportunity.
I have played both parts before, with Kenneth Branagh’s company, Renaissance. We did a world tour of King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and rehearsed both plays in six weeks. I’m really thrilled to be getting a chance to do it again. I remember what I did the last time, and I’m quite sure I shouldn’t do that again. That is only one set of options taken away from me. One of the things that I find really interesting about both these characters, is that they inhabit their skin, without reflection, whereas I live in my head a lot, but these people live very comfortably in their bodies. Although Titania is ephemeral, she is very comfortable in her own skin. Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, is a woman of few words but considerable presence. So one of the most interesting things for me is making the transformation from a person who chats all the time, and just uses her body as a place to put shoes and mascara really (me), to two very different women who live from the centre of their physical being.
I do a lot of dancing in this show, and while I love dancing, I’m not a dancer, so that is making me quite nervous at the moment, but I think it is quite useful, because I think it is a way into this physical landscape I’m trying to describe. It will be fine if I make a mess of it with Paul [Hunter] who is playing Bottom because although Titania and Bottom dancing is a very pure expression of their romantic love – it is meant to be funny, so if we get it wrong that can only add to it. If I get it wrong when I’m dancing with Tom [Mannion, who plays Theseus and Oberon], then we are in trouble.
Preparation
I didn’t do a lot of reading about the characters before rehearsals started because one of the things I hadn’t managed to achieve properly was the way the characters have to live from moment to moment. Hippolyta has been taken captive, she is in a strange Court; Titania is drugged most of the time, she is not in her proper senses. So they are both having to react to what the world throws at them, and I thought it would be best to start with a clean sheet. I do a lot of reading around though, at the moment I’m reading Fairies and Fairy Stories by Diane Purkiss for a bit of fairy lore. Gradually I’ll find some bits of music that I like listening too, and I have some postcards in with my script of images I find useful. Although I like talking about ideas, that isn’t what gets me there in the end. I’ve discovered that ideas are generally useful to me in that they help me not to make a wrong choice, but they don’t usually inspire me. I smell or feel my way to performances. I don’t worry about reading about past productions, or other interpretations of a part. I’ll read whatever there is in the rehearsal room, and anything that another actor says they have found useful, I’ll have a look at, but I won’t worry too much about that. I have to try to get myself into the wood.
I already had a job when Jonathan offered me this job. Fortunately all the filming took place during the first week of rehearsals; that meant that I had to commute between here and Manchester for the first week. I was here for an hour on the first day, and then a couple of hours on Wednesday afternoon and evening, an hour on Thursday morning, and then all day Saturday, feeling I had left a bit of myself behind in both places all week.
The first day
I always find the first day a bit nerve wracking, I think most of us do. Now that I’m a bit more experienced, I realise I’m not going to remember everyone’s name, or possibly even anyone’s name, because you need to see them in their different contexts. So it can be a bit like being machine-gunned with names. I felt sad about missing the read through. Jonathan had said to me that at his read throughs nobody reads the part they have been cast to play. So I was a bit cross to have missed that, because I’d have loved to know what somebody else would do with the parts that I’m playing – so I could steal from them if necessary. Much of any actors career is based on theft – getting ideas from other people – but you have to know what to take and what to leave behind. The read through is usually another very difficult part of the first day, but it might be less so if you aren’t reading your own part, but I’ve never done that before.
Rehearsals
A typical day involves some dancing at some point, with Sian [Williams] the choreographer. She is very, very patient. As I said I like to dance, but because I’m not a dancer it takes me a long time to get the moves in my head. Because I have dances with both Tom and Paul I think I have more dancing than anybody else in the show, which means I’m dragging behind. Every time we start a new dance I have to find another space for it in my head. So I do about an hour of dancing every day. We are moving through the play in story order, so there are some actors I haven’t actually been in the rehearsal room with yet. Those involved with the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbie I’m going to work with later today for the first time, because we have just got to that point in the show [Act three, Scene one]. It will be delightful for me finally to get to work with everyone.
We don’t all come together as a company each day. We are all doing different things at the same time. Some people will be working with Giles [Block] on text, some people will be dancing with Sian, I haven’t done any singing, but some will be singing with Olly [Fox the composter] – I’m not, which is good that everyone has been spared that. Some will be working with Jan on voice. I had a session with her last week. I’ve not worked in this space before, so I wanted her to give me a heads up on what it needs and likes. I think working here will either kill me or cure me of my irritation with extraneous noise. I do get very irritated by it, and I am going to have to find a way to deal with it here. Here the audience will have to deal with that too, with a plane going over, of the sounds of tour boats on the river. So all this complementary stuff is going on alongside the work in the rehearsal room.
Last week we had some chats with the designer [Mike Britton] about what we are going to be wearing, and a photo call, in the attic – which made me realise we have a thatched roof. It is very off looking across this thatched roof and seeing the Gherkin poking up, but quite exiting. I’ve seen a drawing of my costume, which is fantastic, and at the moment what I will have is a dress with an extremely long train. The joy of a long train is that I’ve had a bit of experience with them, and I’m not bad with them. The problem is keeping the boys off them, because they aren’t expecting it to be there, and they are thinking about something else – their sword, or what they are saying next, which is reasonable. You have to have a revolving head to make sure that nobody has stepped on the train, so that you make a sweeping entry, only to be brought up short by someone standing on the back of your frock.
The highlight of the week was the first time that Tom and I got our first dance absolutely right, and when I landed on top of Paul playing Bottom, and I didn’t fall, he caught me.
Bulletin 2
These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as she goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.
This week
I’m having lots of fun with my fairies, although I’ve felt very sorry for them this week, because they have had to lift and tote me, and they are quite small – small, but wiry. Titania demands a lullaby, and then she falls asleep, and we had a plan where they passed me round between them, finishing up with me on the floor asleep. Now we have a better plan where my bed comes trundling on. I’m not going to say too much about my bed, because I want people to be pleasantly surprised by it when it arrives.
The whole of the technical rehearsal will be something of a minefield for me, so I have to be as prepared as I can be, and that is why I need to be more proactive now, even with these very passive characters. There are three weeks to go before Tech week, and this is probably the normal trajectory of a role for me.
Because I’m quite chatty, and I’ve got a facility with language, I tend to play people who talk all the time. These two women don’t. They have got lots to say, but they aren’t necessarily telling you their innermost thoughts. Yesterday I was wishing I had more to say, because it would play more to my strengths. But it is good for us, as actors, to play away from our strengths. It gives a great feeling of satisfaction when you realise you can do something that doesn’t come easily to you.
Yesterday I had a tango rehearsal with Paul [Hunter]; I have not had a tango rehearsal for over a week, and I could not remember anything. I lay down on the floor like a two-year old drumming my feet, saying ‘I can’t remember anything’. We have had to change quite a lot of the tango, because, as you know, a lot of the tango is danced backwards, and I simply can’t do that with a long train to my dress.
I know the lines. I didn’t think I’d remembered them from eighteen years ago, but they have come very quickly. It is quite useful in some respects, but I do need to be vigilant about it, because it means I am not necessarily examining them as I say them. There are new ways of saying things, and new ways of approaching it, which I’m not paying attention to because I am just so pleased I can remember the lines. I’m grateful for the headstart it has given me really, but it is not without its potential pitfalls.
Costume
Yesterday was an exciting day because I had my costume fitted – it’s a pink frock with an enormous train behind. I looked at myself in it and thought: ‘I’m a bit like a cross between Barbie and Godzilla!’ or Barbiezilla as I’m calling it. I have some quick changes between Hippolyta and Titania. I don’t want to think about that at the moment – indeed I’ve made an executive decision, that it is not my problem. I will stand there like an obedient horse while people work their magic round about me. The first one is from Titania into Hippolyta - the other fairies will be doing a short musical interlude to help at that point. At the end of the play, the same change happens again, and I’ve no idea how that will work yet. That will be fun to work on in Tech week. At the moment it feels like my bower will take three days of Tech week to get right, and my dress the other four.
Voice
This morning we had a voice session in the theatre, with the usual parties of people traipsing in and out while we were working. We may as well be doing it in Piccadilly Circus - because people will be constantly in and out of that space, all through Tech week, seeing me throwing myself to the ground and drumming my heels, making a complete ninny of myself. So no chance on holding back on any mystery, it will all be public. Jan [Hayden-Rolls, Voice Coach] was talking about what this space requires, and she said that the space requires a lot of ‘muscularity in the voice.’ So I had to ask, what exactly does that mean? Muscularity has become a bit of a buzzword, and I’m never quite sure what anybody means by it. I’ve worked with voice people who’ve talked about the muscularity of my native (Scottish) accent, when what they mean is it sounds as if I might be lurking round a doorway ready to mug them. That’s not what they tell you when you ask them though. But what Jan means is you need to speak with your whole body; and to be precise about your diction. You don’t necessarily have to speak louder, but you do need to be distinct, and you do need to be aware that there are people all the way around you. Terminology is a good thing to check though, because terms like that can mean as many different things as there are people in the room.
The highlight of the week was seeing the death of Pyramus for the first time; I actually thought I could die laughing. I was watching it through my fingers, with tears streaming down my face. It was truly, truly marvellous. The low point was yesterday having my tantrum because I couldn’t remember any of my tango.
Doubling
I’m beginning to think that I need to change my tactics with these characters. Neither Hippolyta or Titania is really in a situation where they are in full control of their faculties. Titania is well able to call the shots, but she is drugged for much of the play. So I thought I would be as passive as I could be and see what happened. I’m panicking so I need to make some decisions and talk to Jonathan [Munby, the Director], mainly about Hippolyta. Hippolyta is hardly on the page, so in theory, you could do what you like. Though obviously I want to do what Jonathan likes. I don’t want the costume to do all the work for me, I’d quite like to do some work in the costume, so I need to make some decisions quite quickly.
There are parallels between Hippolyta and Titiania. It is possible to look at them as the same thing, one is the daytime face, and one is the nighttime face. We are not deliberately doing anything to draw people’s attention to that at the moment. There was to be some sort of hint in the costume. Titania is a vision in various shades of candy pink and there were going to be some touches of pink in Hippolyta’s black costume, but that is too startling, so instead we are putting some touches of purple in there. Whether that will just look royal, or make people think there is an echo of Titania, I really don’t know.
A lot of Hippolyta is really undiscovered territory still. I do know she has good manners, but that is really all I know about her so far. I fantasise about playing her as a Danish woman, whose first language is not English, and who has a pop-up map of Athens she keeps looking at, although I don’t think those would be very welcome suggestions.
Tom [Mannion, playing Oberon and Theseus] and I were talking about Hippolyta and Theseus after our dance rehearsal today. We think they aren’t fanciful people, more military tacticians. Clearly, Theseus thinks he is better at it than Hippolyta is, because he had just won this war, and she was the head of the opposing army. I can imagine them having evenings that to me would be screamingly tedious, but they would find fascinating, where they have a billiard table where they have lots of little men they pushed about representing armies, like those films of the war. I think they are quite practical people, but they are not unromantic, and that is an interesting combination. Theseus does not believe in ghosts, bogies, and fairies, and stuff like that, but Hippolyta is a bit more open-minded about it. At the same time, he is very lyrical. It isn’t a love match, it is a political union, but it has the unexpected added bonus that they do actually fancy one another, and they would not have necessarily been expecting that. So that is quite exciting for them, and quite fun to play.
With Titania and Oberon it is much nastier. They definitely fancy each other, but I think their relationship is always going to be fraught, because they are both so awful. In this play, it is a happy ending for them, but you know that the next day there will be another Indian boy or something else. I’m looking forward to meeting my Indian Boys (I’ve got two because of the regulations about the time child actors can work.) He is going to be spending quite a lot of time with me. Normally when you see this play the Indian Boy is referred to, but he isn’t seen much, but my Indian Boy is going to be with me quite a lot of the time, until he gets his little nose put out of joint when Titania falls in love with Bottom. I’ve not seen that done before, and it will be fun to see what the audience makes of seeing the poor child being shut out of the bower.
Titania is queenly, and powerful; and a complete fool for love. We have decided this week that the fairies have got extremely heighted senses. In a way, they are almost in a state of perpetual motion. They are responsive to, receptive to, and aware of, every little change in the atmosphere. There is a fly in the ointment in the beautiful love story between Titania and Bottom, which is, although she loves his singing, she can’t really cope with it when he brays; and he does that fairly regularly, so that sends shock waves through the whole fairy community every time he does that – fairies running about holding their ears.
I think it is important that we aim for a sense of majesty in the first scene where all the fairies meet, so that we have somewhere to fall from later on. I remember when I played these parts before, a friend of mine came to see me in LA and he said to me afterwards, that he thought in that first meeting between Oberon and Titania, that they are warring monarchs and you have to have a sense of the importance of that. But because we played them nearer to animals than spirits in that production, so that was something that we weren’t necessarily concentrating on, and I think it is something that it will be useful for me to concentrate on in the first scene. After that, she is a complete slut.
Past Shakespeares
I’ve done quite a lot of Shakespeare in the past. More comedies than tragedies (though I tend to think I’m better in tragedies), perhaps because comedies are more frequently done. I want to have another go at Much Ado About Nothing before I die, I’m sure I could do better. Tom [Mannion, playing Oberon and Theseus] said he’d love to do it with me yesterday, but it is early days – let’s see how he feels in October – it might be, ‘never darken my door again’.
The thing about Shakespeare, it seems to me, is to not be frightened of saying that you don’t know, when you don’t know. I think it is easy to be frightened of it. It is easy to think, particularly in a situation like this, that everybody else knows, and you don’t, which makes you an altogether inferior kind of being. I just can’t afford to take the risk of treading water – I don’t think any actor can. To me the prospect of going on stage and saying something I don’t understand is much hairier than standing in front of a room full of people and saying, actually I have no idea what this is about. You do have to steel yourself to do it.
Generally, Shakespeare is easier to play than other authors are, because he is better than other authors are; so half the job, at least, is done for you. If you say it accurately, speak the sense of it, and can be heard doing so, that is probably more or less job done. So far working here has not really been different from working with the RSC in Stratford, though it will be when we get onto the stage all the time.
Bulletin 3
These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as she goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.
This week
We had a run of the first three scenes yesterday [I1 and 2 and II1], slotting them together, stopping as we went on. It is delightful to see all the different worlds of the play. So it is very nice for all of us to be in the rehearsal room together now. To begin to be able to see what we are in.
Working on the individual scenes, we have got all the way through to the end of the play, but things are still changing every time we get to it, as it is informed by things that we have discovered on the journey. I am anticipating that it will be different again when we get there tomorrow or Friday. We are carrying on like this, slotting groups of scenes together and then running them for the rest of this week. The plan is, having done one, two and three yesterday; four, five and six this morning; to stick all of them together this afternoon. Then to start the same process again with the second half tomorrow morning, and do the same thing, then on Friday do the whole lot, and on Saturday run it again.
There are very few cuts in the text we are playing. Indeed, there are things in it that were cut from the last production I was in. I recognise as soon as there is something which seems new.
Today’s panic is that I fear I haven’t analysed the characters enough, that I should have used the method that I’ve used all my life until this point, rather than embarking on this new unaccustomed way of doing things. The fact is, it is not an intellectual process for these women, so in principle I do think I’m right, but in practice it is terrifying.
Working on the premise that I’m smelling my way to these performances, I’m test driving Titania’s perfume today – very flowery, and at the same time cold. So I’m hoping that will add something to the rehearsal today – at least I’ll smell nice, even if people don’t know what I’m on about. Hippolyta will obviously have to have the same perfume, but in less concentrated doses.
Costume
I haven’t had my second costume fitting yet. But, as the Director pointed out to me yesterday, my rehearsal dress has diminished in volume. It gets such a mauling that the panniers at the back have dropped a bit. I said to him, this is what happens with the passage of time – something to look forward to. It gets such a hammering that I’m now sewn in to it, to make sure that it stays on. I’m hoping that the actual dress will be a little more difficult to separate from me – I’m sure it will. I’m quite looking forward to getting into it now, to see just what it is I’m having to content with.
Next week is going to be very interesting; we are going to be Tech-ing in a way which I’ve never done before. We Tech for only part of the day, because Lear is on in the evening. Like most actors are, I’m used to a Tech were you dive in at the beginning and you just stay there until the end. You go home and sleep for a little while, and then you come back and you pick up from where you left off, and carry on. But we are only going to be able to do five hours a day. So we are going to stay in our costumes all day, and they are going to feed us. In my case I expect that it will be a bit like feeding the lions at the zoo, it will need to be bits of meat on a stick from far off, because no one can get anywhere near me because of the dress, and they will not be allowed to drop anything on this work of art. So I’m be having a lot of porridge in the morning before I come in.
Bottom and Titiania
I’m looking forward seeing Paul [Bottom] in all his gear – the nightmare that is a living prop hell - we’ve come to call him a Mankey, this cross between a Man and a Donkey. I haven’t seen his final costume yet, but I think he has big ears, and a Mohican that goes into a mane all the way down his back, and hoof-like feet, if not hands. I just know we are going to get stuck together – that his teeth will get stuck in my upholstery.
The dance is being modified as we speak. We have come to realise that the mother of all frocks will not allow me to do what we are attempting to do – and neither will my memory to be honest. So it is now a shortened, and a very succinct version, during which, lots of other characters come on. It starts the second half and you get a sort of update of where everybody is and what is happening, which will take the pressure of me, which is a good thing.
The key scene for Titania is probably where she meets Bottom, and falls rapturously in love with him [III 1]. The premise of how the drug works it that it is when you see someone that you fall in love. So when she emerges from her bower, not having seen the Mankey of her dreams, she comes out in a towering temper because there has been all this racket going on before, and shouts, “What” and then sees him. So I’m having quite a lot of fun playing two different things on two different words. “What angel” actually encompasses the whole emotional spectrum – or that is the plan. We are having a great deal of fun with the scene so far, and it will be even more fun when the children are factored into it. The children appeared for the first time on Saturday, and they are beautiful. Of course children exist in their own reality, which is much more interesting and immediate than the artificial reality which we have spent weeks constructing. So my plan of action with the children is not to look at them, except for when Titania looks at them. I’ll just carry on doing what it is that I should be doing in the moment, and hope that if/when anyone looks at me I will be in the right place that I should be at that point. When it works it will be fantastic, it might not work some of the time. That is the risk you take. It is worth it for when it will work. One of them was overheard to say, “She’s scary”, and I thought, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet. If you think this is scary mate… It’s true, I am scary. For Titania, that scene is great fun, and will be even more interesting with the child in it.
Hippolyta
The high point of the week was doing the fairy meets Mankey scene the other day. I hope it is as entertaining for the audience as it is being for us. I just enjoy that scene so much. The low point is the abyss, on the brink of which I am teetering, which is Hippolyta at the end of the play. I am picking my way along the cherrystone path, but I’m not really convinced. I have this terrible feeling – perhaps not terrible because I’ve got time to do something about it – that there is an elephant in the room, that I haven’t yet managed to address. But I’m creeping up behind it, and I will address it, by the next bulletin.
For Hippolyta the scene I feel safest talking about is the first scene, which starts in one place and rapidly deteriorates from there as it is brought to Hippolyta’s attention just what Athens is like. I am playing her as a lofty woman; she is slightly above the clouds and thinks she is the most important person on the stage. In Athens, frankly, they are barbaric, and they have this ridiculous system that a woman can be killed just because she does not want to marry the man her father wants her to marry. So it all goes pear shaped fairly quickly in that scene. For Tom and me it gets better once we have got the dance over with, so we are existing in opposition to our characters emotional arc – phew when we have got that over with.
Real life
The rehearsal period takes over your life. My house looks like it has been burgled. I would only know it had been burgled if they tidied up a bit. It looks like a bombsite. I can’t sleep properly, I sleep for about two hours at a time, and then I wake up in a raging temper because I need more sleep than I’m actually getting. Then I feel slightly undercooked all day, but at the same time it is great fun to do. I did have a bad moment yesterday when Michael Matus, who is playing Peter Quince, pointed out to me that in ten days time people, having paid, will be watching. I suddenly realised the knock on effect I’ve had of missing the first week. Which is that that I’ve felt I have a week longer than I have, which is a bit unfortunate. Earlier I wished I had more to say because it would give me more to hang on to, now I’m devoutly grateful I haven’t any more to say – I have enough to contend with trying to hang on to what I have got to do. Although the rehearsal period does take over your life, I’m willing to let that happen, because it is the most interesting thing in my life. Once the show is up and on, then I can do a salvage job on the rest of my life and my flat.
Bulletin 4
These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as she goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.
[Siobhan is reflecting on what has happened so far this week during a short break for lunch during the Tech rehearsal All the cast are in costume, which they protect with large cotton cover-alls while they eat their sandwiches. For the first time, they are working in the theatre, with their set on the stage. There are two ramps curving from the corners of the stage into the yard. The ramps, and a large circle, which covers much of the floor of the stage, are painted a vivid blue. A number of poppies stick up from the blue circle. There is a semi-transparent blue cloth hiding the facade of the Tiring House. They are working on Act 3 Scene 2.]
Week six
We got two runs in last week. It was quite exciting to do the whole thing for the first time on Friday. Some people from the Globe, and some people working the show, came to see the run on Friday. Because King Lear (the first show in this year’s Globe season) had its press night on Friday, they had to leave at the interval. They did tell us in advance, so we didn’t think that they hated it and left. We did it again on Saturday morning, which was a bit Saturday-morning-ish, with people getting confused in places they had never been confused before. But it has been very valuable, good to have two goes before coming in here, because the Tech slows everything down and breaks it up. Already I can’t remember what it is I do in the beginning of the play, now we are on scene seven.
Tech week
Of course, things have to change, because things you have been imagining, or marking out in the rehearsal room, turn out to have a life of their own, or to be completely different in proportion or dimension to what you had anticipated when you get on the stage and in the space. So there is a bit of creative compromise going on.
Obviously, I’m the happiest woman in the world, because of what I’m wearing. I’d be quite happy to die now, and to be cremated in this dress. I said that yesterday and Tom [Manion, Thesius/Oberon] said if I got to close to him while he was smoking, I probably will be cremated in the dress. I’ll be lucky to be heard above the dress, because the dress is so fantastic. It is extraordinary, and when you see it for the first time, the full sensation, with the cape and all and the fairies sprinkling petals, it will be a good ten minutes before people listen to anything I say. It is very light, so it lets me do my dance, so I can’t blame the dress for any mistakes I make in footwork. It is lovely to be in the yard, and I have all the make up in the world on my face.
I did have a crisis of nerves on Monday morning about trying to pass myself off as a fairy at my ripe old age. Then I thought, too late now, nobody else knows the words, I’m doing it, so I’ll just have to get on with it, and people will make of it what they will.
The Tech rehearsal is going quite well. It is unusual Tech-ing at the Globe because, unlike any other theatre, you have to stop in the afternoon, so that the set for the evening show can go in. Then, in the morning we have to wait for our sets to go back into place. So we are Tech-ing in intensive bursts. There is quite a holiday atmosphere [London is having its first hot days of the summer]. We have decided to take a short lunch break and eat on the hoof, so we can get more done.
It is quite disconcerting, when you are doing a Tech, to have some king of audience, but tours continue to go round the theatre all the time we are working. It can be useful. I was able to ask this morning, when I was tangoing with Paul [Hunter, Bottom], if they could see up my skirt to an indecent degree, and they were able to reassure me that they couldn’t.
At some point this afternoon we come to quick change hell, once Titania has been awakened from her slumber, there will then be the fastest change in the world into Hippolyta again – so we’ll see how that goes. There will be crack teams of wardrobe fairies standing by to help me with that. I fear for myself. By October, I’m going to be thinking I am the queen of the fairies. I’ll be dressing entirely in pink, and I’ll be looking for the fairy who walks in front of me scattering rose petals wherever I go.
The set is wonderful. I’ve been regularly snagging Titania petticoats on those poppies, because they have bits that stick out at the side. I’ve been trapped by them on several occasions. I walk through the yard on my first entrance and I’m a bit apprehensive – will people get out of my way without me tapping them on the shoulder? For me it will be really, really useful to have an audience for some of the stuff I have to do, with the Donkey and with the child on stage, because I’m not quite sure what of audience can make of that combination, and the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.
I’m looking forward to running it at speed it situ, and getting the Tech over with. Theres one dreadful moment when I’m the only person in the theatre who can see Paul Hunter’s face [Bottom] when he is done up as a donkey. The only way to deal with this is to put my eyes completely out of focus. We are nose to nose and he is facing upstage. It is unspeakably funny; frighteningly funny. He just goes on and on – and I hope he does, because he is magnificent. There will be the inevitable ear and tiara tangle, but we are just going to have to vamp our way through that. It hasn’t happened yet, but it will.
The Tech is due to finish on Friday. We have a Dress rehearsal Saturday afternoon, and then the first preview on Saturday evening. It seems unbelievable to me. Hatfield House Country Fair on Sunday to take my mind off whatever has happened the night before. I think it is about time we had an audience, because now we are at the stage where the audience will tell us what they need.
Hippolyta
Sometimes I think that Hippolyta could do with some of the love juice. Because she is barely on the page, there are lots of different decisions I could make about Hippolyta. I know there are lots of things I could do which would be great fun and would be entertaining, but which would short-circuit the larger story of the play in this production. I spoke to Jonathan [Munby, the Director] about this sometime ago, because this high-risk strategy I have adopted, just arriving in the scene and seeing what happened, made me feel as if I wasn’t bringing him anything in the rehearsal room. But he says what he wants is a very strong, calming, female presence, which he realises may not be as much fun to do as other things. For instance, you could play her drunk in the final wedding scenes. She doesn’t shut up. She has hardly spoken during the rest of the play, then she pipes up all the time in those scenes. It would be great fun to do, but it wouldn’t necessarily help this production. So I just have to trust what Jonathan says.
There was an elephant in the room, which we have chased away at the beginning of scene nine [5.1]. It is like the first scene between Theseus and Hippolyta, which is interrupted, and they don’t necessarily know they are going to be interrupted. We’ve thought quite hard about what would happen if they weren’t interrupted. It is very difficult for Tom [Theseus] as his character runs the show for the last scene, and I didn’t want to put extra pressure on him, but we both felt better after our conversation. So the Hippolyta elephant has been chased away for the moment.
The script and lines
We have all been given a clean copy of the script, printed on A4 paper, with no notes, and that is what I’m working from. Tom has been like a proper actor, with a battered copy of the Penguin edition in his pocket, which he whips out at a moment’s notice, so he can refer to chapter and verse. I still have no notes in my script, which feels very odd. We’ve also been given some pages from Giles [Block, the text advisor] with our lines on, with his own system of notation, which means perhaps that you could put the stress in a slightly different place or you could colour the world a bit more, or you are talking nonsense. There is a system of symbols on the back to help you. Then he takes those away, and issues you with some new ones. I’m still working from that. I really have walked backwards into this show, rather than doing lots of research, and it is a very luxurious position to be in, because in fact – giving myself some rope to hang myself now – I have not had to learn lines. They were stored there. If my life had depended upon it, two months ago, if you said to me, say something that Titania says I would have only been able to come up with, ‘These are the forges of jealousy’, and that would have been the end of it. But actually, I did know them all. I’ve had a very easy time of it compared to normal. Eighteen years later, and it was still there. I would not have been able to just reach in and get it, I had to read it aloud a couple of times and I started to remember it. They are neither of them verbose characters, and I did do the show for a long time before, and I was on stage for a lot of it, so I was hearing everything. I’m not on stage so much in this production.
Bulletin 5
These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as she goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.
Hippolyta in scene one
In the most unlikely of situations, two middle-aged people have actually fallen in love. And then this other extraordinary thing happens, which gives Hippolyta a reality check, as to what kind of world she is marrying into. As you can see by Hippolyta’s costume, we are not playing her as an actual Amazon queen, but there is no reason to suppose that things are run, where Hippolyta has come from, in exactly the same way as they are in Athens. I think that a woman who is a monarch in her own right would find it extraordinary, that women are treated as disposable items in Athens. It will give her pause for thought that the man who she has fallen in love with seems to subscribe to that school of thought. I withdraw from him a little as the scene develops; it seems to me to be the most logical way through it. So, essentially, she is in a huff, offstage, until we see here in a huff on stage, in the scene we refer to as ‘dogs’ [4.1]. As usual, the lines don’t help much, because Hippolyta doesn’t speak much. I am getting to like that now though – Hippolyta is a person who speaks when she has something to say. The exception to this is in the final scene, where she is batting for the girls, so to speak, in chipping in the insults about then little play. But that has happened after she has said she doesn’t think that this is a good idea. She says that she doesn’t really think it is fair to watch people squirm their way through something that they are not very good at, and Theseus says he is hell-bent on it, so she just says if this is how it is going to be, I’ll just chime in then.
Acting in the Globe
Last night I was under my own personal flight path. Every time I open my mouth, a jet went overhead. A few short weeks ago I would never have believed that something like that could have happened to me and I wouldn’t have had some kind of embolism, but in fact there is no arguing with it. The fact that everybody knows what the noise is, and everyone is aware of it, arriving, happening, and leaving at the same time, makes the whole thing easier. I’m learning not to pitch myself at the same intensity as planes, but go under them or over them, and hope for the best. It seems to me that this can work, that people do hear at least some of what I’m saying. It is unfortunate when it happens, as it did last night, most of the way through the ‘forgeries of jealousy’ speech, which is Titania’s weather report [2,1 82-118]. And of course, it is much easier to play the second half of the play when the sky isn’t so busy.
I have said before that I am a bit of a noise Nazi in the theatre, but actually I find it much easier to deal with here. People collapsing, giggling coughing, sneezing, moving about, is much more acceptable somehow, because I can see them, and I can see where it is happening. It is not random noise attacks, which is how it can feel when it is coming at you out of the dark in a conventional theatre. So I am a convert really. I really like playing here, but I am very grateful that I’m doing this play here. I imagine this is possible the easiest of his plays to do here.
Other developments
I’ve forgotten, because it is so long since I did this play, that it is a bit like juggling with confetti. It comes deceptively easily off the page, but so much of each scene is about where your character’s heart is, and if you don’t start it in the right place, no matter how well you act, you do feel a bit like you are running behind the bus. A lot of work has to happen off stage, and I’m beginning to have the opportunity to do that now that I am not thinking about where I put the toy donkey or where the Indian Boy is? Now that I don’t have to be dress wrangling and prop wrangling with every bit of what passes for my conscious mind, I can find opportunities to think and feel myself into the right place for the next scene. These are things that are probably not discernable at all to the audience, but they make a difference to me.
The Indian Boy last night said this was his last show, he didn’t like it. You can’t argue with a seven year old, and I do feel for him. As I advance towards him, shouting with a glittering face, it must be so bizarre. Some people are fully formed even when they are seven years old, but most people wouldn’t like standing on the stage – they are normal, and we are the freaks I’m afraid. We have three Indian boys, working on the show, so it isn’t a crisis.
I do still adore the dress. Obviously, I don’t want the dress to be wearing me, and I don’t think it does. The reason it has been so much on my mind is because of the logistics of the dress, which are to do with keeping people off the dress as much as to do with me manoeuvring it. We have not had a single performance where someone hasn’t stood on it, and it is very difficult for them, because everyone is thinking about what they have to do, not about avoiding me, because I go on for four feet behind me. We have shortened Titania’s cape, so I can now put that on by myself, I don’t need people to help me with it as I did before. I think that is quite a good idea.
So I’m a very happy bunny. I’m really, really, enjoying this. I had some friends in last night, who decided that they would just come and see it. They were down from Scotland, and they really liked it. My friend Liz is a playwright, and she is, as she says herself, the note queen, and she didn’t have any notes for me, she just loved it, and she said there are things in this production that brought out things she has never really been aware off, seeing it before.
Previews and the set
The show is shorter than it was last week. It wasn’t ever so long last week, but we have taken some bits out – but not the bits that make people laugh.
For the opening scenes in Athens we had a black floor cloth which covered to stage, and the front of the Tiring House is largely covered in black. When we move to the wood the black floor cloth was removed, it was silk and it just disappeared through the central doors of the Tiring House, and this reveals a blue circle which covers most of the stage floor. There is also a blue semi-transparent cloth, which covers the Tiring House. We have had to lose the black floor cloth. It was lovely to reveal the blue underneath, but because we were walking on fabric, which wasn’t secured, it meant we had to be tentative when it is better if you can be sure-footed. I think that is the only thing that has gone altogether. Other things have been snipped. All the dances have been tweaked which, for Tom and me, can only be good news. We will get to a stage where we do all of our dances correctly, but we haven’t done it yet. Last night the musicians were off kilter on one of the dances, and we both laughed with joy because it was them not us.
We have something we didn’t have before which is duelling drums at the beginning, which is great, it really pulls the audience in. Then we have Peter Quince making an announcement about mobile phones, although of course he doesn’t call them that. It might be so subtle and obscure that they don’t know what he is talking about.
Press night (next Wednesday) looms a bit. I hope it doesn’t rain. It hope that the people who are there to be our friends are able to be our friends in an unsoggy manner. What can you do about press night? You can’t not be aware of it. But I’m looking forward to getting all of that over with. We had a wonderful time on Tuesday night. One of those evenings where the show seemed to move up a couple of gears. New things fell into place. Lots of people had new ideas about stuff that all worked. Everyone’s timing seemed to be absolutely bang on. The next afternoon it was drizzly, and there wasn’t the same sort of feeling about it, but those are the days when you earn what they pay you. It was still a good show, and that is the point really, that you can deliver a good show when there is no free gift, like the night before. I’m quite looking forward to getting on with that.
With a production of the Dream on at Stratford as well, the critics will all be comparing them. I’m going to try to not read them, though it is difficult if you buy a daily newspaper, because then you feel like you are being a bit of a big jesse. I always read them, but latterly I have made an attempt not to seek out every single review. The ideal situation would be to read them after the event. But, like I said, I buy a daily newspaper so it is hard, you think I can’t really keep avoiding that page. I’ve got two good friends in the Stratford production, Tom Davey, who is Lysander, and Peter de Jersey who is Oberon, and who I worked with in the wards of Holby City. As soon as I can I’ll be off to Stratford to see Tom and Peter and I’ll be nicking whatever I think will be of use to me.
Bulletin 6
These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as she goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.
Interview during the show …
I’m taking off Titania’s glitter makeup so Hippolyta doesn’t have a glittering face. I’m glittering and de-glittering all through the show. Titania’s dress is an explosion of pink. I think they definitely missed a trick by not selling them in the shop – every little girl’s dream. There are quite a lot of children in the audience I’ve noticed.
Preparing for the show
I never seem to get time to prepare for this show. We have a jig call one hour before the show starts, but somehow it seems to take about 15 minutes for the whole cast to assemble, so that takes time. I have a wig call before the jig call, so I usually turn up in a bit of a state, with the front of my hair curled.
Because I’m asthmatic I use a steamer every day and I do a mini warm up then, or when I’m in the shower or in the bath. I never have time to do it while I’m here, either because of the change round and the stage isn’t ready for us, or we have we have the jig call and the 15 minute hiatus while we all remember we have the jig call. Then I put on more make up than they have on the counter at John Lewis, so I don’t have time. It is my ambition, one day, to be in a play where I have time to do a warm up, but in this one I don’t, so I do a little bit at home. It is a question of feeling your way into things, rather than thinking particularly. Today for instance, my life outside this is so agitating, mainly because I haven’t really been home to clean the house. It is appalling. That is really getting to me now. Things like the pile of unopened post that needs to be dealt with. It’s a bit oppressive. So I’m actually glad to be here, not having to confront the reality of the rest of my life. We did seven shows last week, eight this week, it is quite a lot. But then of course, we’ll have the other problem – we won’t have done the show for a couple of days so I will assume that I have forgotten absolutely everything. Swings and roundabouts.
A week of performances
I’m very happy doing this show – I really enjoy it. I think this play is always going to be like juggling with confetti, you have to do everything you can to make sure that everything you do is absolutely heartfelt, otherwise it won’t work properly, more so than many other plays that I have been in. But it is an absolute delight for me. It is joyful to go out there and see the donkey for the first time and hear members of the audience who clearly have no idea that that is going to happen, react to it. It is extraordinary. And I think: ‘if you think this is funny, wait until you see the death of Pyramus!’
It is nice to be getting a feel for the place in all weathers. It is quite difficult to be a convincing fairy in glaring daylight with a helicopter above your head. It is even more difficult in the pouring rain. But I am astonished and heartened by how audiences just seem to go with the whole experience. They stay. I’m not sure that I would. But they do.
I don’t think the show has changed any more. Obviously I’m not aware of what goes on all the time. I’m trying to refine what I do. I have to be careful to not become over elaborate. Having got past the first horrid load of nerves, now that I’m a bit more familiar with it, I have to be careful that I don’t become too baroque. It is interesting this place, it is very actor centric, it requires more than any other theatre I’ve played in, that you are absolutely specific about what you do, because the audience has very little else to hang on to. So, as always, they have a right to assume that everything an actor does is intentional, but here you have to be absolutely rigorous, about what you want them to interpret from what you do. Flapping acting won’t work here at all, and that is quite a good discipline.
Reviews
I haven’t read any of the reviews except the horrible one in the Guardian, and I only read that because, as I was on my way home last Saturday, I got on my train, put my bag down, and when I picked my bag up, underneath it was the copy of the Guardian open at that page, so I felt I had to read it, and I really wish I hadn’t. I don’t see the point – after a lifetime of professional theatre going you have a suspicion that some parts of this play might not work so well in daylight – so come to the press night, don’t give us a hard time because it is the afternoon.
I feel quite liberated by not having read any of the reviews – I will have to avoid the Sunday papers this weekend – but that is OK, I can cope with that, I’ve got a backlog of papers I haven’t read for the last month. We have two shows today, a matinee tomorrow, and then we are not on again until Wednesday, so we have Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off. I quite need it. I think it will be useful to have just a bit of a breather, and to catch up on sleep as much as anything else. It is difficult to sleep when you are in the theatre, because you have so much adrenalin, I’m not able to go to sleep when I get in. My specialty at the moment is waking up at four in the morning with the cat sitting on my chest – every time I think I’m having a heart attack, then I realize, Oh no, it is the cat.
It will be interesting to have a couple of days off, and see if I’ve lost my ear for how much you need in this space. When it rains, because we have a little bit of the stage that projects out, we have the Niagara effect, the wind and the rain belting down onto our wooden stage, and hammering, it is so loud you can hardly hear the other actors on the stage.