Gloucester

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Joseph Mydell plays Gloucester

Joseph Mydell’s theatre credits include Twelfth Night, Everyman and The Mysteries for the RSC, As You Like It at the Manchester Royal Exchange, Angels in America and Alice’s Adventures Underground at the National Theatre, and The Treatment at the Royal Court. Television includes Miss Marple, The Bill, Bergerac, My Africa and Shadow on the Sun.

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.

Acting
My first performance was as Jesus in an Easter pageant at Church, and I remember seeing people crying, and I thought well that’s a reaction, I like that. From the age of about eight I was in various school plays, and I thought: ‘I can do this’. I’m old enough to be of the generation that was required to learn poetry by heart at school, and right up until I was 16 learning lines was part of my life. I think that we genetically have a need to memorise and tell stories, it is a way humans have always passed on history and knowledge, and this need to memorize comes right through to rap. The rhythm of iambic pentameter is said to have the same measure as a heart beat, and this makes it feel very natural to speak, which aids this process of memorisation. It’s such a shame that we’ve taken poetry out of schools, hardly any teachers encourage students to memorize. Why is it that kids can memorize reams of what seems to us to be nonsensical noise, called rap, and yet they aren’t being challenged to memorise Wordsworth, Shakespeare, or even modern poets. Though I have to admit memorizing lines as a child was much easier than it is now! When I was younger I was doing it to show-off and to get applause, but when you’re memorizing for a play you’re learning the lines, and then you have to remember the directions, what the other actors are doing, the action, it is a lot to take on. But when all those things mesh it aids the process of memorisation, because when you walk this way or hold someone’s hand, the lines come back to you, it’s in the memory of your body as well as your verbal memory, well that’s how it feels for me anyhow. The mind is unpredictable. Occasionally something happens and you dry up, a word goes, and hopefully another will come to mind. That has happened to me, your mind is dealing with a lot when you’re stage, and it’s tiring. When I was younger I gave this less thought, but as you get older you begin to respect the work it entails more. I’m not saying it’s the toughest job in the world but I don’t think people realise what the process is and often I don’t think actors themselves understand it fully.

Training
I went to university because I thought perhaps I wouldn’t have a career as an actor. I didn’t have that much confidence in myself. I read English, and I thought I was probably going to teach and get married. But that didn’t happen, I became very involved in theatre at university. I got so involved that finally I ended up going to the New York University to do drama. I was there in the late sixties, when New York was the hottest place to be, it was just thrilling. It was teeming with people at the forefront of the arts, a hotbed of creativity. It was also a turbulent time in the States, with the civil rights movement happening, and Martin Luther King’s assassination, it seemed as though change was afoot.

I’d started doing a PhD in theatre history and theory at New York, but I needed to do some research in England for a one-man show that I was also preparing. When I came over here someone suggested I take the show to the Edinburgh Festival, and I did. I won some awards, and I thought I’ll just stay for a year but I ended up staying, getting married and having a child, and of course I didn’t go back to finish the PhD. I ended up at the RSC and that’s exactly where I wanted to be, because Shakespeare is my great love and here I am some 30 years on still doing it.

The Globe
This is my first time at the Globe. It is exciting to be here doing a play that I did years ago in the states, playing Edmund. Now I’m playing his father. It’s nice to have lived to have done that. I find it thrilling here, it’s such an audience orientated venue, in the way that it was in Shakespeare’s time when the audience was very much part of the event. I’m looking forward to the experience of performing at the Globe, I’ve had a little preparation as I’ve done a promenade productions of Pericles and The Winter’s Tale where the audience were in and around the action. But I’m not looking forward to getting my eyes put out.

First Week
In the first week we did something that I think is very useful when you rehearse Shakespeare, which is to read the play and paraphrase it in normal everyday English as we went along. So for example, Gloucester says ‘Edmund, how now, what news?’ which you would paraphrase as ‘Hello Edmund, what’s going on?’ It means everyone knows exactly what is going on.

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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.

The character of Gloucester
In week two of rehearsals, Dominic [Dromgoole, Artistic Director of the Globe] went back to the start of the play and working through it scene by scene, in terms of what the scene was about, the possible moves we could make, the relationships in the scene, and how it fits in with what’s gone before in the play. We talked about the nature of the portrayal of Gloucester and his relationship with his sons. The way I’ve seen Gloucester played before is that he’s a saint, but Dominic had this idea that he is just as much of a fool as Lear. He is good natured and had been organising this big event for the king, gathering everyone, organising seating arrangements and wanting everything to go well – that’s the sort of courtier he is. He expects good things to happen all the time. But then it doesn’t take much to make him think that Edgar has betrayed him. He has a very extreme reaction, just like Lear; he’s another parent making impulsive decisions, being fooled by children who are selfish and who don’t have his best interests at heart, and ignoring the good ones, Edgar and Cordelia. Gloucester doesn’t even talk to Edgar until after he’s blind, and even then he thinks he’s speaking to a stranger. And there’s no relief for him, in that sense. It may seem as though my interpretation of Gloucester means I think he is willing to kill himself, or to be blinded, but it’s more that he can’t quite believe it happens to him. You can see that if you go back to the lines; after he tries to kill himself and realises he’s still alive he says, ‘Henceforth I’ll bear / affliction till it do cry out itself / “enough, enough” and die’ (4.6.75-77). When Oswald comes on and says ‘The sword is out / that must destroy thee’(4.6.226-226), Gloucester replies, ‘Now let thy friendly hand / Put strength enough to’t’(4.6.226-227). So he’s saying that it’s a sin to commit suicide, but if someone murders you, that’s allowed. In my way of thinking, the world can’t be the way Gloucester thinks it ought to be, with everybody behaving well: ‘Good my friends, consider; you are my guests. Do me no foul play’ (3.7.30-1). With him, it’s all protocol and decorum, and he depends on people behaving well; when they don’t, his world is completely eroded, and he can’t see the point in living.

Putting in more detail
After going through all the scenes, we started paying more attention to detail – the speed of the speech, the speed of the movement. It began to be about the director shaping it. One of the things I found tricky was the first scene I have with Edgar, when I say ‘Knowst thou the way to Dover?’ (4.1.58). He’s giving Edgar his purse, because he’s thinking everyone should have something, and perhaps because he’s also thinking that he’s had too much. And I find that a very emotional thing. For Gloucester to realise, ‘This is how life’s been, and I’ve never thought about people not having anything’. I’ve only just got it really.

Text and Movement Work
I’ve been working with Giles [Block, Text] and Glynn [MacDonald, Movement] throughout the rehearsal performances. I loved my sessions with Giles, because they helped me to make decisions about word emphasis and therefore what the character was thinking and what their emotional state was. There’s that difficult speech Gloucester makes when Regan and Cornwall decide to put Kent into the stocks (2.2.137-144), but actually, it’s very character revealing. It’s all status and decorum and rightness and about what you ought to do.
With Glynn, I did some general Alexander Technique work, and she made one note after seeing the run through that was really helpful. She pointed out that blind people see with their ears. And that’s what Lear says: ‘Look with thine ears’ (4.6.147). So once the blindfold is on, I close my eyes, and I don’t open them at all. People may call it ‘method-y’ but I don’t think it is; I want the whole sensation that I can’t see. I have cheated once though and opened my eyes when I thought I wasn’t in the right place for the fall. The reason was that in one performance, when I did the fall, half of my body went out into the audience … which they loved! When Dominic heard about that he got excited, and I thought, ‘Yeah, you would want to keep that in, me half killing myself!’.

The Costume
I had my costume fitted – my leather britches were still being made so I couldn’t try them on – but I got to try the shirt and coat. I love the quality of the material of the coat; it is worsted wool and has a fur trim. The autumnal green colour really suits Gloucester, as he is a man in the autumn of his life, and it suited me, as I’m middle aged as well. It swings beautifully and I use that when I’m making an exit or an entrance. My hat is fur lined, and the richness of the whole costume signals my high status.

The Jig
We started the music and jig rehearsals in week two. I had great trouble with the jig. I still can’t do the double step; everybody’s tried to teach me but I’ve got two left feet and no timing. We also started learning the songs which are in medieval English. It is fascinating to learn, and it was so wonderful to hear the tune. Almost all of us learnt it in a short time. It’s a song about belief. The last line means something like ‘This is what I know, this is what I believe,’ so it’s a life affirming, positive song, not a dirge.

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