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Che Walker - Company member

Che's acting credits for the stage include Biloxi Blues at Salisbury Playhouse, Danny and The Deep Blue Sea and Fly Me To The Moon for Interchange, Home Truths at Guildford, Old Rose and Pitchfork Disney for the Glasgow Citizen's Theatre and Sunshine at Southwark Playhouse. His Television work includes Holby City, Judge John Deed, The Vice, Between The Lines, Dangerfield, Eastenders, The Bill and The Office. Che has also written two plays for the Royal Court Theatre, Been So Long and Flesh Wound.

Bulletin 1

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

Before the Globe
I have been acting for fifteen years. I went to a drama college called Webber Douglas Academy. I haven't acted for a while because I am mostly a playwright. I have written two plays that were both on at a theatre called the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, Been So Long and Flesh Wound. I have also been directing a lot in the last couple of years and teaching. I teach at RADA and I have taught at Central and various other drama colleges. I teach acting technique. It has been a good two or three years since I have been on stage. It's nice to get back to acting because you realise you have to practise what you preach in the classroom. I sit there thinking, what would I make of myself if I was in class, or on the other side of the table directing or in the position of the writer?

Initially I wanted to be an actor, but in the first two years I played about seven or eight policemen and drug dealers and bouncers and stuff like that. Its worth pointing out that I am comparatively large in size, although in this cast I am sort of average as everyone is huge. And I thought, there is a bit more to me than this, this is a bit boring! During one of the lean times that you occasionally get as an actor, I was working as a security guard and I was just sitting at this desk checking people in and out, of a, largely empty, building. So I just decided to start writing a play. I was very lucky that I sold it to the Royal Court. That generated a momentum and since I have had commissions to write for the BBC, a couple of film commissions, I translated a play for the National Theatre and I have also written a second play for the Royal Court Theatre.

The main theme of my writing is families. People trying to make families or repair families where there have not been very good ones. And passion, I write about passion, lots of passion. I like to use a lot of language, contemporary language, but I do like to heighten the language. I like to give people big speeches.

Othello at the Globe
I have been commissioned to write a new play for the Globe for the 2008 season. So I am actually currently working as a writer for the Globe. Wilson Milam, who is directing Othello, directed my last play, Flesh Wound, at the Royal Court Theatre four years ago now. So I harassed Wilson and Dominic Dromgoole (the artistic director of the Globe) and sold it to Dominic that it would be good for me to act in the space and be around the theatre. Luckily they both talked about it and went for it. I auditioned and I was recalled and Wilson tried me for various parts. Eventually I was cast, in comparatively small parts, I am senator number two and first gentlemen. I am only in two scenes in the play.

Because I haven't been on stage for a while, it's nice to be able to ease back into it. And, to be honest, because I am trying to write at the same time it is nice to know I am ‘off book’ already. But, paradoxically, it is interesting that because your time on stage is so limited, it is possible to feel a lot of pressure playing small roles. Coming on just for one scene, you think 'I have got to get this right!' You can also feel that, 'I have got to make an impression in just this one little speech that I have got, so that people will remember me.' Whereas, perhaps if you have got a bigger part where there's a sort of arc and a journey, you can pace yourself and there is more opportunity to allow the text to change you. Because I have only got a couple of scenes I have got to nail it straight away. It's a little bit like being a substitute in a football game. You have to come on and make an impact. The thing mustn't die when you are on.

First Rehearsals
We are ten days into rehearsals and all we have done so far is sit around the table and read the play. There are lots of different versions of Shakespeare's play and we have had to make choices between the folio and the quartos. When the play was first written down in the 1600s there were tiny little differences and discrepancies between the different versions and so we have been sorting out whether we want to use the folio or the quarto versions of different line. The differences between the two can be tiny like:

If imputation and strong circumstance,
Which lead directly to the door of truth,
Will give you satisfaction, you may have’t
(3.3.412-414)

Here it is circumstance as opposed to circumstances. And we consider which one we want to go for? Which is strongest? Which is more powerful? We have got the Arden out, we've got the Penguin out, we've got the folio out, and we've got the quarto. We have a brilliant guy called Giles Block to help us. He's just amazing, and an expert at this stuff. Sometimes you think, well does it really matter? And it can feel like nit picking, but it can make a big difference if you take only one syllable out, because it is so finely crafted.

In the last three or four days we have started to dig into the characters. Wilson is very thorough and he's very keen on people understanding what the stakes are in their scene. What are they fighting for in each scene.

We have done a lot of historical research. There are pictures up all over the walls of the rehearsal room of Cyprus and Venice. We visited the Golden Hinde ship yesterday which is the closest boat we could find to a boat that would have taken us to Cyprus. That was a real eye opener. The conditions were appalling! People basically lived among rats and goats on a boat for ages and if you stole a chicken you had a nail hammered through your hand. It does help inform you when you come on stage and you know you have been on that boat for three or four days that that's how it would have been. Farah Karim Cooper has come in to talk to us about Venice which was fascinating.

We have done a lot of voice work with Patsy Rodenburg which has been brilliant. We have done work on trying to free up the natural voice and extend our vocal range. We have been attacking the text. Patsy wants us to realise that the text is our friend and not our enemy, and that Shakespeare is trying to help us all the time with the way he's laid the verse out. Patsy is acknowledged as the best, and even the older members of the company who have been in the RSC, who've worked at the National Theatre and who've had forty years of a career are finding it really useful.

We did one exercise to unlock the iambic rhythm of the verse. We would say a speech on a hum, so you keep your mouth closed and hum the words. Then when you open your mouth and speak it, it seems that the iambic is more solidified without having to think about it. Everything Patsy does is about freeing you up so that you don’t have to think about your technique. She also made us do the same speech but only say the pronouns and ignore the rest of it. So in my case it became: 'us, we, the turk, we, us, the turk.' This makes the speech more personal. You see who you are talking to. When you put the missing words back in it suddenly makes more sense. I realised that the 'us', was us reaching towards each other in the senate.

We haven't been out on the stage yet. They keep threatening to take us out on the stage for a voice class. You've got to have a good strong voice for the Globe stage and if you've done a lot of telly you've got to be careful that the lines don't die off at the end. You don’t want a fading inflection on a line.

Looking Ahead
I am so delighted to be in this show as Othello is my absolute favourite play. It's the play that got me hooked, it got me hooked into acting, and it got me hooked into Shakespeare. And I still feel that it's the most exciting play I have ever read. It just thrills me in such a way that I can't explain. Obviously Shakespeare has written some brilliant stuff, but I think the plot is so exciting and it is so horrifying what happens to Othello; it's like a film noir thriller.

The plot is so tight. We start in Venice and the first act is quite public. The senate are realising that their patch in Cyprus is being attacked by the Turks. They have to mobilize an army really quickly. Brabantio comes in with a very public accusation of Othello. So the opening act is full of public speaking and big affairs of state and affairs of war that have to be addressed. And then it sort of boils down into essentially a six hander, well in fact I would argue it boils down into a two hander, between Othello and Iago and this bizarre relationship that they have. It's watching that as it simmers down and how Shakespeare uses double time in the second half of the play to accelerate the events and to bring everything to such a horrible boil. I just love it. And everyday I just see more and more stuff that I hadn't seen before, my understanding of it just gets richer.

And to be at the Globe! Something happens to you when you step on that stage. I was standing on it having an almost private moment and one of the stewards said a beautiful thing to me, she said, 'Actors when they step on this stage say it's like having an enormous hug from the audience.'

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Bulletin 2

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

Rehearsals
We finally got up on our feet last Thursday and started throwing up a rough blocking shape. Wilson has added stairs to the front of the stage, so we have stairs stage left, stage right and stage centre, and that's marked on the rehearsal room floor with red tape. The pillars are also marked in tape. And, for instance the scene that we just did I was on the second step, which is kind of hard to imagine for us, so the tape helps.

We’ve pushed forward and Wilson is focusing mostly on the big crowd scenes which are quite tricky; lots of stage traffic. And we did the storm scene, which is my big scene, and Wilson has come in today with a completely different idea of how to do it, which is great because it hadn’t been feeling quite right. We did it one way and then moved on into some other stuff and I came off feeling a bit like something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it, and mercifully Wilson has come in today and said the same thing. He said: ‘I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, there was something wrong. I have had another read of it. I want to try it another way, and the way that we just did it was much better.’

So we have mainly blocked the big crowd scenes. I mean I am trying to jump into Wilson's brain, but I think he's trying to get those out of the way before he can really focus on the intimate stuff between Othello, Iago and Desdemona. That will be nice because we will get a bit of a break!

Getting used to the space
We did some more work with Patsy Rodenberg yesterday; on the stage. We have actually been on the stage, it's nice, and it's less daunting than I thought. There's excellent sound in there. Patsy is very keen on us owning the language and owning the stage. We prowled around the stage doing bits of text. She would encourage us to focus one line at a time at a particular seat number, so you’d find E36 and hit them with a line and the F39 with a line. The thing I am struggling with, because I haven’t been on the stage for so long, is I am running out of breath half way through sentences. So I am trying to get fit and remind myself what my technique is. I mean there are excellent acoustics in there but you have still got that enormous hole in the roof and I think once it's packed with people it will deaden the sound. But I am really looking forward to it.

We did a little bit of movement with Glynn Macdonald, just a stretch out on the stage. We did a thing which is apparently from ‘Sufi’ called ‘Earth, Water, Fire, Air’. It's an exercise constructed of four physical positions. So Earth is like a horse riding stance with my arms extended, ‘Water’ is where I go from ‘Earth’ and collapse the spine and let my hands droop down to the floor with a soft neck, then I swoop up into ‘Fire’ and bring my feet together with place my hands above my head with my hands pressed firmly together and ‘Air’ is just very slowly letting your arms down by your side so you are in a normal standing position. You feel really silly when you first do it, but if you commit to it and do it a few times, what I noticed is I felt a lot more open across the chest area. Glynn called it ‘Yoga of the imagination.’ Which is apparently from Sufism, which is related to Islam.

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Bulletin 3

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

Rehearsals
We are almost all completely off book, except Othello and Iago who have got special dispensation because they have got so many lines. We are concentrating on the first three acts and we have gone over and over them, and just now, today, we have just run it for the first time and it wasn’t as bad as I thought! I, personally, was a bit slow on my cues but there was lots of really good stuff.

Wilson's great strength is how specific he is and he has really nailed it over the last couple of days. He has really not let us off the hook and he's tightened up the discipline in the rehearsal room. He tends to clear us all out of the room now rather than having us all hanging around. It is such a large cast, and such a long play, that you can end up sitting in the rehearsal room for a long time waiting, and it is very hard to keep yourself sharp. It might seem odd, but it is actually easier to be out here, in the Green Room, and for the actors doing the scene it is better too. I personally feel a little bit exposed in the rehearsal room. If I am still finding my way in a scene and I look round and I see people perhaps reading the paper or having a quiet dose it is disconcerting. I am glad that Wilson's done it.

The first of the two characters I am playing is one of the senates. He is head of one of the fourteen top families in Venice. I have found out, through the big interrogation of Othello at the beginning of the play, and going over it with Giles Block (Text Master), that my guy likes Othello and is trying to help him a little bit with the way that he leads a couple of the questions put to him. The way that we have blocked it is that my senator is trying to placate Brabantio and the Duke, who are really getting a bit hot.

In the second act I am a soldier, a Venetian soldier, who has been stationed in Cypress. He is a lower class person than the senator. Everyone bosses me around and I am a bit of a rough neck. I am trying to be slightly earthier, to have a slightly lower centre for the soldier. The costume will make a huge amount of difference, especially when we get the shoes on. He is rough and lower class and more ready to fight, literally because I have a big sword fight, which I am excited about. I haven’t seen any costumes yet, but we have been measured. I have no idea what we will be wearing. We looked at some pictures of the Senate. We are definitely period dress, around 1570. I have had to grow my beard for the part. The beard is driving me nuts. It's itchy.

The other big thing we have been doing this week is the fight scene with fight director Philip d’Orleans. In the fight scene Iago gets Cassio drunk, and then has Roderigo insult him or attack him. Cassio then stabs Montano, and Othello comes down and fires Cassio from the army. It's good fun to do. The weapons in the scene are broadsword and dagger. There is lots of hacking, as opposed to thrusting. The people involved in the fight are me, Michael Taibi, Nick Barbar (Cassio) – who is an excellent swords man - and Nigel Hastings (Montano) and Sam Crane (Roderigo) who sort of scurries around and we kick him up the bum, he runs off and he gets a little beating from Cassio, which is quite funny.

Hopefully Patsy will be coming back and hear what we are doing. What is already coming up is how to resound and resonate in the space, to be audible but without losing the nice detail that we are now beginning to get. That is the challenge of that space. Sometimes I do feel like I am just yelling the whole thing. I have got to remember that I am talking to a real human being who is only just eight feet away.

The Closing Jig
We have started rehearsing the jig, with Sian. We started yesterday. It is good fun and it is simple. The music is brilliant. It's got a slight reggae feel, sort of sca, blue beat feel but performed with medieval instruments. I think there is going to be quite a lot of music in the show because there is no set or lights, so music has to suggest mood and change of place. We have only just started jig rehearsals. We are intrigued because, it is such a sad play and it is odd, that the stage is littered with dead bodies and then we all get up and do a jig! I am curious to see how that's going to work.

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Bulletin 4

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

The Final Rehearsals
We have one week of rehearsals to go and we are starting to feel a little nervous. Othello is a very long play and it is hard to rehearse all of it to the degree that we want to. We are feeling the pressure a little bit. We are working extremely hard. We had a run on Saturday which was very good. Obviously some bits fell apart, now we are unpicking it and looking at various little bits. My scenes are OK I think. But we are slightly behind. However, we are really looking forward to previews. They will be fascinating because we will find so much more out about the play.

In the last week we have mostly been blocking and re-blocking the play. We’ve done the whole play, but now it’s about getting inside it. We completely re-worked the fight today. I was slightly resistant at first because we worked that fight to death and suddenly we were putting in loads of new moves. Wilson [the director] wanted to make it dirtier. I have to confess that it is much better and I am happy that we did it. The fight is probably slightly shorter, but it’s more violent, it’s nastier and it’s less artistic, there’s less flashing blade work. It’s more like: ‘have some of this’ and ‘you’d better get out of the way’. It is more dramatic and it flows now. That was two hours work on stage. It is a very athletic piece. They brought a tour group round to see the theatre whilst we were rehearsing it and we were doing the fight and suddenly I looked down and there’s someone’s head and I thought, ‘that is really close!’ At first I felt a little exposed, because we are only rehearsing, only practising, and there are all these people looking at us. The tour guides were saying to us that the people were not listening to a word the guides are saying because they were thinking, ‘who are these guys with swords?’ But in fact it was actually quite good having an audience because once we’d got up to speed we started to feel how close they are and just feel the space of it. It was helpful.

Costume
I love my costume. I love it to death! I have got these senatorial robes, these black velvet robes, floor length, with, almost like, a priest’s collar and I love it. The minute I put it on I feel like the boss. I become a senator. I feel like I am one of the fourteen most important people in Venice. It is brilliant, and what it does for you posture, it’s fantastic! When you put it on you instantly stand proud.

I am wearing long pirate boots throughout which you can’t see under the senator’s robes, but they are visible when I am my second character. For the second character I have a doublet, which I might have to steal because I love it. I am wearing a big white shirt, (apparently the sleeves will detach because it is hot in Cypress), no hats, I think, but we all have swords, pretty long swords.

Oh and we come on in the last scene with crossbows… it’s a brilliant ending … Oh but I don’t want to give it away, you will just have to wait till you see the show!

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Bulletin 5

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

Tech week
Tech week has been a bit of a last minute scramble. It is very tiring. We’ve been working from 10am till 10pm. This week has been all about putting on the costumes, getting used to moving and getting used to each other, looking at each other and suddenly going: ‘Oh my god you look really different and weird!’ I must say I feel great when I am wearing my doublet and hose. I just love it. It is interesting the effect it has on your posture. I totally broaden out. You start to swagger a bit.

Some people don’t like having the tour groups in while we rehearse. I like it, because it suddenly makes it real. The issue that we are all grappling with is how to hit the back wall with our voices and be heard. And there are three sets of potentially hazardous steps going up to the stage that we have to get used to. It has been gruelling but it is fun. There is lots of last minute line learning and last minute changes, the fight has changed again!

I have become louder now that we are on the stage. In the senate scene, I am wearing this really long heavy velvet robe and a hat, and it has given me a lot more weight. I think I have found the age of the character. The robe has these huge long sleeves; my senator is getting older and weightier, heavier as I move around in it. The tech is helping colour in the outlines we’ve established in rehearsal.

This week we have been joined by the musicians. Stephen Warbeck [the composer] is brilliant, he’s a genius! The musicians are fascinating guys. It is a good time for them to join us. We are a bit battered and tired and suddenly we have this influx of new energy. We also have three supernumeraries, extra actors who have non speaking parts, they have come in and they are very fresh faced and they are all at drama college, they have given us a real lift.

It is weird not having lights and all the usual things you have in a tech. You kind of wonder what is taking so long. It is amazing when you get a plane flying overhead. The natural thing is to look up, and the audience may too, but Wilson keeps saying: ‘they weren’t invented, they don’t exist!’ Nothing quite prepares you for that difference of being at the Globe theatre. I have never done an outdoor show.

We were all teasing Tim [McInnerny] backstage yesterday; he was going over his lines. He has so many lines! He is such a brilliant actor I have learned a lot from Tim. Iago is a bigger part than Othello, it is huge. But it is Othello’s tragedy. What makes it moving, is how much we love Othello when we first meet him. Also Eamonn and Zoe play their relationship absolutely beautifully. When Othello arrives off the Boat in Cypress and he has had a dangerous passage and he says: ‘It gives me wonder great as my content / To see you here before me! O my soul’s joy,’ (2.1.181-2) we see how happy they are as a young couple. I am up the back of the stage with a sword, looking at them and I always find that moment very moving. They are so happy. And within a day, two days, it has fallen apart.

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Bulletin 6

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

Preview week
This is the fifth night of preview week. The first night was the strangest experience I have ever had on stage. The audience were so unruly, they move around, they chat, they talk about you, they go out and get a drink, they come back, they hissed Iago at certain points and went ‘woooo’ when Othello and Desdemona kissed. It was so much fun! I don’t think I have ever had as much fun on stage. It was brilliant. It was very interesting because you could see them! I am used to modern theatres where they shine a light on you and the audience are in the dark. You can kind of perceive shapes and you sort of notice glinting glasses sometimes, but at the Globe they are just there! There is nothing between you. It is so democratic.

The effect it had on me was that it was so easy to be distracted, that I had to really lock on to the other actors, twice as hard, focus on what they are saying and really make sure I am in the moment. It was very adrenilizing. It was incredibly warm and just really exciting. I learnt a lot about Shakespeare.

When I teach Shakespeare, the kids hate Shakespeare; their previous experiences are overwhelmingly negative. Shakespeare has been used to bludgeon them over the head, to tell them two things: one, that England is great, and two, that they are not clever enough to understand it. It makes me very angry and I have always said to my students that Shakespeare would be furious if he knew. Shakespeare is supposed to be fun, it’s supposed to be exciting, and it’s supposed to be muscular. And now I feel completely vindicated, because it is clear that the audience understand everything that happens on that stage and the fact that they are so visceral and vocal in their response to the play, to me, proves it! The fact that close to a thousand people, many of whom are standing all the way through, and yeah they might go to the loo or go and get a drink, but they are not leaving in big droves, means that they understand it, it means that it is clear. This experience has been very inspiring.

And then you have these really dizzy dizzying moments where you suddenly think this is near enough what it must have been like in Shakespeare’s day. It’s an amazing experience.

Cuts
The previews have highlighted some problems. The show is too long. We’ve worked hard to find a lot of cuts. We’ve cut nearly forty minutes from the show. Some of which, because I love this play, break my heart. The lines are so beautiful, but Wilson [the director] has had to be very ruthless.

We did a brilliant workshop with Patsy Rodenberg about picking up each others cues and without ever gabbling it or rushing it, just how to be urgent with it. She said a wonderful thing: ‘the characters speak to survive and they fully expect that their words will change the world.’ I am trying to keep that in the forefront of my mind whilst I am on stage.

We have re-blocked certain bits. Wilson has cut the bed canopy. In the murder scene Desdemona is wheeled on, on this bed, and this 25 foot canopy drops down from above over the bed. Othello comes in and chases her round and knocks and her down and grabs the sheet and pulls it, it flutters in the night air as it comes down, and he uses it to strangle her, but now it has been cut. But, it takes too long. Cutting the canopy has saved us five minutes and it was an unreliable prop that caused problems. I agree with Wilson’s reasoning which is that the whole point about that incredible space is that it is about actors and language. Up until that point in the play the set consists of a table, a bed, and two stools and that is it. The canopy didn’t quite fit.

The pyrotechnics can be problematic. The first show they didn’t go off. They are in my scene. The canon cues my line. On Friday I was standing there wondering ‘when is the canon going to go off?’ We covered for it, but it keeps you on your toes! Last night they were fine though.

The first couple of shows you just have this adrenaline rush but now I am starting to realise we have to do this show eighty times! It is very athletic, I don’t know how Eamonn [Othello] and Tim [Iago] must feel? I have noticed that both have them have dropped weight and it’s not because they are working out. It is the muscularity of having to speak that much and breathe that much. I have noticed we have all started to maintain our bodies. We are all keeping fit and making sure that we are warmed up before going on stage. This is for real! We are doing this till August and we can’t have a night off!

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