Penny Layden

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Penny trained at Rose Bruford College. Previously at the Globe she has played Ophelia in Hamlet (2000) and Diana in Antipodes (2000). Other theatre includes Cinderella (Old Vic), Vernon God Little (Young Vic), Comfort Me With Apples (Hampstead), Mary Barton, Electra, Mayhem (Royal Exchange), Assassins (Sheffield Crucible), Jane Eyre, The Magic Toyshop, A Passage To India (Shared Experience), The Laramie Project (Sound Theatre), Romeo & Juliet (Southwark Playhouse), The Tempest, Juliet, Measure For Measure, Roberto Zucco (RSC), The Winter’s Tale, Ghosts (Method and Madness). Her film credits include Poppy Shakespeare (Channel 4/Cowboy Films, The Libertine (Stanley IOM Films). Television Silent Witness, Doctors, Waterloo Road, The Bill, Bad Mother’s Handbook, No Angels, Murphy’s Law, Outlaws, Fat Friends, M.I.T, Casualty.

Rehearsal Bulletin 1

Previous experience of Shakespeare

I didn’t have a massive experience of Shakespeare at school at all. When I joined high school, I had drama for the first term, but then the drama teacher left, and so there were no more drama classes; we tried to form a drama club, but the only real experience of Shakespeare we had was in the English lessons. I think we had a failed actress as our English teacher, and because I knew I wanted to be in theatre, she was very interested in me. But I don’t remember ever feeling that I had a great knowledge of Shakespeare when we finished school. Definitely there was no sudden baptism where I fell in love with it, but then I also didn’t have that experience of being really turned off it, which can be quite common.

As an actor, I’ve actually done quite a lot of Shakespeare since. Before I came to the Globe in 2000, I had played Perdita in Mike Alfreds’ The Winter’s Tale and had done a season at the RSC playing Miranda in The Tempest and Juliet in Measure for Measure, as well as understudying Isabella. And then in 2000, I played Ophelia in Hamlet at the Globe, with Mark Rylance as Hamlet, which was a fantastic experience. So I do feel like I’ve had a good grounding in Shakespeare, but I feel like now I am ready to do some more. And I’m very, very excited about being in this space again; there’s something very emotional about this space and I have a great love for it.

Preparation before rehearsals

Once I know what character I’m going to be playing, I always do the same thing before going into rehearsal, which is to write four lists. For the first list, I go through the whole play and list anything that the Nurse says about herself; for example “For I had then laid wormwood to my dug” (1.3.26) would be added to that list, as it’s her talking about weaning Juliet.

I then do the second list, which is what the Nurse says about everybody else. You will repeat a lot of the same text, but this is when you begin to get clues as to whether your character talks about themselves a lot, or only talks about themselves in the context of other characters, or if they hardly mention themselves at all and talk more about others. With the Nurse, you get her talking about herself in the context of Juliet an awful lot, and I’m beginning to think that might be for the benefit of Lady Capulet, as a way of lording it over her.

The third list is what everybody else says about the Nurse, which is usually the biggest list, as you have to go through every character’s lines in case you’re mentioned. This allows you to see your character from the viewpoint of other people.

The fourth and final list is facts from the text. It’s usually the shortest list because a lot of the time in Shakespeare you’re not given facts. You can’t take anything on assumption. The facts about the Nurse are:

- she had a husband;
- she had a baby girl called Susan, who died when she was exactly the same age as Juliet;
- she was Juliet’s wet nurse;
- she acts as the go-between for the lovers;
- she is privy to the secret marriage;
- she is instrumental to the wedding night, as she transports the cords for Romeo to climb down;
- she ‘turns coat’ by backing Paris over Romeo when it comes to the crunch;
- she is held in confidence by the Capulets;
- she discovers Juliet’s body after her fake suicide;
- she has a manservant called Peter;
- she saw Tybalt’s dead body;
- she tells Juliet of Romeo’s banishment and the murder of Tybalt;
- and, she talks a lot!

The list may be added to when you unlock the text more. You might find out things, but it should never be conjecture; it should never be guessing that her favourite colour is yellow because she’d rather Juliet wore the yellow dress, or some such. You have to be quite hard with yourself about what are actually facts.

Initial impressions of the Nurse

It can sometimes be quite difficult coming up with a first impression with Shakespeare characters, because they have been performed so many times. Certainly, I don’t look like the usual sort of Nurse; I’m not big and fat and frumpy and old, and so I have to come at her from me and who I am, because we’re playing her as my age. But actually, I think that works incredibly well in terms of Juliet’s age, and when she would have been able to be a wet nurse.

When I was originally approaching the character, more than anything, I was struck by the sense of her earthiness. Her class is very clear, I think, from the text. It’s maybe an obvious thing to say, but she’s inappropriate and she does cross the line when it comes to saying things that are just a bit rude. But I try not to make too many decisions about this person before rehearsals. There’s just a bare bones idea or an essence – more like a feeling really – of who this woman might be. And I know that somebody like Dominic [Dromgoole, the director] has much more knowledge than I do about this play, and about who these people are because of his experience; I have to trust that there’s a reason that I’ve been cast and that he’s going to steer me down the right paths

First day of rehearsals

On the first day, we have a meet and greet where we meet everybody, and nobody remembers anybody’s name because there’s so many people there from every part of the theatre. We get shown the model box of what the set will be like, and the costume designs which was really exciting, especially as the Nurse, because I’m probably going to have to black my teeth up … very glamorous!

After that, we then did a read through. Even though there’s no pressure put on it – it’s really for clarity more than anything else – it’s kind of terrifying! You feel yourself going really red until you’ve spoken your first three sentences and after that, it all calms down and you just get on with it. That doesn’t change as you do more; I’ve been doing read throughs for quite a long time now, and those first nerves don’t get any easier. But what’s lovely about it is that I’d been working with this play on my own, and then for the first time, I got to hear these different voices, or tunes. It’s like a piece of music, like the first time you hear an orchestra try out before the play – what the oboe’s going to be like when it starts, and what the pipes do when they come in and so on. And that’s why I don’t like to make all the decisions before rehearsals start, because I need to hear what the other actors are doing with their characters.

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Rehearsal Bulletin 2

First week: Table sessions

The rehearsal process has very much been in steps, so it’s actually really easy to describe. With this process, the first time you look at the scene you do a ‘table session’, which is where all the characters in the scene sit down with Dominic [Dromgoole, director] and Giles [Block, textual adviser] and you basically go through the text and translate it into your own words. So, for example, we’ve just done a scene where I’ve said, “Well, there’s a clean smock under your pillow” (4.3.6), so I translated that as “I’ve put a clean nightie under your pillow”. Although it’s very simple, and not pressured at all, Dominic is very good at making you be very specific about things. If you have an ‘Ah weladay’ at the start of that sentence, he doesn’t let you just skip it! So it’s great to think about it that closely; it’s not just about me knowing what I’m saying but also about everybody in the scene knowing exactly what we’re talking about, because that’s the immediate context.

Key Relationships

Obviously she is very close to Juliet; she wet-nursed her, brought her up, and has really mothered her. I was given a bit of research from the Library at the Globe, called ‘Quarrelling with the Dug’, which is all about wet-nursing. That was really fascinating, and it has made me think that all the Nurse’s power comes from the fact that Lady Capulet needs her; because of the wet-nursing, her bond with Juliet and with the family is intrinsically there.

Because of that, the Nurse’s relationship to Juliet’s mother is really interesting. Miranda [Foster] is giving Lady Capulet this poise and class and spikiness that the Nurse doesn’t really have (that’s not to say the Nurse can’t spike when she wants to), but as a result, the Nurse is much easier and closer with Juliet. And she shows Lady Capulet this all the time by claiming Juliet as her own in front of her. There’s an awful lot of claiming language; the Nurse is constantly emphasising “when I nursed her, when she tasted my nipple, when she was on my dug, when I did this.” The way in which we play the scenes with the three characters is also showing that physically, the Nurse and Juliet very comfortable and easy with each other whereas it’s much more formal between Lady Capulet.

We’ve explored the relationship with Lord Capulet a bit less, but that seems to have come quite naturally in the rehearsal process. I think we have quite an honest relationship, and at times, it can be quite jokey; later on, when they’re getting ready the night before the wedding, she says to Capulet “Go, you cot-quean, go. / Get you to bed. Faith, you’ll be sick tomorrow,” (4.4.6-7), which is quite maternal, but also a bit cheeky. It’s that cheekiness that means he sometimes has to remind her of what her status is, like in the scene where Juliet refuses to marry Paris.

And then, lastly, there’s her manservant Peter. We have this kind of tetchy relationship where she lauds it over him. We found that particularly at the end of the scene where she goes to find Romeo for Juliet; her lines are: “Peter, take my fan and go before at a pace”, and originally I had played it quite straight. But Dominic told me to stay where I was and make Peter come to me, so that he has to fetch the fan. It’s like a play for Romeo, for him to see how important I am. She’s got to show off to somebody. There are really nice touches, but it’s those that make good story-telling.

Voice work with Jan Haydn-Rowles

This week I’ve also had a voice work session with Jan [Haydn-Rowles] who is the voice coach at the Globe on this production. We talked a lot about using my Yorkshire voice for the Nurse, and Jan’s incredibly knowledgeable about accent placement and the associations with different voices. She said that she thought Yorkshire was a really good choice, because it’s very direct; it doesn’t go up at the end, waiting for the listener to agree with it – it calls a spade a spade! I was worried at first that I would be too broad, but Dominic reassured me that even though it can be quite strong, I can still be subtle and bring out lots of different flavours in it.

At first, Jan and I talked about the first line in her long speech in the first scene:

Even or odd, of all days in the year,
Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she--God rest all Christian souls!—
Were of an age: well, Susan is with God;
She was too good for me: but, as I said,
On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen;
That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;
And she was wean'd,--I never shall forget it,--
Of all the days of the year, upon that day:
For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall;
My lord and you were then at Mantua:--
Nay, I do bear a brain:--but, as I said,
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,
To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!

Right from the first three words, you get these hard consonant sounds married with long vowel sounds; it’s almost a percussive accent where you can be quite musical with it (although obviously not singing it)!

The Yorkshire accent is also going to be very useful in that it relishes the sounds that you make. When you’ve got emotional speeches, the vowels tend to carry the emotion. When I had my session with Jan I asked if we could look at the scene where she thinks Juliet is dead. The Nurse has got whole speeches when she thinks Juliet’s dead, like “O, woe! Oh woeful, woeful, woeful day.” (4.5.49), and we talked a lot about this “O” sound, which is so primal and so full of grief. The way those sounds are carried on this accent seems to pack more of a punch somehow.

Dancing – the Masked Ball

We’ve been dancing a lot! In the first week, the full company had a session with Sîan [Williams, choreographer] for the masked ball, where we just touched on very simple partner work dances, using rhythms and lots of percussion: stamping and clapping and so on. And today, we’ve just had another session this afternoon, which has been looking at the dancing for the masked ball – the Nurse will definitely be having dancing at the party … with Benvolio!

It’s interesting that even something like the dancing can inform your character. When everyone enters into the party, old Capulet is so drunk that he falls over, so originally we were just going to have the Nurse pick him up and then get stuck with him. But now that the Nurse has been paired with Benvolio, I’m able to tell more of a story with the character. So when she picks up Capulet, I want her to be looking round, trying to find who she’ll have her next dance with!

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Rehearsal Bulletin 3

Getting the play on its feet

In the first week we did a table session for every scene to make sure we know what’s going on. And then this week, we have revisited the scenes and started getting them up on their feet. There isn’t a strict blocking policy – it’s not set in stone – but it helps inform the relationships of the characters in the scene. For example, in the first scene with Lady Capulet, Juliet and the Nurse, if Miranda [Foster, Lady Capulet] just slightly edges her way in front of the Nurse or turns her back on the Nurse, that informs how I speak the text; once you are up on your feet, those physical relationships will be explored a bit more than they were in the table sessions. I think that’s pretty much the stage we’re at now. I actually did my third rehearsal on one scene yesterday, so you’re revisiting a scene that had already been stood up on its feet. And each time you just see it getting richer and richer, and we’re more confident with who these people are.

Text work

I’m fairly knowledgeable about verse speaking but there’s always so much more to learn – that’s what I love about this job, actually. And it’s fantastic to have a textual adviser, Giles [Block] on hand to go to with questions. The script we are using is two versions put together to make the one text, but Giles has a great knowledge of the first folio and the quartos: where the punctuation is and where it’s been changed, and where, for example, a section is in prose in one version but in verse in another. That’s quite helpful to know, as prose often indicates a comedy character or low class. So when the Nurse does speak in prose in a scene, it can be because she’s revealing her class, or because she’s trying to be funny and bawdy. She’s primarily in verse in the version that we’re doing, but she does have sections of prose, and she does witch between the two in scenes; I don’t know whether I’m right, but it seems that she also switches to prose when honest things are revealed. I’ll have to look at the text!

Developing the character

Having had more time, and had the sessions with Giles, different things are starting to come out in scenes.

In the scene where Juliet has sent the Nurse to find Romeo, Juliet is waiting for me to come back and moaning about how “from nine to twelve / Is three long hours, yet she is not come” (2.5.10-11). She just wants to know about her boyfriend, and when the Nurse comes on stage, she doesn’t mention Romeo for ages and keeps going on about her back and her knees and her head and everything else! There’s a kind of a game going on, which is a lot to do with the Nurse holding on to her power by retaining information; it’s not a vicious thing – there’s a relish there and an excitement! I think I was playing it too nice at first, but I’ve realised that it’s about letting the audience in on the secret against Juliet because she doesn’t know what Romeo has said, and enjoying her teenage frustration for just a little bit! It’s selfish, but fun!

That selfishness of the Nurse’s also comes out in the scene where the Nurse confuses Juliet about who is dead – Tybalt or Romeo, or both? Giles said something during the rehearsals, which was that the second half of the line is often more important than the first half of the line. So you have a line from the Nurse in that scene like, “O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had.” (3.2.61). It comes completely out of the blue, because you never, ever see her talking to Tybalt in the entire play. And that makes you think that that line is actually more to do with her than Tybalt. It’s almost like she is going to show that she is grieving harder and more upset than anyone else, which is indicative of character.

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Rehearsal Bulletin 4

This Week’s Rehearsals

We were told that we had to be off-book by the end of week three. So there are lots of nearly learnt lines, lots of “Ooo, what’s that word…?” At the end of last week we did the scene when I find Juliet in her bed and think she’s dead, so it was Miranda [Foster, Lady Capulet] and I rehearsing all morning, just weeping and wailing! I looked terrible for about three days! But the way that Dominic [Dromgoole, director] rehearses is using repetition to refine a scene, which is great actually, because by the end of the rehearsal you know the lines and what makes sense in the space … but we did do a lot of crying last week!

The Nurse and Grieving

Dominic said something interesting about the Nurse’s grief when she discovers Juliet. There is a lot of repetition in the text and it’s very emotional; all of the vowel sounds are very emotional sounds. Dominic talked about it being an out-pouring of all her grief and woe. He was saying that all her past grief was unlocked by this one event, a bit like when Princess Diana died and people were suddenly allowed to grieve for other things; it was a kind of displacement from their own lives, a catalyst or an open door to their emotions. That idea was very helpful in approaching that scene. I think there is also an element of “What have I done?” – the Nurse has been party to this misery that led to this end. I think there is an innate selfishness to her in this regard, but selfishness is not always as negative as it sounds.

I think the language indicates how obviously traumatised she is by this event. She can only articulate one word, which is repeated over and over again. My lines are: “O woe, o woeful, woeful day / Most lamentable day, most woeful day” (4.5.49-50). Jan [Haydn-Rowles, voice coach] and I were discussing which part of “lamentable” should be stressed. In the text, it should be “laMENTable” (with the stress in the middle) but if it’s “LAmentable” (with the stress on the start) there is an openness that is more emotional. It then also highlights the “O” of the “WOEful” that follows it. I talked to Giles [Block, Text] about it as well, and he actually liked “LAmentable”.

There is also this huge book in the rehearsal room called Shakespeare’s Concordance. Jan told me to have a look in there to see if there are any accents or anything, and it doesn’t have that, but what I did find is every line in Shakespeare’s plays that use the word “lament”. Interestingly, most are prose lines. So the conclusion that Giles and I came to is that it is pronounced differently in prose and in verse. Sometimes you can feel something without intellectually understanding it. I think a lot of my process is like that, I can sort of feel it somehow.

Overplaying the Nurse?

In a particularly terrible rehearsal last week, I found myself really pushing and being really gross with the Nurse’s lines. Dominic said “Why are you doing that? You’re bawdying her up and you don’t need to; what you were doing before was really nice.” I don’t know where that came from, but we talked about it so it’ll be fine. It was just me maybe slightly losing trust in what I was doing and not feeling it in context, because none of us have seen the whole play yet.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the whole play this Thursday; we’re doing a run of Act 1 in the morning and a run of Act 2 in the afternoon. It will be good to find the flavour of the whole piece and to see how our scenes fit in, because obviously you don’t act in a bubble, even though that’s how you rehearse. I think it will probably change, once we all find our flavour; it’s like being part of the recipe. Like if you put too much tarragon in, it tastes really awful – I was that today!

Dancing: the Jig

We had our first look at the jig this week, which you always have at the end of the shows here. Sian [Williams, Choreographer] is fantastic; she knows the space so well and what works in it. There is a lot of stamping and clapping, some that is simplistic and some that isn’t, all very rhythmic and like the masked ball! It is fine once you’ve got it down, but difficult to learn, but I like using the body for a beat.

It is quite upbeat this time; when we did Hamlet the jig was quite severe, quite aggressive actually. We had these poles with skulls on top of them that we banged for the percussion. Kind of marching forward and formations and lots of percussive banging with those poles, but this time we seem to be doing more with our bodies. This jig is meant to lift and rouse. The objective is lifting and rousing and washing the tragedy away.

We’ve got a big rehearsal for the ball next. Last week we put the dance into the Ball for the first time and acted around the dance. So Romeo and Juliet have their “palm to palm” sonnet down the front, which I then rudely interrupt.

Music

Last week we had Nigel [Osborne, composer] in and we did all the musical transitions. So there is underscoring during scenes, maybe under dialogue. The transitions with the boys singing are absolutely beautiful – I cried twice! Fergal [McElherron, Peter], Graham [Vick, Abraham], James [Lailey, Sampson] and Jack [Farthing, Benvolio] sang round the piano – not even in the scene or anything – singing this beautiful harmony. It was to get a taster of little bits we hadn’t seen, to realise how the music is going to work with everything

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