Anne Page

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Ellie Piercy plays Anne Page

Ellie’s theatre credits include Romeo and Juliet at the Globe, Plunder directed by Heather Davies, How to Beat a Giant at the Unicorn Theatre, Scratch Workshop at BAC, Lady Windemere’s Fan and Women Beware Women at RADA. She played Victorine Meurant in The Impressionists, a mini-series screened on the BBC.

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 was a child model when I was little, so I was used to performing for the camera and being directed. Acting in school plays came easily to me, and we had a brilliant teacher. At about the age of nine I joined something called W11 Children’s Opera which involved hundreds of children that were local to West London. I did that for about seven years. Acting became something of a natural creative pursuit. It became more serious, because it was something I enjoyed more than anything else and it led to me doing theatre studies. I never thought ‘Oh I want to be an actor’, it just seemed to be a continuation of what I was doing. I did my ‘A’ Levels and the grades I got meant I could go to university, and I was interested in costume design so I decided to go to Glasgow to do English and Theatre Studies. I was doing a lot of performing and designing costumes, but academically it was a struggle and I got by for a while, and then suddenly I realised I couldn’t write essays, that it really wasn’t for me. I got chucked out after three years, so I decided to apply to RADA and I got in. So there’s been a sense that it was a journey I was meant to take. I haven’t had to sort of fight for it too much, which has been an immense relief. Life doesn’t feel right when I’m not acting.

First Experiences of Shakespeare
My first experience of Shakespeare was Twelfth Night at school, I played Maria. We had an amazing teacher called Mrs Pinchbeck who didn’t mind that I couldn’t really write, she was someone who engaged people’s brains through other routes. I remember playing Maria, I really enjoyed it. I remember being surprised when people laughed.

I’ve performed once at the Globe theatre once, as Juliet in the touring production of Romeo and Juliet. We didn’t have a dress rehearsal or a tech in the space, we had about four hours on the stage before the show. There was a lot of re-blocking so quite a lot of it in my mind was remembering you’re meant to go to that pillar at this point etc. It was all quite last minute and I felt mildly panicked. But I sat on the stage that morning when there was no one else there, and I thought about how I’d dreamed of working at the Globe, what it feels like to watch plays here and what the Globe represents. There was a feeling of “Gosh this is a really big thing” for me, and I haven’t really told anyone. So I think that sense of achievement overpowered the sense of pressure. Also, we knew that the audience had booked their tickets months ago, and everyone was desperate to see the show. But I did forget a line, and it really threw me because I don’t forget lines very often and I really get cross with myself when I do, really, really cross. I’m so excited about getting a full run this time and Anne Page couldn’t be more opposite to Juliet in terms of her journey and her story and how much she appears in the play.

Anne Page
The whole of The Merry Wives of Windsor is about women being allowed to be women and have desires. Anne Page is the youngest character in the play. The play is all about life in Windsor. One of the storylines is about who is going to get to marry Anne Page. The Pages are one of the Windsor families, and there are four men who want to marry her. They’re all quite reputed men or men of money or men of distinction. Meanwhile Anne Page has already found the guy that she really likes, this gorgeously charming man called Fenton, and he – whilst the others are quite reputable and sort of distinguished – he’s squandered all his money and is a typical kind of wild boy. So she’s being courted by all these men, meanwhile she’s trying to convince her parents that she should get together with Fenton. All you see between Fenton and Anne is a small scene where they’re trying to work out how on earth they can elope together, but not be cut-off by her parents.

The first week
The week started with a meet and greet and a read through. And for the rest of the week we read through the play very slowly, and talked about it, Chris [Luscombe, the director] kept questioning what things meant. There’s a lot of quite colloquial phrases in the play that we don’t use anymore. So we try to find out what they meant, so we can fill the words with meaning and get the point across. We spent a good four days doing that. Then we got up on our feet and started literally standing the scenes out, in quite a simplistic way and we’re still doing that right now. And as I appear at the beginning and the end of the play I’ve not actually had much to do this week!

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Bulletin 2

The suitors
Anne Page has three suitors, who are all quite wealthy – Slender, Fenton and Dr Caius. Slender is her father’s favourite suitor; he knows the family well, so her father won’t lose touch with his daughter and he’ll have quite a hand in how the marriage works. The problem is Slender is a bit weird! We are not sure if he is completely unaware of just how he comes across. For example, he says he women are weak and easily scared, but what he really means is that he simply does not like the way women respond to dogs. She has never contemplated marriage with him at all, and is surprised when the proposal is made. Whereas she’s really fallen in love with Fenton, and can’t imagine being with anyone else. I’m trying to get a balance between feeling like a real person and the stereotype woman that everyone fancies.

Rehearsals
Today we were rehearsing the scene with Slender (1.176-294). I’m just telling him to come in as dinner’s ready. But it turns into a miscommunication conversation, with me saying ‘Will you come in? They want me to come and get you, I can’t go in without you.’ It turns into this awkward situation of him making a big deal out of everything. I hope we can make it as funny as it’s meant to be. The way Anne is written is very direct and I think that’s quite Elizabethan – you say what you are thinking. It’s quite easy for a modern person to go ‘My goodness, what on earth is this guy doing?’ Trying to bring what’s happening across to a modern audience is quite hard.

Rehearsing on the stage
We’ve had a chance to go on stage, where I had to think ‘Gosh, where am I supposed to be in this scene?’ I have little movement because my scenes are so short and spiky. My temptation is to throw myself around; with the audience all round and the blind spots caused by the pillars I get paranoid about not being seen, so I find it much harder to be still. One morning I got a bit panicked about the re-blockings, thinking that I didn’t remember them. But with panic, you don’t connect, so I just tried to remember it.

Costume
We’ve had a costume fitting. I’ve got a proper dress with three layers. It’s really little and neat and cutesy. It’s gold with a gorgeous doublet in a lace design. It’s actually really helped me to allow her to feel more girlish.

Music and Dance
In two weeks is tech week, and I think we might run the whole show for the first time this Saturday. We blocked it quite quickly. Then we put in the music, which was good because it showed us where Chris [Luscombe, the director] is coming from. So next week there’ll be more joining up. We must be starting jig rehearsals tomorrow. I can’t wait. I love dancing.
We all sing and do our fairy dance, which is fun. And I’ve got a tiny duet with Fenton, which is really sweet. One day the composer came in. He’s underscoring some key moments to heighten them. It doesn’t feel like a musical – more like a sound track. Then there is the drinking song in the tavern, which becomes the jig.

The text
Text work and voice work with Giles [Block, text expert] and Jan (Hayden-Rolls, voice expert] is so key. Initially, I think I was imposing too much on such a small amount of text; I was doing fifteen things more than necessary! I did try to make her a bit bitchy at first. You can completely turn the text on its head, but it’s just completely wrong for my understanding of Anne; I think she’s got to be true to the written text. So it was really good being simpler, constantly remembering the words and grammar and punctuation your character has chosen, and why. For instance, she uses really short sentences like ‘Not I, sir’, which actually mean, ‘This is what you have to do if you really want me.’ There is one sentence when her mother is trying to convince her to marry Fenton, and she says ‘I had rather be set quick i’th’ earth, / And bowled to death with turnips.’ (3.485-86). It’s quite weighty and muscular and I thought it was quite an imaginative description of death, but then the research team told me that this saying was popular in Shakespeare’s time, and the audience would have recognised it immediately, so it’s not quite as original as I first thought.

In the end...
The bottom line is she simply loves her parents. She doesn’t want to cause trouble, which is why she doesn’t want to elope. Whereas Juliet rushes to marry Romeo, I think she doesn’t have a relationship with her parents and Anne really does. She just loves them. The idea of going against her father she is like ‘No way. We can’t do that. We’ll just have to wait. He’ll get to like you in the end!’ She really is an optimist.

My next role
I start rehearsals for Liberty in mid-July. That’s enough time to let this show settle in. I think doing it this way round means I’ve got space. Anne is second to Elodie [the part she is playing in Liberty]. It’s interesting coming from Juliet [the part she played in the Globe’s Romeo and Juliet on tour in 2007] to all this. Juliet’s an amazing part and I felt so honoured. But I didn’t have much time to think about it on tour. We just had to do it, and deal with the cold weather and all, including me freezing in a bikini!

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