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Bo Poraj
Bo Poraj plays Apemantus
Bo’s work for theatre includes Cloud Nine at the Almeida Theatre directed by Thea Sharrock, Hilda at the Hampstead Theatre directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, Dr Faustus at the Young Vic Theatre directed by David Lan and The Tempest for the RSC directed by James MacDonald. His work for television includes parts in Holby City, Waking the Dead, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Ny-Lon and Eastenders. For film he has played roles in The Queen of Sheba’s Pearls and Enigma.
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’ve been acting since about fifteen. I was in youth theatre when I was in school; I wasn’t very sporty, so the only thing I was any good at was making people laugh (and it was also a way of meeting girls, if I’m to be honest!), so that was how I got into youth theatre. I was very lucky, as I lived in Birmingham and there’s a really strong youth theatre attached to the Repertory Theatre, and I used to spend all my spare time there doing shows. So it came to decision time in school where you have to decide what you’re doing for the rest of your life and there was nothing else that I really enjoyed or was passionate about in the same way, so I just decided to give acting a go. Despite my headmaster telling me I’d never get into RADA, I did. I went there instead of going to university and I’ve been acting professionally since 1995, which would be thirteen years.
Working at the Globe
I’ve never worked at the Globe before. I saw Antony and Cleopatra and the Midnight Matinee of The Comedy of Errors [both in 2006] which was really magical, and I saw Holding Fire last year. My only connection with the Globe is that I’ve worked with both Dominic [Dromgoole, Artistic Director of the Globe] and Mark [Rylance, former Artistic Director of the Globe] before. I also worked with Lucy Bailey previously, on Stairs to the Roof by Tennessee Williams, which had never been done in this country before.
Becoming part of an established company
Because many of the actors had already gotten to know each other from being in A Midsummer Night’s Dream they could have been cliquey but they weren’t at all. They’ve been really welcoming, really friendly, and while they’re doing their matinees of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Timon [Simon Paisley Day] and I can be working on our scenes together.
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.
First week of rehearsals
The first day is usually a write off because of all the nervous energy, and you don’t actually get that much work done, but we actually started a few days earlier than the ‘first week’. So the first afternoon, we introduced ourselves, read the play, and that was it – that was probably enough! Then in the first week, we did a lot of exercises to do with status and flattering and sycophancy. For instance, Simon would walk into the room, and everybody would be kneeling to him and he had to introduce himself to everyone. But while he would be doing that, whenever he wasn’t engaged with you, you had to completely switch off and show a different side of yourself. If you were watching the exercise, you’d see people walking around in a slightly predatory way, but all he saw were beaming smiles and happiness. Then we moved on to passing a secret word or an object around, and everybody had to get it or touch it, except Timon who could never see what was going on. So it was playing with ideas of appearance and deception, doing it on different levels friendship and love, but we were also exploring how Timon does not get that these people are false. To me, this is one of the most difficult parts of the play to get, particularly in productions where Timon is being played by an old man; I thought that surely anyone who’s been on this planet for fifty or sixty years is going to be able to know when people are being that false, so I think Lucy’s done the right thing by casting it younger. But I was also really encouraged by the fact that when Simon spoke of his experience in these exercises, he said he just had this feeling of being loved and people loving him; you could therefore believe that this man would go through these experiences, not realising that people were out to get him.
Character of Apemantus
Apemantus, the character I play, is very much on the outside of that circle of flattery, so in those exercises, I was playing with different things, trying to disrupt the deception to get him to see what was really going on in that exercise. So when they’d be giving him a hug, I’d go up to them after and give them a really over-the-top hug, or if they were giving him a gift, I’d be making fart noises, trying to disrupt the flattery in the way that Apemantus does in the play. I think it was also useful to see the way that they disarmed me; rather than taking offence, they included me or laughed it off, or changed tack and tried to compete with me. I didn’t do any work with Giles [Block, Text Adviser] or Glynn [MacDonald, Movement] in the first week, although Giles was always there going through the text; there’s a lot of it that’s difficult to get your head around and he was very helpful.
The design of the show
I did have an idea about what the design of the show would be like as I’d met Lucy previously and she’d shown me pictures I thought it looked fantastic. This play does need lifting off the page. There are bits that you read that are just dry, only people talking to each other, but when she explains her vision for it, you’ve got these creatures hanging down from a suspended net. It makes it really exciting and really brings it to life for you. That’s why I think Lucy is the right person for this play because she’s particularly talented at doing that
Rehearsing in parts
It’s fairly normal to split the company up in rehearsal. There’s always people who are in certain bits and who aren’t in others. It’s a big company – twenty actors. Unless you’re working at the National or the RSC or here at the Globe, you don’t get many plays with that many actors, so when you do have them all in a room at one time, it’s very difficult to keep everyone focused; some people will have more to do than others, so it’s useful to work in small groups. This week we’re going to be doing these big scenes – the banquet scenes – and bringing everyone back together now is good, because everyone’s got something to bring to the table.
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.
Playing with the text
After we’d done all the improvisation in the first week, then we moved to the text. I think we’ve gone through the whole play, with the actors who are in each scene trying to get a sense of the language. A lot of it is quite tough to understand on first hearing. As a company, we put it into our own language, bringing it down to the level of ‘Hello, how are you? Haven’t seen you for a while’. Then, when you can go back to speaking Shakespeare, you have more of an awareness of the reality of the situation and it’s a little more grounded. For example, at one point, Timon says something about ‘drugs’, and you obviously think of drugs as we know them today; but in the play it means something else – ‘drudges’ – so we changed the word to that (4.3.253). We’ve done a few things like that, but not many. Lucy [Bailey, director] and Giles [Block, Text Adviser] had already done quite a lot of cutting to make it clearer. Also, there are the central characters, and then there are lots of other characters, and Lucy has doubled those characters up quite carefully. We don’t have any record of Timon being performed in Shakespeare’s time, and Giles seemed to suggest that some of the loose ends that haven’t been tied up are a result of the play not having been polished.
Developing the character
My character is often described as being a churlish philosopher; people associate being churlish with being foolish, but I don’t think he is a fool. I think he’s one of only two or three sane voices in the play. He’s also described as being surly and sulking, and so, in rehearsals, we’ve been playing with the idea of him being on the periphery of all the revelry. He’s standing at the edges, commenting on how these people look like they are Timon’s best friends, but they’re actually not. We’re playing with when those comments should be directed to the audience, and when they should be part of the action. He does say some quite rude things. There is one point when Timon’s friends move him to tears with their ‘kindness’; somebody says something about the tears being like babies springing up, and Apemantus says that if they’re babies, then they’re bastards (1.2.108-110). Imagine if that was a real situation where your friend was in tears saying how much they meant to you, and you told them they were false tears! So at this point in rehearsals, we’re thinking about being less aggressive, just placing the words and letting them hit home.
Apemantus isn’t a rich person; he’s someone who takes pride in the fact that he only eats root vegetables and that he doesn’t really wash. There’s definitely a great deal of pride about him.
Not only does he want to be different, but he wants to be noticed to be different. I think he wants to distinguish himself in a way that’s obvious to other people, whether that’s by having unwashed hair, or by having filthy hands, or wearing clothes that aren’t sparkling. He wants people to ask him why he’s different, so that he can say, ‘I’m not like you’. Although, having said that, what he says is true; he correctly points out that these people are flatterers – so he’s grumpy but he does speak the truth!
The design of the play
In the third week we began to start putting the play on its feet, finding how it would fit in the Globe space. I’ve just been working on a scene between myself and three of the senators. They’re going to be hanging like vultures on ropes from above the stage; when you read the scene on the page, its dry, but it’s going to be played with me onstage and the senators hanging above the audience. It will be horrible, particularly as Lucy is playing with the idea of the courtiers and flatterers as vultures or predators – it’s got that animal quality of hanging in the air waiting to drop down for the kill.
Movement
We’ve been into the theatre with Glynn [MacDonald, Movement] which was really helpful because she was introducing us to the dynamics at work on the stage, showing us the spots where you can be seen and heard by everybody, and anywhere that you have to be moving or be on a diagonal. There was a lot of talk about how to fill the space; it’s a huge stage and its high, and Glynn talked about not trying to reach up to the audience but allowing the audience to come to you. I’ve actually worked in the Tokyo Globe. It is meant to be a recreation of Shakespeare’s Globe, although it’s indoors and it’s not the same materials, and I’m not sure if it’s exactly the same proportions. I like that you can hear all the extraneous noises here, which you couldn’t in Tokyo. Also, in the Tokyo Globe there’s proper stage lighting so you can’t even see the audience so it didn’t have the same sort of feeling – well, I say that not having performed on the stage here, but to me it seems like it’ll be a different experience!
The costume
I haven’t had a costume fitting yet but I’m looking forward it. Bill [Dudley, the designer] pointed out some of the details of the pictures and it looks amazingly modern in some ways. But then there’s also a lot of really interesting imagery from Bosch. So the costumes look like they’re going to have a real hellish quality about them, something a bit animalistic.
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.
From page to stage
In the last two weeks the pressure has been off me because we’re concentrating on other aspects of the production, but we’ve just run through the first half for the first time. It went really well, it’s exciting to see bits I haven’t been involved in. On the page, you read the play and it can be really dense. Lucy [Bailey, director] has done a great job of bringing it to life. Watching it is a lot less difficult than reading it, so it’s good to see it and for the next two weeks we’ll be putting it together more and running it by chunks.
Recent Rehearsals
I haven’t been in rehearsals as much as other people recently because they have been concentrating on the aerial stuff in the last two weeks, for example, using the bungees which I don’t do. Also, a lot of the banquet sequence (which is about the first 25 pages of the play) is going to be a very stylised movement, when the lords ‘turn into dogs.’ I haven’t been involved in that either - I sort of sit on the periphery looking grumpy! So I haven’t actually been used as much in the last couple of weeks as other people, but it’s all coming together now.
Vocal Work
I’ve worked one-on-one with Jan [Haydn-Rowles, Vocal] this week, which was very good. She talked about internal rhythms and iambic pentameter, it was very helpful. She pointed out things that you don’t necessarily think of, like alliterated words - a run of letters that give hints to where the stress and rhythm should be - which was very illuminating.
Work on the Text
Work with Giles [Block, Text Advisor] has also been very helpful. One thing I’ve learnt from Giles is the sense of the rhythm of the text and of the thought behind it. The ideas that Shakespeare puts across are so dense and clever which means texts like this can be difficult. We’ve spent ages talking about it in rehearsals and as an actor you want to convey that. But it actually makes it harder for the audience to listen if you try to push certain words; I’ve noticed myself doing it. It is much easier for the audience to listen and understand if you just run on to the end of the phrase, or the end of the line, or the end of the beat. Shakespeare’s rhythm and rhyme help you understand it.
Costume
There are lots of pictures of Hieronymus Bosch on the wall so I think Bill [Dudley, designer] is using that imagery as inspiration, as one of the ‘colours’ on his pallette. We’ve all got these pumps which look really up-to-date and fashionable, but apparently they look very much like medieval shoes, the shape is very similar. So there is a sort of cross-over between modern and medieval. For instance, when we look at those Bosch pictures, what was fashionable then is similar to what is fashionable now - skin tight trousers and long coats. So my character’s costume is camouflage, skin-tight trousers and this long, heavy, student-like, grubby coat which is frayed round the edges and Apemantus hides himself in it. The coat hints at the eternal student, that strident, politically charged attitude where you go ‘Right, I’m a Marxist’ and the grunge phase that he hasn’t grown out of yet.
Adding the Details
Now we’re trying to tighten it up and bring the whole play together and put a bit more detail in some of the scenes. When you start putting scenes together – because you’re so used to rehearsing in little chunks - your mind goes somewhere else as you start thinking about how they fit together; you inevitably lose the detail of the scene. So I guess the next week or so will be trying to run bits whilst trying to maintain the detail.
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.
Character Outline
Apemantus is described by Shakespeare as ‘a churlish philosopher’ and as ‘sulking’, so he doesn’t like himself and he is somebody who mopes in the corner. But actually, everything he says is very pertinent and more or less true. He complains about Timon’s friends, he highlights their falsity and he turns out to be right. So I don’t think he is churlish, he is maybe a little bit too fixed and strident in his opinions and I think there is a great deal of pride there too. I think that if he followed his own philosophy - which is that the court is a bit of a circus - then he would live somewhere else, (like in the wilderness where Timon ends up,) but he doesn’t, he stays near the court. That could be due to his love for Timon, because despite all their bickering there is a mutual respect or love that goes back a long way. But there is also something else that keeps him round the court, I think he probably quite likes it, or maybe he is a bit jealous that he isn’t part of that world. He’s not gentry like the other guys; he’s probably got to where he has from hard work and intellect rather than being born into the position. So maybe there is certain bitterness about people who have just had life handed to them on a plate, when he has had to strive and live in poverty. In fact, at the end of the play when he and Timon are having this slinging match of insults Timon says ‘your father was begot from some she-beggar’ (ref) which is like the worst insult of ‘your mum’s a dog’. That seems to hit him, so perhaps there is some truth in it.
Relationships with Other Characters
Most of the other characters either ignore me, or ridicule me, or laugh at me. I don’t actually think I affect their behaviour at all, because they’re too wrapped up in their own world of greed.
However, Lucy [Bailey, Director] and I have talked about the relationship between Alcibiades, Timon and Apemantus. We talked about the possibility of them being a trio which goes back to when they were all in their early twenties, all on level pegging. Today we would say they were at university together or army training or something like that. In those circumstances you form very close relationships with people who are outside your normal social sphere or class. I think that’s what has happened with these three people. Even though they are very different, a bond has been formed; their lives have gone in very different directions but there is an underlying bond. Lucy has tried to bring that out wherever possible in the play. It’s not written in the text but it makes sense so we’re trying to bring that out at certain moments. It’s certainly the case between Timon and Alcibiades, then with Timon and Apemantus. There is nothing really in the text to say there is anything between Apemantus and Alcibiades but there’s nothing to say there isn’t. So I think Lucy has cast us all around the same sort of age to suggest this trio.
Anticipating an Audience
A lot of my dialogue is to the audience, so in rehearsals I’ve had to play out to a blank wall and I imagine that’ll be easier with an audience. It’s really good having that big rehearsal room actually. You get a good sense of space in this building because the ceilings are high, so you just have to use a bit more welly! Plus, because they are digging the foundations out over the road, the incessant noise means you have to raise the volume, which is probably quite a good thing. Although I’m surprised how little volume you actually need – I thought you’d need huge amounts of power in this theatre but it appears you don’t really; maybe because it’s made of wood, so sound bounces.
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.
Tech week
Tech week is to get all of the technical aspects of the show in place: the music, the lights, entrances, exits, timing of costume changes and basically anything else. It’s important for getting used to adapting the scenes to the space. Sometimes we have to change the blocking; for instance, we could never do the scene where the three fellows bungee down into the theatre in rehearsals (for obvious reasons!). We had to do that little section, then go back, so they could time how long it took them to put on the harnesses, to change their costumes, to climb out unobtrusively. It was actually two or three dress runs before the timing was right because they had to time their walk on the nets so as not to distract from the previous scene. So you do things like that over and over again until you get it right, and then you move on to the next difficult bit, and you do that over and over again, throughout the play.
The bungees
In this case, tech week was quite unusual because of the netting and the bungees, and so in a way it had to focus on them. To me, it didn’t apply so much, because I stay in the same costume all the way through and I don’t have to go up in the nets, so I wasn’t affected by those issues. In fact, because I’m not on the nets, amazingly, I had a whole day off during the tech, which has never happened to me before!
The audience on the first night
It’s a shock when you first get on the stage. Because it’s a wall of faces, it can be quite overwhelming, but it also feeds you energy as an actor. I think it’s a really unique and wonderfully un-cynical space here at the Globe, because the audience really want to have a good time. Sometimes audiences are on their back foot; they want to sit in the dark and be entertained, in a “Show me what you’ve got” way. But here, it feels like they really want to enjoy themselves, so it gives you a certain amount of energy when you know that the audience are on your side. And even though my characters is a bit of an outsider, I think they like him because he goes against the grain They enjoy the naughty things that I do.
Ongoing rehearsals
Once you’ve got all the technical stuff in place, then you need to recheck to make sure all the scenes are still working; they go on the back burner a bit during tech week. We trimmed a few scenes that seemed overly long; it can be a bit difficult to take on board, as you spend about six weeks doing the scenes. But we got there. There were also cuts to scenes internally and things were tightened up. The jig was played around with an awful lot. We did some nights without it, some nights with a short version of it; it took about a week and a half to get it to the point that it’s at now, where Lucy was happy with it.
Press night
Press night feels different because you know it’s going to be full. Everyone in the cast, the creative team and the crew all step up in adrenalin and excitement. I think everyone tries their best on that night, there is a certain kind of terror which goes around. I enjoyed it. I can’t be bothered with getting really worked up. I’ve done that in the past, getting really worked up about what the audience are going to think. But I just can’t be bothered anymore, and actually, now that I can’t be bothered, I enjoy myself it more and I seem to get better reviews. So it’s worked out; it’s the right attitude to have I think, to try not to care so much.
Reviews
I haven’t really got a policy with reviews really. Sometimes I read them, sometimes I don’t. Every job is different, sometimes if you feel like they’re going to be slating you, you maybe hold back on reading them in case it knocks your confidence for the run. I was quite confident about this play, so when I saw a couple of reviews lying around on the tube, I just read them! They don’t tend to shape the play much anyway. Some people do find it very off-putting, particularly if something bad is said about them, so actors tend to respect that amongst one another and not talk about them.