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Simon Paisley Day
Simon Paisley Day plays Timon.
Simon’s stage productions include The 39 Steps at the Criterion directed by Maria Aitken, Don’t Look Back at the Hammersmith Lyric directed by Lucy Bailey, The Philanthropist at the Donmar directed by David Grindley, Twelfth Night at Regent’s Park directed by Tim Sheader, and Anything Goes at Drury Lane directed by Trevor Nunn. His work for television includes Midsomer Murders, The Relief of Belsen, Hotel Babylon, and Doctor Who. For film he has played roles in Flawless, Spartacus and Churchill the Hollywood Years.
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.
Bulletin 1
Becoming an Actor
I didn’t have the kind of start that some actors do – going to the theatre, and looking up at the stage and seeing some great actor and thinking, ‘I want to be up there in the bright lights’. I just started doing it. I went to lots of different schools, because my parents moved around a lot, and I think I found it quite difficult to turn up at a new school and make lots of new friends, because I wasn’t a sportsman. When I found I had some sort of talent at acting, I would join the drama club in each new school and find friends that way. I sound like a right old nobby-no-mates, but that is pretty much how it worked! I then studied drama at university and went on to do a drama course. My professor thought I should go to drama school, so even at that point, I wasn’t thinking that I wanted to be an actor; it was just something I did, so I’ve sort of fallen into it by default.
At university, I did a lot of acting as well as the theory. To my shame, I directed King Lear, which was the height of hubris. Given that the play’s all about old age and what it’s like to be deceived and betrayed by younger people, what do you know about that at the age of 21? Consequently it was an absolutely rubbish production, but it was quite good to dive in at the deep end. We did The Comedy of Errors at the Edinburgh festival; I think that was probably all the Shakespeare I did while at uni, but I’ve done lots more since I graduated. I’ve never actually performed in a full production at the Globe, though I think I took part in some of the Read Not Dead readings, many years ago.
Initial response to the character
I’d never seen or read the play before, but when I did read it, my initial response to my character was: ‘My God, how am I going to do this all this ranting, all this cursing, all this deeply felt hatred and loathing of humanity?’. But it’s all about rehearsing, and finding the detail, finding the wit and humour within it so that it’s not just shouting. And Timon is the most glorious part, because it’s such a great acting opportunity. You go from a man at his happiest, surrounded by his friends who adore him (or so he thinks), a man basking in the sunlight of his friendships, to a man who literally dies of a broken heart, betrayed and bruised beyond repair. It’s a very great irony that the more hateful he becomes the more inventive his language is.
Researching the part
There are no expectations of me or the play. With any of the great roles that actors and actresses want to play – Hamlet, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Beatrice or Benedick – you have this initial excitement that you’re playing a part like that and then you think about all the great performances you’ve either seen or heard about, all lining up behind your shoulder. And then you have to think about what you can do to make your performance different, and if you will be as good as them. That’s the pressure when you’re playing a great Shakespearean part, but I’ve never seen Timon of Athens performed, so I’ve got nothing nagging at me, going ‘Ooh, but you won’t be as good as him’. It’s all fresh, and I’ve got to make of it what I can and be as good as I can be, but without people hovering behind me. I’ve heard of other great actors playing Timon – Paul Schofield, Jonathan Pryce, David Suchet – but I don’t know anything about how their performances went down, or what difficulties they had with the role. An actress friend suggested that I research what they said about the part and read the reviews but I don’t really want to. This particular actress was playing Beatrice-Joanna in The Changeling, and she knew it was a difficult role that people had had a lot of difficulties with in the past, so I think maybe that’s why she wanted to see what the pitfalls were. I might do it after I’ve played the part, but I trust my director so much, and our own instincts as a company, that I want to uncover what it is that we discover. It just feels a purer thing to go at it on our own for the time being.
Creating a back story
I see the character of Timon as troublesome, because you’ve got to make him trusting, but not foolish. Why would you give all your money away? On some level you think, ‘Oh, you fool! Did you not see that coming?!’. But you can’t make Timon a fool; you have to make him inspiringly generous. He’s like a character I played in Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia, called Nicholas Ogarev, who was a revolutionary poet and a friend of Alexander Herzen. Herzen hung on to quite a lot of his money, even though he was espousing communism (or the beginnings of communism); unlike Herzen, however, my character Ogarev didn’t hang on to his money but gave it all away. He felt that it didn’t belong to him, and he had a duty to give it to other people so he deliberately made himself poor so that he would be on a par with everyone else, and whatever he had he gave away. We discussed it in rehearsals, and we had a theory that even though Shakespeare doesn’t provide us with this information, that maybe Timon was orphaned very early in his life; he’s come into all this money with no concept of where it’s come from or how it was made and that he hasn’t earned it himself. But instead of being a spoilt brat rich kid, he feels that his duty and mission is to use the money well and redistribute it to people.
Obviously, there’s no speech about Timon’s heritage, but with our history of a post-Stanislavskian approach to researching a role, you can’t help but ask the questions : What are his sexual inclinations? What are his parents? Why does he not have children? The only way I can justify Timon’s character is that he is on a single-minded mission to give. Every relationship needs give and take, and he’s not very good at taking from people; he only wants to give, which I think is why he doesn’t do relationships. In this performance, everyone else gets drunk, and he doesn’t. If any girls come onto him, he politely disengages himself from them and he gives them to other people. He just wants to be a conduit.
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.
The role of the director
I’ve actually worked with Lucy [Bailey, the director] before [in Don’t Look Back at the Hammersmith Lyric] and, in fact, she made me take my clothes off then as well! Last time, I was wearing a pair of 1960s underpants, and this time it’s going to be a loin cloth. She is amazing visually; I think that’s going to be such a strong point of this production. When you’re doing what Lucy does, which is to create as she goes along in a collaborative way, there can be quite a lot of sitting around, waiting for her, Maxine [Doyle, movement and dance] and the composer [Django Bates] to weave a tapestry of sound and body movements with the text. All those big ensemble movements are going to be magic but they’ve got to have our patience to pull that off, so I take my hat off to the company for their patience.
Becoming part of an established company.
Most of the company are already involved in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and so it’s difficult for Lucy because she hasn’t got everyone to rehearse with all the time. But there are four or five of us not in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so that at least she’s got some people she can always rehearse with. It can be a little daunting joining an established company of actors – you don’t know who you’re joining and they may think of you as the new kids on the block, or they might be very tired and exhausted – but I have to say this company’s been utterly delightful and welcoming and extremely supportive. I don’t know Jonathan Munby’s work terribly well, but I’m sure he has a very different working method to Lucy’s. And also the plays couldn’t be more different, I mean there is darkness in A Midsummer Night’s Dream but it is joyously funny.
First week of rehearsals
We read the play. We did two or three days of improvisational work about friendship and status. It’s quite difficult playing someone who has the status of a film star or a billionaire, when you’re just a jobbing actor. You have to get into the mindset of someone who walks into a room and changes the chemistry of that room. So we were thinking a lot about that dynamic. We were playing with levels of devotion, from handshaking, to embracing, to kissing, to almost having blood transfusions so that you become blood brothers. We were also doing a lot of animal work, because there is a lot of bestial imagery in the play – loads of references to dogs, bears, wolves.
The language of the play
After the improvisations, we went back to the text and started to go through every scene trying to paraphrase, to put into our own words, what a character was saying at any particular time. For the most part, it was straightforward, but there are some little corners of text where it’s extremely dense. But we not only had Lucy on the case, but also Giles [Block, Textual Adviser]. Between us, we unpacked it and decided on a particular meaning. This has been an ongoing process, and there are still a few little corners of text where I’m feeling that the interpretation we went for doesn’t quite fit with what we’re doing now. We’re still ironing out little patches, for example, the opening speech of Act 4 Scene 3, where I’m lying in my wilderness spot and I say:
Twinned brothers of one womb,
Whose procreation, residence, and birth,
Scarce is dividant, touch them with several fortunes,
The greater scorns the lesser. Not nature,
To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune,
But by contempt of nature.
That part’s quite clear, but after that, I say:
Raise me this beggar, and deject that lord;
The senator shall bear contempt hereditary,
The beggar native honour.
4.3.3-11
It’s a difficult corner of text and we did talk for a while about whether it would get cut, because its meaning was not really coming out, but in fact, we’ve stuck with it. We did a lot of paraphrasing, which is useful; because the language is so difficult, it’s good to have in your mind a simpler version of what you’re saying. So this passage is about how money corrupts and we are always corruptible. If a noble person loses their money, they can suddenly be treated like dirt – which is exactly what’s happened to Timon at this stage – while the beggar, when he’s given a lot of money, is treated with ‘native honour’, as if he’s always had it. And so people forget the history of that person.
The development of the character
I’m discussing with Lucy ways in which we could seed a little bit of worry about Timon’s excess into the first half of the play, maybe to give subtle hints of someone who, although he is lovely and warm, perhaps has something a little funny about him – someone who is perhaps on the edge of a breakdown, as happens in people’s mid-lives. If he has been an orphan all his life, and he’s been under this pressure of being a celebrity and exhibiting great largesse, then one day, it all catches up with him. But instead of giving way moderately, it’s like he decides he’s got to be absolute. He doesn’t move away, but decides to stay near Athens and curse and curse and curse its people. He doesn’t sow food. He’s not even interested in nuts and berries. He just wants the very basics, the bare necessities – just a little root of a parsnip or potato or something – to live in the most basic way he can. He’s a pretty extreme guy, and in that extremity he almost knocks himself out of his own humanity, and becomes a wild beast; he pushes his own humanity too far. So we are plotting little points in the first half where you might think that he isn’t alright mentally, because I think that might help us to understand why he really goes off the deep-end so much.
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.
Costume
The costume has been developing, but I think Timon’s look is going to be very simple. He’s not an ostentatious dresser at all, and we’ve got an idea of him being like a guru – the kind of person who’s been to ashrams and spent a lot of time doing meditation – so his clothes will be white pure linen. I also have a wig fitting next week, and he’s going to have a ponytail neatly tied back; hopefully it won’t make me look vain! In the second half, when I’m the wild man of the woods with just my loin cloth on, my hair can just come down and will make me look really overgrown and beast-like. ‘Timon will to the woods, where he shall find / Th’unkindest beast more kinder than mankind’ (4.135-35). He wants to become a beast to get away from humanity, and clothes are the embodiment of society, what we put on to hide ourselves, so in the second half I wear nothing but a loincloth. I have been rehearsing in just my shorts and it is exposing having to spend rehearsals like that. ‘Nothing I'll bear from thee, / But nakedness, thou detestable town!’ (4.132-33) and he hurls his clothes at Athens. Perhaps if it was an even braver production, the actor would remove his underpants and flick them at Athens too, but then schools matinées would not be an enjoyable thing, so we decided to go with just a loincloth! I think that’s going to work very well, and its going to be very much at odds with a lot of the other costumes, which are very rich and reminiscent of birds’ plumage. There’s something very predatory about the design as a whole; it’s going to feel like a hellish aviary I think.
Working with the experts
I have never worked on a Shakespeare play before where there’s been someone who’s specific job is to take care of the text. There are times when Giles points things up and I have said ‘That doesn’t work for me’. He doesn’t stamp his foot about it. He says ‘I’m offering this to you and if you can’t make it work, that’s fine.’ Mostly I’ve taken on what he’s said and used it, but there has been a bit of give and take.
Giles has also helped me things that I’ve wanted some clarification with – pronunciation of names like Lacedamon: would it be ‘Lassedamon’ or ‘Lackedamon’? Little things like that that have to be negotiated.
I haven’t seen the movement coach [Glynn MacDonald] yet, I think probably because I get no time off really. But maybe next week during our tech I might be able to get some stuff from her.
The physical language of the play
I’m still trying to find the physical language of Timon. He’s very centred in the first half of the play; he’s very happy in his own skin and he’s very physical about and with people, so I’m trying to find an easy physicality. In the second half when he’s so wracked with psychological pain, I’m taking that through to the body. The second half is a slow death really. As soon as he opens his eyes and he sees the sun, he appeals to it to draw ‘rotten humidity’ (4.3.2) from the earth and cancel out every thing. In all his hatred, his stomach acids are burning him, and his body is wracked – it’s all about the physical tension. I found in our run of the second half yesterday that it is physically exhausting to perform; not only is there a lot of talking, but there’s a lot of emotion and I require all the breath that I’ve got to get the language out and o to convey a person in a lot of physical torture. So I’m making myself do a couple of runs a week to stay physically fit.
Going off-book
I’ve learnt the play chronologically as I went, so the final scene with the senators when I finally lie down and die was the last one to get done. We paraphrased it, and then roughly blocked it, and by the time we’d done that, I was off book. And it definitely makes a difference. Finding the physicality of the part is so much easier once you’re not stumbling around with the script. But I have found that I had to be much more au fait with the language than in other plays. If you are in a heightened emotional state, your brain is whizzing, you’re physically sweating and tired, you’re having to fight for air and you’re much more likely to lose your lines than if you’re in a calm place and just chatting. For a play I did recently at The Royal Court called The Ugly One I just had five days rehearsal. But my character was extremely laid back and cool and calm. I was never physically tense. In this play, I’m so knotted with hatred and anger by the end.
The ending of the play
The discovery of the play has been that Timon doesn’t get more and more angry. At the beginning of the second half when Alcibiades and the two girls come in, Timon is raw. He says, ‘The canker gnaw thy heart, / For showing me again the eyes of man!’ (4.3.50-51). He just doesn’t want to see humanity. And then Apemantus comes in, and Timon’s just attempting to get rid of these two people that he loved in his own way. Then Flavius appears, and he’s the real challenge for Timon’s anger, because Flavius has looked after him and there’s some tenderness there, but once he’s got rid of Flavius, he’s almost home and dry – he’s succeeded in isolating himself. After that, the two next pairs of visitors are people he can have fun with: firstly, the poet and the painter, which has become quite a riotous comedy scene for us; and then the senators, who he larks about with too, leading them to believe that he might help them, whereas in fact he’s not going to at all. So in a way, Timon reaches a place where he can see his grave after Flavius; he’s been making his epitaph, and he decides to have some fun before he dies. It goes in different way than I’d expected.
Speculating how the audience will react.
Having never performed at the Globe before, it’s a bit of a voyage of discovery. But I think I’m aware that audiences at the Globe are more prepared to be included than in many other theatres where you’re plunged into darkness and you’re watching something that is lit. Here, the whole experience is shared. There’s a lot of my curses like, ‘Maid to thy master's bed, / Thy mistress is o' th’ brothel’ (4.1.112-13) or ‘Son of sixteen, / Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire, / With it beat out his brains’ (4.1.13-15), and so there’s much more of an opportunity for doing particular lines to particular people. If there is a kid there with his granddad, it’s possible to play off that fact – not that those lines are particularly witty – but speaking directly to the audience is an acknowledgement that we are a big body of people all there together.