Demetrius

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In the Globe Theatre Company's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Demetrius was played by Keith Dunphy.

About Keith Dunphy

Keith graduated from RADA in 1999. He has spent a season with the RSC, where his roles included Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet and McMorris in Henry V. He has also performed at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, Sheffield Crucible, Gate Theatre and at the Ludlow Festival where he played Macduff in their recent production of Macbeth.

Click on the numbered links to follow Keith's journey as he creates and plays the character of Demetrius in the Globe Theatre.

Keith Dunphy - Character Notes 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.

At the moment, Mike [Alfreds, Master of Play] is getting us to explore the text and the characters in a very physical, free way. First, we work on part of a scene, saying the lines in a very natural, almost monotone way. After this, we’ll try the scene twice: once with the script, then once without, using our own words. This is really helpful as it clarifies what we’re saying and helps us to find our character quickly.

Before we started rehearsals, we had to prepare three lists containing lines from the play. The first was of those lines where our character describes themselves, the second where they describe other people, and the third where others describe them. Taking each character in turn, we discussed these lists as a group, and then moved on to the physicality of the character. In this exercise, the actor playing each character remains sitting while the rest of the company get up and try out the role, exploring how they think that character might move, or how they might speak. This is really useful, as it can often suggest new ideas for how to play certain parts of your character that you can then take away and develop. It’s really a crash course in understanding the play, because we all get the chance to work on all the characters.

We’ve also been doing some interesting voice work in preparation for working on the Globe stage. Actors often get stuck on using their ‘head voice’ (when your voice sounds very high and strained) when they should also use their chest voice so they can speak clearly without effort. Hopefully, when we get on the stage, we won’t be tempted to bellow and people will still be able to hear and understand us.

We’re also doing a lot of work on stillness. That sounds strange from an actor, but stillness is very important. If you are relaxed on stage, you can focus the energy of your performance. Many of the characters in the play are very energetic, but that energy must be controlled or our performances will turn into something from a pantomime.

In the same way, Mike [Alfreds] is teaching us to control our energy through the way we speak the verse. He is encouraging to trust the language and to speak through it alone, not to overburden it with extra emotion. As one of the lovers, my scenes are very highly charged, but if we channel that energy through the language, the audience will be able to hear clearly what we are saying whilst at the same time understand why our characters are as energetic as they are. The lovers are often played as a group, as 4 shouting lunatics, but in fact they are distinct individuals. Demetrius (unlike Lysander) is a man of action; he knows what he thinks and therefore what he should do, like Laertes in Hamlet, or Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet. At the beginning, he is adamant that he doesn’t love Helena, but in the second half of the play he is adamant that he does. Both times, he is being truthful, even though these two positions could not be more different, - that’s what makes the comedy.

I walked out onto the Globe stage for the first time on our first day here, and it was an amazing experience. At first, I thought, this is going to be really, really hard work, but having played some scenes on the stage, it’s really exciting. If we can learn to play the space, it’ll be dynamic to watch, like watching the best football team in the world. I hope.

Activities

What is said about Demetrius?

At the beginning of the rehearsal period Keith read through the play and made lists detailing:

  • everything Demetrius says about himself
  • everything Demetrius says about other characters in the play
  • everything that other characters say about Demetrius

Make these three lists for Demetrius. What do you find out about the character by doing this? Send your lists and observations to Keith so he can compare them with his own.

Character Reactions

In the activity above you made lists of what Demetrius says about other characters in the play. Many of these comments are made behind that character’s back. How do you think that character might react if s/he heard what Demetrius said about them?

Try improvising this situation in pairs with a) as Demetrius and b) as one of the characters he talks about. What do you find out about Demetrius from this activity? Send your discoveries to Keith.

Strengthening the voice

Keith mentions the voice work being done by the Red Company. Working on the Globe stage is vocally very challenging for the actors.

Find the middle point in your vocal range. Take one line from the play, and say it at as high a pitch as you can. Your voice will sound very strained. Now say the same line at as low a pitch as possible. Some of the words may be lost or incomprehensible, as your voice will again be strained beyond its usual pitch.

Now find the balancing point. Imagine that you have a vocal pitch control slider (like a volume control on some stereos), with the highest point at the top of your head and the lowest on the soles of your feet. The balancing point will be found when that slider is positioned around the chest or stomach. When you reach this middle point, your voice will not sound strained, and instead will resonate gently.

Why do you think actors in the Globe Theatre Company have to try and use the middle point in their vocal range?

Stillness and action

Both stillness and action is used by the actors to convey story and character.

Divide the students into two groups and give both groups the same short scene. One group then reads the scene standing still, the other "acting" the scene with gestures. How does these two different styles affect the portrayal of the characters in the scene?

Keith thinks Demetrius is a man of action. Do you think this is what the play text suggests?

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Keith Dunphy - Character Notes 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.

We’re now starting to tackle the play in much more detail. Mike [Alfreds, Master of Play] is pushing us to find our character’s intention, and to approach each scene wanting something. Having this intention will help us in engaging and playing with the other characters on stage. This will be especially useful for me when I first come on (Act 1 scene 1), as I only have one line, and I need to maintain a focus throughout the scene.

Using characters’ intentions will also help us with our voice work. Mike is very keen for us to speak naturally, as opposed to declaiming the lines like a bad actor, but it will take some time for us to adapt to doing this in the Globe space. The key is to use our chest voice, which resonates best and carries furthest in the space. If we shout, and use our head voice, the sound gets lost more easily.

One of the dangers you face when staging a production, especially when it’s a Shakespeare play, is that the action can become very static, with actors standing around on stage doing nothing. In contrast, we’re being encouraged to make the action flow, so what you see on stage is continuous movement. In this, the fairies are especially important. For example, in Act 2 scene 1, when Titania and Oberon meet on stage for the first time, they both come on stage with their trains of fairies. Instead of having the two teams of fairies watch their master/mistress argue, we’re moving around the stage with them, creating shapes and obstacles with our bodies, and occasionally lifting them up in the air. When it works, it’s absolutely fantastic, and beautiful to watch. It highlights an important point about the fairies; they are light, airy creatures, but they’re not "pretty" characters that just stand at the sides.

We’ve had a little time to work in the Globe itself, and tours or Globe Education groups come into the theatre whilst we’re on the stage. I really enjoy it when they’re there; whenever anyone on stage begins to speak they totally ignore their tour guide and give us their full attention! I like playing a few lines at them, to see how they react; it’s like a sneak preview of how the audiences might react this summer. For each rehearsal on the stage, different members of the crew sit in different areas around the theatre, so we can experiment with delivering our lines to different parts of the theatre. This is giving me a lot to think about, as, although we discover a lot about our characters and about the play in rehearsals, it only really comes alive when we get it into the space.

I had a solo session with Mike [Alfreds], and we decided that Demetrius’s ‘super-objective’, his overall intention, if you like, is to get his rightful way. He is a very strong character, the sort of guy who might have gone to military school, and he has a very strong set of beliefs. The difficult thing is that, although in this way he is a very constant character, during the course of the play he keeps changing his mind. Having said that, each time he does so, he means it! The other interesting thing we’ve discovered is that, of the four lovers, Demetrius seems to be the outsider. When Lysander is telling Hermia of his plan to elope in Act 1, scene 1, he reminds her of a place in the Athenian Woods

"…a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May…" (i.1, ll. 165-167).

Lysander doesn’t mention Demetrius being there that morning. Perhaps Helena introduced Demetrius to Lysander and Hermia as her boyfriend at a later time? This is all purely hypothetical work, just to help us develop our characters, but the text certainly suggests that Demetrius doesn’t know Lysander and Hermia as well as Helena does. This has also helped to explain the apparent distrust between Demetrius and Lysander.

We are also exploring the physical side of Demetrius, how he moves. Mike [Alfreds] uses a lot of Laban techniques [Rudolph Laban was a Hungarian Dancer who studied how people moved in all situations, and developed his own theory of movement]. These techniques involve using a series of physical actions to explore a character’s emotional states. Demetrius is very strong and certain of both himself and what he’s doing. In many ways he’s similar to a businessman, who goes into a meeting and says "this is what I want, and this is how I want it done." I think Demetrius is like that; he says what he wants and expects to get it.

Activities

1) Keith mentions that he has been working on his character’s intentions.

What do actors mean by a character’s ‘intention’? Can you solely define a character by means of his/her intentions?

2) Keith says that he thinks Demetrius is the outsider of the four lovers.

Do you agree? Which lines from the text would you use to support your argument?

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Keith Dunphy - Character Notes 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.

We are starting to do runs on Saturdays now, which are very helpful, as I can see both the pitfalls and the positives in the play as a whole. The first run was very encouraging, as it was very fluent: scenes flowed into each other very well. The second half needs more work than the first, as you'd expect, seeing that we've rehearsed the first half more, but in general it was very good.
This production will begin with the whole cast coming on-stage, then going to sleep. As each character's name is mentioned, or as they become involved with the action of the story, they wake up. Each character will have a li-lo, or some pillows and blankets to fall asleep on, things that will remain on-stage for the whole show. We were a bit worried that they might become a hindrance at certain points in the play, but doing runs has shown us that we can use them throughout the show without them seeming false to any situation.

We made a good breakthrough the other day, when Mike introduced us to an exercise he calls "Points of Concentration." We pretty much know the scenes now; we know our lines, we know what our character wants at particular points, and we know what actions are particularly appropriate for our characters in certain situations. In this exercise, Mike asks us to put all these ideas to one side and concentrate instead on a different fact or thought. For example, he would ask us to concentrate on the fact that it's very cold in a particular scene, and see how that affects our performance. This has been especially useful in the lovers' scene (Act iii, scene 2), where the point of concentration is simply that it's very, very dark. By focusing on this, we all ended up on our hands and knees, crawling around the stage, feeling our way around. Not being able to "see" each other made the language more open and real; we discovered things about it, and ways of saying it, that we'd never found in standing up and talking to each other.

We've also been working with Stewart [Pearce, Master of Voice] on our clarity of speech, especially on our vowel sounds. Vowels add weight to the way words sound. In normal life, people generally speak very quickly. If you just give the words a bit more time, the text comes alive. We (the lovers) were looking at scenes as a group. For each line, we picked out the vowel sounds and discarded the rest. Having played with the vowel sounds, we then went back to the original line. It's amazing how doing this brings the line to life; knowing the line as its simplest sounds helps us to deliver the line much more clearly than before.

We did some scenes on the Globe stage for the first time this morning, which was quite a scary experience. The scenes all feel very raw at the moment, and the space feels very open. I think it's impossible to be totally naturalistic on that stage; your physicality needs to be slightly bigger than in real life. Still, it's a fine line; it mustn't be so overly physical that the characters appear untruthful to themselves and the situation they are in. I think that Demetrius is very strong and upright, and very smooth in his movements. In contrast, when I'm playing a fairy, I try to be much lighter and faster.

Usually, I'm one of Oberon's fairies, but Mike [Alfreds] said today that he would like me to be in the scene where the fairies sing Titania to sleep, because I sing a bit. The fairies are on stage for a lot of Oberon and Titania's scenes, and we're being encouraged to interact with them, whilst at the same time not taking anything away from what they're doing. Sometimes, we pick them up and make them "fly" around the stage. Paul [Higgins, who plays Oberon] is very good, and a very receptive actor. As a result, we always know when he wants us to be there with him and when he wants us to leave him alone. All of this movement, especially because it's not actually blocked, means it's important that the company know and trust each other. This is one of the reasons it's brilliant that we have a relatively long rehearsal period.

Activities

Keith mentions that the company have been concentrating on how to speak their lines clearly.

Consider one of Demetrius' speeches from act iii scene 2. Take a few lines from this speech, and write them down on a piece of paper. Find the vowel sounds in each line, and write them above the words in which they are contained.

In small groups, read your chosen lines to one another. Is their meaning clear? Write down what you think Demetrius is feeling/thinking at this point in the scene.

Now read the lines again only using the vowel sounds. Were you still able to understand Demetrius' feelings/ideas?

Read the lines out loud again, concentrating on the vowel sounds inside each word. Has this exercise improved or harmed your understanding of your lines?

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Keith Dunphy - Character Notes 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.

This week, I've been concentrating on my character work. If I were to picture Demetrius as an animal, I imagine he'd be a snake, because he is sly and unbearably cocky. This idea has started to affect the way I move on stage. I'm not saying that I've been sliding around on my belly, but I have been working towards gliding a bit more, a very smooth type of movement. Imagining Demetrius as a snake has also affected the way I speak the lines: he is often very condescending, and his speeches slip off the tongue very quickly. I would be very happy if the audiences found him totally unbearable, and I think his arrogance towards Hermia should achieve that effect. I'm beginning to see the idea of Demetrius the snake as the key to understanding his character. He is often played as a rather bland, boring character, a stereotypical lover, but hopefully, this new idea will help me to present the audience with a different view of him.

It's questionable whether Demetrius has changed by the end of the play, as, unlike Lysander, Puck does not undo the spell that's made him fall in love with Helena again. An audience might therefore ask the question; "Does he really love Helena, or is he just under Oberon's spell?" I would argue that the spell serves to right a wrong. In many ways, Demetrius was always in love with Helena (we are told in the opening scene that he loved her before the start of the play), but because he is fickle, he decides to chase Hermia instead and makes a fool of Helena in the process. You could say that when Oberon drops the potion onto Demetrius's eyes he rights the wrong that Demetrius has done to Helena and charms him back to his rightful love.

I naturally speak with a strong Irish accent, but when I'm on stage, my accent takes on elements of Received Pronunciation (R.P.; a standard English accent often used by newsreaders). I'm not doing this intentionally, it's just something that happens to my intonation now and again. I think this is partly because I have done a lot of Shakespearean plays using RP rather than my natural accent. At the back of my mind, there is always something telling me that the audience might not be able to understand me if I don't temper the way I sound. Most of the time, I'm not particularly conscious of speaking differently on stage, but I am aware that I will need to be careful and make sure that people don't think I'm trying to do a pure R.P. accent and I'm just making a really bad job of it!

So far, this week's rehearsals have been very frustrating. We were able to use the Globe stage for a run of the play, but now, because Twelfth Night is starting, we are back in the rehearsal room. It's like giving us a load of sweets and then taking them all away! Sometimes I think that trying a scene on stage and then leaving the space for a while is like taking a great step backwards. Having said that, technical rehearsals start next week and we'll be spending all our time in the Globe space, so we'll really be able to make the play come alive. The tech week is really our main chance to do that. It's going to be a hard process and will involve a lot of trial and error but it will also be incredibly exciting. Mike [Alfreds, Master of Play] has been pushing us all very, very hard. He has been picking us up on every mistake we make, whether it's in our movement or our verse, and especially when we don't stress our lines correctly. Mike's a great director and will settle for nothing but the best, but everyone is very tired at the moment, which doesn't help. It has been a very long rehearsal period, far longer than most companies get to rehearse a play for, and we're all ready now for the next step. Next week's change of scene will do us all good, going into the Globe space and starting to build towards next Sunday - the opening night. It will be very interesting - we'll have to wait and see what happens!

Activities

Keith mentions that he is starting to view Demetrius as a snake. Actors often use comparisons with animals to help them find ways of moving or behaving in character.

Do you agree with Keith's idea? Do you think that Demetrius is a snake, or can you think of another animal which would be a more suitable comparison? Give reasons for your answer.

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Keith Dunphy - Character Notes 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.

This week, I feel I’ve been we’ve been spending a lot of time fine-tuning little bits of the play that need work. Often, this is only a few lines, but it’s very important to get them right. I sometimes think it’s a similar process to learning a piece of music: there are people who will be able to learn a lot of each piece they play without effort, but who will need to spend a great deal of time on just a few phrases, to ensure they play them correctly. Half of our time running concentrating especially on those parts of the play that need work. Often, this is a very small part of the play, but it needs to be fine-tuned.

The week before the technical rehearsals is in many ways the hardest of all, when we try to consolidate everything we’ve done so far. Preparing for a production is in many ways like practicing the piano for a performance. You start learning the notes very slowly, then, once you’ve learnt the notes, you begin to concentrate on interpretation and other more subtle areas of performance. It’s the same for an actor, but before you perform, you need to spend some time going back over the notes to make sure that you won’t forget them in the middle of performance when you don’t have the time to think about them. So, for example, this morning we had a script session, where we went through out lines together with Mike [Alfreds, Master of Play] correcting us whenever we mis-stressed a word. This is particularly easy to do with Shakespeare; it is in some ways a different language, after all. It’s important to practice your lines out loud, especially if you’ve spent time, as I have, going through them and putting them into my own words. Often, my own version is very similar to my lines, but the stresses are sometimes very different. If you say Shakespeare’s verse, stressing the words as if they were modern speech, it often sounds awkward. I walked into the rehearsal room yesterday, and opened my mouth to say a line, but nothing came out, I was thinking about it so hard. In the end, we’ll just have to let it go…

The last few weeks have been spent revisiting everything we’ve done so far in rehearsals, and it’s very draining. It’s like patting your head, rubbing your stomach and doing the washing up all at the same time! One is constantly trying to remember at least four things, different intentions, meanings and movements, at any one time during rehearsals, and then on top of that we need to be alert to new ideas and suggestions. It’s exhausting. Eventually, we’ll just have to push all these ideas to the back of our minds and just do it. This is easier said than done; suddenly, we’re now into the final stretch, which, although exciting, is when elements of doubt begin to surface in an actor’s mind amidst the wash of information available. You suddenly begin to wonder; have I learnt anything over the last few weeks? Has it all been a waste of time? Will I be any good? You just have to let it all go. The other day, I went home with my head spinning and just had to lie down on the floor with some calming music on the stereo, just to clear my head.

We’ve been spending quite a bit of time running through each half, and then the play as a whole. We did a full run on Saturday that went very well. We (the four lovers) were very relaxed and free, and we tried a lot of new things just on the spur of the moment. Whereas our verse work, our language, has to be constantly practiced and always precise, our movement has to be totally spontaneous to keep the performance alive. It’s much easier to run the whole play than to just run the second half, because it’s hard to pick up half way through our character’s journey. The play as a whole as an energy which fluctuates and changes as it unfolds, and as each character undertakes their journey, and takes a great deal more energy to pick up on this process half way through. Still, at the moment, what’s important is to take the production apart and then put it all together again in its final version.

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