Charmian

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Frances Thornburn

This is Frances’ first season at Shakespeare's Globe. Recent theatre appearances include playing Eleanora in Strindberg's Easter, Zlata in Zlata's Diary and Monica Douglas in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She has performed in many theatres, including the Oxford Stage Company, the Edinburgh Royal Lyceum and the Dundee Repertory Theatre. Frances has also worked for television, most recently in All That Glisters for the BBC.

Bulletin 1

First experiences of performing
I just love the stage! When I was about eight or nine I went to a local drama group and did The Wizard of Oz and stories by Hans Christian Anderson and other musical type things and I just loved all of it. I’ve been a dancer since the age of 6 and I love singing and playing the piano, so my whole world was kind of performance or music or arts orientated. I was a pretty ordinary child though, not extraordinary in any way!

I did a school show of South Pacific when I was 14 and that was when I started to think a bit more seriously about doing drama permanently and not just as a hobby. I was advised to do youth groups and youth theatre as a stepping stone to drama college, so I got into Scottish Youth Theatre and did a season there. And then I was in the Junior Academy which is part of the Royal Academy in Glasgow.

Music or drama?
I was either going to go to music college or drama college. I play the piano and I’m a singer so I had to make a big decision, and I decided to do drama. I knew that I didn’t want to be a classical singer or a classical musician and I didn’t want to be a concerto player either because I don’t think I was good enough. Being a pianist is quite an introspective thing and I wanted the relationship with other people. I wanted to get the kind of conversation you get in theatre with the audience. And here I am now!

I graduated in the July of 2001 and I got a job in the February of that year - so I kind of left college before I finished, although I still graduated and got my honours degree which was brilliant. I left to be in a production of Tis A Pity She's a Whore with a company called Theatre Babel and I played Annabella which was my first big part. I hadn’t really done a lot of big leading roles before because I was one of those people who didn’t really make a big dent at drama college so it was a big challenge for me.

Initially, I had been thinking that I would try acting for a couple of months and see how it went and since that big part I haven’t looked back! I went on tour to Jersey and then in Glasgow and it was a great gig, and then I got a year's apprenticeship in acting in rep, so I did that for a year so I did lots of different theatre pieces. I moved down to London about three years ago because I’d done a lot of different stuff in Scotland but I decided I wanted to spread myself a bit further, looking for bigger and more interesting jobs. Not necessarily more interesting jobs because there is interesting stuff in Scotland but I just wanted a bit more of a challenge.

Inspirational actors
Every job I do I find more people that I admire. I’m not one of these people who thinks ‘I would love to be like Julia Roberts’. Obviously, someone like Dame Judi Dench is terrific but I don’t have an iconic focus of any one particular actor. I get inspired by working with lots of different people and doing different types of work. I’m especially excited about being here; I think I can learn so much at the Globe. I’m just a bit of a sponge like that. I just go into a room and take from different things.

There is an actress who I worked with quite a while ago called Gerda Stevenson who is very inspirational to me. She's not necessarily a big name in England but she does theatre and television and stuff and she is quite well known in Scotland and she has been inspirational to me as an actor and she was particularly great when I worked with her as a director as well. But you work with different people all the time who inspire you in some way.

Being an actor
In every job you do there is always going to be stuff that you haven’t done before. Having said that, it's great that now after 5 years that I finally feel like I’ve got a bit of experience under my belt and that means that when unforeseen things happen out there on stage I can handle it. With acting, every job is different; I think that is part of the joy of doing it. If you have the kind of mind that wants to search and find out things all the time, to progress and be prepared to change how you think about things then it's the perfect job because you can never have all the answers. You have to go searching for them within yourself and the audience and the other actors.

Preparing for a role
I’ve been told before that I’m quite instinctive and an ‘earthy’ actor. I don’t know exactly what that means! Maybe it means in some ways it is just in my body. But before I start rehearsals I do some research and I do look carefully at the script. In preparation for playing Charmian, I went to the research department in Globe Education to find out about young Egyptian women to get a kind of idea of the time. I’ve got quite a few things to read!

I assumed that being a servant, Charmian would have been of a much lower class and have a pretty bad life. But of course, being Cleopatra's servant, the research department was saying that she would actually have a pretty lovely life and be well looked after. I need to find out more about that, and just what sort of status I would have had, whether I perceive myself as higher than a messenger for example. I don’t know whether that is a personal thing that I can play or whether it is an strict social hierarchy that I have to work within.

Perceptions of Rome and Egypt
On the first day we had a lecture on the impressions people in Shakespeare's day would have had of Rome and what appeared Roman to them and also about their attitude to Egypt. We explored this idea further in a movement workshop and what I understood from that was the idea that the Romans are very much tight lipped and have lots of straight lines and right angles whereas the Egyptians are all curves and curvy and flowing in movement as well as looks. We were just working with how that makes your body feel quite different. Another aspect we explored was the four elements and thinking about whether you are connected to the earth, fire, air or water. I think Charmian probably has bits of all of the elements in her. I haven’t gone through the script and identified earthy sections or fiery sections but I think that might be something that could be helpful to look at in the play.

Accents
We also had a linguist, Professor David Crystal, who came in and told us how to pronounce different words and the Latin pronunciation which was terrific - and fascinating to hear about the different accents the actors would have had in Shakespeare's time. I was particularly interested to find out that all accents would have been regional because Received Pronunciation only emerged about 200 years ago and I didn’t know this. I was amazed to hear that. I’m Scottish and because I’ve not actually done Shakespeare professionally I was nervous that I would be in a room with lots of well pronounced actors who really knew what they were doing and I kind of felt, not inferior, but nervous about that. But that talk made me actually come out and think that he was writing for people like me which is brilliant because that is the way the Globe looks at Shakespeare, not as something purely for academia.

Approaching the text
Dominic, the director, wanted to look at Antony & Cleopatra as if it were a new script that we’ve just received and that we are doing something that is fresh and doesn’t have 400 years of differing opinions about it on top of it. It's great to feel that we don’t have that baggage before going into the rehearsal room, to not feel a pressure to ‘get it right’ or to treat it well and all that. I still feel nervous to some extent, but not as a sort of pressure, but because I want to do that.

Bulletin 2

Women in Antony & Cleopatra
In rehearsals, we’ve talked about the relationship between Charmian and Iras and Cleopatra and the other girl playing a servant. We talked about lots of things such as whether there is any hierarchy with Charmian and Iras. We talked about what the relationship was between me and Cleopatra.

Now we are just going through the scenes one by one. We read through a scene together and then we go through the scene again but instead of reading out our lines we say the lines in our own words. It means we can see what we are actually saying. It's quite funny because everyone has a different turn of phrase! But it's quite nice to actually get the ideas in your head, and we quibble over what we think things mean word for word so we end up knowing exactly what we are supposed to be portraying.

The next step is to just get on your feet. Just do it! There isn’t a lot of movement at the moment because the scenes we are rehearsing involve a lot of meandering at the moment; there is a lot of lolling about in Egypt to get the warmth and the sexiness of it. My character doesn’t have the huge big speeches so I have to work on how my character reacts to what other characters say.

First impressions of Charmian
I’m still finding out but I think at the beginning of the play she is quite playful once Cleopatra is gone. When she is with the soothsayer she wants to be told that she is going to have a lovely life and that everything is going to be great, she is going to marry kings, she is going to be beautiful and so on, and obviously Shakespeare is pinpointing through the soothsayer that no, she actually isn’t, because she dies at the end and it's not all rosy. It's important that she tries to make everything he says very positive and make it seem like it is rosy. I’m still finding out how much of that Charmian is pretending to be happy and how much of it she's slightly put out by or wary of. I’m still figuring out how much to give of each emotion. But throughout that there is her warmth; I think she is definitely a warm rooted woman, and I think she is actually very much old beyond her years. She's got an old head on young shoulders.

I’m not sure how old Charmian is. I would assume that she is perhaps 19 or something like that. I say that because it seems that she has maybe not met the love of her life yet or had many love affairs. However, being in Egypt I think she has had quite an open way of living and seeing what Cleopatra gets up to perhaps she might have had a few encounters! But I’m not sure, I haven’t worked that one out yet.

In some ways Charmian is a confidante for Cleopatra. She is the only one that can really pursue a point and really get her into trouble for being flighty and volatile and not protecting her heart enough with Antony. Charmian can act like a big sister, in a way, even though she is much younger. And Cleopatra is a very dangerous woman, and Charmian does tell her off so she must be quite brave! But Charmian does itl through love for Cleopatra. She knows what to say and she knows when to step back. In some ways I think she has watched how other people have served her and how you are supposed to do things, and is able to fit with her like a glove. She just knows. She knows her every move and she knows before she even asks what she needs and what she is going to ask for.

There is so much humility in her and integrity. I think that integrity is the big word for her because she is the last one to die at the end and she has to hold the fort and make sure that everything is right and proper and that she does her duty and her job.

Having said that, the friendship thing only goes so far because Charmian is working for her and Cleopatra owns her. But at the end, I think it is really beautiful, and it upsets me when I read it. It's very emotional I think. And it will be lovely to capture that, and to get it right. Not to be sentimental or over the top but to do it well on the Globe stage. I’m looking forward to get working on that, because we haven’t done that yet.

Learning lines
I usually put them on a tape, on a Dictaphone and I usually end up learning almost everyone's lines in the scene because I’ll put my own lines and their lines too. I don’t just learn my cue, I tape the whole scene and learn it all so that I understand exactly what everyone is saying, so I understand the flow of ideas in the scene to not feel lost for where I am in the scene and just waiting to hear the last few words for the cue. It's important for me to be hearing the sense of action.

I don’t learn lines as well or as quickly from just reading the text. Also, I don’t learn very well if I haven’t done the scene so I usually do the scene, and know where I am with that, and then learn it. I suppose if you are playing a part as large as Cleopatra you do have to pre-learn some of it, or at least have a handle on it but luckily I don’t have to do that. I’d rather just do the scene first, learn it a bit from that, and then I know where I am, I understand it more and it goes in quicker.

Bulletin 3

Watching a production at the Globe
On Tuesday I had a very good night because I went to see Titus Andronicus which was very exciting. It blew me away. It's so gruesome! I was standing as a groundling in the yard so I was in the midst all of the action. I was excited as an audience member but also as an actor because I was thinking about being up there on the stage in a couple of week. It brought it all home to me and made me think it's time to get down to business now. It made me really excited!

Warm ups and exercises
Before rehearsals begin, every actor does some sort of warm up to prepare them for the day. I just do a small vocal warm up and I don’t do any physical warm up at the moment because I’m not being extremely physical. I will do a physical warm up when I do more active stuff during the run. To warm up my voice, I just hum because you have to be quite gentle if it is first thing in the morning. This space does demand quite a lot vocally, so you need to prepare properly.

Rehearsals
We are getting to the point where everything is coming together. Rehearsals now involve a deeper analysis of the relationships between characters and it feels as if I am getting to know everything a little bit better. At this stage, we can spend more time with what is actually going on in each scene rather than just the logistics of it. It is such a vast script and there are lots of little scenes that come in as little episodes so it's nice to go over those again. Once you have already done the play you can kind of revisit it with a different eye.

The first scene with the soothsayer has been interesting to look at again. In the scene, he predicts what is going to happen to Iras and Charmian. I think the first time we did it I wasn’t taking on board what the soothsayer is saying and I was being quite frivolous and making a trifle of his words. But I think this time round I have definitely started to take things on board and to portray an underlying worry in Charmian. At the same time, Charmian can’t let the worry show because she is trying to have a good time. There is definitely more depth to it than when I first did it.

There's one line in which the soothsayer says that I’ve already had the best days of my life and the rest is not going to be as good as what I’ve already had, which is quite a hideous thing to say! Charmian tries to deflect by saying that she's clearly going to have lots of bastard children, that they are not going to have a father and that I’m not married…. but deep down Charmian is worried. I think now that she is much more wary of the soothsayer and it's interesting because I find myself connecting much more with Peter who is playing him.

So in rehearsals I’m just being a bit of a multi-tasker, trying to bring more things to the scene. There are many more layers which is good because you don’t see a lot of the inner workings of some characters because they are not the main characters, but as an actor it's good to be able to think this is what is going on in her mind. Hopefully that colours it and makes it more interesting from the audience's perspective.

Egyptian and Roman women
I’ve done quite a lot of research about Egyptian women and more generally about the status of women at that time in Egypt. Women were very much on a level with men, which is terrific. The Egyptians had a lot of foresight in that way and I think the Romans found it very difficult to deal with. Not only were women equal with men but a lot of the women also had their own finances and property and were very much their own people. Women were still in charge of the housework and still had domestic duties but I don’t think women were viewed as second class citizens because of their gender.

Roman women were much controlled by men. They were mastered by their men, whereas I think the Egyptian women probably mastered their men! Apparently, that all ended with the fall of Cleopatra and therefore the fall of the Egyptian reign. The more Roman influence became part of their culture and that equality started to crumble.

The gender equality makes you feel as if you have a bit of status even if you are just a servant. I actually read something on the servants the other day. It was about a servant being much higher than a slave but at the same time a servant is still owned by their master. I think Charmian would have had a lovely life and she would have started being a servant from a very young age. I think Cleopatra would have valued Charmian highly because Charmian would have grown up around her and to some extent Cleopatra can talk to her as if she is her sister.

Costume
I had a fitting for my costume this week. It's lovely! I thought the designer would be going for all kinds of bright colours but instead there are lots of greens and browns and beiges. I think when people think of Egypt they think of colourful, highly sensual, voluptuous images and I think my costume reflects some of those ideas. It is quite sensual without being overpowering.

My outfit will complement what Cleopatra wears because we are creating Charmian as a kind of ‘mini-me’ of Cleopatra. Charmian desperately loves Cleopatra and she is the first point of contact for Cleopatra. Charmian is the ‘good secretary’ and I think she very much looks up to Cleopatra. She is almost another version of her.

The costume department are thinking about putting my hair up rather than giving me a wig. A couple of the other girls are wearing wigs but I am dark enough that I don’t need one. They might give me a hairpiece so that it looks as if I have longer hair. I can’t look too done up because it is Cleopatra's reign and her show!

Bulletin 4

Rehearsals this week
This has been a very dense week of rehearsals. We’ve started doing chunks of the play and started to run the play in sections. For the first time we could see what other people in the company have been doing and it was really interesting. It was lovely to rediscover the story and to see all the other stories within the play. There are lots of little intricate details in the play that don’t come out in your own scenes alone. Obviously, you know your own scenes very well but all of the different characters and things that you’ve forgotten about come back to you when you see the play as a whole.

Everyone is very supportive in the rehearsal room. I don’t think anyone is as relaxed as a real audience yet because we are all concentrating so much on our own work and our own parts. People will still be watching you but they won’t be relaxed enough that they miss their entrances. The first time we ran it everyone was still consulting their scripts for when they are on and when they are exiting and all that kind of thing, so whilst people are being warm and supportive they also have to be on the ball. If you get too involved in a scene you haven’t seen before then you can realise ‘Oh no! I’m on now!’

Snakes on stage
We did a snake call this week! There were people in the cast sitting in the balcony looking pale white and sick when John [the Clown], Rhiannon [Iras] Frankie [Cleopatra] and I were down there with the snakes. I’m not an avid fan of snakes necessarily; I think it is great to have them in the play but I was quite nervous about it. Frankie seemed to be really quite scared at some points but somehow that made me feel less nervous for some reason.

I have touched snakes before. In fact, I nearly got killed by one in Africa but that's a whole other story! I was working in Ghana when I was 18, building a school as part of a charity project, and we were coming home to this village where there was no electricity or anything and there were loads of grass snakes; green mambas and black mambas and so on and they all look the same. We saw what we thought was a green mamba in front of us and usually what you do is shine the torch in their eyes and they get scared and go away. But in this case that didn’t work and the snake wouldn’t go away and was slithering up towards us. And it was maybe about two metres away and we were all just standing there not knowing what to do. Then it reared its head, just like snakes do in films, but apparently they have tunnel vision so it doesn’t necessarily see you. Eventually I decided to walk around it because we couldn’t stay still for much longer. We did that and it went away but when we got back to the village everyone was really annoyed that we hadn’t killed it but we were just glad to leave with our lives! So I’ve had a little bit of experience with snakes.

The snake that I think we will be using in this production is a fairly big, fat snake - it had just been fed when we saw it so it felt very heavy. It was black and blue, a really beautiful animal, but thick and big - I was expecting small thin ones! We still might go for a smaller snake – we’re still experimenting. We had another snake that was red with a lot of orange printing which was very exotic looking. But the black one looks more like a venomous snake.

It's been important to think about the possible distraction that the snake could be during that very significant scene. If it is done at the right time, I don’t think it will take anything away from the language. I think it will be interesting for the audience - they might be quite shocked. It makes the moment scarier for the actors as well. For me, the fact that there is a real snake on stage at the moment she kills herself creates tension immediately, before I even think about the acting.

Developing my character
We did a run of the whole play yesterday and afterwards Dominic gave me quite a few different types of notes [directions] which I have tried to put into this run today. The main thing is to make Charmian much sexier and much more relaxed. I think Charmian is in some ways a little bit separate from the others, not completely separate but a little bit, and I think that was showing too much in the blocking so we’ve changed that. Dominic said my stance seems very abrupt and strong and that he wants me to be more fluid. He wants my movements to be more relaxed and for me to lounge and lean much more.

Dominic also said I need to be sexier so I’ve tried to be more tactile with people and mimic what Cleopatra does with her different men, which I suppose is pretty much what Charmian would do anyway. I’ve been watching Cleopatra more thinking about what to copy. There is a moment in the play where Charmian is making fun of Cleopatra and what she's like with men. Cleopatra asks me something like ‘Did I ever love Caesar as I love Antony?’ and I tell her that yes, you totally loved him. And then I mimic how she is. Today, I made my movements much more like those she had just done and I crawled over the floor rather provocatively. That was good because it worked and I was really pleased. It is always nice when you’re feeling a bit lost and uncertain to just find something that works because then you feel like you have achieved something.

Feelings about going on stage
I’m exhilarated by the idea of performing the play but at the same time it is nerve wracking – any show you do is nerve wracking. I don’t think it matters where you play, whether that is the smallest of venues or the most unknown or the most renowned because you always feel nervous. I do, because I care about the work and I care about what I’m doing. You want to do the play justice and you want the whole play to live.

It is scary going out to so many people and the Globe does have such a reputation that you want to rise to that challenge. I especially want to see all of those faces - I kind of like that idea. I’ve been in shows before where you have seen the audience, but here you will be able to see them sleeping or if they are bored or if they are looking at their watch or if they are loving it or fainting or this or that! And you need to be prepared for anything, which is great because it keeps you on your toes because every performance absolutely will be different!

Let's hope that I can use those nerves and it doesn’t cut off my throat. Sometimes, when you are nervous, the register of your voice goes slightly higher and nothing is rooted and you aren’t really in your centre. It just tenses you up and you don’t deliver Shakespeare's language well enough.

Voice work
We did a really good voice session with Stewart [Pearce who does vocal work at the Globe] which was really helpful. We all lay down on the floor and just thought about breathing to get us to settle ourselves because we are so used to being so busy and thinking about what's next all the time. We never really take time to just breathe and get rid of the bustle and just concentrate on our body and our body being connected to the stage and the world and our voice. The session was a lot about relaxation and envisaging things – one example was to imagine having a light shining out of the middle of your body (not necessarily in a spiritual way but in a very imaginative, emotionally evocative way). Stewart was talking about the sound being centred and all of the sound coming from the middle of your body and connecting your whole body towards your voice.

We worked on breath and how you have to hold your ribs and breathe deep into your belly and deep into your back. I was trying to do that today, I was trying to relax into the run but still use these techniques we were taught. Stewart came to see the run today and he might have some more advice. Because of the way the Globe is designed, shouting and whispering don’t work. You would think that shouting would always be heard, but apparently not. It's about recognising the difference between projection and shouting and apparently the latter just shakes and reverberates back and doesn’t get heard properly. It will be interesting when we are in the actual theatre next week and we can see how low we can play it and how dominant our voices have to be. And we definitely need to work it with an audience because apparently the audience can be very chatty, which I’m sure we’ll find out about!

Rehearsing the jig
This week we started to rehearse the jig. The jig is the dance we do at the end of the play. The rehearsal was hilarious! I really liked it because I like dancing but I think some people weren’t quite so sure – they’re a bit nervous because they’re not used to doing lots of dancing. We begin in two separate groups, Roman and Egyptian, and by the end of the jig we have blended together. The music is great and the dancing is great and it's really, really fun.

h3(#notes5). Bulletin 5

Technical rehearsals
This week has been the technical rehearsal. We started early Monday morning and it was the first time that the whole company was in costume which was all very exciting. Some of the women have wigs and my hair is put in curlers so there is quite a lot of preparation. In this production, I have really curly hair which is brilliant because I am so used to my straight hair. It's lovely to have something quite different so that you do instantly feel more in character.

The costumes are amazing. They are so beautiful and elegant. The corset is quite tight so I have had to get used to breathing in it and just walking around in it because it does alter my posture. I can still be quite relaxed in it because it is just down to my waist so I can sit down and bend down and kneel down and so on.

It was very exciting when we first stepped on the stage. It feels much more intimate than when you are an audience member looking onto the Globe stage. I remember when I was an audience member, the stage feels vast and large but when you are standing on the stage the whole theatre feels well within your grasp. Walking out onto the stage made me catch my breath a bit, but I didn’t find it scary – I can’t wait until the first night!

One of the good things about the tech is that there are lots of visitors who come in and watch so you are always on show even though you are just rehearsing. It's quite nice because you’ve got to rise to the level that you would be doing in an actual performance. Also, with the audience you get little reactions and clues as to what response you are going to get with a full audience. I’ve found it really interesting to see people's reactions and I’ve been surprised at how well I can see their faces. I’ve noticed the company has started playing to the audience much more. In the rehearsal room, we all played for each other as actors but in this particular space there is such a strong relationship with an audience member in the yard which I’m beginning to sense. There is massive involvement, which is why it is good to have a little bit of exposure to this in the tech.

Going through a scene
We don’t go through the scene very much, probably only about twice. The most important thing is the entrances and exits which often have musical accompaniment and we need to get the cues timed correctly. We’re also having to work with the new pillars and raised platform which we’re not used to. Some scenes are incredibly technical, like the scene in which Antony is dying and is raised into the balcony to be with Cleopatra – we’ve had to learn how to use the ropes and pulleys very quickly.

Remembering notes on stage
I haven’t been writing down my entrances and exits. Maybe I should have! But we are going through everything so quickly so it's hard to get a chance to record it all. I check where I am on the stage and I judge how far I am from a pillar or I count along the planks of wood. That is just something that I do personally, I don’t know if anyone else does that. Once I’ve done it a couple of times I just remember where I’m meant to be and it seems natural. Or at least if I get it wrong then I’ll remember the next time!

Costume changes
I’ve got one main dress and that is layered with a bussle and a petticoat and I also wear wedge shoes which I was nervous about falling over in but actually they are ok - I can run in them and do different things I need to do in them so that is fine. The main dress has a little jacket that goes on when they go to war. After that, we’ve also got our black gowns for the death scene so overall there are not that many changes. Cleopatra has lots of changes with all her different fancy dresses. I think she has six different outfits during the play.

All of the women have got dressers because we need assistance for getting into our corsets. It takes about five minutes to get the dress on properly which is quite a long time really for just putting on a dress! My hair doesn’t take too long. I have to put it in little roller things for it to curl. One of the mornings in tech I just had my hair in rollers and so I was standing on stage in my beautiful costume as an Egyptian with my hair in Babyliss rollers! I think the audience were slightly confused!

I don’t get my makeup done by anyone. I have to do that myself because there isn’t really enough time. There is enough time for people to do your hair and dress you, but that is about it because the girls are dressing everybody. There are only so many to go around so I just cover my own makeup. I’ve gone with the idea of being bronzed and tanned because we are Egyptian and use strong black eyeliner. Cleopatra will be wearing more make-up. She does her own too, everyone does their own. But I think they do want it quite delicate, even though we are Egyptian. We want something quite natural.

Preparing for the first night

Everyone has different nerves and they affect each person in different ways. Some people talk ten to the dozen whereas others are quiet. I don’t usually talk a lot, although under different circumstances I am quite a talker. When I’m getting ready for a show I’m not very chatty but I’m really excited. I might feel a bit sick or shaky, and I might be a bit shaky over my first couple of lines but then hopefully I’ll get into the hang of it and I won’t be too nervous and I’ll enjoy it. There a couple of moments when I can properly have fun, like when I’m with Cleopatra, and Charmian can be quite exhibitionist so hopefully those kind of things will relax me. There are a few technical things that I might be nervous about, like lifting Nick [who plays Antony] when he is dead and also the dressing of Cleopatra at the end is very important. I’ll just do my warm up and make sure I’ve got enough water and say, ‘Break a leg’ to everyone. I’m not superstitious actually, I suppose it's just a phrase you get used to saying.

All I need to do now is get through the first performance, have a bit of fun along the way and hope that nothing goes majorly wrong. It's just the first preview so it's almost like a little test run. It's obviously a really important night because it's the first time we’ll have a full audience and I’m looking forward to the energy of the first night. The first time you do a play there is a very special energy between the cast. And I think it is quite a special show for people to see, whether or not things go wrong.

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