Octavius Ceasar

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Jack Laskey

This is Jack's first season at Shakespeare's Globe. Other Shakespearean roles include playing the title role in Hamlet at the Haymarket Theatre Basingstoke, Juliet in Romeo & Juliet for Blood In The Alley Theatre Company and Romeo in Romeo & Juliet for Vienna's English Theatre. Jack has also worked many other theatres, including the Old Vic and the Young Vic in London.

Bulletin 1

Becoming an actor
From a very early age, my parents took me to a lot of theatre and I just loved it. Ever since I can remember I’ve wanted to become an actor and so I started going to lots of local drama groups in Ipswich in Suffolk, although I lived in a village called Layston on the coast.

When I was about 14 I did a couple of Christmas shows at the Wolsey theatre in Ipswich; The Railway Children and The Secret Garden. Going through the auditions and then performing in professional shows at an early age made me realise that I could do it.

The drama groups I was joining got more and more serious. When I was doing my A-levels, I was in a young theatre company and we did lots of educational work with excluded children or children with difficult upbringings and we did lots of work with social care professionals, which I really enjoyed and was an interesting learning experience.

Drama school
After my A levels, I went straight to drama school in London, to RADA, and I left there three years ago. And here I am! Drama school was hard. You go from being this big fish in a small pond to a big fish in an even bigger pond with loads of other really huge fish all around you.

I think whatever training you do there is always some unlearning of what you have learnt previously going on, and some re-learning from the ground up. You are kind of stripped back and getting rid of your old habits. It was absolutely brilliant, but it is incredibly hard work. It's like at school, people think that drama is the easy option, the easy subject, but at drama school, the hours are 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and then you’ve got the individual singing lessons in the evening then the rehearsals with other people, and then if you are lucky enough to get home early that night, all you have time for is to cook yourself some food and get ready for the next day. It is all consuming and apart from the holidays I completely lost touch with all of my closest friends, not that I became a recluse or a loner, but to get the most out of it I just felt that I had to put myself completely into it.

But it was an amazing, amazing training. You are pushed in so many different directions. Often, you have to prepare something different for every class in a day. Sometimes I had three monologues to prepare, a talk to give and a song to work on in a day and you just have to get it done. Quite a lot of it is just figuring out what you can get done under pressure, and we had a very talented and supportive year which really made a huge difference. There were only 31 students in our year, almost like a class at school, but then you are split up for each of your classes.

Preparation for the role of Octavius Caesar

I was only cast the week before we started rehearsals so it's been quite a whirlwind so far. Two weeks ago I had neither read nor seen Antony and Cleopatra so I haven’t really had that much time to do a lot of work but I have been reading the play over and over and looking a bit into my part. And now we are in rehearsals so there is lots to think about.

First impressions of Octavius

He has this huge status and confidence because of the power he holds. He rules a third of the world so that would give you a bit of a big head! I think he really admires Antony but there is this huge competition between them because Octavius is essentially a very ambitious man and so he always wants more. Antony really annoys him because of the power and respect he has held.

I could list loads of character traits but I’m still really trying to find out who Octavius is and where he sits inside me, what parts of me he tunes into and what aspects of our characters are similar. I find that for every part you play, you have to find a part of it that is relevant to your own life. You have to engage every part of it with yourself and you have to find the truth of it inside you and where it lies. And once you have found that, it acts as a kind of foundation. If you have tuned into those parts that are the same as yourself, you can further them over the course of rehearsals. I’ve never really talked about this before and put the process into words so I hope it's kind of clear!

First week of rehearsals
The first day of any rehearsal process is like the first day of school. It's terrifying because you are meeting a whole new bunch of people and you are in a new building and I think it just makes everyone feel a bit edgy. We had what's called a Meet and Greet session and we met many of the people who work at the Globe and then Dominic, the director, talked to us for a bit briefly about the play. I was really nervous and incredibly excited because it is just such a privilege to be here at the Globe playing a lovely part. It's just amazing! It's just such a great thing to be doing this play and of course I am in another play later in the season, In Extremis, but I’m just thinking about Antony & Cleopatra right now and how I’m going to be performing it on the stage that it was written for. It's just such a privilege, and I’m not quite over it yet.

We had a movement workshop to get us thinking about moving in the space and we also did some work on ‘archetypes’ which are fundamental traits found in lots of characters; ‘the warrior’, ‘the lover’, ‘the king’ and ‘the joker’. We did lots of other types of exercises that explored both ourselves and our characters. It was a really good thing to do with all of us on the first day because it got us moving and around the space and we were engaging with one another; it really broke the ice. But also, personally, it gave me a lot of things to think about in terms of working on The Globe stage and acting in general.

Later, Dominic had a talk with us about how Antony & Cleopatra is going to be staged and what the rehearsal process would entail. Then we had a talk by Dr Farah Karim-Cooper [Globe Education Lecturer] about how the Jacobeans would have envisaged Rome and Egypt, so some of the costumes will be Jacobean, and some will be Jacobean with a touch of the exotic. The Jacobeans had some sense of Rome - they were taught the classics - so they had some sense of the history and architecture and so on.

The next day we had the read through. We all sat in a circle and read the play from beginning to end, each of us reading our parts. Then we just got straight up on our feet. What we are doing now in rehearsals is we are just running through each scene; we read the whole scene through together and then we go back and ‘translate’ or paraphrase what's being said. At the moment we are doing very quick blocking or staging and we are going into a little bit of detail but not a whole lot, to give it a sort of overall shape, so it's sort of quite broad brush strokes initially but I think we are going to go back in and colour in as such. We are over half way through the play now, and we are coming in tomorrow (Saturday) to sort everything out. I’m all in favour of more work myself because we only have 4 weeks to get it all done in, and the more work you do on something the better it gets. Obviously people do get worn out but I have a lot of energy for it and I’m all in favour of working just as hard as I can.

Bulletin 2

Movement work
I’ve been doing work on my movement this week because naturally I’m someone who moves quite quickly and who has a lot of energy. I kind of just bounce from one thought to another, not necessarily finishing the original one, and I don’t have a huge amount of gravitas. We’ve been working on acquiring stillness and calming me down a bit. I need to be more physically and mentally expansive and confident. My natural instinct is to close up and be kind of small, but I’m playing one of the leaders of the world, so I have to be big and huge, even though I am quite slight, physically.

Rehearsals this week
This week we’ve carried on going through the scenes, working on them and de-coding them. We sit around, say the scene in our own words, bung some action on and then get it up on the stage. It's a rough kind of blocking. Yesterday we did the final scene of the play so now we’ve moved back to the beginning to really start the play. This time around we are going into more detail. Dominic is telling us what he really wants out of each scene. Last time he would say where we should stand or what we should do and but this time his notes are very specific.

Director's notes
How notes are given varies. Sometimes he’ll say things at the beginning of the scene, sometimes at the end. Sometimes we might start the scene and then we’ll get to the point when either we’ve forgotten our lines or Dominic thinks it looks completely wrong, so he’ll might interrupt and say ‘No Jack , I think it might look better if you came on from the other side’ and so on. The actors do also get the chance to say, ‘Why don’t we do it like this?’ to some degree. If you feel you have something to say you just say it and Dominic is such a relaxed, lovely man that you don’t feel bad.

Being ‘off book’
I have to know all of my lines – be ‘off book’- for all of my scenes. I think the idea is that we have learnt our lines for the scenes as we go through them and I’ve managed so far! We did two scenes today and they were alright so that was quite good. But I’ve got quite a bit of work to do tonight because I have four scenes to know for tomorrow. My way of learning lines is by reading the scene loads and loads. I read it every night before going to sleep. I read the whole of my part from start to finish before sleeping, and then I look at it again when I get up in the morning so that it somehow infiltrates my brain. I read quite fast when I read through at night because I’m quite keen to get to bed, but it normally takes about 20 minutes just to run through quickly. I don’t think my girlfriend is very happy with me sitting there with my script when she is just dozing off to sleep next to me and I’m there reading away with the light. It's not a very sociable thing!

Bulletin 3

Insights into Octavius Caesar
I’m finding that my character is becoming much clearer in my head. I’m finding out who he is. Now that I am off book it feels like I’ve got a far better understanding of who Caesar is, whereas before I knew my lines I wasn’t really engaging with the actual words. I was just saying them and not really knowing what they felt like or what they meant.

At this stage in rehearsals, I think Octavius Caesar is powerful, young, ambitious, proud and ‘still’. I’m working towards some sort of physical stillness because he has the assurance of being this world leader There is a relaxation to Antony that Caesar just doesn’t have and you can see that in the script. The things I say are very purposeful, clear and concise pretty much all the way through. There are a couple of moments where that slips which are really interesting - little moments when his guard falls and his control lapses but Caesar is very much a character who likes being in control of the situation.

Rehearsals this week
We’ve started running the play now. The day before yesterday we split it up into four quarters and ran each quarter. We were then given some notes and worked on some scenes that needed tightening up. It was really lovely to do a run because we haven’t been together as a whole company very much and also because I haven’t seen any of the Cleopatra scenes at all. I have one scene with Cleopatra at the end but otherwise I hadn’t seen anything so that was great.

We haven’t heard the play as a whole since the read through. We have looked at other bits of the play but I hadn’t read the entire script since the read through so it was really lovely to see what Dominic [the director] has done with scenes and the play as a whole. The story is really very clear and I think the play has energy, a real pace that is just wonderful.

Different perspectives on the play
Seeing the whole play makes you see your character in context. Antony & Cleopatra is a play of contrasts between Rome and Egypt and seeing it as a whole helps you realise what you are contrasting with. The order of scenes is also enlightening for me because the scene before has a bearing on the next scene; you can read it in the book but it doesn’t really have the same effect as when it is there in front of you. Sometimes, it can change your whole perspective on a scene. It is really interesting and important for the arc of your character. Again, you can look at things in the book and just get the progression, but it is only when you see it on stage that you get the energy that the scene gives you. Overall, I think we have done a little bit more work on the first half than the second, and I think we will need to look some more at the second half because it is very bitty. There are lots of short scenes and then there are these big long scenes that Antony and Cleopatra have in which they have to change emotional pitch a lot; in just one line they have to go from something really huge to something really intimate. Also, there is this tendency at the end of a play to stretch things out. Dominic mentioned that when actors know it is coming to an end they leave longer pauses and don’t pick up their cues as fast. This morning we’ve been working on some bits of acting that just needed more pace.

The jig
At the end of every play at the Globe the actors do a jig – a dance – to give the play a happy ending so it's not too depressing. We’ve rehearsed the jig and it's really good. It starts with the characters from the Roman world moving to a very rigid beat and then the Egyptians start dancing in more circular and fluid movements behind us and then the Romans get sucked into the Egyptian movements. And it’ll be really nice to do the jig at the end of the show because the play can be quite heavy, even though there is also loads of comedy in the play. The jig will be a really uplifting end.

We’ve also been doing some singing because we will be doing some singing within the jig. We haven’t been told which parts we are doing to music at the moment. There is a short piece of music – a lament - that we all sing when Cleopatra gets carried off towards the end. The whole cast sings that, even the people backstage. A woman called Belinda who is an incredible, incredible singer came in and talked to us about it and we had an hour and a half to learn these songs.

The thinking behind the music is similar to the thinking behind the costumes: they have taken the idea of what the Elizabethans would have thought Eastern music would sound like. I think Belinda said that the Elizabethan audience would have known this kind of song. The words are Turkish and Arabic and it is apparently quite a traditional song. Some parts of it are words and some parts are just the equivalent of singing ‘la la la’ to a particular tune.

The one we have looked at for the jig does have some words. I’m not sure if we’ll use this in the final production but the one we’ve been looking at today has an English translation at the bottom of the page:

There is no escape and no hope for one.
Everything has changed.
Everything has been deserted,
And everything exhibits death.
Hear my complaints, which alas
I, miserable and powerless must speak
From deep inside myself
As I burn blind with demented rage.

We are singing just the harmony while Belinda sings the lament. So far it sounds really good.

Coming up…
Tomorrow, the rest of the musicians are joining us for the first time. All of the music at the Globe is live and the musicians are joining us to go through their parts. For instance, when I come on to the stage I have fanfares and trumpets - which is wicked! It will be nice to have that because it will help to give me that feeling of being an emperor. I think it might give me the giggles because I can’t quite believe it's being played for me. I’m just Jack!

Bulletin 4

Performing in front of a visible audience
Just before drama school, I performed in some outdoor theatre spaces. But everyone here at the Globe has talked about the uniqueness of this space and the audience interaction. Joseph Marcel [who is in Coriolanus] was talking about it and he was saying that as an actor you are trained to act in a black box where you can’t see anybody, so this is just very different and slightly unnerving but exciting.

Yeah that is one of the biggest shifts. But everything is in a really good state at the moment, and we’ve got about three more runs before we go into the theatre, and then we open on Sunday, so we’ve got about 5 days. I think we’ve got a dress rehearsal on Sunday, or Saturday I suppose if it goes well, but I haven’t studied my schedule well enough to know that.

Confidence
I am feeling fairly confident with my part. I think my confidence changes depending on the day because in rehearsal you just go through waves of struggle and confidence. Doing the run has given me a lot and helped me to identify little bits that I need to shift and what I need to keep working towards. There were a couple of scenes that I never felt fully comfortable with until we did the run and I’ve made progress with them, but I still need to go further. There is the scene on the boat where we are all together on the boat drinking (Act 2 Scene 7) which I was struggling with a little bit, and the scene I do straight after that where I say goodbye to my sister (Act 3 Scene 6) which is hard because it's quite a tricky emotional scene to pitch correctly in terms of showing the audience how upset I am but also keeping the restraint of my character.

I find that it's only in a run that I can really experiment because in a run you realise see your character in its entirety. A good example of what I mean is the scene in which I’m told of Antony's death. When we rehearsed it on its own we had to create a certain amount of the sensation but when you’ve just played the history of your relationship it really helps.

Shakespeare and the stage
That's what is so amazing about Shakespeare; because he was an actor as well as a playwright I think he understood what he needed to give actors at certain points. For instance, in Hamlet there are a couple of instances where he gives Hamlet a break for a couple of scenes, or a little break just before he does a huge soliloquy, so the actor can go backstage and go ‘Phew, it's OK, I’ve got a moment’ and so on. Shakespeare is always very sensitive to that, I think.

That's what is so amazing about Shakespeare; because he was an actor as well as a playwright I think he understood what he needed to give actors at certain points. For instance, in Hamlet there are a couple of instances where he gives Hamlet a break for a couple of scenes, or a little break just before he does a huge soliloquy, so the actor can go backstage and go ‘Phew, it's OK, I’ve got a moment’ and so on. Shakespeare is always very sensitive to that, I think.

Shakespeare is always amazing thinking of the practical issues actors and directors face. For instance, when Enobarbus dies the soldiers come on stage and say that they need to take him away because he might recover and they carry him off stage. Shakespeare ties it all up instead of just having the body lying about on stage for ages and someone having to randomly come on and collect it. He just has an incredible sense of what is required. And it adds to the play because it maintains that world of the play – you don’t have a stage manager sneaking on, you have soldiers who are engaging with it and commenting on it. He has such an amazing theatrical sense.

Next week
Next week we go into the theatre to do the technical rehearsal. That is a huge change and an exciting shift because obviously the finalising of moments happens when you are in the theatre. Also, I just love the technical rehearsals in the theatre because you have to be quiet because there is so much going on and while you are just standing in the theatre and you can work out lots of things like where you are moving to and so on. You can see where you are playing to and you can judge how far your performance has to raise to - the distance your voice has to cover - particularly with this theatre because it is so unique.

Bulletin 5

Technical rehearsals
This week has been the technical rehearsal. I’ve been surprised at how much there is to do in technical rehearsals at the Globe because we don’t have to think about lighting, which is often the major consideration. But the entrances and exits are very different on the stage than in the rehearsal room and we have to fit in the music. There is quite a lot of music, whether it's music cues, background accompaniment or music that goes over the end of one scene and the beginning of another. It's important to get the timing right so that the energy doesn’t drop.

We’re in costume this week and we’ve got to rehearse all of the costume changes because some of them are very quick indeed! We have to run those scenes so that the dressers [the people backstage who help the actors in and out of their costumes] know that they are going to have enough time and we also have to make sure that the props are in the right place; there are just lots of nuts and bolts to fit together and they are fitting together really well at the moment. I think we are making really good progress.

A lot of people talk about the unique and immediate relationship between the actors and the audience in this theatre. It's as if the audience becomes another character in the play - if you perform your lines out front to the audience it doesn’t feel like you are just playing into the darkness; it feels like you are really engaging with the audience.

There have been lots of tour groups in the Globe so lots of people have been inside the theatre for some of the technical rehearsals. Sometimes it must be really interesting to watch but at other points the actors are just standing around on stage waiting for technical things to be done. The other day there were two tour parties upstairs as well as some children in the yard who were standing right in front of the stage and someone in the cast pointed out and said, “Look, that's what it's going to be like!” And we looked out and there were all of these faces staring at us. It is going to be incredible on Sunday!

Somebody pointed out to me that I’ve got quite a few scenes where I hold letters and for my first scene in particular I come out and hold a letter out in the air in front of me. I know my hand is just going to be shaking because walking out on stage will be such a daunting experience.

Costumes
I have one base costume which is a very beautiful golden outfit. It's a pale gold so it's quite restrained and makes me look quite innocent. I also really stand out against the red and the dark colours that everyone else wears. It is a very restrained grandeur which suits Octavius exactly. I have a gold toga which goes on top of it. I also have these big boots which are actually rubbing a bit at the moment. They were made specifically for my feet but they are rubbing on my ankles a little bit.

For some scenes I wear leather armour on top of my outfit which consists of a breastplate, shin guards and a sword. It reminds me of the armour I played with when I was a kid – it's like wearing an adult version. It's crazy putting this outfit on and that it's my job to wear it!

This week, I’ve had to have my hair cut. I quite like having my hair cut for a part because it does make me feel very different. This is a ‘Globe’ hair cut and they’ve made my hair look very Roman, especially when they style it by combing it down. I’ll have to have my hair cut throughout the season. I do think it is very good because it makes me look very young when I have short hair and am clean shaven. When I’m on the stage and in my costume people have commented that I look very young which is good because Octavius is always referred to as ‘the boy’ and that creates a very good contrast between me and Antony.

I’m in two plays this season at the Globe and in the second play I’m playing a monk - they want my hair longer and I might have a bald patch so I don’t know what they are going to do about that - I might have to wear a wig.

Preparing for a performance
I think that when you are nervous it is quite good to try and stop thinking about yourself - so if you can have fun or play a game in the Green Room then I think it is really, really healthy to stop thinking and worrying about yourself. Or just lie down and relax and don’t think about anything. You should just judge it on how you are feeling.

On Sunday I will probably be in the Green Room playing backgammon, or I’ll just be pacing gently. I’m not superstitious, but I know that I will get into a routine with this show so that when I am not on stage in a scene I will always go and sit in a certain place and be there with a certain group of people. Most actors follow the same routine backstage every night. I think there is a real reassurance in that familiarity, to have something stable. I love that routine.

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