Luciana

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In the Globe Theatre Company's production of Comedy of Errors, Luciana was played by Jules Melvin.

About Jules Melvin

Jules has appeared in productions for Salisbury Playhouse, the Gate Theatre, RSC, Leicester Haymarket and the Lyric Studio, Hammersmith. Her TV work includes roles in The Bill and Casualty. Jules appeared in the Globe’s opening season in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside.

Click on the numbered links to follow Jules' journey as she creates and plays the character of Luciana in the Globe Theatre.

Jules Melvin - Introduction

The rehearsals take place in rehearsal rooms about 5 minutes walk from the Globe theatre itself. Each rehearsal room is very large and has an outline of the Globe stage marked out in tape on the floor. This helps the actors to prepare for working on the Globe stage. The actors will have very few rehearsals on the Globe stage before production week.

Each day your actor will receive his/her ‘call’ which is the time s/he is expected to report for rehearsal. During the rehearsal period, an actor’s day will vary considerably. Your actor may rehearse scenes, attend a class (voice and/or movement) or have a costume fitting with the wardrobe department. A typical day might begin at 10.00am and finish at 6.30pm – sometimes there are also evening calls.

During the rehearsal period (particularly at the beginning) your actor will research his/her character. To help the actors, the assistant director will find relevant books, pictures, etc. and bring these to rehearsal. Extracts from books and pictures are often stuck onto the rehearsal room walls. Actors will also experiment with using props in rehearsal; these will be rough versions of the final prop and will help the actors to build the prop into the scene. Similarly, some form of rehearsal costume will be worn e.g. long skirts for the women, this will help actors to get used to moving, sitting, etc. in their costume. In particular, actors will use the actual shoes they will wear in performance during rehearsal. This is to wear the shoes ‘in’, as they are made using Elizabethan techniques and most pairs have no specified ‘left’ and ‘right’ foot. Many actors also feel that wearing the correct shoes helps them to ‘get into’ character.

The companies have 5 weeks of rehearsal before the technical and dress rehearsals. Generally, the beginning of this period is spent improvising around the text and in development of character; towards the end of these 5 weeks, actors will rehearse scenes in detail and run parts of the play. The exact method of working in rehearsal is established and shaped by the director.

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Jules Melvin - 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.

Jules will be playing Luciana, the sister of Adriana, who eventually marries Antipholus of Syracuse. Rehearsals so far have been focused on building an ensemble feel within the company, which is incredibly important when playing comedy.

One of the first areas the company focused on was the idea of playing – of being children, relaxing and becoming open to the things around them. Jules found this activity to be a very good starting point for her: she saw she started doing things she hadn’t done since she was very young.

The company’s production of the play will be set in Ephesus in Turkey. The aim, however, is not to recreate an exact version of Ephesus as it is today or was in Shakespeare’s time, but to create an imaginary or ‘fantasy’ version of Ephesus that is unique to the Globe production of The Comedy of Errors. During the first week of rehearsal Kathryn Hunter, the director, gave the company a picture and asked them to recreate that picture by depicting the people in it, using random props and costumes from a box. Jules and Yolanda (the actress playing Adriana) worked together to portray two women from the picture. The actors worked to create the atmosphere of a marketplace, improvising as the characters they had created. It was a very intense exercise, but it really helped Jules to understand what it was like to be such an outspoken woman in a society that does not view women as equal to men. This is important to Jules as she feels it is an issue which Luciana faces in The Comedy of Errors. In this activity, Jules and Adriana were naturally drawn together, just as their characters are in the play - they tend to be the only women in most scenes and are set apart from the other characters because of that. Jules feels that it would have been very difficult for Luciana to be a strong woman in the time when the play is set.

The company have also played their own version of ‘follow my leader’ and regularly play volleyball together. These type of activities help them to get to know one another and to work together as a team. The actors also worked on an activity where they had to move their bodies as if they were a flame, when the director said the flame should grow the company had to try to show this in their movements. The idea behind this activity was that these movements mirrored the action of the play: there is so much chaos within the characters themselves that is almost like a growing flame. Jules found it a useful way to explore the confusion of the play.

Jules read The Comedy of Errors before her audition, for which she was asked to read Luciana’s speech in Act 2 Scene 1. After getting the part, Jules went into a workshop that she teaches every weekend and asked the people in the workshop for some ideas on building the character. Jules had no preconceptions about the play because she had never seen it performed. She came into the rehearsal process looking for explanations for why Luciana holds the opinions she does. At the moment Jules sees Luciana as an unmarried young woman who lives with her sister and brother in law. She may be a very quiet person who doesn’t like to get too involved in the relationship between Antipholus of Ephesus and Adriana. She spends a lot of time thinking and does not have much freedom to choose where and with whom she spends her time. Jules, for now, thinks that Luciana’s speech on subservience stems from her inexperience on the subject of marriage.

Jules feels that Luciana is incredibly brave, because of the way she is willing to confront the person she believes to be Antipholus of Ephesus about his behaviour. By confronting a man, she is going against every convention of the time period (the play is being set around 1594 - the time that The Comedy of Errors was first performed). For Jules this scene demonstrates that Luciana is not as submissive as she preaches women should be.

Jules enjoys researching a role and always does as much research as she can. For her, it’s almost like building a safety net and a way of feeling prepared. Because Jules is slightly dyslexic, she finds it very important to work in pictures; to visualise things in order to make them real to her. Jules finds Kathryn Hunter’s directing method incredibly helpful, because she is given lots of opportunities to open up her imagination and get a feel for the colours and shapes in the play. For rehearsals, Jules wears a dress if her character wears a dress and she also wears the same type of shoes as her character. She finds that this really stimulates her imagination and helps her to discover different ways of moving and reacting to her environment.

Jules’ biggest discovery this week has been the nature of working at the Globe. The white company spent a week and a half of their rehearsal time in workshops for Augustine’s Oak, which is a new play, written especially for the Globe. In this workshop period, Jules worked to develop her character in Augustine’s Oak. She will be playing the Prophetess, who is very connected to the earth and the sky: she gets her messages through nature. After that week and a half of workshops, Jules is very excited about exploring this character some more, especially in the Globe theatre itself. As the theatre is open to the elements she will be able to use the space to develop the way in which her character relates to nature.

Jules thinks the biggest challenge she has faced so far has been to remain open to all the ideas that are being presented to her. Her goal is to get beyond ego, research and paranoia and to simply play each moment. At this point in time, Jules reminds herself not to make any definitive decisions yet: there is still time to play.

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Jules Melvin - Activities

These activities are based on the notes above. They are suggestions only; please feel free to devise your own. Please select the activities which are relevant to your group. You can send students’ work and suggestions from any of these activities to GlobeLink and we will be delighted to forward them to Jules.

The activities have been devised assuming the students know the story of the play.

A Fantasy Ephesus

The production will be set in an imaginary version of Ephesus.

What would your fantasy version of Ephesus look like? Draw a picture and send it to Jules.

Sounds and Images

Kathryn Hunter, the director, asked the company to tell the story of the play using sounds and images.

Choose a scene or moment in the play and think about what sounds Luciana might hear. You could record them, or write a description of each sound. Send your ‘sounds’ to Jules.

What is said about Luciana?

At the beginning of the rehearsal period actors read through the play and list:

a)everything that is said about his/her character
b) everything that character says about him/her self

Look at the character of Luciana and make these two lists. What do you find out about her character by doing this? Send your lists and observations to Jules so she can compare them with her own.

Who is Luciana’s ‘twin’

As part of their work the company have been looking at the idea of twins. They are exploring the notion that each character has a ‘twin’ in the play – someone that is in the same situation as them and shares certain character traits.

Which character do you think is most like Luciana? It can be any character in the play, not necessarily one she shares scenes with. Send your ideas to Jules.

Pictures

Throughout the rehearsal process Jules likes to collect pictures which remind her of her character. These could be drawings or pictures from magazines or newspapers and could be of anything which you might associate with Luciana.

Look out for pictures that remind you of Luciana’s character. Put them together as a collage and send it to Jules.

Working with the verse

At the moment Jules is concentrating on finding the rhythm in the verse. She finds it useful to beat out the rhythm on a table top!

Look at Luciana’s speech in Act 3 Scene 2. As a class or in small groups try this exercise for yourself.

Rehearsal Calls

Look at the copy of the "call sheet": for the first week of rehearsal. Work out what Jules would be doing on each day.

Either write a day or days in the life of your actor OR choose one scene Jules has worked on during the week and try out ways of playing it for yourselves.

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