Luciana

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Laura Rees

This is Laura's second season at Shakespeare's Globe. Last year, Laura played Marina in Pericles and Eve in Man Falling Down. Laura trained at the Welsh College of Music and Drama; since graduating in 2001, her Shakespearean roles have included Ophelia in Hamlet and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. Laura also played Cecily Cardew in The Importance of Being Earnest and Esther in Strange Orchestra. You will spot her in the film Love Actually. Television credits include Holby City, Murder in Mind and Trust. She is also playing Lavinia in this season's Titus Andronicus.

Bulletin 1

Becoming an actor
First I wanted to be a dancer, and gradually I started enjoying the other bits - the smiling and things I did with my face - as much as the dancing. I was in a pantomime when I was 9, in Northampton where I grew up. Then, when I was about 10, I was in a youth theatre production of Bugsy Malone. My sister was in the youth theatre, and she didn’t really want me to join, but they didn’t have enough people, so I joined. When I was about 14 I started having acting lessons with a professional actress, and she was ever so important to me. In some ways I wanted to be like her. That was the moment really. I had planned to go to dance school when I was 16, but I started to think Drama school would be better, so I stayed on at school for another two years because you don’t go to drama school until you are 18.

Shakespeare
I have done quite a bit of Shakespeare in the five years since I left drama school, including playing Ophelia and Juliet. I was in a production of The Tempest that only had two actors so I played Miranda and Ariel and Trinculo and others in that all at the same time. I was Marina in Pericles at the Globe last year. Quite a lot of the work that I’ve done has been classical.

Working at the Globe
Working at the Globe last year was special. In other theatres you don’t get wet when it rains! Seriously, having people all around you and being able to see them is a big thing. When I did a play in an ordinary theatre afterwards I felt something was missing with this big dark space. You get so much feedback from the audience, and you can share special moments with them. Of course sometimes you notice the person who is looking really bored, or who is searching through their bag. You always notice the people who faint and you have to decide whether to acknowledge it or just to carry on and leave the stewards doing their job. You have to be quite disciplined. There are really powerful moments when everyone is utterly quiet and still. Last year playing Marina at an evening performance in one of those still moments I said:

O, that the gods
Would set me free from this unhallow'd place,
Though they did change me to the meanest bird
That flies i' the purer air!

And just as I’d said it this really big dirty pigeon flew right across the stage. It was special, and shared with everybody, and unique.

Bulletin 2

The Comedy of Errors
I haven't yet really made the mood switch, so I had a really poor rehearsal a couple of days ago. I was doing a scene where I've got a big long speech to do about love, and I was just poor. I felt I was doing it really badly. I felt I was being a really bad actor because I haven't let go of Titus enough. Hopefully as I get into Comedy more I'll be able to separate them a bit.

I’ve been in this situation before, where I'm performing one show and rehearsing another but not for the same company like this, I’ve done it as two separate jobs. It is a weird situation, but, once you establish yourself in the second thing, it starts to work. I was rehearsing Juliet for four weeks while I was playing the mad girl from the mountains in Brand. Different rhythms from one play inform the other. So Juliet is what she is, but there was a little beast in me from the other show, which can enlighten things because you have something else from someone else. That happens all the time, you can go and see a play, and it has an effect. I went to see Fuerzabruta at the Roundhouse on Monday, and it was extraordinary. It can give you the energy to be better in rehearsal, and to think about things differently. Seeing something and having the gift of inspiration can be a great help. It can also come from working on two plays at one time.

Luciana
I don't really like her at the moment. She is a romantic, a young idealist. When things go wrong she is surprised. Her sister thinks she is having an affair and she is trying to pick up the pieces. It is a bit early in rehearsals to know more. I'm starting to care more, and the fear will come soon, and that will drive me to care more and to work on it. She isn't the sort of character who drives the sort of research I did for Lavinia, but I need to do that research. I need to work things out about her. I need to do a lot of going through the text and working out who she is. I'm starting to get the enthusiasm about it now. Just this morning in the shower I had an insight, only a tiny thing, but it is the start. I find it difficult to work unless I'm turned on by something and until I start to connect it is hard to make progress. The challenge for me is to be the actor who can transform between Lavinia and Luciana.

Time to recharge
One of the highlights of the last week is having a bit of time to recharge. I've been to a couple of plays this week which has been good. After the low time at the end of last week, to have some time off and then to be able to come to Titus fresh again has been good. For the rest of the summer there are fewer performances of Titus every week. I think I'll miss it, but it will be exciting to keep coming to it fresh as well. It will keep the show energised.

Bulletin 3

Luciana in The Comedy of Errors

I’m getting to like Luciana more. I’ve started to inhabit her. I started rehearsals thinking she was very soft but now I’ve found there is a certain amount of knowingness about her. I don’t know how to describe Luciana. She is quite complicated. She has quite fixed opinions about things and she is slightly cynical. She can see Adriana and Antipholus’ marriage at close quarters because she lives with them. She can see it is slightly off kilter, that there is something not quite right.

I originally thought she wanted the perfect happy ever after story for herself, believing in romance and reading romance novels and that sort of thing. That's still there, but I think she is more like us. We all want the perfect love story for ourselves but we don’t always talk about these things to people. We can pretend things are under control and we can advise other people on their situations. Luciana is young, and very opinionated. She is also a bit eager – to make Adrianna happy for instance, but she is also a bit on edge. She likes things organised and when things don’t go right she is a bit twitchy.

She is living in the house as her sister's companion. Their parents have died and, until she is married, Luciana's place in society is with her sister. It isn’t her household but I think she tends to do more than Adrianna because I think Adrianna is a little bit of a lush! They have crazy servants in the house, and Luciana is trying to keep a hold on things but, of course, it isn’t possible in The Comedy of Errors to keep a hold on things, so it unravels for her.

The turning point for Luciana is the scene where Antipholus of Syracuse, who she obviously thinks is her brother in law Antipholus of Ephesus, says I don’t know who your sister is but I love you. Luciana thinks he is her sister's husband and that this is awful but at the same time their two souls are meeting and she likes it. For me, that is where her heart gets really engaged for the first time. It is a desperate situation for her. She's trying to ignore what has happened but she's also starting to feel that she loves her sister's husband. It becomes more serious after that.

I didn’t do the same sort of research for this play as I did for Titus. My preparation was really just sitting and thinking about Luciana. I went onto the internet once, typed in Comedy of Errors and Luciana, and read a couple of essays, but I was bored by them. What is often said about her is that she believes that the duty of wives to their husbands is to be submissive and serve them, and be demure and non-opinionated. Then later on in the play she is basically saying the opposite. When the Abbess comes out and says that Antipholus will stay with her, Luciana is the one getting riled and outspoken, so she can stand up for herself. I see her as having a certain amount of cynicism about relationships, and when it happens to her, even though she thinks it is her sister's husband, something uncontrollable happens. She can’t use her head any more. Towards the end she hardly says anything, because there is so much going on. Basically I just look quizzical a lot.

Technical rehearsal
We did the technical rehearsal in a day yesterday, in two sessions. Everything has been so organised. The set is great. We use the balcony as the upstairs of Antipholus and Adrianna's house. We have a front door, and there is a whole street system inside the tiring house, which the audience can see, which we use in the chase scenes. We have a lighting designer, so the streets are lit to make them look like day, and even on stage there is a lot more lighting than there is normally at the Globe. The music is very un-Globelike. There are no original instruments, there's lots of brass.

The costumes look incredible. They are Roman but with a sixties feel. There is more than a hint of Carry on Cleo [a British comedy film, 1965]. I have a beehive hairdo and I have this little purple dress which is lovely. The colours are really beautiful – you’d think they wouldn’t work together, but they do. When I play Luciana, I’m wearing my glasses which means I can see for the first time! I’m not sure I really want to do that any more though. Yesterday, I felt like I didn’t know the theatre any more because I could see everything. Normally, I don’t wear my glasses on stage and my eyesight means that things are visible but a bit blurry. Now everything is crisp; I felt I could see every grain of wood. I might try to get some prop glasses instead.

At the moment the show runs at an hour and a half. It is a dream show. The play is extraordinary. We don’t need to do anything to it. If we just say the words, we know there will be a laugh, but that is not enough for any company of actors. We don’t just want to do a production of The Comedy of Errors, we want to do the definitive production of The Comedy of Errors.

The audience will love it. I’m sure it will be difficult as well. Playing comedy can be. I did loads of comedy in college, but professionally I haven’t done as much. The trick is not to try to be funny, but to play the situation. It takes a lot of energy to do comedy, because you have to lift something which sometimes isn’t there, whereas with tragedy it sinks into you, you have to allow it to happen. When I did The Importance of Being Earnest I was often quite down, because you spend all the time on the stage being so up. They say comedians are prone to depression.

Playing Lavinia and Luciana
It is great fun to be doing something which is so different from Titus. It took me a long time to let go of Titus enough to want to do a comedy but we have a three week gap in Titus performances which started this week, and I’ve felt relieved to be able to just concentrate on The Comedy of Errors. I want to be able to give everything to Comedy and not be sidetracked by having to do Titus performances because that would stop me throwing myself into Luciana's world completely. When we start doing Titus again we only do about one a week, which will be hard.

Lavinia has left me with more of a wound than I thought she would. It's something I don’t really want to think about. The more I’ve done it, the more the horror has embedded itself. It does become routine, but the routine is unhealthy subconsciously. The play is so dark, there is no hope at all.

Playing the two roles in the same season is a great challenge. I’m not sure I like the idea of the audience coming along and thinking, I wonder how the woman who was Lavinia will be in a comedy, or the other way round. I just want them to think of me as the role I’m playing, not of me as an actor.

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