The Duke

A flash banner.

David Sturzaker

This is David's second season at the Globe. Last year, David played Florizel in The Winter's Tale and Troilus in Troilus & Cressida. He also played Claudio in the Globe's 2005 production of Measure for Measure. Other Shakespeare roles include Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo in Romeo & Juliet. Other theatre work includes playing Stanhope in Journey's End and Oedipus in Oedipus Rex. David is also playing Lucius in this season's Titus Andronicus.

Bulletin 1

Becoming an actor
It was when I was about 14. For quite a while I’d wanted to be a vet, but after one school parents’ evening my parents came home and told me that the teachers said I didn’t have any chance of becoming a vet because I was so bad at science. So at the age of 14, I thought what can I do? I was a member of a youth theatre and I really enjoyed it, so I thought about it for a career. So it was from really quite a young age that I wanted to be an actor. I continued at the youth theatre I was in, which happened to be very good, in Dulwich in south London, and I did lots of plays with them until I was about 19. In the meantime I joined a couple of other ones as well. Really it was the youth theatre route that got me into acting.

Shakespeare
Professionally it's almost all I’ve done. I left Drama School five years ago and my only employer in the first couple of years was Argos [a retail chain] where I did a series of short plays as a training aid for the Argos management and staff to watch. I did an all male version of Romeo and Juliet set in a public school, called Shakespeare's R&J, then Much Ado About Nothing and Henry V, both in Arundel. And then last year at the Globe I did three shows, Winter's Tale, Troilus and Cressida, and Measure for Measure. The only exception to that is Journey's End, a World War One play, but other than that, just Shakespeare.

Working at the Globe
The building itself. It is the most incredible place I’ve ever performed in. The first night of the Winter's Tale was my first time. Coming out and seeing a sea of faces, at your foot level, staring up at you expectantly, happy, without judgement, eager – it was just incredible, the most wonderful atmosphere. Then there's the shared light. I love the shared light. Not only can we see the audience at the beginning of the play, but we can see their reactions – that's wonderful. Obviously we can hear their laughter, and very occasionally there will be the odd comment, not often, but a comment might be shouted out, and I don’t think that's a bad thing, it's just an indication of the feeling the space induces.

You don’t have to use your voice differently. Last year I remember being very scared before my first voice lesson on the stage. I really was petrified, I completely forgot about any voice training and technique, I just shouted and pushed, it sounded awful. That was purely out of panic I think. The voice tutor assured us all we didn’t need to do that. Actually it's a very good space vocally, even though it's open air, because the galleries are stacked one on top of another. Even if you are in the top gallery you’re still not that far from the stage. So it's a surprisingly intimate theatre for the fifteen hundred or so who get in there. It's a very intimate space.

Bulletin 2

Rehearsing The Comedy of Errors while performing Titus Andronicus
Equity [the British Actors’ Union] regulations state we only have 40 hours contact time, but there is an agreement that we can have some weeks nominated as 46 or 48 hours by the management, and these will be balanced out by 32 or 34 hour weeks later on in the season. Within those constraints we can rehearse whenever we are not on stage provided that we have at least an eleven and a half hour break between finishing a show and starting a rehearsal – so if we finish at half past ten the rehearsal can’t start until ten the next morning. We are also only allowed ten hour days, so if we were to start at ten o’clock on the morning we have to be finished by eight o’clock that evening. So logistically it is very, very hard. So next week with only three Titus performances it will be much easier.

It has all been full company work so far. For the last two weeks we have been sat round the table, going through the play line by line, clarifying any bits which aren’t immediately obvious. This is a bit unusual, but I think Chris [Luscombe, the director of The Comedy of Errors] saw that we had two weeks with a lot of Titus shows and thought the best way to use the two weeks was to be sedentary. We aren’t up on our feet at all, we are sat round the table, it isn’t energetic, quite relaxed. Because of the nature of the play – it is a farce – it is quite useful that everybody knows what happens at all times. So it is unusual, but I think it has been a perfect use of the last two weeks.

Another good thing about the last two weeks is that because we have just been sat round talking about the play an awful lot, come Monday when we actually get up on our feet, we are going to be raring to go. We are embracing the fact that it is a comedy, and a wonderful, self-contained play. This business of rehearsing one play and performing another doesn’t happen much these days. There are a couple of company members who did their time in the old provincial rep system, when that was the way you usually worked, and it has been good hearing their stories about it. Those of us of my generation, who haven’t grown up with that system, lament the loss of it.

At the moment I’m just playing the Duke, but that might change. There are a couple of scenes which Chris wants to populate with townsfolk. I can see that it might be tricky for the Duke to be one of those people, but I’m sure there will be ways of getting round that if another body is required.

You could think that these two plays are unusual plays to pair together for one company, but the more we go on I think the more you see that we couldn’t have a better group of actors to do the two plays – ying and yang or whatever way you want to look at it, they really do balance perfectly. I think we are all just thrilled after Titus, which we have all really invested in, to be tackling something so different.

Bulletin 3

Rehearsals
We’ve been working on the second half of the The Comedy of Errors, and in the second half I’m only on in Act Five, which is just one long scene. I come in about a third of the way through that, so my rehearsals this week have been fairly limited. I’ve had an hour or so here and there. It has been very good to get all the way through the play, and it is a great conclusion to the play. It is a really well written fifth act. It is great to have come to it early in terms of rehearsing. Notoriously, Shakespeare Act Five's can be left in the cold a bit, so to come to it early and do it in as much depth as everything else is very good. Because I haven’t been called an awful lot, I came in one day to observe the rehearsal of a scene I’m not in. That was very interesting. Character-wise it is important I arrive in Act Five without the first idea of what has been going on, but actor-wise it is nice to feel part of the company and to have an idea of the shape of the show – it helps me feel I’m in the same play.

We haven’t resolved the beard. I have spoken to Chris [Luscombe, the Director of Comedy] about it, and he isn’t keen on the beard. He wants the Duke to be as glamorous as possible, and, reading between the lines, he doesn’t think my beard is glamorous. I do like it for Lucius though. I’ve yet to have a conversation with Janet [Bird, the designer for Comedy], but the razor could come out at any time I think. The second half of the season is predominately Comedy, so I have to do what is better for that.

Working on a comedy
Some leading light, a comedian or a comic actor, said that for comedy it has to be split second timing, and with other drama it can be anywhere within a minute. I do think timing is important with comedy. If you are timing a line in order to get a pay-off laugh it is very important. Obviously in a farce, as Comedy is in many ways, timing of things like entrances and exits is very important. As a company the majority of us went to see a farce called See How They Run which Doug [Hodge, who plays Titus] is directing. He says directing farce is precision engineering. It can be as specific as if somebody raises an arm while somebody else is walking forward, they don’t get a laugh, but if they don’t raise their arm, they do get a laugh. So I think somebody who has experience of farce and low comedy would argue that timing is absolutely of the essence.

With tragedy or straight drama I think it is still very important to keep the energy going. Probably one of the things about watching farce is that you notice how well it is timed. You sit there and you think, that's fantastic, the way they’ve done that. You appreciate the mechanics of it. It is more apparent in comedy or farce. A useful analogy is keeping the ball in the air – you have to keep the ball in the air whether it is a tragedy or a farce, if it drops the energy goes and the audience lose interest. That is the same whatever kind of play you are doing.

Back to top