Claudio

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About Ann Ogbomo

This is Ann's second season at Shakespeare's Globe. Last year she was a member of the Globe's first all-female company; she played Catesby and the First Murderer in Richard III. Other stage roles include Miranda in the Royal National Theatre's production of The Tempest, the Mother in Blood Wedding and Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible. You might have spotted her in the television dramas Babyfather and Murder in Mind.

Rehearsal notes 1

  • Background
  • Claudio: first impressions
  • Two routes
  • Balance
  • Back at the Globe
  • First day of rehearsal
  • Vocal centre

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.

Background

I started acting when I was quite young – I remember my first part as one of the Pied Piper's rats in a National Theatre production! Sylvester McCoy (who used to play Dr. Who) was the Pied Piper and the casting people came to my primary school to invite us to be his rats. That was my first experience onstage but I’d only really acted in school plays until I went to The Brit School in Croyden, which allows you to do a BTEC in performing arts alongside A levels. The combination means you get a really good opportunity to do practical work too. I went on to university and drama school; since I left drama school almost two years ago, I’ve been acting for a living.

I was a member of the all-female company at the Globe in 2003 – it was an amazing experience to work with that group of women and it's good to see that there are lots of familiar faces in this season's company. I played Catesby and the first murderer in Richard III, and originally I was cast as Christopher Sly for The Taming of the Shrew but we decided to cut the induction and I read a prologue by a living playwright instead. I was hugely pleased to be asked back for an audition this season: I got a recall after my first audition and Tamara asked me to prepare some of Claudio's lines. I had my second audition with Tamara [Harvery, Master of Play], Mark [Rylance, Artistic Director], Claire [Van Kampen, Artistic Associate] and Siobhan [Bracke, Casting Director]. I wasn’t too nervous because we had all met before. Experimenting with Tamara's suggestions about Claudio also helped me to relax during the audition because I was concentrating on the character instead of thinking ‘This is an audition. This has got to be good.’

Claudio: first impressions

When I first read through the play, I was really attracted to the part of Claudio. I wanted to audition for him. My first impression was of a person who doesn’t have a great deal of control over what happens; he genuinely mistakes Margaret for Hero and responds accordingly. He constantly tries to do the right thing and is very much in love with his fiancée; to see her (or believe he sees her) with another man hurts him deeply. However, I try not to make to many presumptions about the characters I play because I know my initial response to Claudio is the result of looking at him in isolation, and that impression will begin to change as soon as I start work with the company. Other peoples’ reactions will feed into the way I play Claudio – without dictating anything, of course. It's a mistake to make a presumption about a character and stick with it to the bitter end regardless, because obviously you learn so much about any character during rehearsals.

I saw a couple of productions before I read Much Ado About Nothing and each time Claudio denounced Hero, I found myself wondering ‘what on earth was he doing?!’ I hated him in the wedding scene when he seemed to go absolutely crazy: I couldn’t see why he was acting in that way and the illogic of it made him look absolutely ridiculous. I think I disliked that Claudio so much was because the reasons why he did what he did were unclear: the character's journey wasn’t made clear so it felt like he exploded out of nowhere in the wedding scene and started raving like a madman. I want people to understand his motivation. I want Claudio to be liked… I think showing his journey in a very clear way – what actually happens, what he does and why he does it – is going to be very important if I’m going to play him sympathetically.

Two routes

Claudio can be seen as a bit arrogant or jumped up, but you have to try and explain that characteristic rather than just stating simply ‘Okay, he's arrogant’. Don John says of Claudio

That young start-up hath all the glory of my overthrow; if I can cross him any way, I bless myself every way.
(I.3.61-2)

I think that a start-up is someone who has done incredibly well for themselves in a short space of time (probably the wars they’ve just returned from, in Claudio's case). Suddenly this very young man finds that some of the things he has done have earnt him respect; he's amongst the big men now. There's a sense that Claudio is quite proud that he's playing with the big boys. The arrogance about him seems to say ‘Well, now I’m a man’. I think I’d rather play Claudio as the boy who says ‘Now I’m a man’ (though he's still rather anxious about his position), instead of someone who is flatly arrogant. I think people will follow Claudio's journey more closely if they can explain his arrogance. I don’t want to play someone whom people just can’t be bothered with!

Balance

It sounds over-the-top, but I really do think that you have to love your character from the start of rehearsal. I mentioned that presuming too much in isolation was a bad idea because other people influence you when you start working as a group: the flip side of that is that you take on too many of these influences… unless you love your character, you can lose them in amongst other people's opinions. You get to hear other people's views in rehearsal but these are often rooted in the characters those people are playing. Almost without knowing it, they react to your character in character - there is all sorts of back-history influencing what they say. It's hard to take a neutral point of view. I try to find a balance: I’ll go into rehearsal and listen to my natural instinct as well as what other people say. I also try to look carefully at other peoples’ ideas: ‘Well, what elements of that are going to make me play this character sincerely as a human being?’ You can’t assume that a character is necessarily to be hated. Last season, Kathryn Hunter's Richard III made me feel like that – there were moments when you felt you understood why Richard is as he is. That doesn’t excuse anything, but it makes the character more human and the play more interesting. No one is perfect and Claudio does make some huge mistakes, but I want to make audiences see that he wasn’t aware of Don John's trap and from where he's standing, he hasn’t done anything wrong. He's truly shocked when Leonato accuses him of villainy (V.1). You have to keep these central things in mind and take from other people's ideas what is most helpful to you.

Back at the Globe

The first day back was very strange. Meeting all those new people at once is quite nerve-wrecking. Initially a Meet and Greet feels a bit like a school disco – you want to sit down or stand around the edges, but you can’t because you would look very odd and miss out on all the introductions. The awkwardness wore off quickly though and we had a really good day. We all got to know each other and had a tour of the building and learnt about the roles of all the other people in the building. We got together as a company at the end of the day and held a small ceremony or ritual where we blessed the play, the theatre, and ourselves … we touched base with our personal aims for the season and said thank-you to everyone who helped us to get here. By the end of the day I don’t think anyone could wait to get started on rehearsals.

First day of rehearsal

Tamara got us working on our feet straightaway; we didn’t do a normal read-through with everyone sat still, going through parts in a very static way. Instead we did lots of physical exercises. For instance, we put all the chairs in a circle and the middle of the circle was the stage. When it was your turn to speak, you went into the centre of the circle and whenever you mentioned another character (even if you just said ‘he’ or ‘she’) everyone had to point at them and they had to stand up. It stressed that the whole play is full of people who are constantly talking about other people: there's lots of gossiping and that made me realise how important the relationships in this play are going to be. In another exercise, we had to interrupt each other: we couldn’t let the person before us finish speaking and, in turn, we weren’t allowed to finish our lines by the person after us! Overlapping like this made some lines some much more realistic – in real life you don’t always wait patiently to take your turn in conversation, you anticipate and interrupt. Then, still interrupting each other, we ran the lines at speed: I thought that was great because it really highlighted which bits of the play work well spoken fast, with lots of interruption, as well as the bits that you had to wait for another character to get out properly before you spoke, because your response depended on hearing them out in full. The exercises also helped get rid of any nerves; whilst I was concentrating on pointing or interrupting or running across the room, I wasn’t getting up tight about what other people were thinking. After the first day, I think everyone just relaxed and thought ‘right, let's do this’.

Vocal centre

As well as rehearsals, we have group sessions scheduled with the Masters of Voice, Word, Movement and Dance. Today my group had a session with Stewart [Pearce, Master of Voice]: we concentrated on bringing a stillness to our bodies so our breath came naturally – it feels great, as though that's just where it wants to be. We had to try and centre ourselves not only vocally, but also spiritually because a lot of how you breathe is connected with how you feel and your state of mind. Then we went out onto the Globe stage and counted how many breaths it took us to get from one end of the stage to the other, then how many to cross the diagonal, then how many to get downstage from upstage. This is important because we’ll need to know how much breath we need to get where we’re going, whilst saying what we have to say in a way that actually reaches the audience. It's harder than it sounds! I did find a lovely point in the centre of the stage, right at the front. When you stand here and speak, it feels like the sound vibrates around the whole theatre …. I don’t know, it's almost as though the ‘O’ is an instrument that you can play using your voice. It sounds really nice.

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Rehearsal notes 2

  • Update
  • Playing a man
  • Tudor Group
  • Act II, scene 1
  • Discoveries
  • Doubt
  • Disguises

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.

Update

I’m getting really excited about it all; I’m starting to have sleepless nights! My costume fitting yesterday was just incredible – the costume looks amazing. I’ve got a silvery-blue doublet actually made out of silk, and blue hose which are very big but actually look great. There are two colours in the hose so they’ll really shine (I think the material's satin). For the wedding scene, I’ve got another jerkin which I think is silk, too. There are also collars and then a ruff… lots of layers and pieces. It's a good thing we have dressers to help us into costume. The idea of a ruff is horrific, but it looks so good! At drama school, when I played Queen Elizabeth as a joke, I had a massive ruff but this one is a man's ruff and looks very good.

Playing a man

Yesterday was the first time I tried my costume on. It's not that hard to look like a man once you’re in costume because obviously you’re wearing men's clothes, and in some ways being dressed like that helps you access the character's maleness. There isn’t much you can do about having a female face apart from putting on a false beard and Claudio doesn’t have a beard – Benedick calls him ‘Lord Lackbeard’ [V.1.185]. But that got me thinking about how I am going to become this man; what can I change to seem more like a man? I suppose appreciating Claudio as a man has been today's revelation! I’ve got to understand what Claudio says and why he says it, I’ve got to understand his relationships with other people and all the thoughts and feelings attached to those relationships. I’ve got to understand the words, the words, the words! But there's another element to performing all that convincingly, and that is Claudio's maleness. He is a man and that means I’ll have to do some things differently. That's the point I’m at now: I’m saying to myself 'Okay, you’ve got to be a boy.' This season I feel we’re exploring that in more depth. Whereas last season a lot of us said ‘Oh no, don’t try and change your voice’, this season I’m experimenting a bit more. Vocally, I do think there's a lower register that's more suitable than my own voice. I was trying it out today, not whilst we were rehearsing but just in the breaks. I didn’t find a male tone easy to access – I had to keep humming low. I like it because I feel more like a man when I speak like that, but obviously I have to see how it comes across when you look at Claudio from the outside rather than from the inside. There are times when I really do feel like a man and then there are times when I don’t at all; it's to do with things like where you put your voice, how you hold your body, and the attitude you assume. To some extent, those things are dependent on the play … of course the situations in the play and the text itself will give you directions. If Claudio is embarrassed, he’ll hold himself in a certain way and assume a particular attitude. But I think it would be quite easy to play the character without factoring in certain things that stem from the fact that the character is a man.

Tudor Group

A lot of the standing and bowing that the Tudor Group taught us when they came into rehearsal was very useful, because Elizabethan men would have stood in a certain way. It was nice to take that on board; all the information adds up. The footwork they showed us really made a difference because suddenly these Elizabethan-style shoes looked right when we stood in a particular way, almost like ballet dancers. As I said before, being men last season was a very different kind of experience; it was more like assuming a contemporary male pose – you know, chest stuck out. I don’t think that modern stance really worked in the context of original practices, because on the one hand you’ve got these stunning Elizabethan costumes but on the other hand you’ve got quite modern mannerisms. Some of us must have looked quite strange! I can’t remember where I was when the Tudor Group came in last year, or whether I decided to abandon the Elizabethan aspects of Catesby [Ann's character in Richard III] but I don’t think I ever really thought about the discrepancy between our costumes and our behaviour. This time round I’m more appreciative of the fact that Claudio is an Elizabethan man – the Tudor Group work helped me realise how interlinked those two aspects of his character are. Modern men are so different to Elizabethan men and learning the proper Elizabethan gestures is another way of eliminating modern man. The Tudor Group said our movements should be all about control and refinement rather than suppressed power, which I think is better for us as women playing men. It's nice not to have to go to the other extreme of aggressive, macho behaviour. I found all that information really reassuring, and I think my costume is going to help me assume the right attitude too: I don’t have to remember to stand straight in it because the doublet is pulled tight and you can’t do anything but stand upright! At the moment I’m walking slowly in my costume, as though it's armour, and it's nice to feel strong and powerful. It will be odd when I get onstage though because I’ll be thinking ‘Oh, I’m just walking like a fool’ – not necessarily feeling comfortable in the costume will be scary, but I feel that the more I learn about the time period, the more comfortable I’ll be with the costume and Elizabethan attitudes and mannerisms.

Today: Act II, scene 1

I came in today at ten o’clock and worked on Claudio. He's just been told that his friend Don Pedro is in love with and will marry Hero [II.1]. Claudio speaks to himself and the audience about this in a soliloquy [‘Thus answer I in name of Benedick’ II.1.157-67]. It's a short section of verse in between two prose conversations and we worked on those lines in a really good way using a ball. I threw a ball into the air on the last beat in a line – not the last word, but the last stressed syllable in the line – and then caught it on the first stressed syllable of the next line. Imagine iambic pentameter rhythm going de-dum de-dum de-dum de-dum de-dum; I’m throwing on the last ‘dum’ and catching it on the first ‘dum’ of the following line. That helped me work with end-stopped lines because it showed their continuation in a physical way; I could visualise how Claudio's thoughts carry across the line endings and where his next thoughts come from. For instance, Claudio says:

’Tis certain so; the Prince woos for himself.
Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love;
[II.1.159-63]

I would throw the ball up on ‘self’ [see underlined above] and catch it on ‘ship’: the Prince's betrayal leads Claudio to think about friendship and constancy. After the ball exercise, the lines sounded more natural. It was helpful because I’ve never stressed the second beat in a line. We also put actions to the character's thoughts – acting out what the character is trying to do to whoever they’re speaking to – and that also helped to make the intentions behind the lines clearer.

Discoveries

One of the things I discovered from working on Act II, scene 1, is that Claudio's relationship with Hero has been purely visual. He sees her as very beautiful in a way that is something to be looked on. In his soliloquy [II.1], there's an emphasis on eyes:

Let every eye negotiate for itself,
And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch
Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.
[II.1.163-5]

When I first explain to Don Pedro that I’ve fallen in love with Hero, I begin ‘I looked upon her with a soldiers eye’ [I.1.277]. It's just the way I say ‘looked’. Even then, looking is important.

After working on the soliloquy [II.1], I also realised that I take responsibility for what's happened (or rather what I believe has happened). At first I accuse Don Pedro because I think he's guilty of falling in love with Hero and taking her for himself. That leads me to think that I should have wooed her on my own behalf. I don’t lay into Hero, but I do slate beauty, and in the end I come to a conclusion of my own – without being bitter necessarily – that beauty ‘is a witch’ and therefore I should not have trusted an agent. I learn and I do take responsibility for the situation. I think that's an excellent trait, especially as he makes such a mess later on in the wedding scene [IV.1].

Doubt

Early on, I think Claudio has seeds of doubt about Don Pedro's offer to woo Hero. The main thing that makes me say this is that when I’ve explained how I came to love Hero [I.1], Don Pedro calls it ‘twisting’ so fine a story. I think what I have to say is major: the facts I’ve got to keep hold of are that I’m in love, I’ve seen the girl of my dreams and I think I’d have doubts about someone else speaking to that person and declaring love for them as me. I’d like to do it, possibly. I’m at the stage where I just want to do what he's doing; I would rather do it than someone else.

I certainly regret Don Pedro wooing Hero later on – ‘Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues’ [II.1.162] – I think just tongues, the whole speaking aspect, you know, just tell someone you love them, woo for yourself. Like all Shakespeare's lovers. Viola says in Twelfth Night

I’ll do my best
To woo your lady – yet a barful strife –
Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife.
[I.5.40-3]

Similarly Claudio has that feeling of wanting to woo… the same impulse makes me arrange to play music at Hero's window and send her gloves. There all these things you’d want to do if you were in love with someone. So there are definitely seeds of doubt and Don Pedro's attitude towards the whole thing has surprised me: I’d rather do it myself and take it slowly.

Disguises

Also, what I discovered yesterday is that none of the disguises work. I was taking it for granted before that Don Pedro looks like me for the stand-in wooing to work, but he doesn’t! He doesn’t in the play, anyway, because I’m described as a lamb [I.1.12-6], which I know doesn’t necessarily have to refer to him physically but it does suggest how he looks. I might have doubts, I think, from being at the party watching everyone else, and maybe hearing snippets of conversations… so when Don John tells me that Don Pedro has declared his love for Hero and is going to marry her, I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t believe it. In fact, I think this is easier to believe than the possibility that Hero is having an affair. Although as a character I have to believe in that later on. As the actor I find Don Pedro's proposal easier to believe because I can’t see any reason why I shouldn’t, but I’ve got to get my head around it. Maybe having been through one big doubt, he would be more susceptible to a second crisis of faith; I’m young and impressionable and if the evidence says she's guilty… well, because I’ve been a fool once I probably won’t want to look like a fool again.

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Rehearsal notes 3

  • Approach
  • Wedding scene
  • Vulnerability
  • Hero
  • Audience
  • Disbelief: III.2

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.

Approach

I’m at a stage this week where I’m thinking a lot and I don’t want to be thinking any more! Or rather, I want to play this character and discover what it's like to be that person, so thinking about Claudio in an analytical way is not really very helpful. I just want explore everything from this person's perspective. Why are they doing this, how do they feel? I’m not near enough to Claudio to be able to do that all the time. The text gives you other people's opinions about what this person is like. I might not agree with those opinions but I’m not sure about my own alternatives yet. For example, Claudio knows he's not going to marry Hero straightaway in the wedding scene [IV.1], but how would you play it in that situation: light? The book says ‘sudden aggressiveness is in bad taste’ – that's actually what it says in the notes of my edition. I’m thinking a lot about what I’m going to do. I just want to answer all the questions for that character rather than from an analytical point of view.

Wedding scene [IV.1]

Today we read the scene through, analysing what different people said and putting the lines into our own words to make sure we understood it all. If you have to put the lines into modern speech, you can't gloss over any points where you’re uncertain about the meaning. In terms of a process, though, it felt like we just got up and did it! Actually, I was quite surprised because Tamara [Harvey, Master of Play] didn’t give us as many preparatory exercises to do on this scene as she usually does. It was a very good session; I’ve been thinking about how Claudio should come into that scene because, as I said, he knows straightaway that he's not going to marry her. I really like the idea that he doesn’t come into the scene with the sole purpose of shaming her either. Claudio doesn’t want to be cruel, and he doesn’t approach Leonato with the attitude ‘I’m going to disgrace your daughter’. I didn’t start off along those lines, then I realised halfway through the session that it would be much better to stop thinking about it in terms of Claudio having a go at Hero: that was really nice because I actually took on board that everyone else in the scene was asking ‘Can this be true?’ and I wanted to answer those questions, making my case for disregarding Hero like a lawyer. I believe Leonato has to listen to my accusations: I really believe that Hero has done a terrible thing and I’ve got every right to state my case against her.

Vulnerability

I also enjoyed an exercise we did where I had to turn to different people as I needed them – that helped me find out where Claudio's support comes from in this scene. It's especially useful because the thing I want is Claudio's vulnerability: I want him to be very vulnerable and I haven’t got that yet. You can only get at that in a situation where you need other people, so it was nice to be a situation where I needed somebody and there were people there to offer support. It's hard to be vulnerable; you have to find the right actions. Today I held onto both Belinda [Davidson, Don Pedro] and Rachel [Sanders, Don John] when I asked Hero to deny that she had spoken to someone at her bedroom window. That felt like they were supporting me: I needed their help to say what I had to say.

Hero

At one point I physically passed Hero around to other people in the scene, which was great because Mariah [Gale, Hero] and I don’t have the same close connection that the characters in the play have. So much of acting is to do with pretending: to hold someone who you’re supposedly in love with and explore your relationship with that person in the context of a scene... it's great. It gave a very different feel to the scene – a vulnerability – and having to say goodbye to her as well – I love that. We could sit down with the lines

But fare thee well, most foul, most fair! Farewell,
Thou pure impiety and impious purity!
For thee I’ll lock up all the gates of love,
And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang,
To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm,
And never shall it more be gracious.
[IV.1.98-106]

And we could say ‘Well, you’re saying bye here,’ but to actually physically discover that is ten times better because you see how it can work. It's like you’re more sensitive to the shifts in the dynamic between the two characters. I felt ‘pure impiety’ helped me say goodbye to Hero, but ‘for thee’ took me back to her – Don Pedro helped me step away.

Audience

I really like using the audience as the congregation in that scene [IV.1]. I find using Tamara and Laura as an audience quite strange at that point: they're two people who you have to transform into a whole crowd. Also, they’re on the look-out for specific things in the rehearsal room so they don't engage with the performance in the same ways as a normal audience. Sometimes when I look at Tamara sometimes I 'come out' of the place where I am as Claudio. That can't be helped; you can’t really imagine what the audience will be like.

Last year [in Richard III] I had to direct lines out to the audience; I was so frightened, and I was terrible! I think it will be easier this year with Much Ado About Nothing, because I’m using the audience as part of the action. When you just have an aside that seems to come from nowhere and you’ve had no previous contact like that with the audience, then it's a different story. I used to think ‘They’re not going to care about what I have to say.’

Disbelief [III.2]

I loved rehearsing the scene when Don John comes to tell Claudio and Don Pedro that he knows that Hero is unfaithful [III.2] – Belinda [Davidson, Don Pedro] and I just laughed the whole way through, not believing him. I loved the distance between us, which just felt so right. We spread right over the stage. The laughing was funny because I thought I'd taken it a bit too far and Don Pedro sort of went ‘Come on now, shut up’ – I felt a bit uncomfortable but maybe that's why it worked so well. Claudio is quite young; there probably would be times when he goes a bit too far. Right now, most of my thoughts are more to do with how I’m going to play it and what kind of person Claudio is. I really do like him.

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Rehearsal notes 4

  • This week
  • Missing scene
  • Mixing tones
  • Another useful exercises
  • Back onstage

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.

This week

We’ve done some more work on the wedding scene over the last week. We rehearsed it with everyone else – including Hero's waiting women – and that changed things because suddenly I had to take new people and their points of view into consideration. When we first ran it like this, I was quite disturbed by the presence of the women, because I felt that they were suggesting that Hero was innocent and they seemed to be protecting her physically. That made me think that I had to prove that she wasn’t innocent – trying to prove that to people who actually believed in her innocence gave the scene a different dynamic.

I rely on Hero most of all to get through that scene. The way we’d been playing it, I looked up to Don Pedro a lot and there were points in the scene when I relied on him and on his brother. In terms of how we’re playing it now, however, a lot of what I receive comes from Hero as opposed to everyone else. I think Claudio relies on Hero quite a lot in terms of how he feels, and what he does. I rely on what I know and what I’ve seen, with prompting and stability from Don Pedro. I also have to rely on Don John a bit more because it's his words that convince us, after all.

Missing scene

Sometimes Claudio gets criticised for believing Don John's story so readily. I think from the audience's point of view, there's a whole scene that we don’t see. I don’t actually believe Don John easily in Act three, scene three. I say what I’ll do if Hero has cheated on me, if Hero is a strumpet, but I’m not convinced that she is disloyal at that point. Don Pedro describes what happened to convince us later on [IV.185-92] and that's so important because it shows the audience what we actually saw. Don John doesn’t just come in and say ‘Hero is unfaithful’ and we don’t just agree, ‘Yeah, she is.’ We have to be convinced that she is and that's the scene the audience don’t actually see, except for the description. I think my reaction to Don John's initial allegation is quite fast. I’m quick to say I would shame her, but that's an instinct: because I feel so strongly for her, it's as though at that moment I’m thinking ‘I love you so much I hate you!’

Mixing tones

Yesterday we worked on Act five, scene one. Don Pedro and I find out that Hero's dead and then learn she's innocent in an emotional scene that's mixed with high comedy, and I think that mix of tones is deliberate. It's a device. I think the comedy and the tragedy should be equally strong, and they should stand up next to each other so that the audience could see both. It would be awful to come down heavily on either side; they should stand side by side because the contrast wouldn’t be there unless it was useful. I’m hoping that the way we play the scene won’t favour one thing over the other. It's a bit like this exercise with two people and two chairs; one chair is empty and one person sits down, really happy. Another person comes in really sad and sits down, and then they look at each other. The person who was happy takes on the sadness and the person who was sad takes on the happiness, and it's hilarious but tragic at the same time. It's so funny, but it's so sad to see the person who is now sad. I think the scene is similar. It shows two opposites: you see how funny it is and you see how sad it is at the same time. Like when people sometimes laugh at funerals: they laugh, they stop, then they start again.

Another useful exercise

We did a different chair exercise involving rhythm that was good. I had to stand on a chair on the second beat of each line and on the final beat of each line. It was quite focusing; it helped give direction to what I said and it also helped to place things. There were lots of chairs set out and certain chairs meant certain things. One chair meant love and one meant war, so when I talked about either love or war, I went for the corresponding chair. The chairs took on associations with different feelings, as everything does – for instance, I think of my University and I have different feelings than when I think of my Drama school. So that exercise was quite helpful. We’ve also been working on verse with Giles [Block, Master of the Words], looking at thought-patterns and how long they are, as well as the way the lines end. You can find out a lot about what's going on with a person just by highlighting the word that they finish on.

Back onstage

We’ve been onstage again for a voice session with Stewart [Pearce, Master of Voice]. This time we tried out different volumes, scaled from one to ten. Speaking on stage, ten is the ‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen’ sort of level that you need to do that kind of oratory. Level one is much softer. Some of us went out into the different galleries to hear the others whilst they tried out different volumes. The idea is that you can still be heard when you speak at level one, but you communicate something different with that volume than you do with volume ten. We weren’t necessarily appealing to ‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen’… it's more intimate speech, though everyone in the galleries can still hear you.

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Rehearsal notes 5

  • First run
  • Exploring relationships: Claudio, Don Pedro & Don John
  • Influences
  • Current thoughts

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.

First run

The run the other day was fun, it was really good because it highlighted areas we had to work on. It was a great opportunity to see the whole play and piece it all together. We had a bit of an audience, too: other people working on the production, which was nice. The rehearsal period has gone quite quickly. I wish we had three months to rehearse, because there are so many people to learn things from, like Glynn [MacDonald, Master of Movement], Stewart [Pearce, Master of Voice], and Giles [Block, Master of the Words]. In a way, we have got three months because we’re doing the show for that period of time, but it would be nice to go on stage for the very first time with that period behind you; to get that utter confidence without any holes. I think we are going to try and achieve that in the time we’ve got left because I certainly feel that I know where the holes are and I’m trying to fill them. I don’t really mean holes; it's just a case of progressing further. We’ve worked on so much so far, and there's still more to be achieved. That's what I’d love to have more time to do, and that's going to happen during the run. It's just lovely when you start to feel that happening and when you see that happening in other people as well. I enjoyed the run because it was a great opportunity to sort out what I would like to work on, and what the character needs for me to feel that it's presentable. The main points were to do with my relationships at particular moments, my voice and physicality, and being that character. A lot of it is being the character that I feel and that the play requires, but the physical and vocal bits are also necessary to wash away ‘Ann’ and become Claudio.

Exploring relationships: Claudio, Don Pedro, and Don John

Rachel [Sanders, Don John], Belinda [Davidson, Don Pedro] and I did an exercise before lunch today where we had to tell each other who we were and what our position was. For example, Don Pedro said to me: ‘I am Don Pedro, Prince of Aragon,’ and I said ‘I am Count Claudio.’ He then said ‘I am your Prince’ and I said ‘I am your servant.’ Then we had to say what we wanted, so he said, ‘I want you to share your life with me’ but what he really meant was ‘I want to share my life with you!’ I said I wanted Don Pedro to be my father – I was thinking about him wanting to share his life with me because it's true, he loves me.

On the other hand, Don John certainly doesn’t care for me. The commitment to that was quite helpful because afterwards we went on to say what we wanted before each line we spoke in Act two, scene three. That's the scene when Don John comes in to tell Don Pedro and Claudio that Hero is being disloyal, and stating what we wanted before each line brought out a lot of things. For instance, I had found the part where Don John says to Claudio and Don Pedro ‘If you will follow me’ a bit difficult [III.2.108]. The line isn’t necessarily an instant ‘Follow me now’ but it does lend itself to an action. I think Don John's really saying ‘Come with me tonight and I’ll show you what I’ve been talking about, if you follow me.’ Once we had the intention there, right before the line, there was no need to add anything for that to make sense. It made sense already. So the exercise helped strengthen that moment.

I think it's quite a tricky scene, especially for Rachel [Sanders, Don John] because this scene is the first time that we all meet together, just the three of us, and Don John is embarking on a very dangerous project. If he is found to be a liar, his relationship with the Prince would definitely be over, and there's certainly a lot at stake for him. He has to do his job really well. There's a lot of pressure on him, and I think how that particular part is performed is quite tricky. Basically, Act three, scene two is about believing or disbelieving Don John, and I found there were times when I believed Don John and times when I didn’t. However Rachel chooses to perform it, the idea is that she performs it in a way that our characters will believe. Whether the character believes another character is different from me (as an actor) believing another actor, so it's a bit complicated. We’ll just have to see what happens. We’ve got another run this afternoon.

Influences

I see people and the way they behave near my home in London – there are lots of Claudios that are gorgeous! I’ve seen guys that I think would make exquisite Claudios, and I long to get in their shoes. Earlier in rehearsals, I had a week when I just walked behind guys, copying their walks because they were so cool. There was one guy who was so slow – he was walking at a normal speed, but it looked so slow that it must’ve taken loads of confidence. If I could act like that guy, then my life would be complete!

Holidays are also good times to see people and how they behave. I went to Lanzarote on my own for my last holiday. When you meet other people on their own, they’re often characters and they pour their heart out to you almost without knowing it. They tell you so much more than they would if you happened to meet on the Tube in London, and yet they are people that you could meet on the Tube in London. They’re just on holiday and making friends, so they’re more open, I suppose.

I’ve been to quite a few places: Nigeria, Tunisia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Turkey. When I travel, I look at people and their lives, and it amazes me (as it would anyone). I always think ‘I’ll knick that for acting.’ Nigeria was just another world. I wasn’t an actor then, but I remember things that influence my acting – how people tell stories, for instance; it's as much a storytelling nature as a case of ‘I’m going to tell you a story.’ I think there's a production of Mother Courage on at the moment with an all black cast, and I’d love to see that because these are characters that you see today. A lot of the theatre I grew up with did not necessarily have black actors or actresses – I had to go and find that. So it's nice to see part of the world I grew up in, in a play.

Current thoughts

I love doing this play. Hero's amazing! I love it, and it feels very different from last year [2003 Season]. It's also very exciting because there's a lot to learn from this play. I like it because it's got love in it and there's so much love in the characters. It's about finding the absolutely perfect match, finding the right person and admitting it. There will be a day when we all come away and go ‘Guys – that was it,’ because Much Ado does have all these moments about finding your match and admitting it. That just needs to happen on stage when we all realise what we’ve got, what this is about, and what we’re doing. It's about all linking together, which sounds cheesy but it's true. I feel so secure on the stage; I feel like there's no one in the company that doesn’t care. Everyone's got their heart and soul in it.

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