GlobeLink :: Hero

Hero

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About Mariah Gale

This is Mariah's first season at Shakespeare's Globe. Whilst training at the Guildhall, her Shakespearean roles included Rosalind in As You Like It and Isabella in Measure for Measure. Since graduating, she has performed in Crispin Bonham Carter's production of Stealing Sweets and Punching People. She has also performed at the Chichester Festival Theatre.

Rehearsal notes 1
Rehearsal notes 2
Rehearsal notes 3
Rehearsal notes 4
Rehearsal notes 5
Rehearsal notes 6
Rehearsal notes 7
Activities 1
Activities 2
'Ask Your Actor' bulletin

Rehearsal notes 1

Auditions & mischief
Ideas about Hero
All-female Company
New
First day
Point
No accident
Learning lines

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.

Auditions and mischief

I chose to do Hero's first scene with Margaret and Ursula for my audition (III.1) – they’re plotting to get Beatrice and Benedick together and there's a real sense of energetic joyfulness and playfulness there. For the first time we get to see Hero's mischievous side. It's also the biggest stretch of conversation she has; she doesn’t actually speak very much in the scenes until that point though she's often onstage, and I’m thinking a lot at the moment about why that might be. Silence speaks volumes with Shakespeare – it's never an accident when he brings someone onstage and keeps them silent – but I don’t want to jump to any conclusions about Hero's silence just yet. It's early days and I want to explore lots of possibilities. I also learnt some lines from the chapel scene (IV.1) because that's such a completely different situation for the character; tricking Beatrice is very light-hearted and fun, while Claudio's accusations are a matter of life and death for Hero. I enjoyed the audition itself: I really committed to the first scene I read, then Tamara asked me just to sit down and tell her about it… it's like Giles says when we’re working on the text – because the lines are Shakespeare and they are full of such beautiful poetry, people tend to text the text too formally and you forget that it's just you speaking. I fall into that trap myself – I’m aiming to bring it back and make it real.

Ideas about Hero

My first impression of Hero is that she would never do anything to hurt Claudio. I think that's what makes his accusations against her so painful – he is the person she loves most in the world and he has turned against her, whilst seriously misjudging the constancy and honour at the core of her character. She forgives him and her father for making her feel so small and awful because her love is unconditional and constant. That's the wonderful thing about the story: although things do go wrong, the possibility of tragedy only makes it more wonderful when everything is put to rights in the end. Without exploring darkness you can’t really appreciate light; unless you really believe that Claudio leaves Hero for good in the wedding scene, you won’t feel such wonderful surprise at the end.

All-female company

I was really intrigued when I first heard that the all-female company would be doing Much Ado About Nothing. There seemed more obvious choices of play for a same-sex cast; As You Like It and Twelfth Night play around with gender roles in a more overt way than Much Ado About Nothing. The all-male company did Twelfth Night two seasons ago, so obviously that wouldn’t be brought back now, but I could see how the idea of a forbidden love affair in Romeo and Juliet could translate into something slightly different with a same-sex cast… whereas when I first read Much Ado About Nothing, it seemed to be so centred on heterosexual love: I just thought ‘My God, how are we going to do this with an all-female company?’ Suddenly I realised Much Ado About Nothing is very much concerned with the relationships between men and women… their attitudes to marriage and their conventional gender roles. The all-female company will allow a really interesting slant on those things – and I think it will also throw all the other important relationships in the play into relief. In some productions the Beatrice-Benedick relationship is a bit overwhelming: an all-female cast will perhaps channel attention onto the story of the play in a new and different way. Aside from the story of the play, I’m finding that there's something about a cast of women that has a real energy, like electricity… I can’t describe what it is, but if there had been one male actor I know the group dynamic would have been completely different. I don’t know how to describe it; there's a different quality to our focus… it's very unified and channelled, and maybe that's because it's all female energy? I don’t know [laughs].

New

I’ve only just left drama school, so coming to the Globe has been very exciting but also quite nerve-wrecking. At drama school you’re mostly working with people of your own age and experience, but here I’m walking into a rehearsal room with all these women who have such a breadth of experience. My first professional job was a children's Christmas play and this is the first piece of professional Shakespeare I’ve done; I feel very … new! [laughs] It's not only the range of theatrical experience in the Company that I find impressive – it's the life experience too: they ‘ve experienced more and they carry a certain power with them that you don’t get with people my age. I’d sort of forgotten that I’ve only been experiencing a really narrow spectrum of experience and to come here into a pool of experience that is so rich – well, I’m trying not to be too scared. The Meet and Greet was great; it really helped me find my feet and everyone was so welcoming. You don’t feel like you’re just being shipped in to play a part then after that's over you leave. Everyone wants you to learn something more lasting from the production (be it the Masters or whoever), and grow in yourself as an actor. It's a powerful manifesto. We ended the first day with a sort of ritual that was a welcome and a blessing: it just brought us into the space and set out our hopes for the production. I feel more secure because of that, which is really important as some of the most electric acting comes from taking risks and, in doing so, making yourself vulnerable. Playing safe all the time isn’t interesting for anybody, but to play around and take risks you have to feel comfortable enough to fall over and make mistakes in rehearsals: you have to know that other people will catch you if you fall, and if you do something that involves a real exposure, you’re not going to get prodded whilst you’re still raw. I’m really going to enjoy the security here because it feels like I can take more risks with my character.

First day

We didn’t just sit round and do a formal read-through on the first day. Straight away we were up on our feet doing different things with the lines. One exercise involved a speed-run where we had to interrupt the character you were speaking with, and that really takes your mind of any nerves because you had another task to focus on. Sometimes you can get really tense if you’re just concentrating on saying the lines – you feel like you should be performing or showing something straightaway … instead we had fun. I enjoyed making things physical from the beginning – it's so important to get the play off the page. The text on the page is just the beginning of the story, like the tip of an iceberg, and there's a wealth of things underneath but you have to use your imagination and remember it's a play to be performed not a novel to be read. It's about the actions of physical bodies in a space and how they affect each other.

Point

Another exercise I found really useful involved lots of pointing. We did a run-through where we sat in a circle and everyone had to point at the character to whom their lines referred, then that character had to stand up. Hero gets talked about a lot! In the wedding scene, I felt so vulnerable with the whole room pointing at me – how Hero must feel when everyone is accusing her. That scene [IV.1] was a real contrast to V.1 when I’m supposed dead; Claudio avoids talking about me when nearly all the other characters talk of little else. I just kept standing up when I was pointed at and stayed silent. It made me think of Hero as casting a shadow over that whole scene, which I suppose she does in an emotional way. This exercise also reminded us that we weren’t acting in our own little bubbles. It's easy to get lost in your own ideas and images with such beautifully poetic language: you can forget that the scenes involve you in an active relationship with someone else… at the heart of the play, there are people doing things to other people, not passive insular reflections. I think in play especially, characters are always talking about each other and gossiping and eavesdropping – Antonio's man overhears Claudio and the Prince in the orchard, the Watch overhear Borachio and learn about the plan to dishonour Hero, and Benedick and Beatrice overhear talk of how much each loves the other. It's as though there's a whole chain of people listening at keyholes and the truth gets scrambled along the way, either by mistake or on purpose.

What I’m finding quite tricky to get my head around at the moment is all the disguise and deception. I’m finding it hard to understand why the Prince woos Hero as Claudio in the masked ball [II.1], and that's just the beginning of a whole string of deceptions and disguises. Margaret is taken for Hero, Borachio is taken for a criminal called Deformed and at the end Hero is brought back to life as her uncle's child. I haven’t really got the bottom of the reasons for this. I think the idea of disguising an outward appearance also feeds into the language: Giles [Block, Master of the Words] was talking about how much of the play is written in prose and that often happens when people are hiding their true feelings. All the witty banter is layered on top of something quite raw. The banter also often means that you can talk about everyone else without ever having to reveal much about yourself or how you’re feeling inside. All that will have to be explored.

No accident

The pointing exercise also made me realise that it's important to look at how characters refer to themselves and each other: nothing in Shakespeare is an accident. If a character keeps referring to themselves ‘I, I, me, me, me, I’ that says something about the character and how they feel; in the wedding scene, Leonato says

… Grieved I, I had but one?
Chid I for that at frugal Nature's frame?
O, one too much by thee! Why had I one?
(IV.1.125-27)

He's breaking up inside and the repetition of ‘I’ hammers home his personal suffering at Hero's dishonour. I’m also going to look out for the terms of address ‘you’, ‘thee’ and ‘my lord’. I noticed that Hero refers to Claudio as ‘my lord’ for the first time in the wedding scene: ‘Is my lord well, that he doth speak so wide?’ That she should claim him in that way just before he disowns her makes the way he behaves towards her even more shocking.

Learning lines

I’m always in two minds about learning my lines prior to rehearsals. When I found out I’d got the part, I actually started learning the lines (it's something I nearly always wish I’d started sooner and one less thing to worry about in rehearsals) but then I stopped, because if you learn them without really understanding what they mean, then you could just end up shooting yourself in the foot. If you discovered a different meaning in a line having already learnt to say it one way, you’d have to break out of that rhythm which could be quite tricky. I find it easier to explore a part without having the lines set in my head. Sometimes you find that you become so well acquainted with the meanings behind the lines, that only those words will do. Basically I’m still undecided about where line-learning comes in the process of preparing for a part; I haven’t learnt my lines yet but I’ll have to get on with it soon!

Activities 1

Getting the point
Welcome to the Globe

These activities are designed to be incorporated by teachers into their individual schemes of work. The activities reflect key challenges faced by the adopted actors during the rehearsal period; they cover a range of different ability levels and focus on different areas of the curriculum. We advise that teachers select the activities which are appropriate for their students and adapt them where necessary. We hope that teachers will develop their own activities based on the material in the bulletins: we would love to hear about them and share them with other members – please send them to globelink@shakespearesglobe.com

Activity 1

Getting the point

Materials: Copy of V.1 and IV.1 for each student, pens, paper
Time: 40 minutes
Type: Groups of 12

Mariah describes a pointing exercise the White Company did early on in rehearsals that helped them get to grips with the story and the relationships between characters in Much Ado About Nothing. The Company sat in a circle and each actor moved ‘onstage’ to the centre of the circle when their turn came to speak their lines. Whenever a reference to another character came up, that character had to stand up and everyone else had to point at them until the reference passed. For example, the pointing pattern would be as follows in Act V, scene 1 (when the Watch brings Conrade and Borachio before the Prince and Don John's lies about Hero are revealed)…

Don Pedro:
Who have you [point to Borachio & Conrade] offended, masters [point#2], that you [point#3] are thus bound to your [point#4] answer? This learned Constable [point to Dogberry] is too cunning to be understood; what's your [point#5] offence?

1) Get into groups of 12 and allocate the roles of Dogberry, Verges, the Sexton, Conrade, Borachio, Don Pedro, Don John, Hero, Margaret, Claudio, Antonio and Leonato. Sit in a circle and read-through Act V, scene 1 as Mariah and the White Company did: go to the centre of the circle to speak your lines, point out character references as a group and stand up (if you’re not already standing ‘onstage’) whenever your character is ‘pointed’ out.

2) Discuss what you found as a class. How much did you point at each other? Did the exercise help you keep track of the story? Were there any lines that worked especially well with the gesture (or any that didn’t work at all?) How did the students who had to stand at the edge of the circle feel when everyone pointed at them?

2b) Repeat the exercise with Act IV, scene 1 (Claudio rejects Hero during their wedding because he's been tricked into believing that she's unchaste). Who stood up most this time and how did it feel? Can you relate those feelings to the way their character might be feeling at this point in the play? You might like to consider the different reasons for pointing at someone and whether the motivation behind the gesture is different this time round. Everyone round the circle should pick one word to encapsulate how they think that character feels and write it down on a sheet of paper to produce an internal snap-shot. Try to support your ideas with evidence from the text and send them into Mariah at globelink@shakespearesglobe.com so she can compare them with her own notes.

3) Mariah says that Much Ado About Nothing is a play where characters spend a lot of time gossiping, eavesdropping or talking behind one another's backs. Do you agree or disagree? Think about how often you found yourselves pointing at characters ‘offstage’ at the edge of the circle. Repeat the same exercise with Act III, scene 1 (Hero and Margaret trick Beatrice into believing that Benedick loves her). How does the pointing pattern in this scene differ from V.1 and IV.1? What might the pointing patterns suggest about the web of relationships between characters in this play? Share your ideas with Mariah by emailing them to globelink@shakespearesglobe.com.

Activity 2

Welcome to the Globe

Materials: classroom with internet access, paper, pencils
Time: 20 minutes
Type: Whole class activity

This is Mariah's first season at the Globe – she talks about how the Meet and Greet session helped her to find her feet. Whether they’ve played here before or are getting ready for their first season, all Company members are given a tour around the theatre on the day of their Meet and Greet session. It's essential that the actors get to know the space: over the next few weeks, Mariah will become very familiar with the challenges and peculiarities of the Globe stage. It's similarly important for you to be aware that the space your adopted actors will be working in, so you can offer them the most useful advice.

1 Click here to take a virtual tour of the Globe Theatre. Make sure you look at the theatre from the perspective of audience members and actors.

Stand on stage: look out into the yard and up at the galleries. Imagine the theatre is packed with people. The Globe of 1599 had a capacity of about 3,000 – our Globe allows audience members slightly bigger seats (people have come to expect a certain level of comfort, and modern safety regulations must be observed) so on first night Mariah will come onstage to face up to 1,500 people. If you stand still, centre-stage, are there any audience members who will be unable to see you? Why?

Stand in the yard as a groundling in the yard, and sit in the lower and middle galleries: where do you get the best view? Who would be closest to the stage? On how many sides of the theatre does the audience sit or stand?

Compare the Globe to other modern theatres you might have visited: think about scenery, lighting, areas where the audience sit, the shape of the theatre, and special effects. List the differences on one side of a piece of paper and similarities on the other.

2) Discuss how these differences and similarities might affect Mariah as an actor, and send in your advice to her at globelink@shakespearesglobe.com

For example:
Feature: the Globe stage has two large pillars and the audience sits all around the stage.
Advice: Mariah might have to move around more than on a modern stage so everyone gets a good view.

3) What do you think actors would find easier at the Globe and what do you think they would find more difficult? Original practices productions explore the costume, settings, dance and music available to the players in the Globe of 1599: what modern technology might our adopted actors miss, or be pleased to get rid of? Send in your suggestions to Mariah at globelink@shakespearesglobe.com so she can compare them to her own notes.

Rehearsal notes 2

Tudor Group
Useful context
Quiet
Courtship
Complication vs. core
Direction
Difficult stage
Approach

Tudor Group

We’ve been going through the scenes in more detail after last week's read-through. I’m enjoying trying to answer the questions that seem small but actually have a huge bearing on your character; what are Hero's given circumstances? What would she have done all day? What was her routine? Something that really helped me piece Hero's background together was our talk with the Tudor Group. These people live for so many months of the year as the Tudors would have done. They were amazing – like walking dictionaries who could tell you anything you wanted to know about Elizabethan life in great detail. It's a joy to have that information available at your fingertips. For every character I play, I want to be able to go and ask someone for answers: what would my education have been like? Who would I have shared a bedroom with when I was younger? How formal would my relationship with my father have been? How much contact do I have with the opposite sex and how is that sort of contact regarded? How tactile would I be with men and how tactile would I be with women? Does that change depending on whether the context is public or private? The Tudor Group had all the answers – they were absolutely brilliant.

Useful context

The most surprising thing I learnt about the Elizabethan period and the biggest imaginative leap I had to make was to do with the prevailing Elizabethan views on marriage and chastity. According to the Tudor Group, Hero wouldn’t ever have been allowed to be alone in a room with a young man and that affects my whole interpretation of the first scene. I can’t know Claudio as an intimate friend because I’ve had no chance to talk to him in a room without someone else there. Maybe people found ways to steal off into corners, but I get the impression that I don’t really know him that well. That changes things. Hero's on unfamiliar ground with Claudio. The importance of an Elizabethan woman's honour – to be chaste until marriage – was huge. If a woman lost her virginity before marriage and didn’t marry the person she had slept with, she would be ostracised by society and by her entire family too. There was the sense that she was contaminated: Borachio's plan is to make Hero appear as ‘a contaminated stale’ [II.2] – that's the language they use. You were seen as completely tainted, morally and physically. It's mad that you could go from a position of great status where you commanded great respect, to become the lowliest of the low. How awful would you feel? Those views on honour and chastity would influence Hero's behaviour towards any man in the play. There's a tension added to wooing and courtship because until the Prince talks to me about love in Act II, scene 1, I’ve never been spoken to in that way. Marriage would be quite a scary prospect because I’ve had no experience, and I’m probably going to be dependent on my husband… in practical terms, it's a much bigger deal. Effectively, it decides what the rest of your life will be like. I also realised that I wouldn’t have had a choice about who I married – it's there in Leonato's lines

Daughter, remember what I told you. If the Prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer.
[I.3.59-60]

I don’t think I would necessarily feel bitter about this – that's just the way it was, and Hero loves Leonato unconditionally. It puts my relationship with my father in a new light… a different light: I’m familiar with modern opinions about sex and marriage and Hero would have been familiar with the Elizabethan perspective. I don’t feel cheated of a choice, but I am finding it quite hard to make the adjustment. Their beliefs were so different from our modern views.

Quiet

I’ve also been thinking about the scenes where Hero doesn’t say very much. I’ve tried approaching these scenes in so many different ways; I don’t speak because I choose not to, or because I don’t want to show that I like Claudio, or because I’m annoyed that everyone is talking around me but not to me, or because I’m extremely cold or restrained … suddenly I thought, hold on minute, it's not going to add more to the action if I’m just passive. It's never helpful to separate yourself and withdraw from what's going on. It's better to be on the front foot and want to be a part of things. Tamara [Harvey, Master of Play] made a suggestion which really unlocked this for me: she suggested I try to speak in these scenes and something just freed up in my head. She might be trying to speak – the thought helped me switch from a passive to active attitude… at least for a bit! It didn’t seem to work as well when we came back to the first scene [I.1] again. I think it's because I was trying to recreate a feeling rather than actually trying to get what I wanted … trying to get the words out. Also, I suppose I know that Hero doesn’t actually get her words out and that might affect how I play it even when I’m half trying to say something in a scene. I hope it frees up again.

Courtship

Last night I found myself thinking a lot about Hero as somebody who does want to part of everything, and perhaps that runs all the way through the play and gives her character a warm energy. She's coming of age. At this point in her life she wants to become a woman. I don’t know yet whether she wants to be like Beatrice. She definitely takes Beatrice seriously because her cousin is a lot more worldly-wise – just look at the scene where Beatrice compares love and marriage to dances [II.2]. I’m not sure Hero thinks married life is as awful as Beatrice makes out! I do think Hero listens to Beatrice's advice about the Prince's suit

If the Prince be too important, tell him there is measure in everything, and so dance out the answer.
[II.1]

Beatrice tells her to be careful and Hero's words to the Prince are almost directly taken from what Beatrice has said, so although Hero seems really outspoken at this point, she's actually falling back on what Beatrice had told her. At first I thought that scene [II.1] with the Prince was quite flirtatious but actually it's not. Giles brought up an interesting point about Hero's first line in response to the Prince's question ‘Lady, will you walk a bout with your friend?’ [II.1]. She replies

So you walk softly and look sweetly, and say nothing, I am your for the walk, especially when I walk away.
[II.1.80-2]

There are lots of commas in the line; it's quite broken up and that might suggest she's not at ease with the situation. It's not smooth talk! She's never been alone with a man and now the Prince is wooing her – it's a change of gear and she's going to be flustered and scared. However, what's wonderful about Shakespeare is that things are never black and white: who knows how Hero feels about the Prince? There might be an element of flirtation there. With Shakespeare more than any other playwright, you get the feeling that nothing is an accident. There are clues in the text but then when you neatly add them all up, they don’t necessarily make sense in a straightforward way. Perhaps that's something you don’t have to resolve.

Complication vs. core

Josie [Lawrence, Benedick] and I were saying the other day that it's important not to over complicate things in your head because it's really easy to get overwhelmed with all the details that could feed into your character, when what we’re actually doing in rehearsal is pairing the huge range of possibilities down to a core that consists of what is going on. Actually, the core is pretty simple: what does your character want? What do they do to get it? I remember watching a brilliant performance from a guy in the year above me at drama school: he did the monologue from Hamlet where the prince talks about Gertrude marrying Claudius. He did it with such clarity that the force of what that speech was about really struck me: I wish I could die because my mother has married my uncle.' I’ve never been so moved by the soliloquy before. He just paired it down to the core and the feeling behind the lines jumped out. You can’t get lost in amongst all the choices that the offers. The guy repeatedly kicked his leg in the air during the monologue, which was physically very extreme: he made the boldest choices and it worked because he committed to them one-hundred percent and believed in what he was doing.

Direction

Working with Tamara [Harvey, Master of Play] is great because she helps you discover the intentions at the core of your character without forcing anything on anyone. We try an exercise and see what it throws up… it's a stealthy way of guiding you! For instance, we were talking about act II, scene 1; I said that I wanted to put the Prince off and normally I would spend two days racking my brain to get there! I would think ‘Right, I’ve got to come up with an intention, that's got to be what I’m going to the other person and it's got to be a physical action…’ but somehow she had tricked me into discovering what my intention was without any of that.

I also really like the way we’re making everything physical straight away. You do detailed text work, looking at the words on the page, but everything's connected to physical actions. That helps you to be brave; I’ve been feeling a bit inhibited because it's hard to start off looking at scenes where you’ve only got one line but everyone's talking about you! I don’t want to make it a scene about Hero when it isn’t about her, but at the same time, there's a reason why she's there and there is a lot going on with her that you can explore when you get the words off the page. I find it harder to rehearse scenes where I don’t have very many lines; you can feel a bit self-conscious. That's why the ‘trying to speak’ exercise was so great – it made me forget myself… it helped me to stop watching myself.

Difficult stage

It's difficult stage of rehearsals right now. I always, always go through a period of thinking ‘Oh no, I’ve forgotten how to act!’ so I just stand there feeling like an idiot. At this stage, it's really tempting to fix ideas about the character, but if you close doors too early on i.e. before you’ve had chance to get to know the person, then the decisions won’t be very useful in the long run. But keeping so many doors open can be disorientating – I’m keeping a notebook with ideas and pictures and thoughts about the character and I often find myself writing on the pages WHO ARE YOU?! It's frustrating not to know. I suppose if you throw everything up in the air, it will all land at some point.

Approach

Normally I use the Stanislavski approach: I write down what my character says about other characters, what other characters say about me, what I say about myself. You’re not really serving the play without those givens. I also put the text of the play in my own words, because I find that reveals the bits that I don’t really understand. That was one of the exercises we’ve done; at first I looked at the bits I’d already done which made this easier but I came unstuck when I reached the second half of the play because I’d lost the thread of what was happening. I started all over again, putting the lines into my own words. It really helped to make sure I understood what was being said, and the exercise also made the words more immediate. You don’t get intimidated by the verse or the complexity. Know what's said about your character, know what you’re saying – the first two golden rules. I don’t think things can go wildly wrong as long as you stick to that.

I also like to split the scenes up into units. A Russian director I worked with called them 'pavarot' which apparently means the beat within the scene – a sort of rhythm. It coincides with Giles’ [Block, Master of the Words] idea that semicolons are points at which something active happens. A unit will involve a physical action that has begun and ended and triggered off something else which becomes part of the next unit. That's quite a good way to break the play down. Identifying intentions and obstacles can also be useful, but you have to leave all that outside the rehearsal room and see what happens. Sometimes I’m guilty of rehearsing a scene and worrying about whether I’m playing my intention; that's not what we do in life. That's not truthful. So I decided to wait until we started work with Tamara [Harvey, Master of Play] before I looked at Hero's intentions and so on. Often it's better to make discoveries than to come into the rehearsal room with preconceptions, because you’re not really open to other actors’ ideas if you’ve already prescribed your character. I suppose I’m really confused at the moment because I’ve just decided to go in saying ‘let's see, let's see.’

Activities 2

WHO ARE YOU?
Speaking silence

Activity 1

WHO ARE YOU?

Materials: writing and drawing materials, access to library & internet, magazines and newspapers
Time: 25 minutes
Type: Whole class activity

Mariah is keeping a notebook full of ‘ideas and pictures and thoughts’ about Hero. She says that she often finds herself writing ‘WHO ARE YOU?’ on the pages. You have been cast as Hero in an original practices production of Much Ado About Nothing. Remember all the female characters would have been played by boy-actors in Shakespeare's time: the whole group can try out some of Mariah's methods to help create their own versions of Hero.

1) In character, try to answer the question ‘WHO ARE YOU?’ Go through the text and note down any clues to your identity. You might like to start with ideas under Mariah's key headings: what do other characters say about you? What do you say about other characters? What do you say about yourself? Alternatively, use some questions from the questionnaire that your group filled in as an introduction to other GlobeLink members – what are Hero's top three likes and dislikes? What would be an interesting bit of information about the town she lives in? Send in your ideas to Mariah at globelink@shakespearesglobe.com along with the URLs for any helpful websites, explaining why you found them useful.

2) The Tudor Group helped Mariah to piece together Hero's background as an Elizabethan young lady. The Globe productions this season (and your own ‘original practices’ production) will be set in 1599: try to find answers to the ‘background’ questions that Mariah mentions in her bulletin – what was Hero's daily routine like? What about her education? How formal was her relationship with her father? How much contact would she have had with the opposite sex? The internet, reference books and portraits might help put Hero in an Elizabethan context. Next to each piece of background information, note down how this affects your understanding of her character.

For example:
Context – it would have been improper for a young Elizabethan gentlewoman to be alone with a man who wasn’t a member of her family
Implication – the accusation that Hero had spoken with a man at her chamber window during the night would have had especial force.

2b) How important do you think this contextual information is for a) you, the actor and b) a twenty-first century audience? Shakespeare's audience was contemporary: that young gentlewomen were not supposed to talk to strange men by themselves was a fact of everyday life. Discuss what might be the advantages and disadvantages of an awareness of the play's historical context for both actor and audience.

3) Mariah's character log is includes visual images. Create a character sketch, or take some magazines and newspapers and cut out pictures of anyone who looks similar to your idea of Hero – you can choose anybody, as long as you give reasons for each of your choices. Try combining several pictures of people and other things that say ‘Hero’ to you (perhaps a certain type of animal or a particular colour) in a collage – send them into globelink@shakespearesglobe.com for Mariah to compare with her own ideas.

4) Mariah breaks scenes down into units to chart Hero's progress through the play. Map out Hero's emotional ‘journey’ from beginning to end in your character log – you might like to imagine the play as a landscape with some rocky, difficult parts and other patches that are smooth and pleasant. Decide at what points in the journey Hero would have the greatest difficulty and where she would coast along, supporting your ideas with evidence from the text (e.g. for every stage in her journey, find a quote to justify whether she's in a difficult situation or having a good time). Sketch in the obstacles that Hero has to overcome throughout the play, alongside her ‘intentions’ at key points: what does she want and how is she going to get it? Keep adding to your character notebook as you explore the play further.

Activity 2

h5 Speaking silence

Materials: 4 folded slips of paper per group with one of the following words written on each slip – cold/ restrained, annoyed, hiding feelings, WANT TO SPEAK! – and a copy of the excerpt I.1.1-88 (‘I learn in this letter’ to ‘Don Pedro is approached’) per student.
Time: 40 minutes
Type: Groups of 4

Mariah's been thinking lots about why Hero stays so quiet in several of her scenes. In her first bulletin, Mariah said ‘Silence speaks volumes in Shakespeare – it's never an accident when he brings someone onstage and keeps them silent.’ In this bulletin, she describes how she has been getting to grips with Hero's silences in Act one, scene one. Decide for yourselves what Hero's silences might be saying…

1) Warm-up: get into pairs and decide who will be A and who will be B. Stand an arm's length apart, facing each other. Neither is allowed to move their feet. Each person should choose the first verse of a pop song (any song as long as it's appropriate), but don’t tell your partner which song you’ve chosen. A must speak the whole of the verse they choose to B, and at the same time B must speak the whole of the verse they chose to A. Repeat this three times: the first time using volume to make sure your verse is heard over your partner, the second time using speed, the third time using gestures but no sound (mouth the words, but don’t make any noise!)

2) Get into groups of 4 and allocate the roles of Hero, Leonato, the Messenger and Beatrice.

3) Read through the excerpt from Act one, scene one as a group (each person taking a line) to get an idea of what happens in the play at this point. This read-through will be repeated 4 times and each time you will rotate your roles; each Hero will play the silences in a different way each time. Everyone take one of the slips of paper from the desk: each piece of paper has a word written on it that describes one of the ways Mariah tried to play Hero's silences. Don’t tell anybody else what your word is. When your turn comes to play Hero, you should try to communicate that feeling without using any words.

4) First read-through: Hero can use movement, gesture, expression and non-verbal sounds to express her feelings to the rest of the group. You can move about the room and use any props available. After the read-through, the other characters should each make a note of the word they think is written on Hero 1's piece of paper.

5) Swap roles and repeat the same exercise with Hero 2. Remember to think about your position in relation to the rest of the group. Repeat the exercise for Hero 3 and Hero 4, writing down your words for each Hero.

6) Discuss as a group which type of silence worked best. Did your Hero interact successfully without any words? If so, how did you manage this? Compare the words on your own slips of paper with the words written down by the other characters in the scene. Are they a good match? Do you agree or disagree that these are good reasons to explain Hero's silence? Where possible, use reasons from the text to support your arguments for or against. As a class, talk about whether there are any alternative ways to play her silence. Decide if you agree with Mariah's view that ‘Silence speaks volumes in Shakespeare – it's never an accident when he brings someone onstage and keeps them silent’. What do you think Shakespeare's reasons are for bringing Hero onstage and keeping her quiet at this point? You might like to tie your reasons into your ideas on characterization (activity 1). Send your ideas to Mariah at globelink@shakespearesglobe.com

Rehearsal notes 3

The last week
Beatrice & Hero
Cultural context
Clothes
Yellow dress & big questions
Leonato

The last week

It's been really nice to discover more about the relationships between Ursula, Margaret, Hero and Beatrice this week. We’ve been exploring the role of gentlewomen in Tudor society, which I was rather confused about. They’re not like servants – as members of the gentry, they have higher status than that. Even though they are gentlewomen, the lady of the house would have a higher status than them because they are part of her household; they’ve been brought in for some reason. You can get them to go errands for you and they call you ‘Lady’ or ‘Madam’. It's interesting to notice when Margaret and Ursula address Hero in those terms and when they don’t. The relationship between a lady and her gentlewomen is kind of odd – it's difficult to find a modern equivalent because nowadays the only people who really have ladies-in-waiting are Royals.

What I found really lovely today was talking with Joy [Richardson, Margaret], Yolanda [Vazquez, Beatrice] and Lucy [Campbell, Ursula] about the closeness of the bond between these women. It comes down to the fact that they would have helped me dress every morning and undress every night, and we would have slept in the same room together. They would know everything about you – if you woke up in a mood or went to bed in a huff. You couldn’t possibly hide those sorts of things from your gentlewomen because they would have been there with you all the time. They would have shared a really close physical bond. It's when Hero is with Margaret, Ursula and Beatrice that her intimacy is revealed. She is not very intimate with Claudio – she can’t be, she's not allowed to be – but you see another side to her in the scenes with her gentlewomen. I love the warmth in these physically close, comfortable relationships – they’re less formal than the scenes with Claudio and the others, or at least they shift in and out of formality more easily.

I’d like to explore what Hero, Margaret, Ursula and Beatrice do all day, what sort of activities might occupy their time. The Tudor Group said that they would have known about medicines and when Margaret is teasing Beatrice she does mention ‘Carduus Benedictus’ being good for a qualm [III.4.68]. That isn’t something we know about now. I suppose girls know about cosmetics, which creates a similar social bond. It would be useful for an Elizabethan housewife to know about medicines and I guess Hero would be educated with that end in mind. Our production has been cast so that Margaret and Beatrice are closer in age, and Ursula and Hero are closer in age. We’ve made that division; Margaret is Beatrice's waiting woman and Ursula is mine, so maybe Margaret would have the role of educating us.

Beatrice & Hero

There has to be a reason for Hero confiding in Ursula about Claudio because the bond really under the spotlight is between Hero and Beatrice. I find the second half of wedding scene [IV.1] so moving: after Hero leaves, Benedick tries to proclaim his love for Beatrice. She says ‘Not now, this is really important.’ It's as if her bond with Hero is to the death. Beatrice is so angry with Claudio that she wants him dead. I mean, that's huge and I’m not sure that Hero would agree – I’m not sure she wants him dead! But I think it's so beautiful that Beatrice is absolutely certain that Hero is innocent. She's spent all her time with her, so she would know, but it's more than that – there is absolute conviction and faith in Beatrice's reply to Benedick's question ‘Think you in your soul that Count Claudio hath wronged Hero?’ She says ‘Yea, as sure as I have a thought or a soul’ [IV.1] Beatrice is the only one to really trust Hero – and the Friar. Not even her father trusts her at first.

Hero's isolation is interesting in itself: why has Shakespeare has left Hero with just Beatrice to fight for her? Dramatically, that choice heightens tension and it emphasises the extremity of her situation. Hero is all the more vulnerable and isolated. There are remarks in the play which suggest maybe she's only just come of age… so she's quite fragile and has been left in these awful circumstances. I think it makes the strength of the friendship between the two women is all the more incredible – the way it runs through the play is fascinating. I’m also really interested by the way Benedick has to choose between Beatrice and his friend Claudio – it's the pitting of your romantic love against your deep friendships, and being torn between the two. Shakespeare ties people up in very complex dramatic knots.

Cultural context

I’m noticing that there's a lot of emphasis on pledges in Much Ado About Nothing. Everybody swears! It's a way to back up the truth of what you’re saying. Even the Friar says

…Trust not my age,
My reverence, calling, nor divinity,
If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here
Under some biting error.
[IV.1.165-8]

He swears that Hero is innocent by everything he believes in and everything he has dedicated his life to. The swearing seems an odd contrast to all the witty banter that goes on: someone just says ‘I swear’ and all of a sudden they want their words to be taken seriously. I suppose it feeds back into questions about whether you can believe what you hear.

The more we rehearse, the more you discover how social and cultural norms have changed since Tudor times – it's weird how some things, like the importance of swearing as a pledge, have largely fallen by the way-side. We don’t look at chastity in the same way either. Back then, it was socially unacceptable for a woman to lose her virginity before marriage. The Tudor group also spoke about the fact that there were more murders in certain areas of London than the rest of the entire country! Murder was a more frequent occurrence then than it is now, and it wasn’t simply a case of someone shooting at you with a gun: instead you would be challenged to a dual. To kill someone by running them through seems to require a greater connection to the physical act itself than pulling a trigger. There seem to be so many things about that society that are visceral and physical, really earthy and rude – and then there is also this incredible sense of decorum and formality.

Clothes

Even Elizabethan children would have worn corsets – they were dressed up like little adults. It must have given them a chance to get used to the way a corset restricts your breathing. My corset was done up too tightly in a fitting the other day and I had a bit of a turn! The costume fittings take about an hour and a half, and it's absolutely amazing to hear about how the clothes are made: materials are specially woven and dyed, and wherever possible, they’re made using techniques from the Tudor period. Luca [Costigliolo, Master of Clothing] likes you to know about the clothes you’re wearing – where the material has come from, why a certain colour or cut has been used, and how much different things cost. The Tudors would have been walking around in their money! That's quite a nice thought.

Yellow

My dress is yellow, which Luca says is associated with hope and joy amongst other things. The one negative thing that yellow was associated with is jealousy – not that Hero would have been aware of it, but perhaps Claudio might be. He prizes her so much that he gets into a fit of jealousy and behaves appallingly. Or does he? I’m not sure how I feel about his reaction. He believes that she's been unfaithful on the night before their wedding. Even nowadays I’m pretty sure anybody would break a marriage off if they found out their wife-to-be had slept with someone else.

The really difficult question is what exactly does Claudio think Hero has done? Does he think she's slept with someone or does he think she's just been alone with someone when she shouldn’t have been? Is seeing her alone with someone as good as saying she slept with them? It's hard to get your head round that. I guess Shakespeare leaves that open for a reason. Borachio says an interesting thing when describes meeting Margaret at Hero's window: he says that Margaret wishes him ‘a thousand times goodnight, and….’ [III.3.142-3] And what? He breaks off by saying ‘I tell this tale vilely.’ That could mean ‘I’m telling it really badly and should go back to the beginning,’ or could it be that he's about to describe what happens with Margaret and that's something he shouldn’t do? I guess it's up to Joy [Richardson, Margaret] to decide how far Margaret would have gone with Borachio. He defends Margaret's honour at the end, when Leonato accuses her of knowing about the plot:

Leonato
This naughty man
Shall face to face be brought to Margaret,
Who I believe was packed in all this wrong,
Hired to it by your brother.

Borachio
No, by my soul, she was not,
Nor knew what she did when she spoke to me,
But always hath been just and virtuous
In anything that I do know by her.
[V.1.283-290]

Borachio says that Margaret has always been virtuous and I think I believe him. Otherwise, Shakespeare would have flagged it up, and afterall the play is Much Ado about Nothing : nothing much really happens!

Leonato

Going back to Leonato: why does he believe the Prince and Claudio? That's one of the things I’m thinking about at the moment. He can’t really know his daughter very well if he believes that she is capable of doing what they say she's done. Of course, Claudio is very convincing. It must be a great shock and the accusations are backed up by the Prince's authority. Leonato is an interesting character because we don’t get to see the scene where he changes his mind and goes ‘oh lord, what if she is innocent…?’ We just see him say ‘I wish you’d never been born’ [IV.1.125-33], which is awful, and when we see him in his next scene [V.1], he seems to have changed his mind: he basically says to his brother Antonio ‘Oh I feel awful, I feel awful, I feel awful, and by the way I think she's innocent.’ I think there is literally one line that mentions this: ‘My soul doth tell me Hero is belied.’ [V.1.42] I’ll have to ask Penny [Beaumont, Leonato] what she thinks about that. She said earlier that if Leonato and Hero are very close then the change in Act four, scene one, is more marked and their relationship involves more of a journey. If they are really close and then Hero completely falls out of favour, that's the worst case scenario. I suppose the reason Leonato believes Claudio and Don Pedro is because they are so convincing...

The Tudor Group told us that in Elizabethan times, if your father walked into a room, you would have to stand until you were told that you could sit. That makes the parent-child relationship seem very formal today, but I think it should be taken as a sign of respect rather than distance. It doesn’t mean Hero and her father are not close. I think it's interesting that Hero swoons after Leonato says ‘Hath no mans dagger here a point for me?’ [IV.1.108]. She can’t bear to be accused of something which her father finds so terrible that he would rather kill himself than believe it. That's the worst punishment of all. The thing that gets a rise out of her is when Leonato says ‘You must be guilty because you’re not protesting.’ He sees her lack of response as proof that she's guilty, so she responds in extreme terms: ‘If you find me to be guilty, you can kill me.’

Rehearsal notes 4

Wedding scene: points of concentration
Grey areas
Developing ideas
Work onstage
Ending
Character questions
Different approaches

Wedding scene: points of concentration

Our rehearsal on Saturday was rigorous. We rehearsed Act four, scene one, which is a very intense moment in the play. Tamara [Harvey, Master of Play] gave us points of concentration to focus our intentions; the one I found most useful came out of her suggestion that I don’t fall back on my ladies-in-waiting for support during the wedding scene. The gentlewomen are not actually in the script for that scene but we couldn’t see any reason why they would not be there, so we tried a run-through with everybody which seemed to work. That meant there were a lot of women in the scene, so we decided to divide into two processions, one from Leonato's house (with bride's friends and family) and the other with the groom's friends and family, because that's how it would have happened. Anyway, I realised that my procession is predominantly female and Claudio's is predominantly male. He had a posse of men over his shoulder and I had all my waiting gentlewomen. The most obvious thing was to fall back on them when I’ve been accused by Claudio. Tamara suggested that I didn’t let them look after me, so I tried to take my concentration away from all the other things in the scene and just focus entirely on standing on my own two feet. When we came to do the scene, this independence opened up an entirely different aspect of the character. It is amazing how one sentence can unlock so many other things! Hero might be going into the wedding with the attitude that she wants to do it properly, she wants to be a real woman. I think that's an important; she really does want to grow up and she really does want to be accepted as a woman. If that's a strong want from the beginning, then the wedding scene is going to be a day for the fulfilment of that wish. The fact that it all goes so wrong is difficult for an actor because you want to give in to your obstacles, but what you need to do is concentrate on fighting them. In real life, you would want to do everything in your power not to fall apart. It was quite helpful when Tamara suggested that I didn’t accept help from my ladies-in-waiting.

When we played the scene in this way, I felt that I tried harder and harder to hang on to my dignity as the wedding went more and more awry. I also realised that I’m not expecting this to go wrong, so it's a shock when Claudio starts acting so strangely. That gave me the idea that perhaps Hero thinks Claudio has gone mad when he accuses her. I have such belief in my own good name that I’m not going to crumble if someone suggests otherwise because I know their accusations to be untrue. I hang on to the fact that I know all of this to be untrue and that leads me to think that something is very wrong with Claudio. Generally, this approach made me fight to hold things together. I tried to keep the whole wedding going until it really had reached the point of no return and I couldn’t continue: when Leonato asks ‘Has no man's dagger here a point for me?’ [IV.107], I do fall back on my gentlewomen. The scene changed slightly every time we went over it. I think it will be difficult to do the scene again in our next session, because in a way you have to keep finding new points of concentration. The temptation is to go for the end result rather than go through the actual process of getting there. I think I’ll have to find something else to concentrate on next time we do it. Theoretically you should be able to go for the same intention every time, and if you’re really engaging with it, then you will be telling the truth. I’ll keep trying different things at this point, I think...

Grey areas

We’ve reached a weird stage in rehearsals. I sat down last night and I tried to write a bit about Hero's life. I found that if I had to write about what I do all day, I wouldn’t know at this stage, which is a bit scary. I’m still slightly confused about what I do with my time: I know I’m being trained to run a household but I don’t quite know what that involves, so I’m thinking of emailing the Tudor Group. They’ll be able to help with questions about my daily routine. Basically, the difficulty is that Hero would have led such a different lifestyle and I don’t feel like I’ve engaged with that yet. There are so many grey areas, and there are also grey areas in my ideas about who she is. You think you know until you start asking yourself questions, for instance ‘Where exactly do I live and what's my history?’ I realised I haven’t sorted that out, although I think that's probably normal at this point. You leave all the doors open… it's not good to make sweeping decisions. However, there does come a point in rehearsals when you have to start making decisions. I just want to sit down by myself for a bit and think it through. I find it quite useful to write biographies for my characters – that's what I started to do the other day. I worked with one director who said ‘if you do nothing else, just write and write and write about your life.’ Even if you include what seems to be ridiculous detail that you’ll probably never use, you come on to the stage with a whole life behind you. Sometimes you think ‘Oh, I don’t really need to know that,’ but you do: you need to create something you believe in. Shakespeare is slightly different because so much of the detail is in the text that it feels odd to add anything in your own head. I’m at a stage where I find it difficult to talk about character, to be honest.

Developing ideas

The point about not accepting any help from Beatrice, Margaret and Ursula was good because it made me think that Hero could be a lot stronger than you might think she is at first. In one sense, that discovery is a bit difficult because we started working on individual scenes ages ago: my ‘Hero’ jigsaw has become more complete since we first started. In those first initial scenes I thought she was so young, and that she doesn’t speak because she doesn’t know how to or perhaps she isn’t given the chance. Yet she keeps everything under control in the wedding scene [IV.1] and at that stage it seems as that her role has changed. It will be really interesting to see what happens when we to go back to work on the first scenes again, and how the latter half of the play informs the beginning. There's always a change in Shakespeare's characters – they go through something that changes them and my task is to find out what that change means for Hero. How is she changed and why does she need to change? It's odd that just when you think you’re figuring this person out, you realise you actually don’t know anything!

What else this week? I also had a voice session on the stage with Stewart [Pearce, Master of Voice] which was really good. We went up into the balcony of the Theatre and listened to each other. We played around with the vocal levels, and I found that you can actually speak quite quietly as long as you speak with power. You can bring the volume right down as long as your voice is supported. So gradually I’m learning more about the space.

Work on stage

Lucy [Campbell, Ursula] and I decided to rehearse a scene by ourselves on the stage. There were lots of people in the auditorium, taking a tour of the theatre. I found it quite intimidating; I'm at that stage of the rehearsal process when you’re not ready to expose yourself. To have people watching whilst I tried out ideas actually made me feel quite vulnerable, but then again it was good to start imagining what an audience might be like, how they might respond. When Lucy said ‘Do you want to do the scene?’ my initial instinct was to say ‘Oh no, I don’t want to.’ Then I thought to myself ‘Oh, come on.’ You should be able to mess up in front of people and it shouldn’t matter. What made me nervous was that the people watching didn’t know the circumstances, and it was my second time in the space. Maybe it would have felt more comfortable if we'd been working with Tamara or Stewart in that situation, because, in a funny kind of way, it would have been more obvious that this was a work in progress. I started to make some progress, but I wasn’t ready to bash on into a huge chunk of text. I ended up shouting my way through the whole thing because I didn’t want to engage in it – I felt too exposed. That made me realise what I do when I’m frightened: I just shout my way through and avoid engaging with the text. That's good to know! It is very tempting to give everything out to the auditorium because you’re surrounded by an audience, but I don’t think you need to do that. You can be really intimate and trust that people are going to want to listen to you.

Ending

Thinking about change, in the final scene Hero says:

And when I lived, I was your other wife;
And when you loved you were my other husband.
[V.4.60-1]

There's something in that; both Claudio and Hero have changed and are completely different people. They both fall in love so crazily without really knowing each other and they’re both going through a phase where they do see each other in a totally different light. They go through a lot of heartache before their reconciliation, and that in itself can cause some huge changes in a person. I think falling in love with someone, having your heart broken, breaking someone else's heart, or falling out of love (although I don’t know if that's possible?) – all of those experiences change you so much. Those are the kinds of experience that make you grow up more so than anything else... maybe that's what Hero's journey involves? She does grow up, not so much through a marital rite of passage as her own internal experience. I’m not sure though… I haven’t gotten to the end of the play yet, so it's all speculation!

Character questions

I dug up a strange form the other day. Word went round about this sheet of questions that you fill out for your character and they somehow grow from that... of course, no one believes that just filling out a form with your character's details will work miracles, but it is good fun and it also makes you think about things that you just hadn’t considered. The sheet included things like character's name, character's address, date of birth, nationality, star sign, education, occupation, family, social class, politics, habits, vices, virtues, hobbies, preferred literature, music, why are you called by your name, person you’re closest to, role model, greatest fear, greatest sorrow, most significant moment in your life, happiest moment in your life... it went on and on. There were some bits that made me think though - for instance when I got to the question about ‘person closest to’, I thought ‘How do I make that decision? Am I closest to my father or am I closest to Beatrice or to Ursula, who dresses and undresses me every day. I am close to Beatrice, but that's more like admiration (she's older and perhaps I want to be a bit like her). Ursula's the person with whom I would spend every waking hour, although I sleep with Beatrice [IV.1.147-8]. Perhaps in the last year, I’ve become closer to Beatrice than Ursula. However, my father is probably the person with whom I have the deepest bond; my mother's dead so he's my closest blood relative. I do think Hero and Leonato have a close relationship. I suppose the questions on the form were interesting because you know you can’t really answer them, but as you try to answer them, you go deeper into the character and the text. It made me realise I don’t know anything about the politics of the time... At the moment, I think Hero is a bit black and white, and I haven’t filled in all the colours because I couldn’t say what her habits are and so on: I have no idea! The same goes for her vices: right now I don’t think she has any, but that can’t be true. She must do things that she considers vices – staying up after half past eight, or whatever – well, she must have something like that. Sometimes you get stuck in amongst the detail and you think ‘Oh this is ridiculous. I’m sure Shakespeare didn’t care.’ But it's hard to come on stage without that background.

Different approaches

I think sometimes you have to go through difficult patches. For instance, when you start writing about a character and you think that what you’re writing is absolute rubbish - but if you write through this barrier, often you'll suddenly find yourself with something interesting. It's always worth writing a big biography of your character. There are so many ways into the process of creating a character... I was talking to Bette [Bourne], who's playing the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. I think he's absolutely brilliant and I said to him that I can’t believe those words were actually written on the page. I wanted to know how he created the Nurse's character, and he couldn’t really explain his process. He tried to, but at the end of our conversation he said ‘Does that make sense?’ and I thought ‘I don’t know what you mean at all!’ Then I realised that everyone has their own way of doing things and my way is probably individual to me - it might sound strange when I try to explain to somebody else. And it's always evolving, because I’m just finding my way. I hope I’m still saying that when I’m sixty because you’ve always got to stay open to new ways of working and there is no absolute answer. Personally I like to listen to music of the era that the play is set in; somehow you get in contact with an aspect of the time that you can’t read about in a book. I get more of a feeling for that culture. I also find that a song can fill you with that character; one of the directors at Guildhall asked us to find a song to sing and dance around to before we came on to play a character. I think I’ve found a song for Hero...

Rehearsal notes 5

Last week
Improvisation
Formality
Signals
Feelings for Claudio & the Prince

Last week

This has probably been our most stressful week so far. At the beginning of rehearsals there are lots of fresh ideas, and you don’t feel like you have to come up with a finished product. The performance is so far off that you feel you have time to experiment. Then it gets to this stage, when you start to think in more detail about the right choices for particular scenes. There are so many different things one could do, but obviously choices have to be made. As we try to get to the bottom of these specifics, there isn’t the freedom of performance and there isn’t the same freedom of the initial approach. Basically I’m really grappling with the play. I think this the most important stage as well as the most stressful. You have a choice: you can become overwhelmed by questions with the result that you don’t try to answer them at all, or you can say “Okay, I’m going to get my hands dirty and I’m going to go through this patch of questioning.” I feel like it's the ‘hard work’ bit of the process in a way, but at the same time it's really important not to lose the freedom. It's important to stay relaxed as the performance gets closer, so whilst I am trying to work in more detail, I’m also aware that I need to stay calm and relaxed because this is the time when fear enters the rehearsal room. You can feel everyone going “Oh no, we’ve only got so much time left” then it suddenly creeps up on you!

We’ve been rehearsing scene by scene. That's good because we’ve been doing lots of different exercises and games on each scene which help you to find different ways into the character and the action. Sometimes you start running scenes together quite early on in rehearsals, though, and because we’re not running it yet, I can’t quite imagine the whole thing on its feet. That makes me a bit nervous, but I think it's far better to look at each scene in detail than to plough into runs, because the play is so complicated. There's so much disguise and hiding that it's difficult to know which layer of your character's journey to engage with at any one moment. My main worry at the moment is that I’m finding it difficult to know the atmosphere of what's going on: how light or heavy things are.

Improvisation

I like doing improvisations because you’re bringing a life onto the stage. It's such a luxury for a director to suggest that, and it's so helpful to actors because normally you have to flesh out what's happened in between scenes in your imagination, and you also have to try to flesh out your character's relationship with other people. We hardly noticed that we’d started work on some scenes, and it takes away that fear of the scene because you know your character has a life offstage. You know they’re coming from that life and they’re going to return to it, and it just so happens that you walk into the space and happen to be there for the interim.

We improvised what happens between the first scene in Act one and Act two, scene one: basically what happens between the Acts for Leonato's family. The men have arrived back from war, and that made me wonder about what we would do all day. How on earth does that time get filled? We set the improvisation in my bedroom with me, Ursula, Margaret and Beatrice, and we found that we all wanted to talk about the men. It was so exciting, and we just could have spent hours sitting in that bedroom just talking. That really brought our relationships to life. I felt the bond with Margaret and Ursula was much stronger after that, and it made me see why Hero instantly forgives Margaret for what she's done. I do that because I know Margaret so well, I know what she's like, and I know that she's a bit naughty but she loves me. I’m glad Margaret's name has been cleared after the misunderstanding at the window. I’m glad she didn’t really lose control of herself and I can appreciate that she was having a joke. It was at my expense and she shouldn’t really have been doing it, but since we have a little fun together and tease each other, it's not such an unusual thing to have done.

We decided that Antonio comes into the room and tells me that he's heard from his man (who turned out to be called Ned) that the Prince wants to marry me: Ned overheard the Prince telling Claudio. That was all very confusing because I thought Ned's not the most reliable source. I also realised how much of a shock it was – I couldn’t believe the Prince would choose me especially. I’ve only just come of age, so it is a real shock. I am of the right age now, there are a lot of men coming to our household, and hopefully that means that someone will ask for my hand in marriage. That's what I really want, but I don’t expect it to happen within an hour or so of them arriving and I don’t expect it to be the prince! I think, then, my reaction is just shock really, and I was inclined not to believe it. Whilst Antonio was telling me this, Beatrice decided to hide.

Formality

Another thing that came out of the improvisation is that I didn’t really want to let my uncle Antonio in to my bedroom where I’m chatting with my friends. I mean, I love my uncle very much, but I think I find him rather doddery and slow so I don’t really want him to interrupt us because I’m having fun! At first I told him to go away because we were having a sleep. He came in anyway, and then my father came through the door, which meant that this was serious. He had a talk with me and it felt like a really momentous talk, it felt like one of those formal occasions that very rarely happen with your parents.

Recently I was with my parents and my dad said “I’ve got some news.” My sister's boyfriend had asked my dad's permission to marry my sister: it was so lovely that that tradition had been observed. That reminded me that the formality in world of the play can be quite wonderful. The Tudor Group said, yes, there were murders committed and brothels everywhere and people were quite free in some ways, but intelligence rather than physical strength was seen as a sign of real nobility. To be intelligent and gentlemanly and to display restraint and politeness – these were qualities prized above physical prowess. I really like that, and I don’t think it's like Victorian repression. It helps me get my head around the fact that it is such a disappointment for me that the prince has proposed. I am in love with Claudio prior to Act one, scene one, but I’ve got to get him to ask my father for my hand in marriage, and that is a hard thing to do when all the time I spend with him is years apart in between wars. He might just happen to be passing through, he might just happen to be staying at my house, and we might not get any moments alone unless we’re dancing. I can’t instigate anything myself, so that made me realise there must have been a lot of flirting going on that was unspoken; they must have been very aware of silent, physical signals.

Signals

Tamara [Harvey, Master of Play] mentioned that there was something on television about people who lived as Victorians, and how the man said that a flash of an ankle was erotic because they weren’t allowed to be nearly as demonstrative of their affection. I think that 'less is more' is also true of the world in Much Ado About Nothing and one glance across a room between Claudio and I would have carried so much information. I feel like there's a series of dangerous glances that happen between us, and I hope that he’ll do something about that. But he didn’t ask for my hand before he went to war, so I don’t know. I think when I find out about the Prince's intention to propose, I have to put Claudio right out of my mind. It was weird when it happened in the improvisation: Leonato was telling me about the prince and all of sudden I got very emotional. I didn’t realise that was going to happen; it was more to do with what he was saying about my mother, how he wished she were alive, than Claudio as such – the way that my father was speaking to me just resonated and struck me.

Feelings for Claudio and the Prince

I don’t think I’d tell anyone about the depth of my feeling for Claudio, but if my girlfriends pestered me I might tell them that I think he's handsome and have a laugh about it. I don’t think we’d ever really discuss, “I’m deeply in love with him, but what if I don’t get him?” I guess we don’t really talk about things you’re never going to get, because that just makes it harder. Friar Francis is the only person I really talk to about these feelings because I think Hero is the kind of person that would have to confess everything that was in her heart. I think she does, and when she goes to confession, he's like a councillor. Jules [Melvin, Friar Francis] was saying she feels that he's quite tough and firm, but it is that kind of person that you go to in those situations. She would go to confession for guidance; it's completely private and you can’t see the person you’re talking to. I don’t think it's a problem for me that I’m not allowed to marry Claudio because it just wouldn’t have been allowed to be a problem.

Basically I think I might have spoken to the Friar about the feeling that I’m having for Claudio – asking whether it's okay to feel that, and for advice about how to deal with it. I find it exciting when I hear everyone is coming to stay, that something might happen. So I feel happy, but I mustn’t show it yet, and that gets completely obliterated and eclipsed by the information about the Prince's intentions. I have to know how to behave and I mustn’t think about Claudio. I think deep down there's an underlying feeling that I would be marrying the wrong man, but that's far below the surface. Perhaps my intention in that scene [II.1] is to dance away my nerves. I don’t mean this literally, but I’m at a party and there are so many emotions running high, and I think we’re all in perhaps a heightened state of excitement at that point – we are in the first scene; I’m like a coiled spring. Tamara pointed out the other day that this might be one of my last parties in this house or in Messina because I might be moving to Spain as Don Pedro's wife, another life in a different country.

I found that I didn’t want the responsibility when Leonato was talking to me during the improvisation. I didn’t want to grow up, and I didn’t want to get married. Often your biggest wants are also your worst fears; there's a sort of crumbly wall in between your intentions and your obstacles. There are very mixed feelings. It was something to do with the way Leonato was talking to me – it was so formal and so packed with emotion. Whenever your parents talk to you about having brought you up, or about you as a child or how they’re proud of you, it's always so potent that you almost want to say “Okay, stop!” because it is the most powerful bond. I think there is huge love between Leonato and Hero. I think it's absolutely huge… you can only get as cross as Leonato is in the wedding scene [IV.1] with people you really love and for whom you have great hopes.

Rehearsal notes 6

Running the play
Globe space
Technical rehearsal
Differences: now & then
Worry

Running the play

We ran the play twice in the week before we started our technical rehearsal. It's great when you do the first run because there's such an energy that comes with the flow of the play. I often find it hard to rehearse scenes later on in a play because I don’t feel I really know where my character is at in the context of a wider journey. After a couple of runs, you start to get a sense of that journey.

During the runs, some scenes just seem to play themselves because they’ve got to a certain place, and I think there's something really magical about the first time that you see the story unfold. We had some people in to watch the first run – Mark [Rylance, Artistic Director] and Claire [Van Kampen, Master of Theatre Music] – and it's funny how, even though we knew the people who were coming to watch, it still made us quite nervous to have people come in from outside. That made me think a lot about how I might be affected by an audience; I’m going to be very nervous for our first preview. I think the same thing happens in life; you’ve got to admit that you feel that nervous and not hide from it. Live in it and just say “Yes, I am nervous, but I’m going to share myself with all of these people, and, as frightening as it is, I don’t mind if they see that I’m frightened.” I don’t want to retreat from it and turn the audience into the enemy that's making me scared. I think fear and excitement go hand in hand; it wouldn’t be this frightening if it wasn’t so exciting to be here.

Globe space

I went to see Romeo & Juliet. I haven’t worked in that many different spaces, but I think the Globe does feel very different from any other theatre where I’ve been in the audience. I don’t know whether it's because everyone's outside or because there are people standing or because there's something magic about the place (you think about all the other people who performed in the original Globe). There's just something really magical and I think that the audience picks up on that. I watched Romeo and Juliet : as the sky grows dark and the story unfolds, the atmosphere is amazing.

Technical rehearsal

Technical rehearsals are a nice time to let things settle. You can be working things out in your head and you don’t feel like there's any pressure to perform amazingly; you can experiment with things as you go, but this week I did get really stressed. I thought I’d have to leave the script for a bit… I don’t think I’ve reached a technical perfection with the text, but I’m not in the frame of mind where I can make it clearer. I’m going to try to relax and hopefully it will fall into place!

The context of the story and the space and the audience and my relationship with them: that's what's really hard. At the beginning of a run, you feel that you have to have reached your peak and that you’ll stay at that level through the run, but of course it doesn’t work like that. That's strange: the audience at the first preview is just as important as the audience on the last night. It's annoying that some audiences will only see the production in the early stages. I find it difficult not to worry, and to trust that if I don’t worry I’ll be better off than if I do. If I enjoy myself then the audience will enjoy it more! A lot of the worry stems from the fact that I just can’t believe that I’m here, but I have to channel that in a positive way. I don’t have to be perfect in my telling of the story, but I do have to deliver it to the audience with as much generosity as I can. Making friends with the audience is going to be scary. If there's one thing I want to achieve with the first preview, then that's it: make friends with the audience. I want to be able to walk round the stage feeling open to them.

I was watching bits of the tech run and thinking that it's so nice to be telling this story. We don’t know what it's going to be like on the first preview because we’ve only run the play a couple of times, but that's not a problem: that's what a preview is for, after all. The audience is such a big part of what happens in a performance at the Globe that you really need them there to take work on the play forward. You need to be aware of this huge presence and not only how you connect to your fellow actors on the stage, but how you connect into the huge wave of electricity that comes from all the sides. I’m going to be really interested to see what happens. It might throw me for six or change what I’m doing – I’m really not sure how the relationship with the audience will affect me, but I’ll try to play around with it. I’m hoping to stay open to the preview – and to making changes. The trick is not to feel like the play is all set and that you can’t change anything if it's not working. If something doesn’t work, we can change it.

Differences: now and then

Everyone gets used to their Elizabethan clothing during the tech. You have to remember what order to put the clothing on in. If you get your dress on and realise you haven’t got your stockings and garters on then you can’t actually bend down to do it. Having the clothes makes me realise how different life must have been for the women and men because you had to have someone to dress you. It takes a long time. First of all I was really impatient, but that made me think a lot more about how it probably would have taken longer even to walk across the room – you can’t run easily. You take longer to sit down and get up again in these clothes, and you take longer to eat because you’re wearing a corset, so you have to eat slowly. I was thinking “What did they do all day?” but I’ve realised life went by at a slower and a more patient pace. That's the big difference between us and them: we want to get everything done quickly, so we rush round faster and faster, but it wasn’t always like that. The clothing makes you remember that you can’t always be doing active things. Sometimes you just have to wait. It's nice – we’ve forgotten how to do that. We don’t realise how stressed we get. I often get very stressed when I’m doing plays, and I think it's something you have to watch.

Worry

You can’t really do any constructive work on your own when you’re worrying about something. I realised that I was worrying and worrying because this is a scary and an amazing thing to be doing. I felt that I had run out of time: we’re coming up to the previews and I haven’t got to where I wanted to be. However, I’m not going to be able to do anything if I’m worrying about it. I’m just going to trust the work we’ve done, give myself a break and say that maybe the characterisation won’t be perfect, but the main thing to concentrate on is how much Hero loves Beatrice, Benedick, Claudio, and her father. I feel like you can go round and round in circles thinking about intentions and actions, or which word you should stress in a sentence. It's important to do all that technical work, but there comes a point where you’ve got to get out of your own head, off the page, and onto the stage. Sometimes it's helpful just to think in a more immediately physical way. You have to ignite your own imagination; I’ve found it more helpful to think of Hero as a ray of sunshine. I know that sounds really daft, but if you think of something you can focus on which is physical rather then mental, then hopefully everything else will be there underneath.

Rehearsal notes 7

First performance
Onstage
To be continued…

First performance

Five words to describe our first night: nerve wracking, nerve wracking, nerve wracking and nerve wracking, but the last one is amazing! I think it's such an amazing theatre – during the jig at the end, the audience decided that they were enjoying it so much that they were all going to clap along. The whole theatre was clapping along to the jig and cheering, and I’ve never experienced anything like that. It was difficult to hold on to the steps of the jig… I’d been so nervous all the way through, but I suddenly felt in that moment all the nerves left me, because it was so heart-warming. The audience were so generous, and it's just been the most overwhelming experience I’ve ever had, really extraordinary.

On stage

It takes a while to become physically open on stage. It's really tempting to retreat from the audience, and it's quite a difficult thing to let that number of people in. You don’t realise when you’re on the other side of the stage just how frightening it is to offer your character, and to also offer yourself, to an audience.

After the play has finished is quite strange too; I just wanted to go and hug everyone in the audience because I’d been feeling so exposed, and then the people just left and went back home at the end without ever having met me. It's really weird, and that's never been so apparent to me before. I think the Globe magnifies that feeling because it's so huge, and because you’re not performing in a bubble to the darkness. You can see the audience and the expressions on their faces, and you can see when people are laughing and when people they are bored; it's such a raw an experience.

I realise more and more how much exposure is involved in acting, but that doesn’t keep me from wanting to do it. By the end of the season I’d like to be able to stand out there and be completely welcoming, and win over some of the bored faces! Not that there are many, but I just want everyone to experience the story and I want people to discover the joys of it.

To be continued…

It doesn’t feel like we’ve done that many performances, which is good because we’ve got so many more to do. I really feel that we’ve been trying to work through it and keep it free. Tamara [Harvey, Master of Play] has been giving us notes all the way through, and we’ve tried to keep a progression going. I hope that continues throughout the whole run; I would hate to think it will ever get fixed. Some things have to be fixed, like blocking, but you can’t let it make you rigid inside. I realised in some of the scenes that I wasn’t listening to people as if they were telling me something for the first time, and I think that's one of the most essential things. You shouldn’t have to remind yourself of that as an actor, but suddenly you do just think ‘Oh no, I’m not listening to this person!’ and it can bring you back to life again.

As the run goes on, I want to become more and more alive, rather than more and more rigid. I found the freedom of the rehearsal room very liberating, and I want to feel just as free on stage but within the structure that we’ve now set, so my mission is to feel that I can do and say anything within this structure. That’ll be the biggest change, I think. I want to keep working on the text, as well. There's a long stream of performances, and there are a lot of things I want to discover. I don’t want to get into patterns and habits!

'Ask Your Actor' bulletin

This bulletin was composed with questions sent in by the schools that adopted Mariah Gale.

We thought the all-female cast was very successful but we would like to know, what were the challenges of acting in an all-female cast and what differences do you think would occur when acting in an all-male cast?

Initially it's strange to have an all-female cast but then you stop seeing the actor and you start just seeing the characters - for example, as soon as Ann steps onstage as Claudio I just see Claudio. I think that there would be a difference if Much Ado was done with an all-male cast because there would be a completely different energy: it's not a case of a male or female 'perspective' on the play, rather that the play would be filtered through a different dynamic and a different energy. I'd say that both men and women have a masculine and a feminine side, so perhaps an all-female cast can expose the more feminine side of the male characters and then you can embrace the masculine side of those characters in a more playful way.

What did Much Ado About Nothing teach you about the ways and attitudes of the era?

I realised that they had very different attitudes towards female chastity and marriage - for example, Hero's life is completely ruined by the loss of her reputation and not only this, but her family would also have been shamed. She could have been disowned by her family and apparently it wasn't unusual in this situation for the woman to have been publicly shamed; that raises the stakes even higher in the wedding scene. Also, you're very aware of the status of other characters and this affects your behaviour towards them all the time - there would have been different kinds of greetings, for example: for the Prince, you would have curtsied very low and not raised yourself up until he gave you permission, whereas the prince's brother (because he's illegitimate) is only given any status at his brother's discretion so we wouldn't have to curtsey at all. It's up to us what status we accord him. When Don John was brought forward in I.1, Leonato brought him forward and bowed to him: as Leonato's daughter I respect my father's decision but I think above all Hero is a gracious person and wit and good manners were highly prized in that society (above physical prowess etc. in a man).

Who do you think would get on better in life at the time, Beatrice or Hero?

Beatrice is in a very different position from Hero because Beatrice has been orphaned (we think) and therefore she is not as financially safe as Hero, so she's not in as good a position in terms of marriage from that angle, although she does have status because she is a gentlewoman and she is Leonato's niece. She seems more worldly-wise than Hero: I was talking to Yolanda & she said that perhaps Beatrice has acquired this disdainful attitude towards marriage partly because of this situation she's in. I think Beatrice is a survivor and she's clever enough to hold her own in any social situation, and she's so independent and self-assured - who knows whether the prince is joking or not when he says 'Will you have me lady?'

Have you acted in film before? If so, how does it differ from a modern theatre, and also from the Globe?

I graduated from Guildhall (drama school) last July and since then I've been doing theatre, but we did workshops for acting for the camera at drama school, and I would say the main differences between acting for film and acting for theatre are technical, basically. It's not that you have to have less energy for the camera - you have to contain the energy more because the camera acts like a microscope and also you have to stay within the frame of the shot unless it's a very wide shot, whereas onstage you don't have that physical restriction. In a close up, for example, the slightest flicker of an eyebrow will look huge and convey so much information. Often film actors will say 'just do nothing' because it's enough just to think the thought and it will read on your face, and you have to trust that. But acting for the camera is a great lesson because you should think those thoughts through anyway in the theatre; you can allow them invade your body to a greater degree. In theatre your energy has to flow out and reach an audience, whereas TV is all about letting the audience into you: you can hold your energy back and it's more to do with letting them in. Just because the information is being received through a different medium, you have to channel the information in a different way, but essentially the core and the heart of what you're doing and it's all got to come from a place of truth, really.

I'd say that the Globe is a completely unique theatre. It's a unique theatre experience because it seems to have its own laws: it's in daylight so people's faces are lit in a more three dimensional way than they ever are in a conventional black-box theatre: this means that - like acting for the camera - your face is put under the microscope. You've got to channel your energy out to the audience, but they can see every flicker on your face. It's a unique mixture and a real challenge for actors because you have to be absolutely truthful and radiate that out. In terms of working in an ensemble, you've got to give other actors focus because you can't do that with lighting. For film and TV, the audience doesn't exist - it's just a machine - whereas at the Globe, you can see right into what people think. You can see their faces so clearly.

How different does it feel to act her (Hero) rather than watch her?

In a way, my response to Hero when I'm playing her is essentially the same as my response to her when I watch a good production to which I feel really connected. When you play a character, you really look into the motivations for their actions, you look for clues about the sort of person they are and how they have been shaped by their lives and the people around them. It's just like getting to know a friend – the more you know about them, the more you can forgive them for what might appear to be faults at first glance. Equally, an actor in a production would hope that they’re letting the audience in to the extent that the audience feels they understand or connect with a person. I know I've seen films or plays where I've really identified with the character - and it's been in some way cathartic. Sometimes that connection has helped me deal with situations in my own life. The difference between acting Hero and watching her is perhaps that the audience can see a spectrum of characters i.e. characteristics at once – all of which exist somewhere inside you simultaneously. There's an interesting passage about this in Declan Donnellan's ‘The Actor and the Target’.

We thought that Beatrice and Benedict seemed to have a history together that had somehow gone wrong in the past, and that this had led to the acerbic relationship they have in the play. Did this come out in your version? Or do you interpret it differently?

The way Beatrice talks about her past with Benedick appears to be almost deliberately obscure, but we came to the same conclusion that you did – that there was a history of some kind between them. We think Benedick arrived and said 'I'm a lady-killer', and Beatrice took up the challenge. There seems to be some sort of situation where they may have played with each other's feelings and got stung. The way Yolanda plays Beatrice, and from discussions we had in rehearsals, she's a character who is covering up a lot; occasionally breaks through the surface – for instance, when she talks to the Prince about having 'lost the heart of Signor Benedick'. I think more pain breaks through when she talks about how her mother cried when she was born (which we think means that her mother died in childbirth). The prince makes the remark 'you were born in a merry hour' and then for an instant the mask comes down. She goes on to say 'but then a star danced and under that was I born' – and the mask is back in place. Elizabethans believed that after turmoil, stars danced and this heralded joy. Perhaps this exchange tells us something about Beatrice and how a lot of the merriment is there in order to either cover up or amend painful experiences. Beatrice and Benedick speak in prose for most of the play which contrasts with Hero and Claudio's verse. One explanation might be that Hero and Claudio have an openness about them whereas Beatrice and Benedick have been stung and therefore try to protect themselves by covering up their true and most vulnerable feelings. This is a skill which is perhaps necessary in life but, as Shakespeare reveals at the end of the play, when we trust each other enough to be open that trust is often answered by security and comfort.

In which part of the play do you find it hardest to portray Hero's feelings, and why?

I've never done a run of a performance for this long before: we opened in May and we’ll continue until September. Obviously it's hard to do scenes which can be very emotional, like the wedding scene, day after day. But actually, acting is a strange paradox because from the first day of rehearsals you're trying to make your way from confusion to a place of simplicity, so the word 'hardest' can be a bit misleading. What an actor is trying to do is get to a place where the character's feelings flow easily: the wedding scene isn't hard when we stop our heads getting in the way of the flow of the scene. It's difficult to predict or plan what a character's going to feel, just as in life we cannot control exactly how we feel about every single thing. All we know is perhaps what the character might want to happen and how they might want to affect other characters. How our actions (verbal and physical) and the actions of those around us affect our feelings is beyond our control and a by-product of events. This doesn't mean that we don't cover our feelings up to varying degrees.

On the subject of the wedding scene, it's often quite exposing for an actor to reveal those kinds of feelings and it is important for them to feel that they are in a safe environment in the rehearsal room. It does feel exposing to play that scene in front of an audience, especially at the Globe where you can see people's faces. I would have liked a hug from everyone in the audience after the first preview!

Where in the script did you find the characteristics needed to create the character of Hero and how did you make her your own?

The first thing I do (Stanislavsky came up with this exercise, but it's actually common sense!) is I write down what I say about myself, what I say about other characters, and what other characters say about me - this is all taken from the script. As a voice teacher called Patsy Rodenburg used to tell us when she was talking about Shakespeare 'You’ve got to know the rules before you break them' – it would be stupid not to lay foundations when building a house. So you have the givens in the script and then you start to build. But in a funny way with Shakespeare, I feel like you don't have to add anything to it - you have to dig deeper into the text. In response to the question about how I made her my own, I sort of see an actor's role as being a channel for a play, so it's all about letting the author's and the director's creation flow through you, but in this process, it is inevitable that you, the actor, will reveal some of yourself: it's like shining light through a prism. With each different actor that plays Hero, different rays of light will be refracted. One thing that Mark Rylance inspires actors to do is always say 'Yes!' to every mad idea you have in rehearsals! I think he's a prime example of bringing a lot of ‘Mark’ to everything that he does, but it's always relevant to the life of the particular character.

GlobeLink - Globe Education's Online Resource Centre

Hero

About Mariah Gale

Rehearsal notes 1

Auditions and mischief

Ideas about Hero

All-female company

New

First day

Point

No accident

Learning lines

Activities 1

Activity 1

Getting the point

Activity 2

Welcome to the Globe

Rehearsal notes 2

Tudor Group

Useful context

Quiet

Courtship

Complication vs. core

Direction

Difficult stage

Approach

Activities 2

Activity 1

WHO ARE YOU?

Activity 2

Rehearsal notes 3

The last week

Beatrice & Hero

Cultural context

Clothes

Yellow

Leonato

Rehearsal notes 4

Wedding scene: points of concentration

Grey areas

Developing ideas

Work on stage

Ending

Character questions

Different approaches

Rehearsal notes 5

Last week

Improvisation

Formality

Signals

Feelings for Claudio and the Prince

Rehearsal notes 6

Running the play

Globe space

Technical rehearsal

Differences: now and then

Worry

Rehearsal notes 7

First performance

On stage

To be continued…

'Ask Your Actor' bulletin

We thought the all-female cast was very successful but we would like to know, what were the challenges of acting in an all-female cast and what differences do you think would occur when acting in an all-male cast?

What did Much Ado About Nothing teach you about the ways and attitudes of the era?

Who do you think would get on better in life at the time, Beatrice or Hero?

Have you acted in film before? If so, how does it differ from a modern theatre, and also from the Globe?

How different does it feel to act her (Hero) rather than watch her?

We thought that Beatrice and Benedict seemed to have a history together that had somehow gone wrong in the past, and that this had led to the acerbic relationship they have in the play. Did this come out in your version? Or do you interpret it differently?

In which part of the play do you find it hardest to portray Hero's feelings, and why?

Where in the script did you find the characteristics needed to create the character of Hero and how did you make her your own?

Resource Centre