Desdemona

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Zoe Tapper plays Desdemona

Zoe graduated from the Central School of Speech and Drama. Theatre includes Epitaph for George Dillon. Film include The Grind, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, These Foolish Things and Nell Gwynn in Stage Beauty. Television includes Cutting It, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, Foyle's War, Jericho, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hotel Babylon and Miss Marple.

Bulletin 1

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

Before the Globe
I suppose I should start with drama school. I went to the Central School of Speech and Drama and left in 2003. We spent a lot of time doing Shakespeare there. For a couple of terms we focussed on comedies and then we focussed on tragedies. There were a few opportunities to share parts so, for example, I played Rosalind with another girl and then in our final term before we went into our third year, all the girls did a project on Richard II and all the boys did Macbeth and so we got to play all the nice male parts which are always a bit weightier and bigger! When I left central I was very lucky and got a lovely film job directed by Richard Eyre called Stage Beauty where I played Nell Gwynne. It was lovely and a dream jobs – I was on cloud nine the whole time I was doing it! That led me down a television and film path and so the doors of the theatre world were firmly closing which was a bit worrying. At drama school you pretty much do all theatre. You spend two or three weeks on television work and the rest of it was about building character sand putting on plays. I finally got my first theatre job in 2005 which was a play called Epitaph for George Dillon by John Osborne and Anthony Creighton which was great because it got me back on the theatre track. This production of Othello is the first Shakespeare play that I’ll be doing professionally so it's very exciting and a big challenge.

Auditioning
I had three meetings in all. At the first one I read with Wilson Milan the director and Dominic Dromgoole the artistic director of the Globe. They called me back on the following Friday night to work on the stage. I had to perform on the stage which was a little bit daunting and I thought that was going to be it. I think they had a little bit of trouble working out who they wanted to play it and got it down to two people and then Wilson decided that he needed to see us all again. I then came in for about three hours on the next Thursday. I found out that I had got the job that Thursday and it started the next Monday! It was lovely to get it finally, and there was a mad rush over the weekend.

First impressions of Desdemona
I read the play at drama school and we’d studied scenes in classes. It wasn’t a play I had been in before as a whole play. I’d seen it on stage and I knew the story and I knew the play. I love the part of Desdemona because she is one of the few younger parts who I think shows real strength. She has a real weight behind her.When we first see her she is doing an incredibly defiant thing. She stands up to her father which at that time would have been huge – not only to be marrying a black man and going against her father's wishes – but to declare her love for Othello in front of her entire family.

What I love about the early part of her relationship with Othello is that she very much fell in love with him through listening to his tales about his adventures through the world and the dangers that he found and the battles that he fought. She responded to that and I think there's a passion that she has which is akin to his passion. I think they have found a kindred spirit in each other. I think that's why their love has to be so ferocious at the beginning for the audience to believe how much he is betrayed at the end. I felt that she's actually a very moral person and it would have taken such a lot for her to have defied her father and the only way she would have defied him is because she absolutely fell in love with Othello and she had to be with him. I think if you start from that you’ve already got a character who is not only ruled by her passions and emotions but also by her morals. She's very fervent in her defence and standing up for what she believes in. She's very resolute in her defence of Cassio, she fights for him. When she knows and believes something in her mind she absolutely stands her ground and I think that's a lovely quality. It makes her very direct.

As you keep exploring the language you find a lot of her words are to do with her senses. She talks about her eyes, her ears and her voice – it all comes from her soul and her being – she's a very sensual, sensitive person. I very much want to veer away from making her too angelic and ‘airy fairy’ because I think she's absolutely direct. She knows she hasn’t betrayed Othello and she knows who she loves. I think, at the moment, that's very much how I’m wanting to play her.

Acting at Shakespeare's Globe
We haven’t had a proper text session on the stage yet. We have had a movement session. I have to say its terrifying! I keep getting these lurches in my stomach every time I think of the first night and walking out seeing lots of people. Its one thing playing to an empty auditorium but quite another playing in front of all those people. I’m trying to block those thoughts! But hopefully by the end of the rehearsal process I’ll be much more comfortable!

The First Week of Rehearsals
The crux of it has been to read through the play and keep rereading it to absolutely iron out any little problems we have - any worries about character and any worries about the shear mechanics of how the play works. So we’ve been reading it a lot and by doing that we have been finding out new things every time. We’ve also had a couple of voice sessions with Patsy Rodenberg who's just fantastic and absolutely brings it alive. She makes you aware of the danger of the text because speaking Shakespeare is not like speaking a play that would be written today. Patsy believes that you speak every single line to survive. You’re speaking as if you’re just about to change the world. There is so much weight and gravitas to everything you say therefore your voice is so important on relaying that.

We’ve also had brilliant help with research from Dr Farah Karim-Cooper. We can literally say ‘what was Desdemona's education like? And suddenly I’ve got an answer which is fantastic. So this first week has been about finding out as much as we can about the characters, the place where we are – Venice and Cyprus - and really sort of setting the scene. When we’re on stage we won’t have complicated backdrops. We have to believe where we are and what we’re doing to make the audience then believe it. Its been a good week so far.

Costume
The design of the production is set in the renaissance. I’ve seen a couple of pictures which I think they’re going to base my costume on. I think I’ll have two main costumes. The first one is for when I start off in Venice. It will be quite formal and strict – showing her full background and that patrician family that's she from. When I go to Cyprus it becomes very romantic with lighter colours and it might become a little more bohemian. The costumes will defiantly reflect the two different places and what they represent.

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Bulletin 2

These comments are the actor's thoughts or ideas about the part as s/he goes through the rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the rehearsal process progresses.

Rehearsals
We’ve finally got on our feet. We spent a long time round the table working on the text, which serves several purposes, you find out so much about the play and when I am at home learning the lines - because we have read it so many times - it is in your head already.

The work done sitting around the table is essential, because instead of wandering around with your script, going, ‘oh what does she really mean here?’ you’ve already discussed every single intention. You know who you are speaking to and why you are speaking to them, and in a sense that then dictates how you move and where you go. So although at times you may feel that you need to get on your feet or that you’ve had enough of reading, there are benefits to the table work.

Desdemona and Othello
In the early days of Desdemona's and Othello's marriage they are very much in love. In Act 3 Scene 3 Desdemona runs rings around Othello to persuade him to recall Cassio. She tries to wrap him round her little finger. There's a big long speech in which she's changing her direction all the time. She tries to persuade Othello using any way she can. The scene is quite fast and funny. Desdemona is thinking on her feet and if one tactic doesn’t work she moves on to the next one. So she's flirting with him a bit, chiding him a bit and then laughing at him or cajoling him, but she is always changing her intention, to try and get him to do what she wants him to do. This scene is just before the scene where Iago first plants the seeds of doubt about Desdemona in Othello's mind - so it's quite nice that you see this lovely romantic banter between Desdemona and Othello, and having got what she wants she leaves Othello, and Iago comes up and suddenly the tone changes.

I believe that Desdemona and Othello are kindred spirits and they’ve found each other. They are soul mates. She fell in love with his passion and his drive and he is a great warrior of the battlefield, I don’t think he would fall in love with a ‘little girl’. Desdemona admires Othello's strength and he admires her strength. I think that's a lovely quality that she has, but then of course, it is because she's so forthright that Othello starts to doubt her. He thinks, ‘hang on a minute why is she so obsessed with this Cassio business?’ so it is her downfall as well.

I think you have to build it up - you have to believe in the relationship. The audience need to feel that she has made the right choice by leaving her old life behind and defying her father. You need to believe that her and Othello are made for each other and hope their relationship will last. When all this jealousy starts eating away at Othello, you can see that ‘oh no’ - this one true thing that everyone believed in, this love, is now slowly disintegrating.

Desdemona in Venice and Cypress
There's a very distinct change from the Desdemona we see in Venice and the one we see in Cypress. For a start she has to learn everything when she arrives in Cypress. Not only is it a completely different world and full of soldiers, but she's discovering how to be a wife - the general's wife as well - so people are reacting to her as a figure head. She's had to grow up. In Venice she was always daddy's girl - told what to do, how she should act, where she should be, keep your mouth shut, this is who you are going to marry etc and she's now veered off that path and suddenly, almost over night, she finds herself filling different roles and positions

We have looked at the scene where she arrives in Cypress (Act 2 Scene 1) and all the soldiers and the ship's oars men they all get down on their knees and bow to her and I think, certainly when I was playing it in rehearsal, it is quite overwhelming for her, suddenly she's going ‘oh my god they are looking at me to tell them what to do.’

Cypress is a bewildering world for her, but at the same time, especially the first half of their time in Cypress, she's absorbed in this love for Othello. She's very comfortable about declaring her love for him in front of everyone. She doesn’t seemed to have quashed that in anyway because of her surroundings. I think she is just in the throes of love and willing to declare it to the world where as he's a bit more embarrassed by it.

Desdemona's relationship with Emilia
Iago and Emila's relationship, is the absolute antithesis of Othello and Desdemona’s. I think Emilia is quite a sad character in a way. She is feisty because she's had to put up with quite a lot. She has Iago as a husband and in our production it is not a happy marriage.

Lorraine, who is playing Emilia, and I are really trying to forge a really true friendship between Desdemona and Emila even though they find themselves in different situations. Desdemona spends a lot of the time being quite wide eyed and innocent about life and about men because she has only had a good experience so far. Emilia has been slightly jaded, so she often takes on the role of advisor and says ‘hang on a minute, just wait before you rush into this, you don’t know that much about men.’ It's kind of a ‘big sister’ relationship. We are certainly going to encourage that kind of closeness. We don’t want it to be a servant and mistress relationship. I think that they only met each other coming across from Venice. So they’ve had this journey together on the ship and it would have been just them for a lot of the time. There would have been no airs and graces on Desdemona's part, I don’t think Desdemona is the sort of person who would project her status onto someone else. We are also lead to believe, at the beginning of the play, that Iago and Othello are the greatest of friends therefore Desdemona would be encouraged to treat Emilia as a friend and I think that's important. At the end when Emilia ‘outs’ Iago she is crying on Desdemona's behalf. It is really poignant if you’ve seen that lovely relationship that they have together because you understand how much they loved each other.

Corsets
I’m wearing a corset in the rehearsal room so I can get used to wearing one in the run. You don’t realise how much you are used to your own body and used to slouching a bit or leaning on one hip you are. That's not what you would do it you are playing a lady and the use of the corset then gives you that lovely up right poise which perhaps I don’t have in real life.

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Bulletin 3

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.

Rehearsals
We’ve just done a run through of the first half which is good, because until today we have been working on individual scenes, so to have a perspective of the whole first half is really useful. Also, when you are working on your own scenes, you get very enclosed in your own world and you think you are the only person that exists. In fact there is so much more going on in the gap between your scenes, that it is good for your sense of perspective to see it all. It has been good this morning, and I think we are getting there. It took round about two hours – it will get shorter as we run it more. We are ending the first half just after Iago has planted the first seeds of doubt in Othello's mind, he's worked Othello into a bit of a lather, and its ends with them in a firm friendship but Othello beginning to doubt Desdemona [Act 3 Scene 3]. Then the second half starts with me asking the clown where Cassio is because I want to fight his suit. We’ve worked on individual scenes from the second half, but we haven’t done anything like a run. We’ve done a lot of the textual stuff, but we haven’t done the fights yet. The fight guy is coming in for the first time this afternoon. That will be a weight off my mind. It is one thing to get the emotion and the sense behind the line. It is another thing to do that with someone trying to strangle you.

I think this week is going to be brilliant in tentatively setting things in stone. We only have one more week of rehearsals and then the tech week. At the end of last week it was a little bit scary because I felt we had only touched on scenes once or twice whereas now we’ve done much detailed and cementing work. For me as an actor this is how it usually works. I start confident, then in the middle become terrified, then towards the end I get my confidence back, so that by the first night I’m back on track. Now it is beginning to really take shape and it is lovely to start getting excited about it.

Most of us are in all day every day because Wilson [the Director] wants the freedom to chop and change what scenes we work on if he needs to. So we are always around. This week has been about fine tuning. Last week was about making sure we had gone through every single scene, that we had got the blocking, got the intentions – who you were speaking to and why. Whereas this week is about saying this IS what I want, this IS where I stand. Cementing in our own minds, for the audience, exactly what we are doing.

If I’m not in the rehearsal room I often spend some time with Giles, the text man. He is fantastic. I’ll ask him to go through some lines with me. He watches rehearsals all the time and he will mark in his script a couple of places when you haven’t stressed things exactly in the right place. He is a good sounding board as well. Being the first professional Shakespeare I’ve done I want to get it right – not just for me, but there are the students, all those people who are studying the play, and you have also got a lot of people who know the play very well coming to see it. And I don’t want to disappoint anyone who comes to see it. I’m really working hard and I think I’m getting there – I hope.

We have a lovely couple of moments in the play when it is supposed to be pitch black, and, except for the midnight performance, it will be full light. There are all sorts of clever things – looking past people, missing people as they are trying to meet them. That has been choreographed very well. You would be surprised how many comic moments we have been able to find in Othello. It does get to a point when there aren’t any more, but in the first bit there are plenty where we can play about a bit. Obviously you get to the point where all the rest is just tragedy and anguish.

I didn’t know the play very well before this production. I had studied scenes from it at drama school, but we were playing all the characters so I might be doing scenes as Iago or Othello – to concentrate on the verse and text and to explore that. I’ve seen it, but I didn’t know it in a hugely detailed way at all.

Act 4 Scene 3 - The 'Willow' Scene
We’ve only done it once so far. It is going to take a lot of practice because, as you know, I’ve got to completely get out of my everyday clothes, I’m just in my shift in the end. I have to take off the dress, the corset, the skirt, the shoes, whilst singing, and worrying about all the things she is worrying about at the time. Obviously Emilia is there as well and we have got plenty of time – and it is quite a slow, melodic melancholic song. But we have to look like this is the most natural thing in the world. I’m keen to keep practicing that scene, even outside rehearsals, just to get it down pat. I sing the song everywhere, I can’t stop singing it, I wake up singing it. It is driving me slightly insane.

It is a pivotal moment in that it gives her a chance to reflect. She talks about something in her past; her mother singing this lullaby, and the maid her mother had. She has got so many thought that are going through her head – why is Othello behaving in the way that he is? Can she do anything about it? Has she done anything at all that has provoked this in him? This is her one chance to collect those thoughts together and to try to think of a way to reach out to him. I think it is also a sad moment in that she is realising she could have had a very different life, (this isn’t in the text, but we have discussed this) perhaps, she is thinking she could have missed all the anguish, all the defiance of her father. She is reflecting on all of those things, and they are all going through her head; it is a sad moment for her.

There is a lovely musician who is going to be playing with me. Stephen's music is gorgeous. I haven’t practised with them yet, but it's going to be good. Singing makes me a little bit nervous, but I think this is more of a reflective song – she is singing to herself, to soothe herself, so its not as if I’m singing it as a performance to the audience, so that eases my nerves about the singing. I’d be a lot more nervous if I had to sing out in the operatic style.

Changing Ideas
My ideas about Desdemona have changed a bit. When I started I was determined to make her strong – feisty in a way. I still want to show her strength. When you are faced with something like the confrontation with your father, you really explore that. But some of that defiance does diminish a bit because the full emotional impact of everything that has happened must have an effect on you. I think, although she is strong, she has a lot of sympathy and she has become a lot more thoughtful towards the end. It is not just standing up for her rights – her main aim is to reach out to him – which is slightly different from standing up for yourself; it is a slightly different journey. So it has changed in subtle ways. I still don’t want to make her, in any way, a weak little wallflower, because then she couldn’t defy her father and marry somebody who everybody disapproves of.

I think she is probably in her early 20s or maybe a bit younger. She is of marriageable age. Women did marry young, and she has refused a lot of suitors her father has put forward for her. Othello is in his 40s, so there is a real age gap – but there would have been – women did marry older men at the time. If there is one thing that hasn’t gone against their marriage it is the age thing, but unfortunately everything else seems to have done.

I don’t think she regrets choosing Othello. There is an interesting moment in the willow scene when they start talking about Lodovico – Emilia is undoing her corset and almost out of nowhere Desdemona says `Lodovico is a proper man`. We have debated whether this should be Emilia's line, trying to change the subject and lighten the atmosphere. But because Desdemona is in a reflective mood it feels right for her – in real life you do have passing thoughts that just pop into your head. She might be thinking that if she had married somebody like Lodovico, this life would not have unfolded for me. She is not full of regrets. She carries on the conversation by saying to Emilia do you think there are women who do abuse their husbands – and that I wouldn’t do that for the world. Plus she adores Othello. She can’t imagine herself with anyone else. They are soul mates and I think she is very reluctant to let that go.

Emilia and Desdemona
I think Emilia is probably faithful to Iago (though you might have to ask Lorraine what she thinks). But I don’t think he is faithful to her, and this has made her quite cynical. She says to Desdemona, this is what marriage is, don’t think you are the first person this has ever happened to. It is quite poignant for Emilia as well, because a lot of the things she is saying to Desdemona reflect on her own experiences. She has married a bad one.

The Globe Stage
Today I came in a bit early and went out on to the stage. I didn’t realise the tours start at about 9.30 in the morning. I thought I’ll get in a nice half hour of quiet time on the stage and sing my willow song, but after about 15 minutes the tour groups started coming in, and people were taking photos of me, so I decided to run away.

In the mornings I usually read my script on the tube. People must give me odd glances as I sit there mouthing things. I’m not terribly good in the morning so the train journey helps me get my head focused. If I know I’m starting the day with a lot of lines and try to go away and do a short vocal warm up, or if I’m not needed in the first scene I’ll away and do some stretches and some vocal warm ups – but I don’t have a set routine.

I am still a little bit scared. I’ve said that for the last two weeks. I’m usually scared at this point in a production. It is because I’m a little bit of a control freak and I need to know exactly what I’m doing, and at this stage of the game we haven’t got everything completely sorted – which is a natural state to be in. I’m now feeling that the excitement is building and, I hope, by the end of next week , that I’ll be at the stage where I say I can’t wait to do it. I also can’t wait to start working on the stage. We’ve been working in the room the whole time – it will change everything. We have one afternoon on the sage before the Tech week. Even in Tech week we have the tours coming through the theatre all the time we are working on the stage. It will be interested to see what that is like – it might be quite nice – to get a little taste of the audience.

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Bulletin 4

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.

The last week of Rehearsals
Last week I said we were at the stage of tentatively setting things in concrete. Things are still changing so I’m not sure how much setting in concrete we have done. We have done a lot more of running large chunks of the play, so we get a better idea of the arc of the play, or the arc of the first or second half, which is giving us more of a sense of where we are, at what place, and at what time. This is helping us make firm decisions. A lot of it is becoming much clearer, and the story is coming through more strongly.

We did a full run on Saturday, which was great to do. We realised that the first half is pretty much exposition in terms of setting the scene and setting the relationships. The second half almost deals with itself – it is all movement and action; all unravelling at its own speed. So our big challenge now is to get more pace in the first bit – it is running at about two hours now. There is so much information that you are torn between wanting to keep the pace up, and respecting the language. It isn’t the sort of language you can just rush through. We need to make sure it is very clear – there is a distinction between a proper pace and just rushing which is very important. The Director isn’t keen on cutting anything – though that is what is normally done with Othello. He is keen to keep it all in, which is lovely, but perhaps we will need to cut. We need to keep running it and keep making it slick. Two hours is a long time when many of the audience are standing. When we get to the previews (9 days away), it will probably help us decide. There is so much information, and so much beautiful language, in the scenes between Iago and Othello that it would be a shame to cut some of it; but, at the same time, I didn’t see how we will get the running time down without a few small snips! Of course nobody wants to see their good bits cut, but I think Iago and Othello would both be quite happy to lose some of their lines.

After the first run on Saturday we have started back at Act One Scene One, working at the detail, and then running it. Then moving on to Act One Scene Two and so on. So much of the first Act is Iago and Othello that we have had to do some other things to give them a break, but we are really trying to be fairly chronological so we are all clear where we are in the play, rather than jumping from scene to scene. We started the week all in the rehearsal room pretty much all of the time, but today we have moved on to just being called when we are needed – so there is a lot of sitting round in the Green Room.

I am completely sure we will be ready for the first preview, but we shouldn’t put to much pressure on ourselves. It will be one of the first times we have run it on the stage, and things will change – that is what previews are about anyway – for us to evolve and experience what it is like with an audience. So we will be in the right place by next Friday [the first preview], but there is quite a lot to do. We are working until 10 every night next week, long days through to the evenings. During the day the tours still come through the theatre while we are working, so the only time we have the theatre completely to ourselves is in the evening.

The other things we have been doing this week are learning the jig, which is vaguely hilarious, and the fight stuff has come together. The boys have had fight calls most morning this week, because they have their big fight scenes, and I’ve been working with Othello the final scene. I’m just going to be smothered now, we had started of thinking about strangling as well. I say just smothered, but it is a pretty horrible way to die. I think there are going to be a few bruises. He is dragging me round quite a lot – and I give as good as I get. It is one thing doing it in rehearsal when you are doing it fairly slowly, but as soon as some adrenaline comes in, you don’t even realise if you have hurt yourself. You go for it, and it is only afterwards you see the bruises. The fight is ok – I have a signal to give him, just in case he really is smothering me. I think it will look good, and the scene preceding the moment when he does it is really electric. We found while we were blocking it the other day that I’m almost like prey, stuck in the middle in the bed, and he is circling me. So even if I wanted to escape it would be difficult for me to do so. That was really powerful and felt really intimidating and scary. So I’m pleased with how that scene is going – it will be really dramatic.

We started thinking about the strangling before the fight director arrived because even the way we are speaking will change because of what we are doing physically. So we had marked through a basic choreography of how we wanted to be when we end up. The fight director then comes along, and the first thing he does is make sure you are doing it safely – so Othello doesn’t really smother me, but that it does look real, and that the audience won’t be able to see any gaps you might leave – like making special provisions for me to breathe. I haven’t yet worked out how I’m not going to breathe when I’m dead at the end; that is the one bit we haven’t rehearsed yet.

It is just a combination of working through the scene, making sure our intentions are right for each line, adding the physical movements and then slowly doing them until we are used to them, then making sure we are doing them safely, then adding all the realistic thrashing around and all the rest, that makes it seem so brutal. It is not the sort of fight scene that we will have to do each day before the show. It just has to happen. You can rehearse it and rehearse it and rehearse it, but the adrenaline will change it. It mustn’t look rehearsed – it must look on the spur of the moment, rough and brutal. On the other hand it has got to be safe – I haven’t got an understudy.

We have this Sunday and Monday off, then we move on to Tuesday to Sunday weeks for the rest of the run. It is a bit scary to have Monday off, which means we have just got three days to tech it, but everybody is exhausted and I think we all need the break.

Costume
The costumes are really taking shape, and they are so beautiful. What I particularly like about mine is that there is a distinct difference between what she wears in Venice and what she wears in Cyprus. The Venice one is very dark and formal – a very heavy brown velvet – almost Puritan in effect. In Cyprus I have a corn-blue dress, with very intricate embroidery on the corset, all sorts of little gold trims and beads. It is really romantic and pretty and summary. They are gorgeous, but they will be boiling hot. I have a special little nightdress to wear in the death scene. Having just rehearsed it I am a bit worried about it riding right up over my head during the course of the fight – I need to get myself some bloomers. The costumes are all hand made. I also have these great big thick platforms, which look a bit Vivienne Westwoodish. They are not too bad to walk in. The original design they showed me copied a shoe from the period which had a large platform on the front but no heel, so you would have had to keep all your weight on the front of your foot. They only were able to wear them at the time because they would have had their maids with them, to hold them up if they started to go backwards. My shoes now have a platform which goes all the way back to the heel. As I’m quite short I’m glad of the platforms – with all these tall men around.

Research
Bearing in mind I was only cast two days before rehearsals started, I didn’t do a lot of research before the first day. One of the joys of working at the Globe is that it is all at your fingertips. There is an amazing research team, and what I could do was to say to them, these are the specific things I’d like to know about, like

  • What sort of education would she have had.
  • What sort of relationship would a daughter and her father have – would he have been away a lot and would they have spent much time together. How much contact would she have had with him as a child?
  • What was the process by which I got a suitor or a potential husband.

The research team then put together little packs with all the information we asked for. They also came in and gave us some brilliant talks about what Venice and Cyprus would have been like at that time, so they have really backed us up brilliantly.

The Jig
I’ve seen plays at the Globe, so I know how they finish with the jig. It does feel a bit weird. We haven’t actually gone from the last scene straight into the jig yet, but I think it could feel very strange, having just gone from the drama of the ending, and for me being killed, into a jolly dance. It is a really tragic play, and I think it is a lovely way to bring us all out again. We show ourselves as performers to the audience. At the end of a tragedy people may really want it – some lightness at the end of something which is so dark. We are trying to avoid anything too silly; we don’t want to detract from the impact of the play in any way. Because at the end of the play Othello, Desdemona and Emilia are all dead on or around the bed, there is a type of funeral march that will be played, and the bed is ceremoniously taken of during this sombre music. Then the Clown will come out – he is the one bit of comedy though the whole play – he seems to say enough of all that, now it is my turn, and he just starts tapping his foot, then the music joins in, then we all join in. It is not too courtly – it will be quite fun. The Director describes it as Skaa music. It is very beat driven. Patsy Rodenberg, who is our voice teacher, has worked with a number of other Desdemonas, and she says it is a hard part because there is no redemption in it, which can get to you playing it night after night. So the jig could help and give me some release at the end. I can go away at the end of the day, thinking I’ve put that away until tomorrow.

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Bulletin 5

Press Night
There is a way in which you try to deal with press night as if it was a normal show, because you don’t want it to change that much from the way you have been doing it for the last two weeks. Plus you should treat every show as a special night. But you can’t get away from the fact that it is nerve wracking having the critics there. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have an extra warm-up or an extra collecting of my thoughts before I started. Perhaps I took an extra 20 minutes to make sure my voice was in tip-top shape. We didn’t have a company-wide response, it was a personal thing. Every one reacts differently to press night. I try to keep a calm exterior but inside it is sort of bubbling around.

I think the show went well. It was a very, very hot night, not like today when it is pouring down with rain, which can be a bit disheartening. The thing that Press Night always gives a performance is an extra adrenaline buzz – I think everyone was extra alive. It was a fast-paced, electric, show. Everyone felt good afterwards and it certainly gave us all a buzz and we were proud of it. We went away feeling we deserved our post show drinks.

I do read what the critics write. A lot of actors say that they don’t read reviews but my curiosity gets the better of me. Sometimes it is not a good thing – if you read something that is not very nice you take it to heart, but really you need to keep it in perspective and think this is one person’s opinion, and you win some and you lose some. The ones I’ve read so far have been fine. Some of them have been quite mixed, but today we have had a gorgeous one in the Observer. The Sunday Times liked it, but the Observer loved it, and it was especially nice about me. It must be a very funny job being a critic. You can tell the good ones from the bad ones. Some people like to put in a little funny jibe-ey comment which they think makes it quite an amusing article to read, when actually that can be quite personal. Others actually really know what they are talking about and really understand this space, because the Globe is a really different space and a lot of reviewers review it as if it was a typical theatre. It isn’t, and you have to deal with things in a very different way in this space. Othello in the Globe will be a very different production from the Othello which will be on in the Donmar Warehouse in the autumn. It will always be a different type of performance and a good critic will understand that and review it accordingly.

Desdemona
Last week I talked about some changes in Desdemona I had been trying out. During the week I went from one extreme to the other almost. I tried out quite a few different things and then towards the last couple of shows before the press night I settled on the right balance. Wilson [the Director] and I came to a good compromise, so before press night it felt settled. It feels quite different inside, but as I said last week it may not look very different from outside. I think what the audience might see is I play her as more of a woman rather than a girl. She does have girly moments, but she goes on a hell of a journey in the play, she really does have to grow up quickly. I think I injected more of the poise of a knowing woman towards the end than I had in the earlier previews.

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