Marina

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About Laura Rees

This is Laura's first season at Shakespeare's Globe. Laura trained at the Welsh College of Music and Drama; since graduating in 2001, her Shakespearean roles have included Ophelia in Hamlet and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. Laura also played Cecily Cardew in The Importance of Being Earnest. You will spot her in the film Love Actually. Television credits include Holby City and Murder in Mind.

h3(#notes1). Rehearsal Notes 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.

Coming to the Globe

I had my first audition back in December. I was playing Ophelia in Hamlet at the time and Siobhan Bracke, the casting director at Globe, put my name forward for Pericles so I came in for Kathryn [Hunter, Master of Play]. I always get really nervous at auditions, but I was especially nervous this time because I’ve been interested in Kathryn's work and Theatre de Complicite since I was at drama school. Our first meeting felt more like an informal chat than an audition – Siobhan and Kathryn put me at my ease. We talked a lot about the importance of having a connection or a personal affinity with the roles that you play; I find that personal experience feeds through into my performance a lot, so we left the meeting by saying that I’d think about whether Marina would be a role that would be right for me to play now.

I didn’t hear anything for ages and just thought ‘Oh well, I didn’t get it’ so I was surprised to get a call from the Globe in the New Year. They invited me back for another meeting. Altogether I had five meetings that became increasingly practical and involved more and more people, including the Globe Masters of Voice and Movement, and John Dove, the director for The Winter's Tale. By the time I came to the last meeting, I wanted the part so badly! When I got the call offering me the part of Marina, I was so happy that I cried and called my mum to let her know. Eight weeks later here we are.

Pericles

I first saw the play a couple of years ago: Ninagawa's production at the National Theatre. What struck me was the incredible beauty of the images in the story. I didn’t want to look away at the subtitles (the production was in Japanese) because the images were so amazing: big samurai, beautiful ladies, everyone moving in an incredible way. So I didn’t have a clue what anybody was saying, but you could follow the story through the images that the performers were creating.

Later Ninagawa told me that there was one bit in the production where the girl playing Marina (who also played Thaisa: both mother and daughter) had a quick change, so a man came on as Marina. He was all dressed in white, with a white painted face and I don’t think anyone noticed that just then Marina was a beautiful man. The transformations were like magic. I don’t think I really understood the details of the story but the overwhelming impression was of a story that was visually humongous: a beautiful, epic journey.

Having read the play several times, those are things that I think still stand out. The journey in Pericles feels very different from the journeys in other Shakespeare plays, in that it's quite simple; Pericles doesn’t have big psychological discussions with the audience about what he thinks or feels… he travels around six different countries, from one place to the next, with a kind of directness and clarity. He's here, then he's shipwrecked and he ends up here… the action is so fast as the story travels around the world. I think the journey can be seen as a kind of self-discovery without losing that simplicity.

First impressions of Marina

Marina is Pericles’ daughter. When I first read the play before the auditions, I asked myself ‘Why do I want to play this character? How can I identify with her?’ Other characters in the play talk about Marina as a perfect, beautiful, talented girl who sings and weaves and sews and dances… so I had this image of a girl who sits singing nice songs and doing nice embroidery: nothing like most girls nowadays, nothing like me. Marina was so nice that I didn’t actually like her very much; I’m often attracted to characters with a bit of evil in them, like the bawd in Pericles.

So I went to my first audition thinking ‘I’ve got to try and like her, but I don’t really.’ Once I’d talked to Kathryn about the part and thought about it some more, interesting questions started to pop up – how can Marina be kind of stronger than that wimpy image? A lot of Marina's actions are very gutsy. After I started to look for the strength in the character, it became much easier. She's very close to nature and very instinctive. She's in tune with people and she sees people's strengths all the time. Even when Leonine attempts to murder her (at the order of her foster-mother Dionyza), she looks to him and says ‘I can see you’re a good person.’ A more hysterical reaction like ‘Oh, don’t murder me!’ would have been more predictable but she sees the good in him even at that moment:

You are well-favoured, and your looks foreshow
You have a gentle heart
[IV.i]

That takes some guts. So although my first impression was that she was a bit of a wimp by modern standards, now I’m trying to discover ways for her to be a strong modern woman. She's almost got a sixth sense, and some kind of healing powers – she's not a doctor, but she's a sort of alternative, spiritual healer perhaps. She knows about plants and nature, she's earthy… all these things are coming into my head just now. But really, as far as impressions go, it's just a bit of a jumble sale at the moment!

First day of rehearsals

We spent the first day meeting everybody at the Globe. I’ve never worked here before so it felt amazing just to walk out onto that stage. I spent a few minutes imagining what the theatre would be like full of people… people down there in the yard and people up there in the galleries and people all round there as well! And we’ll be able to see all these people in the audience, because the whole theatre is open to natural light. What's that going to be like? The sense of wonder and awe made it difficult to concentrate on anything else!

The Globe feels like a very active, communal space. Audiences are so used to going to modern theatres with comfortable seats and the auditorium lights going down: everyone sits quite passively in the dark. At the Globe, there’ll be about six hundred people standing and moving round the yard, and because we can all see each other the relationship between the actor and the audience will be very alive. I’m really excited about playing here. The most special thing we did on the first day was to make a gift to the spirits and gods in the theatre (like Venus, Mars, Apollo). We asked them to allow us to be in this space, which has lots of similarities with sacred architecture and feels very spiritual. It was an experience like no other.

The White Company isn’t rehearsing Pericles at the Globe; we’re rehearsing at studios in Bromley-by-Bow, which is about 30 minutes from Bankside by tube. Our production will have aerialists in the show to help us physically realise the movement of the sea and the Bow studios have enough space for them to rehearse. Normally on the first day of rehearsals, a company reads through the play together and the director shows everyone a model of the stage design. We haven’t done that. Instead, Kathryn has been using activities to help us work together as a group. We’ll have to work together as a Chorus to create the sea: a very important element in Pericles (Marcello [Magni] describes it as ‘an agent’ in the story). One of our big questions at the moment is ‘How are we going to create the sea in the Globe?’ All we have is us – the sounds of our voices and the shapes our bodies can make, and the way we can combine those voices and shapes. It takes time to work to be able to together like that so we’ve been doing about an hour of group work on the sea each day.

Moving like the sea

We started with some very simple exercises as a group; just walking forward three paces and then walking back for two paces. But if you think of the sea, it doesn’t move in one uniform wave: there's a wave from here and another wave about to burst from over there, and then there's another dying out in a different area, so moving like the sea is actually more difficult than it seems at first. How can we show that with our bodies? Just before lunch we did an exercise where we closed our eyes and imagined our pelvises to be full of water. It might sound daft but if you actually use your imagination and invest in the visual images, then you’ll find yourselves moving as a group in extraordinary ways. The play isn’t just about the words; Pericles is a massive journey and our physical images will help tell that story.

Improvisations

We’ve been doing lots of improvisation work. Kathryn or Marcello will set up a situation – for example, ‘Ok, you are eight years old…’ Initially that situation seems to have nothing to do with the play, but all of a sudden we’ll reach a point in the improvisation where we realise that we have actually started the play – we’re exploring the feelings and situations in the play before diving into Shakespeare's text. We did an improvisation the other day where we all pretended to gang up on Jude who is the first tyrannical leader that we meet in Pericles. We all bullied him and shouted abuse, and then the tables turned and he was given power over all of us: he could make us do whatever he liked. His (mis)use of that power was informed by his experience of being bullied; there was a reason why he behaved so cruelly towards others. Jude will be able to draw on that when we get to Shakespeare's actual text.

Voice work

Training sessions are part of the rehearsal process here too. You don’t normally get that in a theatre so that's something else that's been in this first week a real ‘wow!’ Our weekly group sessions on Movement, Voice and Words really help to tune your body and your voice to the space; that's important because the Globe has such particular requirements. For example, we had a Voice session with Stewart [Pearce, Master of Voice] at the Globe this morning. At first, it was a bit too cold to work on stage (it wouldn’t have been conducive to opening up the vocal cords) so instead we talked about peoples’ experiences of the space. Several members of the White company have worked here before and they shared what they had learnt – how you might react when it rains (it's loud so you have to adjust vocally and you have to take into account the unsettling affect the weather can have on the audience), or when helicopters hover over the theatre or when people faint and we’re up on stage trying to give the play. Those things will be challenges, but that fact that they can happen and that the space is constantly changing is what makes it so special!

After our talk, we did some practical work that concentrated on the breath. Stewart describes breath as the inspiration for life. When you have an idea, you breathe in first and then it comes out. It's the first thing we do when we’re born. We did exercises that allowed our breath to come to us naturally so we could use it to its optimum effect. As actors, we need all that breath to get to the end of line and to speak so that our words will reach everyone in the theatre. It sounds obvious, but it's very easy to run out of steam (try counting to see how long you can breathe out). Basically there's a whirlwind of things happening every day; I just want to be as open as possible to the idea of ‘play’ rather than ‘the Play’.

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Rehearsal Notes 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.

Work begins on Marina

It's shocking! I thought Marina had a simple trajectory through the play, but every situation she faces is so extreme. In Marina's first scene [IV.i], somebody tries to kill her and then she's kidnapped by pirates. She seems to have the ability to change people – to convert them from one course of action to another, like Lysimachus in the Brothel [V.i] – so we’ve really been trying to find out more about that. It's a very strange quality… she would just seem arrogant if she knows that she can bring about these changes whenever she needs to, and clearly she's not got that kind of control over her situation. What I’m discovering is that I have to root that quality of conversion in the extreme situations she faces – what the Bawd and the Pandar and Boult do to her in the Brothel scene [IV.ii] is horrific, and only in that extreme situation can you appreciate the bravery needed to hold up a mirror to those people and ask ‘Is this you?’ That useful contrast between her fear and her bravery is what we’ve been discovering, but getting into the scenes has been a bit of a whirlwind.

Improvisation: Happy Birthday Marina

The first thing we did when we met Marina was an improvisation that started with Marina's tenth birthday party. We were all throwing a ball around as a warm-up, and Kathryn [Hunter, Master of Play] suddenly started saying ‘Oh, Happy Birthday Marina!’ It was my tenth birthday, and we started to build up the relationships with Cleon, Dionyzia and Philoten (Dionyzia's daughter) from that point. In the improvisation, Philoten was a kind of misfit – Marina's great at sports whereas Philoten drops the ball – and we looked at the jealousy that grows from that. Gower tells us that

This Philoten contends in skill
With absolute Marina: so
The dove of Paphos might with the crow
Vie with feather white
[IV, Chorus]

The friction has really been present all the way through Marina's childhood. When she got slightly older, we improvised the scene where her nurse, Lychorida, dies. In the play, we meet Marina just after the death of her nurse [IV, Chorus], so we built up a whole relationship to get an idea of how she might feel in that first scene [IV.i]. We never see Marina and Lychorida together in the play, so we filled in the gaps with imagination. In part of the improvisation, we imagined what our bedrooms would be like and went into each other's rooms – Lychorida and Marina are very close, and to get a sense of that, we created these rooms and showed each other around. My bedroom was very simple and humble because that's the way that Marina is, and Lychorida's bedroom had a tapestry frame with a tapestry that we were working on together. After building up their relationship like this, the improvised scene where Lychorida dies was emotionally charged and I took that sadness into the scene when we actually meet Marina. I found the background improvisation work really helpful, because it helped us work out what the relationships might be before starting work on the text.

Healing Pericles

I’m realising how emotionally sensitive Marina is to the pain of others – she's somebody who takes that pain onto herself. Another member of the cast told me a story about a friend's child who was in a shop at Christmas with her mother and she saw a man buying Christmas dinner for one person. She was distraught by the idea that he was alone at Christmas and her mother really had to talk her down ‘It's ok. It's probably a happy time for him too.’ She got so upset about someone else's situation; it's as though she saw a pain and took it on herself. That kind of emotion is what I’m thinking about for Marina. She goes to those extreme emotional places.

I think that special emotional connection relates to what happens with Pericles and Marina in the healing scene [V.i]. What actually happens there? I’ve been reading about spiritual healing and that doesn’t really make sense to me – I felt perhaps there was just something about her nature that was very honest and direct? We did an improvisation on the Healing scene and Kathryn asked me to set up what it was that Marina actually does. When Helicanus tells Lyismachus and the Lords about Pericles’ grief, straightaway they say ‘Oh we know a girl who has healing qualities, and maybe she can get Pericles to talk again?’ What kind of healing qualities are they? Lyismachus just mentions ‘her sweet harmony, / And other attractions’ and later on ‘thy sacred physic.’ So Kathryn asked me to set up a healing, to show what it was that I do. Half the group worked with me and the other half worked with Corin [Redgrave, Old Pericles] – my improvisation turned into a vague sort of hippy festival; it was far too wishy-washy. I’d gone in the wrong direction so we stopped it.

I felt like I’d messed up; you feel quite exposed when something like that doesn’t work. But because of that experience – because I’d gone in the wrong direction and I was feeling a bit vulnerable as me, as Laura – when we went into the next exercise, doors really opened. We did the actual healing scene [V.i] from Pericles but we put in our own words instead of using the text. What I found was that Marina isn’t completely confident and certain of herself. There's an uncertainty and loneliness when she meets Pericles which came through because I made the mistake earlier. So it's such a good thing to be able to get it wrong and to feel that it's ok to get it wrong (I always think I can’t!), because that leads you to discover new things.

Notebook

I’ve been collecting ideas in a notebook since the auditions – questions, pictures I found that remind me of Marina, some random doodles too! I always find images really helpful. There's one of a figure rising up from the sea into the sky: it's almost religious, and that reminds me of Marina because another thing we’re discovering is that she prays in the midst of these extreme situations ‘The gods defend me’, ‘The good gods preserve you’, ‘Hark, hark, you gods’. I use all sorts – leaflets from gallery exhibitions, pictures from CD covers (there are a couple from Rufus Wainwright), and bits and pieces from magazines. The leaflet is for an exhibition I went to see at the Hayward Gallery called African Remix, and I included that because the textiles there really inspired me. Marina's supposed to be able to sew but I didn’t want to imagine her just sitting there sewing a handkerchief; I wanted to find images that allowed her to be bold and creative rather than domestic and kind of wimpy. There's a picture of the boat and the sea looks quite serene there… we discovered that when we try and make the boat in the storm scenes, in order for it to look real, we have to move almost as though we’re fighting through clay. If you think of water, you think of something that's easy to move through, but the sea has huge force… it's not like still water in a bath or a bowl. We found it really helpful to think about opposites for ‘sea’ movement in the storm scenes (pushing and pulling, fluidity and force) and the same is true of Marina. I’m finding it really helpful to define the soft and open aspects of her nature against her fire and strength, her determination. Marina is connected to water and the sea – she was born at sea and it's part of her name and nature – but at the moment, I’m finding it more helpful to play the contrasts in her nature and look at her strength and determination in the face of the most extreme situations.

Clothing in the rehearsal room

There are all kinds of props and pieces of clothing around the rehearsal room. For our work on the brothel scene [IV.ii], Kathryn asked me to make up something that looked as if it had once been a dress, but it's been ripped up and tattered. I’ve made up something with lots of ragged layers pinned together and tucked so bits of skin are revealed and it shows my legs. The costume makes me feel very exposed, which helped in the sense that that's how Marina feels in the brothel as the Bawd and the Pandar discuss her price as a whore [IV.ii].

We have the most fun with clothes and props when we improvise the places that Pericles visits: we make silly costumes and the best thing is that it's just like dressing up! Each place has an individual look and feel. Epheseus has become a place where a tsunami has just struck so we started that improvisation with people sunbathing and fishing, then in the aftermath we built shelters and pretended to be wounded ‘Ohh, my leg!’ Mytilene is like a shabby resort on a Greek island; it's a bit dirty and seedy. Tharsus is very much set in the First World: a famine has struck but we combined that situation with the idea of photo opportunities for political leaders. When Pericles came to help the people of Tharsus in our improvisation, he gave Cleon a cheque as someone else took a photo: it was as though being seen to give money is almost as important as the aid itself. That seems very relevant to our Western way of thinking about relief. So the improvisations help draw in ideas relevant to our modern situations, as well as being a lot of fun.

We’re working on the brothel scenes now, in Mytilene. Jude [Akuwudike] and I are going to be working on Marina and Lysimachus for the rest of today, and we’ll do the healing scene with Pericles and Marina later on. We just take things a day at a time, but generally we’re going forward through the play whilst also going back to look at particular scenes in more detail – for example, if we’re working on Act four for part of the day, we might also go back to the very beginning so we’re always reminding ourselves of the story and the through-line. Although we’re three weeks into rehearsals, we’re still doing some scenes for the first time then going back to a scene that we’ve worked on a lot. That's a nice balance.

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Rehearsal Notes 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.

Puzzling light

The part is coming together bit-by-bit, piece by piece. It's a real slow burner and that's not what I expected at all. I think you really have to inhabit the character; it's like playing Juliet: she has to be you. The thing about Marina that's puzzling me now is that she has a kind of light, an ‘other-worldly’ quality that enables her to change people. She changes all the men who visit the brothel, she changes Lysimachus and she changes Boult. What is it in her? How is she able to change their minds? Of course, she's a very eloquent speaker. Her clever arguments take hold of what people say and turn the words around – ‘virginal fencing’ is what Bawd calls it – but her ability to ‘convert’ people is more than being quick witted. It's something that is instantly recognisable and sets her apart.

Marina's journey

We’re concentrating on the scenes in rehearsal, but I did one improvisation at the end of last week before Jude [Lysimachus] and I started work on the brothel scene. Physically, I went through Marina's journey… Kathryn asked me to imagine myself running around outside, then she asked me to take myself physically through the stages of the story up to the Lysimachus scene. At first I was running around and playing, breathing in an open way. As Marina is faced with more grief and trauma, she becomes physically closed off – having been physically expansive, she curls up into a ball. We carried on through the story, into the reunion scene when she almost came back to being expansive, but with the added burden of her experiences. That exercise helped me to think through the emotional curve of the story: she goes from grief to fear to embarrassment to exposure.

Brothel [IV.iv]

After the improvisation, Jude and I worked on the scene when Lysimachus comes to the brothel to sleep with Marina. I’d been playing her as very noble and controlled throughout, but it hit me that she's just a child who's faced with the most horrific situation. When Lysimachus is about to force himself on Marina, she says:

If you were born to honour, show it now;
If put upon you, make the judgement good
That thought you worthy of it.
[IV.iv]

I was being too controlled when I said that, but then Kathryn [Hunter, Master of Play] got me to play it as a ten year old. I had been avoiding playing ‘age’, because Marina is about ten years younger than me and I find that when you start playing age, it becomes easy to fall into ‘acting’ rather than inhabiting a part. When I played the scene as a ten year old, it released a kind of interesting clarity… you know when really young children ask ‘Why?’ an adult is angry or someone is upset. They just ask ‘Why?’ which often makes the person whom they ask stop and think ‘Yes, why?’ They see things very clearly, and I found that clarity useful; Marina asks Lysimachus questions in the same way – ‘What trade, sir?’, ‘Who is my principal?’.

Fear

Playing the scene as a young child also helped me realise how terrifying Marina's situation is – she's a little girl and this man is going to take her by force. In the ten days that she's been at the brothel, Marina has seen everything… the diseased clients, the prostitutes, and the brothel owners each present her with horrible images. I wrote in my notebook ‘What have I seen?’ and then a list of all the disgusting things that have been dangled in front of her to try and make that real for me.

Then Lysimachus arrives: it's going to happen and there's nothing she can do. She begs the gods ‘Please, please don’t let this happen’ but the important thing is that she doesn’t know her prayer is going to be answered. I had approached it as though Marina was somehow in control, but really those lines are a last resort in a moment of desperation… in rehearsals, Jude was handling me and it's that horror that I’m starting to grasp. It's going to be hard to do that night after night throughout the whole run; it only works if I believe that situation is real and that's scary. The first thing that happens to her when she gets to the brothel is that the Bawd puts on a glove and tests Marina's virginity: it's becoming really gruesome which makes it very real… almost x-rated.

I want to read a book called I Choose to Live. It's written by a French girl who was kidnapped then raped and tortured for months; the book is the account of a survivor. Hopefully that insight will help me make sense of what happens to Marina in today's terms. The reality has only just begun to dawn on me that Marina's situation is repeated all over the modern world. Young people are kidnapped and horrific things do happen to them – they’re sold for prostitution, they’re murdered. That relevance has only just started making sense.

Conversion

When you read it on the page, she can seem quite sure of the conversion of Lysimachus but of course she doesn’t have any control. She's weak and young, but she has the choice to crumble or to take a stand (even though it might seem pointless). She chooses to live. In those really scary moments, she doesn’t just beg ‘No, please, please…’ (although she does beg sometimes and I think that's important as a contrast); she finds strength within herself to ask ‘Why? Why are you doing this? I can see this isn’t you.’ She says that to Leonine and later she says it to the bawd. When she's made sure Marina is a virgin, Marina asks ‘Are you a woman?’ The questions go to the heart of people; it's like holding up a mirror and challenging them to look, but what makes that amazing is that it comes from a place of such fear and powerlessness.

Reunion with Old Pericles [V.i]

We’re still trying to crack the scene where Pericles is reunited with Marina [V.i]. It's beautifully written but the more I think about it, the more confused I get! So much happens. At first, the problem was that I was pre-empting the reunion itself. Of course, Marina doesn’t know that everything will turn out fine. Pericles is actually quite a dangerous person; he's very angry and when she walks up to him, the first thing he does is to push her away. She falls over and really cracks herself. To be abused again in that way makes her turn back to him ‘No. The things that have happened to me are just as bad as whatever as happened to you.’ It's almost a challenge: ‘Prove your grief is worse than mine.’

She speaks,
My lord, that, may be, hath endur’d a grief
Might equal yours, if both were justly weigh’d.
[V.i]

There's conflict, and then he asks her to prove herself. It's difficult for her to talk about her past (Lysimachus says that when Marina was asked about her parentage, she would ‘sit still and weep’) but she finds herself telling Pericles all about her history. So that's another really raw scene where I’ve got to be in the moment – I can’t just play something as general as ‘I’m coming to heal him because I’m a nice person’! Marina sees something in Pericles to stay after he pushes her away, and something in her makes him speak after a three-month silence. There's mutual recognition on some level.

There's a sexual undertone as well; Pericles sees a resemblance between Marina and his wife Thaisa. His attraction to a beautiful young woman who looks like his wife complicates the scene. How does Marina react? She's trying to keep things under control – again the lines are written so that she seems to speak in an adult way, but I keep thinking about how young she is. And on top of that, she practically gets engaged to Lysimachus during the scene… the last time we saw him, he was a customer at the brothel! We haven’t even got to that bit yet in rehearsals. My head's full of ideas… discovering that child-like openness has been a big thing. It makes more sense for me to play that instead of Marina as some kind of good angel.

Good heart

The horror of what Marina goes through emphasises her goodness all the more strongly. Despite the fact that people attack her (like when Pericles hits her), she takes it and then focuses on the other person. There's something integral to her that looks outward rather than inward. Although at moments she does go ‘I hate this world!’ and asks ‘Why is this happening to me?’, the moment passes and she focuses on the other person: ‘I see you.’ She's unselfish and honest – there are so many awful people in this play that those qualities make her stand out as that person who is the light. But I’m trying to ignore that – I’m hoping that just comes through rather than thinking ‘I am the princess, the pretty girl’ because that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in my head and by today's standards if I depict somebody who is simply nice and well brought up and honest; she needs to have some fight about her and get angry as well.

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Rehearsal Notes 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.

Making it real

We’re now beginning technical rehearsals and it's been quite a hard week. I had a bit of a crisis in confidence when we ran the play towards the end of last week; I felt I didn’t know what I was doing in the middle section of the play (the section where Marina's in the brothel). I’m finding it difficult to access the kind of complete fear that Marina must feel in that situation. I got the book I mentioned last time: I Choose to Live by Sabine Dardenne. Sabine was kidnapped in Belgium aged 12 and spent three months in captivity with a paedophile. I’ve been reading the descriptions of when she was first abducted to try and get a sense of the psychology of the situation. That's helping me to find real parallels with what happened to Marina: in her first scene, she's kidnapped by pirates… it happens so quickly and a sack is put over her head. Sabine was snatched as she rode her bike down the street. She describes the physical manifestations of the fear so vividly: “I suppose that my yelling was just instinct – a reflex action until fear began to constrict my throat and I thought I was suffocating.” She writes that it was so sudden and so shocking that it knocked her “utterly sideways”. And then: “I began to retch… I began to cry from sheer anger… I just cried and cried, by now terrified out of my wits… I pretended to go to sleep… my stomach was churning.” She describes the fear as the kind that “makes you think you’re going to pee in your pants because you’re shaking so much.” Sabine says she felt as if she was made of glass and at any moment could break in two. Also “I couldn’t seem to swallow” – as if something was stuck in her throat – and she could feel herself “panting like a dog”. When I’m anxious, I get a real constriction in my throat which makes it hard to breathe…I can relate to that, but to make such an extreme situation as real as possible in my head – that's very difficult.

Start of technical rehearsals

Although I’m still working on Marina, we’re into the next phase of rehearsals: tech week. We’ve moved from Three Mills Studios to the Globe stage and time seems to be flying! I’m in the ensemble for the first half of the play, so we create the storms and the different places that Pericles visits – there are lots of entrances and exits to be worked out, lots of music cues and choreography and a million other things that will make the show. At the moment, I feel I haven’t got a clue how I’m going to play the space! The audience will be so present – we can see and interact with everybody. So that's all very scary but we’ve got time… I’ve got to keep reminding myself that there's no rush. Once the play opens, there will be two weeks of Previews when we’ll rehearse during the day before evening performances. There will be lots of changes during that time, but I want to be happy with what I’m doing as soon as we get an audience!

Part of the whole

As we run the play more and more, I’m realising where Marina's story fits in. The first half of the play focuses on Pericles and his grief; the storms and all the bad things that happen to him. He breaks down under that weight and stops speaking. The second half is about Marina's journey and her suffering. When Marina and Pericles meet, she says to him

She speaks,
My lord, that, may be, hath endur’d a grief
Might equal yours, if both were justly weigh’d.
[V.i]

I think the play is very much a ‘weighing up’ of their different responses to suffering. Marina chooses to live in each ‘live-or-die’ situation; from a place of extreme fear and vulnerability, she comes through and says something incredibly brave. In the brothel she says to Lysimachus:

If you were born to honour, show it now;
If put upon you, make the judgement good
That thought you worthy of it
[IV.vi]

To be so young and to have that kind of strength is amazing. One of her first lines is ‘This world to me is like a lasting storm’ [IV.i] and that just emphasises the parallels between Marina and Pericles: the storms batter Pericles in the first half, but Marina's storm is the journey she has to go through after Leonine attempts to murder her and pirates take her to the brothel. She comes out on the other side without breaking down. Marina and Pericles have both experienced grief and suffering; the structure of the play clearly balances them. Running the play helped me get a sense of that and what Marina's story means in the context of the whole.

Reunion with Pericles

I still think ‘How do I even begin?’ with the reunion scene. There's so much going on and I feel I haven’t even grasped half of it! For Marina, Pericles is basically a patient; in the time since she escaped the brothel, she has been put in a position where people turn to her as some kind of refuge and she seems to do good for them – like a healer. Pericles is just somebody who is not speaking. But I think she also has to feel an instinctive connection… if someone had never seen their father and then met him by chance, you would hope there would be some kind of connection. Marina is about to leave Pericles alone – ‘Alright, it's not working’ – but something makes her stop:

I will desist,
But there is something glows upon my cheek,
And whispers in mine ear, “Go not till he speak.”
[V.i]

So there is a kind of connection. When he does speak, it's obvious that he's a very different kind of patient: what he's interested in is her. That puts Marina in a strange position too, because she hasn’t ever talked about herself before. Lysimachus says that whenever they asked Marina about her past, she would ‘sit still and weep’ [V.i] It's a hard thing for her to talk about. But when this man speaks for the first time in months, he starts firing questions at her ‘What about you? Where are you from?’ It's a bizarre meeting and she's put off balance. When they each realise who the other person is, the amount of happiness is overwhelming! That reunion is another thing I can’t really comprehend… to be so happy that sheer emotion takes over. From then on, the happiness snowballs… you’ve met your dad and now you have to meet your mum! Marina has one line in the scene where the family reunion is completed [V.iii] and Pericles finds Thaisa. Shakespeare puts things in such a wonderful way that characters seem to find the words to express extreme feelings, but I think in that scene it's wonderful that Marina doesn’t speak. All she can say is ‘My heart leaps to be gone into my mother's bosom’ and that's enough. Silence says a lot too – it's not an accident when Shakespeare keeps someone silent.

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Rehearsal Notes 5

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

First performance

The tiring house doors opened and it was such a shock to see so many faces in the theatre! A big wave of personality hits you and then it's a case of getting focussed; the audience creates a big ball of energy and we have to grab hold of that. I was very scared although surprisingly I wasn’t as scared as I had been during our week of technical rehearsals when I was very, very nervous. On the day of the first show itself, I felt strangely calm. Of course, there were nerves just before I went on, but a great feeling of unity among the cast gave me confidence: ‘Ok, now we’re together and we’re going to do this together’. When I was really nervous I’d been thinking ‘Will I be able to do it?’ but then you realise that everybody is supporting each other.

The audience are so open to the story and there are so many different things going on within that audience itself. The funny thing is that in normal darkened theatres, you think ‘I’ve lost them’ if you hear a distraction but here there's a completely different feeling. We still have a hold on the energy even though it's not so contained. Somebody could be fainting over there and a bird might have just landed on my head and those people could be moving round to get a better view but it's like they’re still part of the story. The theatre seems to focus their energy.

The first show… I think we just got through it! And the second show was a case of getting through it again (adrenaline got us through the first time!) Work really started after that, during our week of previews. We rehearsed every afternoon and then performed in the evening, making changes, lots of changes. Our first show was far too long so there were a lot of cuts to be made, especially in the first half. The first part of the play is very much about setting up the drama – Pericles’ story really begins after the first storm and things can lag if you’re not careful. I feel lucky Marina's half of the play is definitely written by Shakespeare! Before the end of the Previews, we cut the running time by about thirty minutes and the story moved along a lot more smoothly.

As Marina, I started to feel more secure in my relationship with the audience. Nearly every line can involve the audience as well as other characters in the scene. The audience here is so active, like another character that changes depending on the scene. In a battle scene you’ve got 1500 soldiers, in a crowd scene you’ve got a crowd. When I arrive at Mytilene (where the brothel is) in my head the audience become quite intimidating. Fifteen hundred faces look you up and down. At another moment, they become my conscience or the part in me which is strong – when I feel as if I’m sinking, there's somebody there that I can turn to ‘But I’ve got you to help me.’ When Marina defends herself against Lysimachus, she's supported by all those people. That's what I imagine in my head, and it sets up a relationship that means that we’re always sharing the story. I think the moment you stop using the audience is probably when they get lost or bored. When they’re spoken to – addressed and involved – you can feel them going ‘That's what I am, that's me, that's my part.’ It's great, is what I’m saying!

The atmosphere backstage can get quite manic: we’ve got a lot of quick costume changes and you can find yourself on stage and tense. It's very important, especially in the Globe, to be grounded and have a moment of calm focus that channels all that energy – that's what our work with Glynn and Stewart [Master of Movement and Master of Voice] is all about, but it's so easy to forget when you’re flustered! Of course, that's when we really have to use it and remember it, amongst the excitement of all the stage furniture and the ropes and the costume changes. If you get over-excited, you forget important things like ‘What do I actually want in this scene?’ I think the most important thing on stage is to know what your character wants at any moment – if you don’t know then it's so clear that you’re not clear. At the Globe there's no lighting or scenery to hide behind and the audience is so present. It's tricky when you’re nervous… tomorrow night will be Press Night, and it's like exams or any situation where you want to do well; you have to stay strong even if you’re thinking ‘What if it goes wrong?!’ I’m sure we’ll be fine – oh la la!

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Ask Your Actor Bulletin

This bulletin was composed with questions sent in by schools who adopted Laura.

How did you become an actress? How long have you been acting for? What was your first part?

I used to dance as a hobby and wanted to be a dancer, but when I was about 14, I started to have acting lessons (at school, like you). I had acting lessons through college and did my A-Levels (you have to be 18 to go to drama school, and if I didn’t get in, the plan was to go to university). I didn’t get into drama school at first but I kept trying and next year I got in. My first part was a mouse in Cinderella (I was nine) so that gave me a firm grounding in rodent representation! I left drama school four years ago but I suppose I’ve been acting since school. I suppose dance got me interested in acting and being on the stage just came naturally.

Have you ever made a mistake on stage?

Yes, I make mistakes all the time. But mistakes – whether it's forgetting your lines or falling over – are actually wonderful things because suddenly you haven’t got a clue what you’re going to do next and you can’t help being spontaneous. The other night I accidentally elbowed Marcello (who plays Boult) …

How do you learn all those lines? Is learning Shakespeare's lines hard?

I read them lots. When you’re rehearsing a play, the lines just start to go in because you’re living them. If you’re finding it difficult to learn lines, a good method is to record them on a dictaphone then play them back again and again. I always learn everybody else's lines quicker because I’m hearing them; it's like when you play a song over and over, it just goes in without you consciously thinking about it. But normally they just go in anyway (cos I’m so good!) I find it easier to learn Shakespeare's lines than normal lines, because they’re poetic and written in a rhythm – it's like song, written in beats, and that seems to make it easier to remember.

What's your costume like? Is it comfortable? Is the material heavy? What do you wear in the scene where you get kidnapped by pirates?

As Marina I’ve got a very simple white dress and white pumps – it's a modern production so we’re not in ‘original practices’ clothing (clothing that they might have worn in 1599 when the original Globe was built). Original practices clothing can be heavy and difficult to move in at first, but my costume is very practical and comfortable – not too hot, easy to move round in. The pumps are actually the same as ones I own; I got to choose and I knew these were comfy. I keep the same costume for the whole second half, although for the brothel scenes I wear a ripped version of the dress. I’m in the Chorus for the first half of the play and we all wear white shirts and black trousers; it's like a uniform that we can quickly add things to for different characters – so when we become the lords of Tyre (advisors to king Pericles), we add jackets and ties, and then we take off the jackets and roll them up to look like babies for starving mothers in Tarsus. Getting dressed up is nice, but wearing lots of different costumes can be a bit of a pain because you’ve got to get changed so much.

Did you choose stage acting instead of film or television? Was stage acting easy to get into?

You tend to do whatever job you’re offered; it's not that easy to pick and choose! I’ll do television work if I’m offered it. I found acting easy to get into because I really wanted to do it; it was hard work, but if you’re completely committed then there isn’t really any other option. Getting into a good college helps; your teachers will be better if get into a good drama school (but it's more about interest than validation, as far as qualifications go).

When you were performing in Holby City were you squeamish from all the fake blood?

I’ve been in Holby City twice and the first time I had to projectile-vomit blood (I had kidney or liver failure) so the camera was on one side of me and on the other side was a pressurised container full of ‘blood’ (sugary stuff) with a pipe running out, taped to my face. When I opened my mouth, it looked like I was spewing blood – no, I wasn’t squeamish, I loved it! (It was really tasty!) The second time my mum was giving birth.

Do you like Shakespeare? Do you prefer Shakespeare or modern plays?

Yes, I do… I prefer doing Shakespeare because the language is so rich and also I’ve had more experience with Shakespeare. But a modern play can be just as good – most aren’t because Shakespeare was a genius.

Do you like Marina or would you like to play another part? If you could play any character from Shakespeare, who would it be?

I love Marina. It would be nice to play other parts just for the fun of it – maybe Pericles? – but I’d rather keep Marina. If I could play any character from Shakespeare, it would be Hamlet.

How long does it take to rehearse a single scene?

Lots of time; we had six weeks of rehearsals. Each scene is part of the whole story so you’ll go back over different things all the way through rehearsals.

What's it like acting at the Globe? Is the Globe different from normal stages?

The tiring house doors open and it's such a shock to see so many faces! A big wave of personality hits you and then it's a case of getting focused; the audience creates a big ball of energy and we have to grab hold of that. Audiences here are so open to the story – there's a very special relationship between actors and the audience. Everyone can see everyone else; it's as if the audience is another character that changes depending on the scene. In a battle scene you’ve got 1500 soldiers, in a crowd scene you’ve got a crowd. I think the moment you stop using the audience is probably when they get lost or bored. When they’re addressed and involved – you can feel them going ‘That's what I am, that's me, that's my part.

There's so much going on in the audience itself… the funny thing is that in normal darkened theatres, you think ‘I’ve lost them’ if you hear a distraction but here there's a completely different feeling. Somebody could be fainting over there or a bird might have just landed on my head or those people could be moving round to get a better view but it's like they’re still part of the story. We still have a hold on them; the theatre seems to focus their energy. I think it's a very demanding space, but the rewards are even bigger because of that.

Did you feel nervous going to audition?

Yes, I always feel nervous. I was especially nervous this time because I’ve been interested in Kathryn's work and Theatre de Complicite. Our first meeting felt more like an informal chat than an audition – Siobhan (the Casting Director) and Kathryn (the Master of Play) put me at my ease. I didn’t hear anything for ages and thought ‘Oh well, I didn’t get it’ so I was surprised to get a call inviting me back for another meeting. Altogether I had five meetings that became increasingly practical and involved more and more people, including the Globe Masters of Voice and Movement, and John Dove, the director for The Winter's Tale. By the time I came to the last meeting, I wanted the part so badly!

What happens when there's a thunderstorm or if it rains? It looks like there isn’t a roof…

There isn’t a roof over the yard where the groundlings stand – because Shakespeare didn’t have electricity to light his theatre, he had to rely on natural light. The reconstruction is as close to the original Globe as possible so we don’t have a roof either: if it rains, people in the yard put on macs or get wet! There's a canopy over the stage itself (the ‘heavens’) so normally actors don’t wet, although the noise of rain on plastic macs is really loud so you can end up shouting to be heard. Our production has lots of aerial work with ropes and if it's pouring down, we go to the wet-weather plan to make sure everybody stays safe.

How is the modern Globe different from the Globe Shakespeare built in 1599? Do you have electricity, lighting effects and scenery? Does music come from an orchestra pit?

Our Globe is a ‘best guess’ at what the original was like, so it's as close as possible to the 1599 theatre (allowing for modern health and safety). We’ve got sprinklers and fire exits and a lift that allows wheelchair access. The modern Globe holds about half as many people as the original Globe and it's got electric lighting to recreate daylight conditions for evening performances (the audience and the actors are lit up). There aren’t lighting effects – no spotlights or anything like that – so it's up to us to create atmosphere and give and take focus. We don’t have much scenery because big pieces of set would cause problems – sightlines would get blocked and it’d be difficult to move on and off stage. Shakespeare's really clever about setting the scene with words; he tells you what you need to know about the place and time of day. Music helps set the scene too – you might have drums for a battle or trumpets for royalty. All the music at the Globe is live. Sometimes musicians play on stage as part of a scene (they do that in Pericles at King Simonides’ feast). Often they play in the ‘Musicians’ Gallery’ which is above the tiring house.

What is the staging of your production like?

We’ve got very little set; we use lots of physical imagery to create the different worlds that Pericles visits, as well as the storms. We’ve got a lot of ropes for the aerial work in the storms and the knights’ tournament. I think we tell the story very simply.

Did you make any more friends when you started acting? Do you get on with the rest of the cast?

Yes and yes. You’re always working with new people so you meet lots of friends.

How does Marina find her parents?

You’ll have to watch the play! There are lots of coincidences: when she was a baby, Pericles left Marina to be brought up by the Governor of Tarsus. Thaisa, her mother, died in childbirth (at least, that's what Pericles and Marina think). Marina finds her father by chance in a place called Mytilene and a dream-vision helps them find Thaisa…

Do you get worried when you see all of the people who’ve come to watch you perform? Have your parents come to see your play?

Yes, I always get nervous. My parents have seen Pericles – they’re very supportive and come to see all the plays I’m in.

I think acting is fascinating because you never quite know what your character is really like so you become the character. Do you think this?

You have to get to know what the character is like in order to become them.

How do you convey emotions when you’re captured by pirates?

You put yourself in that position – if you’re captured by pirates and you don’t know where you’re going to go, how would you feel? You live the situation, so you don’t play things – you experience them.

Do you think that updating the plays for a new generation of audience is a good thing to do?

That's a really good question. Yes, I do, as long as people can see the original too – it's so important to have original practices and be able to listen to the original verse. But I thought Baz Luhrmann's film Romeo and Juliet was brilliant – I think it's rare that it's done so well. We’ve tried to bring Pericles into the present without messing around with the text too much.

Is there a reasonable space backstage?

Directly behind the Globe stage is the ‘tiring house’ (from ‘attire’ because it's where the actors used to put on costumes and get changed) – that space is quite big but there are often props there too, ready to be brought on stage. The tiring house is a ‘best guess’ at what would’ve been there in Shakespeare's time, but today we also have normal dressing rooms and a green room – that's upstairs on the other side of the tiring house.

How would you sum up Marina in three character statements?

She's someone who sees the good in any person and situation, who never lets go of her belief, and who is completely honest and open.

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