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Sir William Catesby / First Murderer
About Ann Ogbomo
Ann trained at LAMDA. Since graduating in 2002, she has played Miranda in The Tempest and appeared on television in Murder in Mind and Babyfather. This is Ann's first season at Shakespeare's Globe.
Character 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.
The first week of rehearsals was fantastic! It was very exciting to start working here, and yet at the same time I didn’t feel nervous at all. We spent the first week of rehearsals getting to know everybody in the company and doing lots of group movement work. Barry [Kyle, Master of Play] is planning on using group movement in several different scenes so we’re exploring how to move as a group, like a flock of birds. To do this, you simply have to be extra-aware of everyone around you; where they are and what they’re doing/how they’re moving. One exercise we did was to have the group standing in a triangle formation (lines of 1, then 3, then 4, then 5 people (and so on) in front of each other), with the person standing alone at the ‘top’ of the pyramid as the ‘leader’ of the group. Everyone in the group then has to essentially ‘follow the leader’, copying the way they move and the speed at which they do so, whilst at the same time being careful not to get in the way of anyone else. This sounds fairly straightforward, but we play the game so that no one person is ‘leader’ for very long. Whenever the ‘leader’ turns into the triangle, in any direction, they give up their role as leader to whoever now finds themselves at the tip of the triangle. In this way, the ‘leader’ of the group can often change very quickly, and you have to keep on your toes to stay together as a group. After having tried several group exercises, we then started to look at how we can use group movement at different points in the play. One scene we tried was act 2 scene 3, where three citizens discuss what will happen now that Edward IV has died. The actors playing the three citizens were asked to try the scene whilst the rest of the group joined the scene as state officials, perhaps policemen. Just by our presence as a group, those actors playing the citizens were forced to play the scene as though they were being watched. We were thinking about how we can create an unsettled atmosphere, how we could suggest instability within the world of the play, and this exercise seemed to do that quite well. I don’t know if we’ll use it when we come to putting all the scenes together later on, but group work will play a large part in the production.
I’m playing Catesby and the First Murderer in Richard III, and I have to admit, I’m really looking forward to playing some male characters on stage. It seems to me that often, whenever you play a female role, you are often hindered by people's expectations of your character simply because that character is a woman. For example, whenever your character is upset, you are expected to be far more emotional than you would be if your character was a man. Likewise, when I had to play a mother in one play, I was asked to play the character in a far softer, more traditionally maternal way than I originally thought would suit that character. Playing male characters means there is no pressure to fulfil any such expectations, which is great!
I think Catesby is a fantastic part; it's a small part, but a good small part, because he has such a strong function in the play. I see him as Richard's spy, a secret agent. We see more of him as the play goes on, as Richard gains more and more power, which means I have a lot to do! My first impression of the murderers’ scene (act I scene 4) was how funny it is; you see two people trying to do their job but they haven’t got a clue what they’re doing:
Second Murderer:
… Shall I stab him as he sleeps?
First Murderer:
No. He’ll say ‘twas done cowardly
when he wakes.
Second Murderer:
Why, he shall never wake until the
great Judgement Day.
First Murderer:
Why, then he’ll say we stabbed him
sleeping
(ll. 101 – 107)
The first murderer totally fails to understand that killing a person in their sleep means they won’t wake up again… The scene is hilarious, but obviously I’m not sure yet exactly how we’ll approach it; whether we’ll actively play it ‘for laughs’ or not.
We’ve been using improvisation in rehearsals to help us find ways into our scenes, and this was especially useful when looking at the murderers’ scene. It's a common temptation for an actor to allow the way you play a scene to be influenced by the fact that you, the actor (not the character), know exactly what's going to happen at that point in the play, and that knowledge can blur your character's journey through the scene. The murderers’ intention at the start of that scene is simply to kill Clarence. That's it. It's when that intention is affected by Clarence's pleading that things start to go wrong for them. To help us start the scene with a clear intention, Barry [Kyle, Master of Play], got us to improvise the scene as though the murder goes according to plan. Clarence didn’t get the opportunity to talk to us; we taunted him, shouted at him, (in fact, I’ve lost my voice a little as a result!), and then killed him without any fuss. Having improvised the scene as though our initial intention is fulfilled has really helped us clarify what this intention is, and should really help us to develop the scene as it appears in the play, when this same intention is totally altered by Clarence's pleading.
As well as group movement work, we’ve also had a lot of group singing rehearsals. A lot of the music in the play will be unaccompanied, a cappella singing. At the moment we’re working with Belinda [Sykes, Master of Singing] on some Eastern European songs. One point in the play I know we’ll be using singing is the beginning of act 1 scene 2, when Lady Anne enters following her husband's body. The songs we’re rehearsing at the moment are songs of mourning, such as would have been sung at a funeral. Interestingly, in Eastern European Music, such songs would most often be sung by women so although most of the company are playing men in the play, when we’re singing as a group, we’re singing as a female chorus.
Character 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.
The whole company has been doing a lot of research into our characters and the historical period in which the play takes place. At the moment, I’m reading The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe by Charles Nicholl. It's rumoured that Marlowe was murdered, and, since I’m playing a murderer and a spy (Catesby), I wanted to find out about such people in the Elizabethan period. I’ve been wondering how Richard would meet the murderers, who they were; were they high status courtiers or low status beggars and thieves.
Spies such as Catesby were usually men of high social status. During the Elizabethan period, spies were often recruited through the universities, especially Oxford and Cambridge. Many spies were recruited by high-ranking members of the court such as Sir Francis Walsingham, (one of whose responsibilities was to look after Elizabeth's personal security), who often used those people he caught in acts of treason to spy on their fellow conspirators. Spying was often linked to religion; England under Elizabeth was a Protestant state and Catholicism was illegal, though many people continued to practice the Catholic faith in secret. Many plots to kill or replace Elizabeth were supported by English Catholics, even though their reasons for plotting against Elizabeth often had little to do with religion. Walsingham would often use those English Catholics he caught to spy on others. Although these people called themselves Protestants in public, they would easily be able to infiltrate the Catholic community and find out about future plots and unrest because they themselves were once, if they weren’t still, practising Catholics. Spies were often people of very high status, but murderers such as in Richard III would most probably come from the lower levels of society. Servants who showed their masters that they could be trusted, perhaps through successfully completing smaller tasks, may have been asked to do such things. They may have been offered money to commit murder, or perhaps a higher position in the household.
I’ve been wondering why the murderers do what they do, and why they get on with Richard. Their common ground is that they’re both fighters and feel that they don’t really fit in the world that we see at the beginning of the play, ruled by a king who has no interest in war. In such times, all of the under-ground, slightly dodgy jobs that they’d usually be employed to do don’t exist. Something we’ve been working on with Kathryn [Hunter, Richard III], is that the murderers and Richard share a kind of social discontent. Because of his deformity, Richard is rejected by the Royals, and as a result, perhaps feels more able to fit in with people like the murderers than his own ‘family’.
We’ve been looking in detail at the murderers’ scene. As I’ve mentioned, I think it's a really funny scene, but that, in many ways, means it's especially hard to pull off in performance. I think the key is going to be playing the scene totally straight, not trying to play the scene for laughs. I remember a comedy show I saw once when one of the characters walked into a hardware store and asked the man behind the counter for some nuts and bolts. Of course, it turns out that he isn’t after nuts and bolts such as you’d find in a hardware store; instead he's after some peanuts to eat. It doesn’t sound that funny put like this, but when you’re watching them do the sketch it's brilliantly funny because that character plays the scene as though he's asking for something totally normal, something you’d expect to find in a hardware store, and as a result, he gets a little puzzled when the shopkeeper tells him he doesn’t have any… At the moment we’re trying the murderers’ scene (act 1 scene 4) in the same way. So, when the Second Murderer asks me, “Shall I stab him as he sleeps?”, I reply as though it's a serious question: “No. He’ll say ‘twas done cowardly / when he wakes.” At the moment, I think the audience will find it funnier if they’re laughing at us rather than with us.
I had my first costume fitting for Catesby the other day. It's quite plain and simple; I’ll be wearing doublet and hose, but nothing elaborate; it's mainly black with little touches of white here and there. It's very plain and official-looking, which I think is very appropriate for the character. Catesby needs to be able to blend in; he needs not to be noticed when it suits his purposes, but at the same time, it's appropriate that his clothes are very different to those of Edward IV and his court, whose clothes are far more brightly coloured and gaudy.
I’ve been starting to think about why Catesby sides with Richard. I think they both believe that England is not well served by Edward and his family and that they need to instigate change. He also sees the opportunities for advancement in serving Richard; there is a possibility of a better future for him if he serves Richard because of their shared opinions. The other consideration is that Catesby is a man with nothing to lose. When reading the play, I found no hints that he had anything to lose in following Richard, and when I was doing some research into the history of the character, I found out that the real Catesby's wife died shortly before the time period during which the events of the play take place. When this happened, the historical Catesby was of an age when he probably wouldn’t be able to marry anyone else, so all he was risking in following Richard was his own person and reputation.
Character 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.
Recently, we’ve all shifted gears during rehearsals. Now, each day when we come to rehearsal, we will run several scenes together instead of concentrating on one scene at a time. So, we might run a group of scenes in sequence, a whole act, or even most of the play. This shift of gear is different for different actors: for me, it really lets me know the points during the play where I know what I’m doing and when I don’t know. For the Red Company as a whole, I think it's the sort of shift in gear when we suddenly realize that “We’re doing a play in a few weeks!” Starting to run the play during rehearsals allows us to see the play as a whole as opposed to seeing just our scenes and those other bits we’ve happened to watch during rehearsals. So right now, we’re at the next stage of piecing it all together.
As we run sections of the play; I try to really get a sense of what is actually going on within this world, the world of the play that we as a company are creating. For me personally, the most important thing to do during these rehearsals; is to establish what I’m doing; what my character's intentions are in the play at different moments. This doesn’t mean that the way I play scenes will stay the same every time we do them, but, I have to make sure that my character's intentions, the platform for which I can start to experiment with my scenes, is secure.
For me, figuring out what the character wants is the most important thing, if you can figure out the intention behind what you’re doing, then, your movements are going to convey that naturally. Take the Bosworth battle (v.4 – v.5), for example; if I’m not careful, my character will appear to be running around on stage for no good reason when in fact there's a very specific reason behind it; I’m looking for Richard. Whilst I’m on stage, it's important that I have no doubt about why I’m there even if I don’t have a line where I share this with the audience; “I’m running around looking for Richard.” If I know that's what I’m doing, then I will hopefully be able to communicate this reason to them without telling them directly. It will help the audience understand that there's a reason for me to be running around all over the place, even if they’re not sure exactly what that reason is.
I’ve spent a lot of time recently really figuring out what Catesby wants. Catesby wants to promote and encourage Richard. Of course, as with most characters, he wants different things at different stages of the play. But, the main thing he wants is for Richard to be King; he wants to make sure that happens. One way Catesby promotes Richard is by suggesting to Hastings that Richard should be King:
Catesby:
Many good morrows to my noble lord!
Hastings:
Good morrow, Catesby; you are early stirring.
What news, what news, in this our tottering state?
Catesby:
It is a reeling world indeed, my lord,
And I believe will never stand upright
Till Richard wear the garland of the realm.
Hastings:
How Wear the garland! Dost thou mean the crown?
Catesby:
Ay, my good lord. (iii. 2. 35 – 42)
Beyond that, he supports him and makes sure that he gets what he wants. He encourages Richard by being loyal to him, being a friend, and being a sort of political advisor. In order to communicate that, Kathryn [Hunter, Richard III] and I have done a great deal of work developing the relationship between these two men. In the play, these two characters trust one another. They have a friendship based on similar interests and beliefs. Catesby had believed in Richard's father and he believes in Richard. He believes that Richard is the best person to rule England because he's a fighter. He will be a strong King who will be able to restore English rule in France and also cure England. Catesby recognizes that the state is sort of infected by an overly indulgent court and he knows that Richard is the person who's going to put things right.
Catesby is always trying to support Richard. A significant part of Catesby's political journey is the point in the play where Richard begins to show that he's under a lot of pressure. At that point, it becomes about keeping Richard up right, in power, in control. That's not to say that I think Catesby is after power of his own because I do not list “gaining political power” as one of his objectives. There is one exchange between Buckingham and Catesby, however, that does indicates that Catesby could hope to be in a position of power in the future:
Buckingham:
What think’st thou then of Stanley? Will not he?
Catesby:
He will do all in all as Hastings doth.
Buckingham:
Well then, no more but this: go, gentle Catesby,
And, as it were afar off, sound thou Lord Hastings
How he doth stand affected to our purpose,
And summon him tomorrow to the Tower
To sit about the coronation.
If thou dost find him tractable to us,
Encourage him, and tell him all our reasons;
If he be leaden, icy, cold, unwilling,
Be thou so too, and so break off the talk,
And give us notice of his inclination;
For we tomorrow hold divided councils,
Wherein thyself shalt highly be employed. (iii. 1. 167 - 180)
While I don’t consider political power one of Catesby's main objectives, I do think there is an element of “I’ve got to keep on the right side of Richard” in Catesby's objectives which overrules any concerns he might have over whether what he's doing is right or wrong. As opposed to Buckingham, who, throughout the play he has insecurities about supporting Richard and remaining in his favour. When he falls, he realises his mistakes and his faults:
Buckingham:
…This is the day which in King Edward's time
I wished might fall on me when I was found
False to his children and his wife's allies;
This is the day wherein I wished to fall
By the false faith of him whom most I trusted;
This, this All Soul's Day to my fearful soul
Is the determined respite of my wrongs. (iv. 1. 16 – 19)
In contrast, Catesby definitely wants to stay on the safe side of Richard and doesn’t have any concerns about what he has to do to stay there. Fundamentally, though, I think Catesby is motivated to do what he does for Richard because he genuinely wants a better England.
Early on in rehearsal, we (the company) did an exercise with Barry [Kyle, Master of Play] where we each profiled one of the characters we portray. The profile was created from a set of detailed questions about the character's background and role in the play. He asked us questions such as ‘What's their full name?’ ‘What's their job?’ and ‘What's their darkest secret?’ I chose to profile the murderer. I suggested that the murderer's darkest secret was that he secretly loved other men. And one day, Barry suggested that maybe Richard was once my lover! I think these sorts of details are really important when playing a character on stage; the more you know about them, the more natural your performance becomes. Barry's suggestion added a closeness to the relationship between Richard and the murderer, but also a distrust; could one of them use this secret against the other? Even though we haven’t agreed whether to keep this ‘secret’, starting to think about potential details of this relationship have been a great help in starting to develop the character. Barry also suggested that, even though I’d only selected one of my two characters, that there are many parallels between the Murderer and Catesby, and he's right. These two men both feel a bit out of place in this society and are therefore willing to serve Richard. Though they belong to separate social classes, they support Richard for the same reason; they hope that Richard will bring them a better England in which they may find a future. The existing society doesn’t need them, and they hope that Richard's England will offer them a more active role.
In continuing to develop the character of the murderer, it's been really helpful to get a bit of feedback. Now that we’ve started to run the play, the other actors in the company have become a sort of first audience. Now, when we do the murderers scene, Barry, Abby, and several actors in the company can watch. I think they like the murderers, I think they like the characters; they’ve been giving us good feedback. What we are learning is that this scene is highly enjoyable for the audience. These two men will make the audience laugh when they least expect it. At least I hope so.
Starting to run the play during rehearsals is a very important part of an actor's journey. That journey begins when she reads the play for the first time. And everything that actor does between that reading through the performance is the journey that actor makes; that's her job! An actor reads a play and says to himself about every character: “What's this person doing here?” and so begins the discovery about that character. Those ideas that you come up with, even the ones you come up with early on, I think, are very important because that's an actor's initial response. At this stage in rehearsals, it's important for an actor to remember these initial responses as well as all the work we’ve done over the last few weeks; the combination will help us take the last steps towards performance.
With thanks to Melinda Scott
Character 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.
The character I was originally going to play in The Taming of the Shrew has been cut. I think this was the right decision. Sly was going to be part of an introduction where Queen Elizabeth I paid a visit to the Globe. Her ladies-in-waiting intend to put on a play to show the Queen what she's really like; they are busy with the preparations when Elizabeth comes in and sees the tramp asleep. She decides to trick him into believing that he is a lord, and makes him think the entertainment is actually for him. The idea tied into the original introduction, but with a twist – Queen Elizabeth took the Lord's place and that seemed to fit with the company's exploration of gender issues… as a Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I was a woman in man's world. But this is now just too much for us to deal with in the time we have left: Phyllida [Lloyd, Master of Play] has taken over from Barry [Kyle] and we’re going to have to concentrate on the essentials rather than working out such complex additions. I had mixed feelings about playing a character whose relation to the actual play is unclear – I didn’t really understand Sly's function, and no one really likes playing a character that isn’t called for much work in rehearsals, so things have turned out for the best.
When Phyllida arrived, we pretty much started again from scratch with The Taming of the Shrew. Though time will be a real pressure, we’re approaching the play as a group and the atmosphere is actually quite relaxed. Early on, we had open rehearsal and worked on a lot of group scenes. Those actors who weren’t involved in a particular scene were called to help work on ideas – we tried to include various types of women who aren’t written into the play, for instance. I played the part of a heckler in the final scene, putting a modern woman's views into the picture as Katherina gives her last speech. When we got to know the play better, these additions were no longer necessary – they would have confused the essential story (though the group exercises definitely helped our understanding). Now I have a prologue to perform, which I love because it gives me the chance to play with the audience at every show. A friend of Phyllida's called Chris wrote it; I haven’t met the writer and can’t tell from the name whether Chris is a man or a woman. It would be nice if Chris was a woman, in keeping with the idea of an all-female company. I’m going to be onstage at other times, but these parts will be fairly minor. However I’ll still have a good time and joining in with the wedding and songs is great.