Paulina

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About Penelope Beaumont

This is Penny's third season at Shakespeare's Globe. Last year she played Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing and she was a member of the Globe's first all-female company in 2003; she played Vincentio in The Taming of the Shrew and Lord Stanley in Richard III. She also performed in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Richard III as Queen Elizabeth. Penny has appeared in several television dramas including The Bill, Prime Suspect, Midsomer Murders, and Murder Without Motive.

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 back to the Globe

When I learnt that John Dove was going to direct The Winter's Tale this season, I was very keen to be considered for the play. There were some other possibilities of work at the same time, so I came to Mark and said that of all the possibilities in the air as it were, the Globe was where my heart was and I very much wanted to come back. John saw me twice; very early on, and then later when he was ready to cast. I came back for an audition and we talked for ages; so much of what he said about the play seemed right and fresh. For instance, we looked at the scene at the end of the trial [III.ii] where Hermione has been given news that her son has died and King Leontes refuses to accept what the Oracle says. Hermione faints and at the moment I think that Paulina really does think she's dead. Having taken Hermione off, Paulina comes back on quite quickly: she says that Hermione is dead, and she's furious with the King. There's a little speech towards the end of the scene where she apologises for speaking in Hermione's defence ‘Oh, I’m sorry; if I’ve done something wrong, I’m sorry.’ You could play those lines as if she really does feel sorry for the King and she's now repentant: ‘Oh, poor you, I shouldn’t have said anything, the queen is dead and your son is dead, this is just awful, I’m so sorry.’ But you could also play it another way – perhaps Paulina feels that being sorry just isn’t enough: ‘Oh, sorry! I’ve upset you? Are you really upset? All these terrible things have happened to you (and it's your own fault), but I shouldn’t say anything… I shouldn’t remind you of the fact you’ve killed your queen, you’ve killed your son, and you’ve killed my husband as well.’ I really liked that take on it, and that's how I’m hoping to approach it. After our meeting, John asked me to play Paulina. I was absolutely thrilled and delighted and here I am, still thrilled and delighted!

Preparation

I read the play a lot before I came into rehearsals and just tried to get rid of any preconceived ideas about it, really. I’ve been in The Winter's Tale twice: I walked on in a production whilst I was at drama school, but I wasn’t in rehearsals very much. We were mainly in the big country scene [IV.iv]. Then I played Emilia and Mopsa at Liverpool Playhouse, which was my first job all those years ago. So I would have listened to the play in those rehearsals, although I don’t remember Paulina much. Sometimes you can listen to plays or see them done by other companies and come away without using your own brain, without really thinking: ‘How would I do it?’ So for me, preparation is a matter of looking at the play afresh, without any baggage at all. That's what I try to do.

First impressions of Paulina

As a character, I think she's quite difficult: she's not going to put up with any nonsense. As always, I’m looking to chart her journey through the play. In her first scene [II.ii], she arrives at the jail hoping to see Hermione and ends up taking the baby to the King, to try and soften his heart. I think at that point she's quite optimistic; she just thinks this is all a terrible mistake. When she arrives at the jail, the jailer says he's not allowed to let her see Hermione and she seems to accept that - she isn’t going to push that yet, because she doesn’t need to. She's going to try another tactic:

Is’t lawful, pray you to see her women?
Any of them? Emilia?
[II.ii]

‘Well, c’mon, surely I can see one of the women?’ And he does let her, provided that he's present. So we’re getting there. But then he gets very worried about her taking the baby because he's pretty sure that's not allowed. Again, she persuades him ‘Look, don’t worry. I’m going to make sure that it will all be fine’. She achieves what she wants, so the jailer must have some confidence in her, but I think basically she's one of those people who are very difficult to say ‘no’ to!

Leontes and the baby

In the next scene [II.iii], Paulina goes to see the King. I think she goes in with her mind made up: she's going to do it, she's going to go in and to say to the King ‘Here's your baby, your lovely baby, look!’ And the king is going to soften when he sees his child. What she isn’t ready for is the fact that this man has gone completely mad. A few times in my life, I’ve gone into situations and expected the outcome to be absolutely fine, because the people are reasonable; of course they’ll respond to a reasonable argument and there can be no problem. But sometimes (and it happened to me quite recently) you meet a mind that cannot encompass your reason. In the end you have to sort of agree to differ, I suppose, because there can be no meeting of minds and that's exactly what happens with Paulina and Leontes. What's difficult for Paulina is leaving the baby in that room with Leontes. I don’t know what else she can do, really. I suppose she could take it back to Hermione, but would it be any safer there? I’m not sure. Paulina takes the decision to leave the baby, and that turns out to be a bad choice – or so we think.

This morning we’ve been rehearsing the trial scene [III.ii]. I wonder whether Paulina feels any responsibility when Hermione talks about her baby being ‘Haled out to murder’. It must weigh on her mind… it's really tricky. That's as far as we’ve got in terms of charting a journey for Paulina: the first scene is very optimistic, the second scene is determined, and then the trial scene – I’m going to try and approach it as someone going in there to deal with a situation in a pragmatic way, but things become more emotional when Paulina thinks the Queen is dead. Then her heart starts to rule her head, and perhaps her anger with the king drives that scene. We’re going to carry on rehearsing this afternoon and I might change my mind. We’ll see… that's what rehearsals are for, to change your mind.

Rehearsal process

I love having the maximum amount of time to investigate the text. If you have problems with a scene, then improvisations and specifically targeted games can be absolutely brilliant. I suppose I’m a bit old-fashioned, but I do just love getting stuck into the scenes with the rest of the company. These different minds meld together and come up with really inventive ideas. Perhaps it's a very traditional way of working, but as part of that ‘traditional’ process you’re always looking for original and fresh ways of doing the play. Actually – having said that I really like improvising. I think it's very useful in allowing you a freedom to be truly inventive.

Similarly, our production is ‘Original Practices’ so we’ll be exploring the settings and clothing available to Shakespeare's company in the Globe of 1599, but of course we’re still looking for what keeps the scenes alive – what stops them being predictable for an audience. Sometimes I think what's really interesting on stage is when you have a group of people who all play something different because each person has a different ways of reacting to things and different expectations from a situation, different ways of changing a situation. Like the trial scene, for example; it's possible for all of us to come on with a sort of hushed grandeur, waiting for the king to make his pronouncements, but I think the difference makes scenes interesting and real. We don’t want to conform to some kind of preconceived idea of courtly behaviour: we don’t want to put a ‘Shakespearean’ wash on it!

Humour

The Winter's Tale is one of the Comedies but it does have lots of dark patches. I just think Shakespeare's great at balancing light and dark. Paulina very sharp. In Act two, scene two, the jailer says to her

Madam, if't please the queen to send the babe,
I know not what I shall incur to pass it,
Having no warrant.
[II.ii]

Basically ‘I’m not allowed to give you the baby’, and she responds:

You need not fear it, sir:
This child was prisoner to the womb and is
By law and process of great nature thence
Freed and enfranchised, not a party to
The anger of the king nor guilty of,
If any be, the trespass of the queen.
[II.ii]

She draws a witty distinction to persuade and reassure him that it will all be fine! Of course it isn’t. So she keeps her wits about her and her humour is always there, even as her plan to soften Leontes’ heart with the baby goes awry: Paulina says to her husband, Antigonus

For ever
Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou
Takest up the princess by that forced baseness
Which he has put upon't!

Leontes mocks Antigonus with the line ‘He dreads his wife’ but Paulina is back quick as a flash:

So I would you did; then 'twere past all doubt
You'ld call your children yours.
[II.iii]

I get the feeling that Paulina and Leontes know each other very well, but also that Paulina's known throughout the Court as the sort of person who goes around saying ‘Tie your shoelaces up! Stand up straight! Behave!’ Leontes knows that she’ll come to him when she hears about Hermione, so Paulina's reputation rides before her, I think.

She's kind and generous too, but the injustice that she sees is beyond the pale. When she snaps back at Leontes, she doesn’t care if he is King: he's not going to get away with this if she can help it. She doesn’t pussy foot around him like a lot of people do, and even tells the other courtiers that they’ll never do him good, creeping around him and ‘sighing at his needless heavings.’ Of course, that's not actually doing him any good at all, so Paulina's full of common sense as well. It's early days, but that's how I see her.

Starting to jig

So, we’ve been having lots of discussions about the scenes, and we’ve also worked with Glynn [MacDonald, Master of Movement], who keeps me well-oiled, and Giles [Block, Master of Words] who helps us to get the most out of the text. We’ve had sessions as a Company so far, but later today I’m going to have a session in a smaller group. Later we’ll have individual sessions to iron out bits and pieces. There are quite a few lines in the play where I’m not quite sure where the stresses come, so hopefully he’ll help me clarify that.

We’ve also started to learn the dances and I haven’t completely fallen apart yet! I’m actually managing to keep up with everyone else (although I went a bit pear-shaped today but I expect I’ll get the hang of it). The way that Sian [Williams, Master of Dance] teaches us to jig is so clever: she introduces things slowly and builds up the steps, so you start off with something that isn’t at all frightening and make it more complicated as you’re more able to take more complication!

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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.

Sixteen years pass…

Most of this week has been spent working on Act four, scene four (an absolutely huge scene – the sheep-shearing) so I haven’t done much rehearsing as Paulina. I had a costume fitting which is always enjoyable They try to distract me while my corset is being laced up so that I won’t notice how tight it's getting! The play spans such a long period of time (sixteen years) that fashions would have changed and I think that I am having a second set of sleeves in a different shape, - though we decided that as Paulina's quite traditional, she wouldn’t have been too bothered about keeping up with the latest fashion. As our play is an original practices production, we probably won’t use make-up to show the ageing process – we might do something with hair, but Shakespeare's words do a lot of that work for you. The character Time tells us time has passed and we accept it. Leontes says Hermione's statue is wrinkled [V.iii], and that's almost like verbal make-up; it's all part of the imaginative game.

When we return to the Sicilian court after sixteen years, the fact that everyone is in mourning for King Leontes’ family will probably be more noticeable than the age difference (or lack of it!). The king has been doing penance all that time, so I suspect we’ll be pretty sombrely dressed – though I’m hoping to introduce something a bit more colourful by way of an embroidered front piece for the last scene. By that time everyone knows who Perdita is, and Paulina knows that she's going to complete the reunion. Hermione will come to life and everything will be fine. I think the final scene also marks the end of Paulina's reign as the king's closest advisor (which is certainly how she sees herself for the latter part of the play). She's going to relinquish her huge influence at Court quite happily because she's got what she wants; the king is repentant and his faith has been awakened, he's reunited with Hermione – and Perdita too, as it turns out. She's happy to give up that position, but it will be quite a change for her, and it would be nice to show that costume-wise by introducing something a bit more colourful for the last scene – it's celebratory, after all. Perdita has been found, and everything is going to change for the better.

Word work

We’ve done some group work with Giles [Block, Master of the Words]. In these sessions, we tend not to work on The Winter's Tale but take a general look at Shakespeare's text; Giles helps us to discover how the form of the text unlocks meanings that you might find difficult and it also helps you find the most effective way of using your own imagination to bring the words to life. I’m a huge believer in ‘using’ the final word in the lines and that's something Giles has introduced me to, really. He's never constrictive in what he says; he says there are no rules at all. The sessions are really all about guiding you to get the best out of the form of the text – he never ever tells you how to say something.

What I try to do is look at the last word of a line and find a reason for giving it; I don’t think stressing is the right term – but it's giving it a real life. If you can find something to give most of those last words in the line a real life of their own, you can really liven up the whole speech. You can’t do it with every line, but often you can. It's a sort of key into the verse; it helps me think about those particular words in a new way and why they should be special. When people stress too many words in the line, the line drags out and it all sounds like it's some kind of archaic ‘Shakespeare’ that has nothing to do with the way we talk. That just can’t be right.

I make a lot of decisions about the text at home – that's where I try to answer questions about the impetus behind the lines: ‘Why does my character open her mouth to speak at this point?’ I find the most relaxing position (sometimes I lie on the floor) and just say the lines out loud: there's no need to think about what to do with the rest of your body. You just use your brain and a bit of voice. That's when I tend to discover things about the text that I didn’t realise were there. I bring those ideas into rehearsals, and they change and develop as we rehearse the scene together – finding meaning obviously isn’t something you do by yourself, so much depends on the other actors, the relationships between characters and the shape of the scene. As an actor, you can get tunnel-vision, looking at your own scenes without seeing the whole picture. The director looks at the play as a whole and how each scene tells the story, and helps you discover how you fit in to the overall scheme of things. Word work on the character's motivation, their reason for speaking, is the beginning of that voyage of discovery.

Trial scene

I mentioned that we had been thinking about Paulina's speech at the end of the Trial scene [III.iii]. We did some more work on that earlier in the week. Paulina comes in to face Leontes after Hermione has fainted, and at that moment I believe she truly thinks Hermione is dead. The speech where she tells the King about Hermione's death builds up to that moment by recounting all the terrible things that Leontes has done (he betrayed his best friend Polixenes, he attempted to poison Camillo's honour with regicide, he sent his baby daughter to be eaten by the crows) but these are all ‘poor trespasses’ when compared with his latest atrocity… that's when she reveals that he's actually killed the Queen: Hermione is dead.

At that point Leontes seems repentant:

Go on, go; Thou canst not speak too much, I have deserv’d
All tongues to talk their bitt’rest
[III.iii]

But Paulina isn’t having any of that, she says: Oh, you’re sorry are you? That's such a shame, yes, you poor chap. There's no point in you being sorry at all because no matter how long you repented, no matter what you did to show that you’re sorry, the gods wouldn’t look at you because what you’ve done is so awful.’ She doesn’t repent telling him the truth at all – her honesty forces him to acknowledge what it is that he's done.

The next time we see Leontes and Paulina is sixteen years later [V.i]; his political advisors want him to marry and have an heir to secure the future of the state, but Paulina can’t allow that to happen because she knows that Hermione is alive. That's the scene we rehearsed this morning. I found Paulina really has to have her wits about her. Her trump card is Apollo's Oracle ‘King Leontes shall not have an heir / Till his lost child be found’ … he cannot get married and have an heir, because the oracle has forbidden it, therefore it simply cannot happen. I’m really looking forward to exploring what goes on between Leontes and Paulina there.

Next week

I believe the Tudor Group are coming into rehearsals – they’re wonderful people who spend some of their time living as the Tudors would have lived. They wear Tudor clothes and share their knowledge about different aspects of Tudor life, which is often useful background for Original Practices productions. I’ve met them before, as they came to talk to us before Richard III and Much Ado About Nothing, so I know that they’ll be telling us about the right way for a Gentleman to take off his hat (without showing the inside of it, which would be greasy) and the proper way for a lady to curtsey. We’ll learn about wearing swords too, because the men would have worn swords all the time. I’m much more up to speed with what the original practices to do with men because I’ve never played a woman here before!

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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.

Jailer

We had a really good look at the jailer scene a couple of days ago. The story there is coming along nicely. Paulina wants to see the queen; as she knows she's not supposed to, her challenge is to get everybody on her side. She's got to come up with something that will persuade the jailer to let her see Hermione. When the jailer refuses, I’ve decided that it's Emilia whom Paulina really wants to see, because she knows Emilia will be game for anything to help Hermione. Haley-Jane [Emilia] and I had a chat and we decided that Emilia was a bit of a drama queen, up for anything and ready to take the whole situation to another level. Emilia is wonderfully dynamic, a bit like a young Paulina, and together we give the jailer a hard time! Having gradually made him agree to do all these things that he knows could get him into terrible trouble, Paulina brushes his concerns aside ‘Do not you fear. Upon mine honor, I will stand betwixt you and danger.’ [II.ii]. There's humour in her absolute confidence; the humour of the play is something that John [Dove, Master of Play] is keen to bring out.

Getting her own way

What's interesting from my point of view is how Paulina achieves her objectives: she's constantly adapting to the situation. First of all she wants to see the queen, then one of the ladies-in-waiting (Emilia). When she learns that the baby has been born, her objective is to do something that will get the queen out of prison: she thinks the newborn baby might just do it – if she takes the baby to Leontes and makes him acknowledge the likeness. Paulina thinks the baby will open up a chink in his armour; he’ll want the baby to be his. Unfortunately it doesn’t work out like that, but in the jailor scene you can really see how her mind works and how she pursues her objectives through a situation.

A combination of quick-wittedness and commonsense makes Paulina very difficult to argue with; for instance, as she's about to take the baby, she tells the Jailer not to worry about the consequences:

You need not fear it, sir.
This child was prisoner to the womb, and is
By law and process of great Nature thence
Freed and enfranchis’d, not a party to
The anger of the King, nor guilty of
(If any be) the trespass of the Queen.
[II.ii]

Basically she's saying ‘Look, you don’t need to worry: the baby was just a prisoner to the womb.’ She even uses legal jargon to make her case all the more impenetrable – like a lawyer arguing a Defence. I do feel sorry for the poor jailer because he's in a terrible fix. Faced with this woman's wonderful arguments but under the King's command, he's stuck between a rock and a hard place. Paulina's faith is very strong. There are so many things stacked against her, but she behaves as if everything is going to be alright in end. She's one of the sources of good in the play.

Whose logic? [II.iii]

Paulina tries to use logical arguments with the King in the next scene, when she brings him baby Perdita. That's the scene we did yesterday. I try to be quite reasonable during the first part of the scene, because I have a baby in my arms and I don’t want to frighten her. When the lords challenge me, I’m calm and firm: ‘You should be supporting me – are you really more worried about the King's tantrum than the life of the Queen?’ I’m bringing him peace; everything I’m doing is to put him at peace with himself – ‘I do come with words as medicinal as true’ – so I’m not going to burst in all fired up.

Of course, Leontes is not very pleased, to say the least. Again, Paulina has to manoeuvre to deal with his anger. The first thing she does is position herself as his loyal servant and obedient subject: she's telling him ‘I’m on your side’. At that point, she thinks she's in with a chance because Leontes is a normal, rational human being… but he just won’t listen. When he tries to force her out of his presence, it hits her in the face that he's not rational at all – it's as if he's gone mad.

It's terrifying when you come across a person with whom you can’t connect with on any level: no matter what you say or do, your logic is not their logic. I think that's what happens with the king and Paulina, because he simply cannot conceive that he's wrong. He cannot and he will not see. She says that it's a ‘curse’ he cannot be compelled to remove ‘the root of his opinion, which is rotten/ As ever oak or stone was sound.’ So his opinion is unsound, diseased, and he cannot even allow for a second that Hermione might be innocent. That's the source of all the unhappiness.

When Paulina goes into that room she thinks she's going to come out with some sort of result. Not only does she get pushed out, she also has to make the decision to leave the baby with Leontes. I don’t know what would happen if she tried to take the baby out… I don’t know if he’d stop her. We did the beginning of the trial scene just before lunch today, and at the moment I feel a huge weight about Antigonus, my husband: I must know by now that my husband has gone with the baby and hasn’t come back. Maybe I still think he’ll return, but perhaps I also think it's somehow my fault? Maybe I shouldn’t have left the baby. I don’t know. Questions, questions, questions!

Lines

I get to a stage in rehearsals where I wonder ‘Am I ever going to be able to get every word out in the right order at the right time?’ And if I manage to do that, am I going to do it without trampling over someone else's lines?! Now I’ve learnt most of my lines, I have to go back now and find the ‘trigger’ moments in what other characters say to me – what it is that means I have to speak. Sometimes it's obvious, but every now and then I find I haven’t quite got the right trigger in lines of the character who speaks before I do. Finding those triggers will help me know exactly when to say what I need to say.

Paulina's plan

One bit I’ve been finding difficult to remember is in the final scene. Paulina has four little bits to Leontes whilst they all look at the statue. The first one is:

No longer shall you gaze on’t, lest your fancy
May think anon it moves.

But Leontes continues to look, and she says:

My lord's so far transported that
He’ll think anon it lives.

Again Leontes carries on gazing at the statue. Paulina says:

I am sorry, sir, I have thus far stirr’d you;
But I could afflict you farther.
[V.iii]

In my head I know those four interjections and I know the progression of the thoughts; first of all she plants the idea that somebody might think the statue could move, then that there are people who think it could live, then she drops the hint that there is more to this than meets the eye. Until recently, though, I couldn’t remember the lines because I saw them in isolation. Now I see them as a progression, and I can remember how they go because I’ve got a plan in my head. After learning lines, the next stage is to put together Paulina's plan. That gives me something to think about at all points; when anyone speaks on stage, I think about what my angle is on what they’re saying – how it fits into Paulina's plan: ‘Oh, he's just said that… it would be just the right moment to put this little bit of my plan into action.’

Thoughts and actions

Paul [Leontes] told me about a great exercise where you break the text down into ‘actions’. You take each thought and give it an action – what you want the thought to do to the person you’re talking to. So you might want the thought in one line ‘to reassure’ or ‘to soothe’ or ‘to comfort’. That helps to clarify why your character is speaking. I find it very difficult when I’m not committed to a thought; whether other people agree with my interpretation doesn’t matter, in a way: if you’re absolutely committed to the thought then it's real. At the moment I’m trying to find the holes, the points where I’m not committed. In the final scene Paulina says ‘Come; I’ll fill your grave up’ to Leontes; I don’t think I’ve been fully committing to that line because I wasn’t quite sure what it meant. One idea was that Paulina is getting on a bit and she’ll probably die soon; she’ll fill up the grave. But now I really think she's saying ‘Let's stop thinking about the dead and start to think about the living.’ Now I think I have the right angle to be committed.

Paulina and Leontes

Paul [Leontes] and I have talked about the relationship between Paulina and Leontes. I feel that they know each other extremely well. She's certainly able to meet him on her terms and when she's so upset and angry with him in Act two, scene three, she makes no allowance for the fact that he's the king. After the trial scene [III.ii], they spend the next sixteen years… not exactly cooped up together, but in close contact. She does make sure that he's deeply, deeply repentant. Sixteen years! It's such a long time. When I’m angry with people close to me, it rarely lasts longer than a day! She has to fend off the courtiers’ suggestions of marriage too, so Leontes has probably had sixteen years of her reminding him: ‘Just remember what the oracle said, remember what you did – your child, my husband.’ We joke that Leontes must occasionally think that this is all beyond the pale. The scene would suggest that he has to keep being pulled back, at least. During the sixteen years, I think Paulina is just waiting until she feels he's ready to be reunited with Hermione. Once Perdita turns up, she knows it's the right moment – the Oracle's prophesy has been fulfilled; the heir has returned and she knows that Hermione needs to see her daughter as soon as possible. I think one of the most important things she says is in the last scene: ‘It is required that you do awake your faith’ – that's a key thing for Leontes, who has to believe in Hermione's innocence and the fact that she's come back to life.

Hermione's statue

All the lines referring to the curtain in the final scene have been cut, so as things stand now there’ll be no curtain for Paulina to pull back and reveal the statue. Shakespeare must have envisaged a curtain (possibly across the discovery space in the tiring house) but we’ve decided to do it another way. The statue will stand on a plinth that will be pulled on stage at the right moment. In modern theatres you can have lighting and gauze to help stage that scene… you can even have a bit of dry ice if you fancy it! We don’t have any of that at the Globe, but what we do have is an audience with a slightly different perspective – I think they see things in a slightly different way, because they really do ‘awake their faith’ and stick with story. It's extraordinary.

Paulina says ‘It is requir’d/ You do awake your faith. Then all stand still./ Or; those that think it is unlawful business/ I am about let them depart’ in the last scene. At the moment I’m not playing that out to the audience as if they’re all in the chapel with us, but there's the sense that it does include them: they have to be part of this to make the miracle happen. That's one of the fantastic things about the Globe. They have to awake their faith too. I just hope there's not a rush for the exits!

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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.

‘Awake your faith’

What strikes me about The Winter's Tale is that it's a play that celebrates being a story. Giles Block [Master of Play for Troilus and Cressida] and I were talking about Troilus and Cressida this morning; I don’t know the play very well yet, but it feels as if Shakespeare gives you the humanity behind well-known events: ‘This is what actually happened…now I’m going to tell you what I think these people were really like.’ Whereas The Winter's Tale enjoys being a story – it can leap over sixteen years in an instant or bring someone back from the dead. When Paulina says ‘It is requir’d/ You do awake your faith’ she's asking everyone on stage to believe in the statue's transformation, but she's also saying to the audience ‘You have to believe in the story’. If they believe, you don’t need to make huge physical alterations for the sixteen-year time lapse, for example: it's enough that the character Time comes on and says ‘This is what's happened, we’ve moved on 16 years.’ It's very dependent on the audience's ability to believe (we might grey our hair a bit too!)

As for rehearsals, now we’re running acts of the play together. The runs are very instructive because the more you put the play together, the more confidence you have that you’re playing the same person in each scene! And that you’re finding the right story to tell from your character's perspective. I haven’t watched scenes that I’m not in, so it's also great to see what everyone else has done and get a sense of the world of the play. We’ll probably run the whole thing from beginning to end by the end of the week.

Relationship with Leontes

Paulina argues with Leontes in the trial scene [III.ii] but their relationship seems much closer next time we see them [V.i]. Her compassion for the king is awakened more at the end of the trial scene than perhaps I thought at first. Her last speech has so many conflicting things in it: compassion and anger and grief. All those things together have to find their own place, which is hard. I’d like to explore their relationship before all this happens… you don’t see me before it all happened, but I’m going in to see a man whom I know very well when I take him the baby [II.iii]. If I can suggest the kind of relationship they might have in normal times during those first few exchanges, they’ll hopefully inform my speech to Leontes at the end of the trial scene. Even though this man has done something so terrible, I can tap back into a relationship with somebody I’ve always liked. That's quite easy because Paul's Leontes is a man of great humanity who goes off the rails. He's incredibly warm and big hearted; when a heart that big is troubled with jealousy, the results are disastrous.

We haven’t pinned down their relationship at the beginning of Act five, scene one (where Paulina makes Leontes swear not to remarry). We play it in different ways as we come to it. I’m not sure how ‘connected’ Paulina and Leontes are by the end of the trial scene and that informs the way they talk to each other in the later scene. At the moment, when Leontes says ‘Come, and lead me/ To these sorrows,’ I leave with him but not in complete empathy with his suffering. I’m still full of grief and shock. Sixteen years later when we next see them together, I feel that Leontes has completely subjugated himself to Paulina as repentance. The lords are desperately worried that there won’t be an heir and the security of the kingdom is at risk. Paulina has to stand up to them and remind them what the Oracle said – basically I think she says ‘Oh look, come on, this is what the Oracle said and that's just tough. Don’t you worry about the crown – the crown will find an heir.’ In one rehearsal she was really fronting it out with the lords whilst Leontes himself was rather left out of it. I think that's basically what's going on: the lords accuse her of not having the country's best interests at heart and she can’t let Leontes marry because she knows Hermione is still alive. They’re jockeying for power over the king and ultimately Paulina wins. After the king promises not to marry unless Paulina agrees, the first thing she does is turn to the Lords:

Then, good my lords, bear witness to his oath.
[V.i]

It's as if she's saying ‘There. Did you hear that?’ As we put the play together, the thread of their relationship will become clearer.

Camillo [V.iii]

In the last scene, Leontes turns the tables on Paulina and picks her a husband:

Thou shouldst a husband take by my consent,
As I by thine a wife: this is a match,
And made between's by vows.
[V.iii]

I think she is absolutely horrified. It could be anybody – it could be the old shepherd! When Leontes chooses Camillo, my Paulina is shocked but it's not an unpleasant shock. I think she's pleased; she definitely likes him. It's a good match, in that she's a voice of good sense and integrity within the court and Camillo is a similar voice of reason in the other scenes so it's as if they become the same person, the two facets of the same ideal. That they should come together is absolutely right, I feel. There's harmony everywhere at the end and the pairing off Camillo and Paulina is part of that. But it's still a tricky moment because I’m not given any lines in response!

Shakespeare's comedies often include a villain who gets his comeuppance at the end of the play, or some kind of little sting in the tail – like Don Jon in Much Ado About Nothing or Malvolio in Twelfth Night. In The Winter's Tale Shakespeare actually ties everything up in a very harmonious way. Of course, nothing can bring back sixteen lost years or Mamillius and that can’t be put right. Antigonus, Paulina's husband, has also died; that's my struggle at the moment – how to do those last lines without sounding dismissive or self-pitying:

I, an old turtle,
Will wing me to some wither’d bough, and there
My mate (that's never to be found again)
Lament till I am lost.
[V.iii]

I’ve got everybody's attention at that last moment, so I get a bit embarrassed saying ‘I, an old turtle…’ I haven’t got the right measure of that line yet but I think it will come. It seems that Paulina accepts the death of Antigonus quite early on – perhaps she's ready to start a new life too.

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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.

Tech week

We’ve started technical rehearsals this week. Getting to work on stage is the best bit of the tech, and at the moment we’re working on entrances and exits. At the Globe, the tricky bit is hearing your cues. Most theatres have a cue light (red for standby, green for go) but here you get down to the tiring house and it's up to you to make sure that you go on at the right time. It's much harder than you’d think! Once you get down into the tiring house to wait for your cue, there are huge heavy doors between you and the action on stage. There are little grills cut into the doors and if the door that you’re about to go through is closed, you can stick your ear to the grill – but you’ve still got to negotiate the door being opened for you. If the door is open as you wait for your cue, it's really hard not to be seen by the audience. You have to stand quite a long way back in the tiring house which makes it quite hard to hear your cue. The technical and the dress rehearsals give us time to get those things right.

The cue that's proving difficult for me is when Paulina comes back into the Trial scene [III.ii] and says ‘Cut my lace…’ But there will be a solution. During technical and dress rehearsals, there's more noise backstage than there would be during a performance so when things quieten down I’ll no doubt find it easier to hear the cue. I just don’t want to leave everybody on stage looking like they’ve got something wrong! That's just a tiny little thing that I’ve got to sort out.

All dressed up

I’m wearing a beautiful dress – this is the first time I’ve played a female character at the Globe, so it's my first ‘original practices’ dress. Getting into it takes some doing: first I put on a shift, then a petticoat, then a corset (which is pretty tight) and a huge bum roll is laced onto that. It's so big that I can’t get my arm round to lift the back of my dress when I walk backwards! As the skirt rests just above the ground, reversing is not too much of a problem. A skirt comes next, followed by a jacket which is again laced; like a second corset. It's beautiful – I don’t know how to describe it. The fabric is patterned with grey and silver flowers and delicate leaves against a black background. I’ve actually got two sets of sleeves; very puffy sleeves for Paulina's first three scenes and then smaller sleeves for the last two scenes which come after the 16 year interval to reflect changes in fashion. I also have two partlets (that's the lacy piece of material that goes over your chest): the first one is cream and the second one is black for the scenes where Paulina is in mourning. The skirt and jacket are made from beautiful light silk and the bum roll is stuffed with hair, so overall it isn’t uncomfortable to wear. Original practice shoes are not so comfortable; apparently Elizabethans didn’t make left and right shoes, so the balance feels very strange. I’ve got a heel on my shoes and it throws your weight down to the edge of your toe in the most peculiar way. I’ll get used to them: they’re so pretty, I want to wear them! Getting on stage and into costume does help me with characterisation. I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but it does make a difference. During rehearsals, you know that you don’t look like the way you picture your character… but, for me, the costumes give me that extra confidence which helps me commit fully to being Paulina. I feel that the audience will accept who she is.

At the moment I don’t know how many people will need to help me get dressed because we haven’t actually done a full dress rehearsal to work out timings yet. This morning Hannah and Debs helped me get ready. Hannah is my dresser and Debs is Head of Wardrobe. They’ve done it so many times I’m sure they could almost do it in their sleep, but it still takes 45 minutes to put me into my clothes. Then I need 15 minutes to put on some makeup and have my hair done. The Wardrobe team at the Globe is unlike any other – their expertise is extraordinary. Jenny Tiramani [Associate Designer, Shakespeare's Globe] designed my costume for me in collaboration with Hattie. Melanie actually cuts the fabric and then there are so many people who sew it together and make different buttons and braids and lace. As ‘original practices’ explores clothing as it would have been in Shakespeare's time, every stitch is hand-sewn. It's such a privilege to wear something like this extraordinary dress that has been made just for you

Sitting down is a bit tricky because the clothing is so bulky and doesn’t allow you to bend in places where you normally bend! The sofas in the green room have been raised on wooden blocks so actors wearing original practices clothing to sit down without having to bend so much. My bum roll is so enormous that I can’t sit on an ordinary chair without being perched on the very edge because the bum roll hits the back of the chair and there's nothing there for you to sit on!

Open rehearsal

We had an open rehearsal yesterday, where people sat in the middle gallery to watch part of the tech. It was lovely to get the odd reaction from them – little laughs at certain moments reassure you ‘This might possibly work!’ Tours usually come in and out of the theatre too, and I find that a bit more difficult because it's quite distracting if there's a mass exodus in the middle of one of your scenes. That won’t happen during the performance, so it's really fine. We’re all straightening out little things… that's what technical rehearsals are for!

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Rehearsal Notes 6

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

Well, the first performance was very scary but funnily enough I was more frightened during the dress rehearsal. I felt as if that was my last chance to get it right, which was silly of me because of course there's never going to be a perfect ‘finished’ play; it changes all the time. Before our first performance I looked out through the tiring house grilles and saw all the people out there – I just thought ‘You can only do your best’ and it was fine. There were lots of things to improve on throughout the play – little problems that make you think ‘Ok, Next time I’ll try this instead.’ A little problem for me cropped up in the second performance when I got stuck vocally in the first two scenes. I think I fell into the trap of trying to play with more volume rather than simply playing the intention of the character. The space does require a very supported voice because it's open air and there are the elements to battle with, as well as planes and helicopters (things Shakespeare's actors didn’t have to worry about!). I’m sure I can be heard most of the time, but there were a couple of moments in our first performance when my lines needed to be a little clearer. I tried to be louder in our next performance and got a bit stuck, but I gave myself a good talking to after the first two scenes and focused on playing what Paulina wants; soon my voice relaxed.

The audience reaction has been fantastic. I feel they like Paulina because she doesn’t take any nonsense at all. She's a hoot and I want to build on that alongside the other aspects of her character – her pity for the king, for example. I’m playing her compassion more and more. After Hermione's trial, the king is distraught and I think Paulina understands that he's a victim of his jealousy too – he loses as much as Hermione and has to cope with the knowledge of what he's done. After her initial anger and the shock of her grief, I think Paulina sees that. Paulina's relationship with Leontes goes back a long way; in my mind, Paulina is almost one of the family, so his jealousy is a tragedy for her too.

Her enormous compassion is the reason why she does what she does, and keeps Hermione hidden for sixteen long years. I suppose if I was in Paulina's position today, involved in a similar marriage crisis, then I’d say ‘Leave them.’ But Paulina thinks that once he's cured of his jealousy, he’ll be able to resume life with Hermione. I think that's what she does during those sixteen years; she heals him and brings him to his senses. He realises that he was wrong and does extreme penance. When we see him in Act five, he's a completely different person; he's generous and loving, ready to be reunited with his family. So I don’t think Paulina is out to punish him by imposing the long separation… I think she's out to heal him. Hermione needs time too – she can’t return to Leontes until Perdita is found.

Nerves

As you walk out on stage, you see so many faces but you know they’re going to be there and it's a joy to see them. I don’t find that the least bit scary. I’m more worried about messing up my lines in a first performance: there's that terror ‘What if you mess up your lines and that messes up somebody else?!’ I don’t think I’ve done anything too terrible yet, although I did talk some drivel when my lines got muddled in the statue scene. I started off alright:

O Hermione,
As every present time doth boast itself
Above a better gone, so must thy grave
Give way to what's seen now!

But then I got the words the wrong way round somehow. I had to keep the rhythm going until I came to a place in the rhythm where I knew what I said next! I don’t know what I said – it was scary but that's live theatre and everybody makes little mistakes. Mostly it's been fine.

During the preview period, we have a rehearsal before each show to go through notes and to tidy up bits and pieces. To a great extent those are technical things – entrances, exits, music cues, how the music fits into the scene. All the music at the Globe is live and being able to see the musicians makes such a difference. Often musicians sit down in the depths of a pit where they can’t be seen. Here they are very much a part of the play. Those are the kind of notes we’ve been working on… and we’ve also looked at how our positions on stage could be stronger. The blocking is pretty flexible so we can try out new things. It's all quite gentle; things will develop and change of their own accord as we play on stage during the previews

New ideas

Lots of ideas are coming to me on the spur of the moment. It's wonderful when that happens during performance – I don’t mean radical things, it might just be a slightly different way of saying a line. In Paulina's scene with the jailor, for example, I basically say ‘Well, come on, take me to see the queen,’ and he looks at my servant then says ‘Put apart your servant and then I’ll take you.’ I agree ‘Ok, fine, take me then or fetch Emilia.’ The jailor looks at the servant again and I say ‘Withdraw yourself.’ I say that in a way that lets you know Paulina is thinking ‘Oh for goodness’ sake!’ and I recently found a better way of conveying that slight impatience. My intention hasn’t changed at all, but within that I’m finding a slightly earthier way of playing Paulina. She's a member of the nobility of course, but now I’m playing her in a more human way that's easier to identify with: you really know where she stands in that first scene.

Jig

I love our jig! It's fantastic to finish the play with a really joyous celebration – for the characters, for the actors, for the audience, and for the musicians. It's traditional to end with a dance that brings everything and everyone together. Last year I found the jig for Much Ado About Nothing tricky and the year before that [Richard III], I didn’t think I’d ever learn the steps, but it seems to be getting easier with practice. Having said that, I went wrong last night and caused a bit of chaos. Hopefully that won’t happen again! When I make a mistake in the jig, I just remember that the characters are people who aren’t dancers and if they go astray, well, so be it! It can add to the sense of fun – of course, I’ll try to get it perfect by the end of the season.

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Rehearsal Notes 7

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.

Previews

We opened and I’m pleased to say the play is going well… tonight is our last preview. We’ve been fiddling about with moves, just trying to find the right places on stage and really that means trying not to get in anybody's way! We have to make sure we’re using the depth of the stage to its full advantage; if people play in a line along the front of the stage, scenes get flat and you end up blocking the audience's view (especially in these enormous frocks). If the person in the centre of a line moves upstage above the pillars to form a triangle shape then more of the audience will be able to see more of the scene. So I’m just experimenting with where I want to be on stage at different moments. I think the best place to be for a really big scene is just above the trapdoor in the centre of the stage, but I also like the downstage corners (facing upstage on a diagonal line). It's not really where you stand so much as your position in relation to the other characters – that's why the diagonals are particularly useful. We’re all aware of each other's positions and what things like distance say about the relationships between characters; as you try different positions, you find patterns that work. The other important thing is to keep moving without being ‘busy,’ so everybody in the audience gets a chance to see somebody's face for some of the time. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the face of the person who's talking: I realised that during Paulina's big speeches at the end of the trial [3.2], it's Leontes you want to be looking at, not Paulina. It's the effect her words have on him that's important to the story.

We also tried out my new take on the end of the trial scene with Leontes. There's a real sense of reconciliation that we didn’t have at the beginning of rehearsals. Now I’m quite sure the scene is written so that Paulina absolutely takes pity on the king; she understands how upset he is and tries to help him. Originally we thought she could remain angry with Leontes until the end of that scene, but now I’m absolutely certain that reconciliation is important because it signals the start of Leontes’ healing. And the relationship between Paulina and Leontes prior to his jealousy is too strong for her to simply abandon him. She's all he's got left in a way. As I said, I think the focus of the scene is Leontes’ reaction… Paulina's got the lines but I’m certain the scene focuses on Leontes’ reaction to the news that his son has died, his realisation that it's all his fault, and his reaction to Paulina's anger. It's all about what's happening to him at that point. I think the more compassionate Paulina is in the final part of the scene, the more you understand just how upset Leontes is, because only that would calm her anger. It's the extremity of his reaction to the realisation of what he's done which touches Paulina and makes her compassionate. Her response helps you see how deeply he repents, and that prepares you for sixteen years’ penance and resolution at the end. At least that's what I’m hoping! The more we play the scene, the more that approach seems right.

Modern miracles

Our audiences have responded very well to the statue coming to life – those that know the play know that the statue isn’t a statue, of course. Sometimes there's a bit of a titter here and there to begin with, but I play the line ‘It is required that you do awake your faith’ quite strongly. Within the play, I’m saying it to the courtiers and everybody on stage, but I think it also includes the audience: as a member of the audience, if somebody on stage says ‘It is required that you do awake your faith,’ you’re going to go along with it and say ‘Ok, I’m going to enter into this.’ That scene is very cleverly written – Paulina asks her audience ‘Ok, you’ve just got to believe’ and at the Globe they do enter into the spirit of it. It makes all the reconciliations and reunions at the end more joyous.

Press night

I get terribly nervous, but I hope I won’t tomorrow… I expect I will, but I try to treat it like any other night. You just pray it isn’t going to rain so you don’t end up shouting everything! The forecast is good, so fingers crossed. You hope that on a night when you’re judged by people who may or may not persuade other people to come and see it, that they’re going to see it in the best circumstances without too many planes or helicopters or driving rain – but you want that for every audience.

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Rehearsal Notes 8

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.

Next play

Work has started on our next play. We’ll be performing Troilus and Cressida in what's called ‘Original Pronunciation’ – a best guess at the accent that Shakespeare's actors might have used. Professor David Crystal helped the Romeo and Juliet cast with last season's OP experiment and he came to talk to us on the first day of Troilus rehearsals. Apparently this is the first time a production has been rehearsed in OP from the very beginning, so it's a bit daunting! Romeo and Juliet rehearsed in RP [Received Pronunciation] and then had a shorter OP rehearsal period during the run.

I’m playing Ulysses. He's high up within the ranks of the army and a manipulator, a thinking man. The OP accent, it seems to me, might sound more rural to modern ears. In Shakespeare's time, accents were more closely linked to geographical divides than class distinctions – the accent wouldn’t have had the rural association that perhaps it has today. I grew up in the country and I know rural accents can be the butt of jokes – today a strong rural accent might evoke stereotypes that won’t fit with Ulysses as a man of high status and intelligence. It will be interesting to see how a modern audience reacts.

I didn’t see the OP performances of Romeo and Juliet, but I heard about how liberating the actors found it. Unstressed little words are passed over in OP and I think that's absolutely right. Looking at some bits in Troilus and Cressida, if you try to give each little word its ‘proper value’ then the meter just doesn’t work. You can skip over some consonants in little words as we do in everyday speech and still understand what's being said. Hopefully that will make it all trip along. David Crystal said that the OP performances of Romeo and Juliet were about ten minutes shorter than performances in RP. But I think that's only to the good: get that story told.

First ideas about Ulysses

It's very early days, but I can see that Ulysses is a great man. He's the brain power behind the Greeks. He comes up with a very funny plan to get Achilles fighting again. He suggests the Greek princes trick Achilles by telling him that everyone thinks Ajax is the best man in the army. Achilles will come out of his tent and fight to prove he's still the best of the Greeks.

There's the wonderful speech where Ulysses convinces Achilles that all the brave things he did in the past will be forgotten:

Achilles:
What, are my great deeds forgotten?

Ulysses:
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.
[Act 3, sc.3]

Basically Ulysses is saying to Achilles ‘You might have done lots of impressive things in the past but that doesn’t count for anything at present. You’ve got to keep it up, otherwise people just forget. The next shiny button is the best…’ Achilles falls for it completely. It's very funny and the fact that three girls (Yolanda, Haley Jane and I) are playing Agamemnon, Nestor and Ulysses will bring that out. They make such a funny little trio, and the thought of Roger Watkins [Ajax] saying to Haley Jane [Nestor] ‘Can I call you father?’ … it's just going to make my day!

I’m really looking forward to saying the lines, but I’ve got to understand them first. It's quite convoluted stuff and I’ve already come up against a little problem. Ulysses describes Achilles as ‘The sinew and the forehand of our host.’ What do you think that ‘host’ means? I have seen the play many times and every time that line is said, I think ‘host’ must mean the enemy camp – Trojans – so Achilles must be Trojan? I get confused… ‘But I thought he was Greek…’ Achilles is Greek and when Ulysses says ‘the great Achilles, whom opinion crowns/ The sinew and the forehand of our host,’ he means like host of angels – a crowd: our host, our people. That's what it means, but how can I convey that meaning? Today we do use ‘host’ in that context but it's not a word that springs to mind when these Greeks are perched on the edge of Troy. I think the only way to get that meaning across is to ignore the meter and stress ‘our’ rather than ‘host’. I asked Giles [Master of Play] if he’d like to change it to ‘troops’ but he wasn’t too keen!

So there are little things like that to work on. Troilus and Cressida is harder to understand than a lot of the Shakespeare I’ve done. Most of Ulysses’ big speeches are in verse. Unravelling the meaning will be stimulating; at first you might think ‘What?’ and then you begin to understand them. Eventually it seems so clear and that clarity is what you should be able to communicate to an audience. I tried out the ‘host’ speech on a young friend of mine who is 13. I was thrilled that he did understand it and we talked about ‘host’ afterwards. I shall take more bits to him and if he can understand it then I’ll know that I’m on the right track.

Rehearsals

Now we’ve been through all the scenes to make sure that we know what we’re actually saying. I decided that I wasn’t going to do OP in our most recent rehearsal because I wanted to concentrate on what I was saying, and I found that OP was getting in the way of that: I was spending so much time on how to say the words that I wasn’t really getting to grips with what they meant. I had a session with Charmian, a wonderful dialect coach, and she helped me go through the phonetic script, translating the phonetic symbols into ‘sounds’. That's made things easier.

It's important that my interpretation of OP is such that the audience will be able to understand what I’m saying. That doesn’t mean that they must pick up every word immediately – after all, some of the words are not as we would say them now. I’ve got to be judicious in picking out words that are crucial to the meaning of the piece, and, if necessary, tweaking them towards RP. For instance, the way I said ‘power’ at one point made it unintelligible to a modern audience. As that word is really important for the sense of what I’m saying, I decided to make it a little bit more RP (I think I was going too far with the OP anyway and it didn’t have to be that unintelligible!) I got the impression that what I had to say was ‘poore’ rather than ‘power’. There's a midway which sounds more like the Irish ‘pore’.

Click here for an audio clip

David Crystal and Charmian are both very keen that the Original Pronunciation shouldn’t get in the way of the understanding of the piece; it should add to it and for the most part I think it does. There's one particular bit where I think OP really helps. Ulysses explains his cunning plan to stop Achilles being so proud:

Click here for an audio clip

What glory our Achilles shares from Hector,
Were he not proud, we all should share with him.
But he already is too insolent,
And we were better parch in Afric sun
Than in the pride and salt scorn of his eyes,
Should he scape Hector fair. If he were foiled,
Why then we did our main opinion crush
In taint of our best man. No, make a lott’ry,
And by device let blockish Ajax draw
The sort to fight with Hector; among ourselves
Give him allowance for the better man;
For that will physic the great Myrmidon,
Who broils in loud applause, and make him fall
His crest that prouder than blue Iris bends.
[Act 1, Scene 3]

That's not a very good rendering but it gives you an idea of what it sounds like. OP makes Ulysses less pompous. I’m hoping it makes him more accessible and easier to understand as a real person. Of course, Ulysses is a prince but I think what sets royalty apart in this day and age is not so much the way they behave as the way they’re treated. People who’ve met the Queen say that she's very normal and ordinary and nice. It's the way everyone around her behaves that makes her seem so different. The Grecian princes have been stuck in this war for seven years… that's a leveller of sorts, in terms of the way they behave together. I think what the audience want is to understand where each character is coming from; it's very human and very funny stuff. I think the OP helps draw that out.

Modern practices

The costumes and set for Troilus and Cressida won’t be Original Practices. It's been advertised as ‘minimal settings,’ and I think that will mean the production has a timeless look. It's set in a sort of No Man's Land, a bit like the First World War, but we’re certainly not saying ‘This is the First World War.’ We’re saying ‘This is the Trojan War and we’re wearing these clothes’. I’m not sure what I’ll be wearing yet – I imagine it will be a uniform of sorts.

As we start to put scenes on their feet, I’m finding different ways of standing; I’m playing a man again and there is a difference. I think physicality and the involvement in a situation is different for male characters. In the Trial scene of The Winter's Tale I play a woman and there's quite a lot of reacting there. The situation is different, but you behave differently because you have a different empathy with people onstage. This morning we rehearsed a scene with the long speeches of Nestor, Ulysses and Agamemnon and the way I reacted was totally different because Ulysses has a completely different attitude to the other people who are speaking. Agamemnon starts the scene off by saying ‘Why are you all so glum? Come on, we’ve got this war to fight. It's a test to see who's going to stand firm and who's going to be blown away. We’re the people who are going to stand firm.’ Ulysses is thinking ‘I’ve got some bad news for you. Things are not going that well. There's a reason for that and we’ve got to tackle the problem.’

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