Viola

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In the Globe Theatre Company's production of Twelfth Night, Viola was played by Michael Brown.

About Michael Brown

This is Michael's first production at Shakespeare's Globe. He graduated from LAMDA in 2001. Since then, he has worked on many TV series including Doctors and McCready and Daughter. Twelfth Night will mark his professional stage debut.

Click on the numbered links to follow Michael's journey as he creates and plays the character of Viola in the Globe Theatre.

Michael Brown - 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.
This is my first theatre job since leaving Drama School, and I imagined the introductory day would be quite scary. In the end, it was much nicer than I thought because everybody was so nice and relaxed. The bit that really sticks out in my mind from that first day was walking out onto the stage for the first time. I’ve worked on some large stages before, but I had a bad case of butterflies when I walked out into the Globe. I think it was partially the fact that I knew I would be performing here in front of 1500 people in 5 weeks time, but also, the energy of the space is amazing – I think it comes from the fact that it's huge, yet at the same time very enclosed.

My first rehearsal was great fun. Fortunately, I was doing one of my smaller scenes – Act 1 scene 5, where Viola (as Cesario) is first introduced to Olivia and her household. I was working on the scene with Mark [Rylance, the Artistic Director, who is also playing Olivia], who really helped me with the verse. First, we took pieces of the text, often only a few lines, and put them into modern speech; this helps me to be clear both to an audience and to myself about what Viola is really saying and why she is saying it. Then, we moved on to the verse itself, examining the rhythm of each line in detail.

I have also been enjoying our work on individual characters, where the whole company sits down and explores each character in turn. Before we started rehearsals, we were all told to make three lists: one list of lines where our character talks about themselves, one where we talk about the other characters and one where other characters talk about me. We all sat in a circle, and I had to go to the middle and read out my first two lists. When I’d finished, the other members of the company took it in turns to read out what their characters say about me, and we took that as a starting point to discuss my character and her journey through the play, although my ideas about that journey are constantly changing at the moment!

I am consciously not worrying at the moment about the challenges in playing a woman. Instead, I am focusing on the character; what Viola wants, where she is, what obstacles she faces and how she overcomes them. I definitely think this is best done in rehearsals, as I’m not very good at discovering my character while sitting at home with the text and nothing else! Later on, I will start to think about movement and voice, although they are going to lend me a corset to wear in rehearsals so I can get used to the restrictions it imposes on the way you move.

This is all a very new experience for me. For starters, all the actors are roughly the same age as their characters, unlike in drama school where actors who are the same age in real life will play wildly different parts, even father and son. Some of the actors in the company played the same parts when this production played at Middle Temple Hall earlier this year, but all of them are fully re-discovering their characters as rehearsals go on, and it's great to be working and developing ideas with them.

Activities

What is said about Viola?

At the beginning of the rehearsal period Michael read through the play and made lists detailing:

everything Viola says about herself
everything Viola says about other characters in the play
everything that other characters say about Viola
Make these three lists for Viola. What do you find out about the character by doing this? Send your lists and observations to Michael so he can compare them with his own.

Character Reactions

In the activity above you made lists of what Viola says about other characters in the play. Many of these comments are made behind that character's back. How do you think that character might react if s/he heard what Viola said about them?

Try improvising this situation in pairs with a) as Viola and b) as one of the characters she talks about. What do you find out about Viola from this activity? Send your discoveries to Michael.

Viola's movement

Twelfth Night is an original practices production, where men will play the female characters.

Michael will soon be starting voice and movement classes to help him develop his portrayal of the character of Viola. Do you have any advice for him on how to do this?

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Michael Brown - 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.
We’re in the middle of the technical week at the moment, and things are getting rather busy. We start at 10am and finish at 10pm, with only two breaks, so I’m getting rather tired. The technical week is where we go through the whole play making sure that it will all fit together. In a conventional theatre, this often means that the actors will do little bits of the play over and over again whilst the crew makes sure that the technical side of the show (lighting cues, sound cues, special effects etc) fits with what the actors are doing on stage. At the Globe, it's slightly different! One of the main things the company does during this week is to make sure we’re certain about our entrances and exits. Before this week, we hadn’t necessarily decided which doors we would use at different points during the play. What's important is to maintain the sense of place; if your character is moving through a location, e.g. coming into the scene from one location and then leaving to go somewhere else, you need to pick your doors carefully so that when you leave, you don’t go back where you came from. At the same time, stage management have to make sure that all the props we need, whether they be heavy, like a desk and chairs, or lighter, like pen and paper, are brought on-stage at the right time. This sounds simple enough, but it takes a surprisingly long time to find out exactly how long each scene change will take, and whether the actors should begin the scene before the scene change has been completed.

I’m gradually becoming more comfortable working on the Globe stage. I’m not confident yet; yesterday morning I walked out onto the stage to be immediately told “speak up!” Another thing I need to be careful of is my positioning. I’m very aware that I mustn’t stand in the same space for too long, as that will alienate me from those members of the audience who can’t see me when I stand there. Having said that, I like to stand still when I deliver those lines that I think reveal something important about Viola. For example, in act ii scene 4, Viola is talking guardedly to Orsino about the strength of women's love, and of her own secret love in particular. She speaks of her father's daughter who:

“… never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i’the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief.”
(ii.4.109-114)

I think Viola is in a quandary when she tells him this; she desperately wants to tell him the truth, but at the same time she's terrified of what might happen if she did. It's such an important moment for her, and I think that were I to keep moving as I say those lines, their power and importance would be lost. Still, we’ll see what happens as we get closer to performance. The nice thing with this production is that the blocking for each scene is not set in stone, and with such a long run ahead, I think that's a good thing; if we were doing the same moves every night, it might get a bit mechanical. There are certain movements that I seem to make every time we run particular scenes; this is just because they still feel like the best thing to do at those particular moments. There's no point in changing something that works, but there always has to be scope to keep the production fresh and exciting.

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Michael Brown - 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.
The biggest development this week is that I’ve got the jig right. Apparently, most scholars think that 400 years ago, performances would often end with a jig. Because Twelfth Night is an original practices production, we are following this tradition; when Feste finishes his final song, the whole company will come on stage to dance. Because we’ve had a relatively short rehearsal period, I’ve missed a few dance rehearsals just through having to rehearse other sections of the play. This has made me worry a little about whether I’d be able to do it come the first performance, but I’ve finally got it right!

One thing that's starting to make the whole production come alive is the music. Having the musicians in rehearsal makes scenes feel more rich and complete. The best example is Act ii scene 4, where Viola and Orsino listen to Feste sing “Come away, come away Death.” Before, we were just listening to him sing it unaccompanied, which was lovely, but the [viol] gives the whole scene a much more melancholy feel. It's slightly strange to have the musicians playing, as we’ve been doing the show mainly without them so far, but it's wonderful how the music completes the production. The whole show now feels much more polished.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been concentrating on my movement and my gestures. Now that we’re working solely in the theatre, I’m becoming far more aware that even the tiniest movement speaks volumes in that space. I’ve been concentrating on the differences between how men and women move. Women's gestures are often far smaller, more delicate than men’s. That observation has been a great help when working on my first scene, when Viola is dressed as a woman. Viola is a lady, and all of her movements would be based on curves; very graceful, very smooth gestures. That's not to say that she's a delicate character; at times she has to be extremely tough, but her movements have to be free and unconstrained. When she's disguised as Cesario, she has to change her gestures a little. If Viola tried to act ‘like a man’ her ‘performance’ would turn into a caricature. I think she intends Cesario to be seen not as a grown man, but as a (rather feminine) youth, and the other characters’ reactions to her suggests that she plays this part quite well.

I have been wondering how much Viola enjoys her disguise. She is extremely intelligent, and being dressed as a man gives her the chance to speak frankly to others in a way that would otherwise be thought improper for a lady. She gets to be very rude to Maria, referring to her as “good swabber.” (i.5.196). I think she really enjoys her conversation with Feste in act iii scene 1. She appreciates the fool for his wisdom and wit, whilst at the same time noting that wit and folly are not one and the same:

“This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;
And to do that well craves a kind of wit.
………………………… This is a practice
As full of labour as a wise man's art.
For folly that he wisely shows is fit;
But wise men, folly-fallen, quite taint their wit.”
(iii.1.58-66)

However, her disguise is also a danger to her safety; she is lucky to avoid a duel with Aguecheek in act iii scene 4. Viola would not be able to fight a duel; if Antonio hadn’t intervened, she would have had to confess to being a woman in man's clothes. She also finds it very difficult not to be able to tell Orsino of her love for him. I think, in the end, she's quite glad when it's all over.

Activities

1. Michael mentions that he thinks Viola's disguise is successful, and that the other characters in the play do not suspect ‘Cesario’ to be anything but a young boy.

Do you agree? Which lines from the play support your ideas?

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Michael Brown - 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.
Twelfth Night has now opened, and the first night was an amazing experience. I don’t think my performance was as good as it will be; I was slightly intimidated by the audience which meant I spent most of the time just concentrating on getting my lines right! I lost a lot of the focus that I had in rehearsal and I wasn’t particularly relaxed, which meant I felt like I was simply going through the motions, like a robot. Still, it got much better by the second performance. Because I was scared on the first night, I started to judge what we’d been doing in rehearsals rather than trust in it. As soon as I started to trust that our preparations were good, I started to enjoy myself more, and my performance has become much better.

It's quite a scary experience to walk out onto the stage in front of 1,600 people for the first time. Having said that, my first entrance is through the trap door in the stage floor, so I don’t have time to worry about the audience when I’m scrambling through the trap making sure that my dress doesn’t get caught! For this production, they’ve removed the panels at the front of the tiring house so that the audience can see the actors getting into their costumes from 30 minutes before the show goes up. As an actor standing in the tiring house, it's an amazing experience when the theatre doors are opened and there's a flood of people rushing in towards the stage. Getting into costume is quite an elaborate routine; I have to be ready to start getting dressed an hour before the performance. I go down to the tiring house in my smock (a long vest) and stockings to meet one of the dressers and one of the makeup artists. First, I have to be helped into my corset, then they put my makeup on, then we start on the costume. After the first scene, when I have to change out of my dress into Cesario's costume, I have about 4 dressers helping me so that we get it done on time.

Even though we’ve opened, we’re still very busy because during the first week of performances because rehearsals continue until the end of the week. These rehearsals are simply a chance to work on aspects of the show that Tim [Carroll, Master of Play] feels need work as a result of the opening performances. For example, I’ve been doing some work on how to speak to the audience. When working in the Globe, or in any theatre I suppose, it's easy to fall into the trap of declaiming your lines instead of simply speaking them. Tim noticed that I’d started to shout my lines at the groundlings rather than talk to them, so I’ve been working with him on keeping my delivery clear and natural.

The audiences, especially the groundlings, seem to be especially enjoying the end of the play and the confusion that ensues when Sebastian and I are on stage together. Lots of people have commented that we look amazingly similar to each other. I’m enjoying exploring different ways of playing the scene, but at the moment I think that Viola is very confused and frightened. When Sebastian enters in Act v scene 1, I hide behind the pillar! Viola's already guessed that it's her brother who is causing this confusion before he arrives on stage, but when he finally appears, she's terrified that it might not be him after all. I don’t know when she finally accepts that it is her brother standing there; possibly not until after the play ends, as she tells him:

Do not embrace me, till each circumstance
Of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump
That I am Viola;…
(v.1.248-250)

It's all a bit of a shock, and it's possible that she wants to be absolutely sure of what is happening to them both before she can enjoy their reconciliation. This is just one of the questions I’m looking forward to finding lots of different answers to over the next few months.

Activities

1) Michael mentions that he thinks Viola is confused and frightened when confronted with Sebastian in Act v scene 1.

Do you agree? Look especially at lines 224-251 (“Do I stand there? … That I am Viola;”). Which lines from the play support your argument?

As Viola, write a diary/journal entry describing the events of Act v scene 1. You might want to consider her reaction to:

- Antonio confusing her for someone else
- Olivia's claim to have married her, and Orsino's reaction
- Her reconciliation with Sebastian
- Orsino's proposal of marriage

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