I have been so lucky to have come into contact with so many great directors and masters of Shakespeare. Each of them has influenced me in my approach. Ken Fletcher and Dennis Lavin at Elizabeth College were the first two to ignite my passion for Shakespeare, which is as strong now as ever. I still use many of the techniques they taught me; mining the text for clues, trusting the playwright and the language. When I joined the National Youth Theatre Michael Croft taught me about the stagecraft of Shakespeare, the importance of the Shakespearean O and walking in curves onstage. At the Central School of Speech and Drama, John Jones and Deborah Warner took me right back to basics showing how you can perform Shakespeare with the minimum of set and props and also the huge importance of ensemble work. For 16 years I toured schools around the UK introducing children to Shakespeare. They taught me more than anyone did. The importance of clarity, pace, energy, ambiguity. The John Barton series "Playing Shakespeare" and Ian McKellen's one man show where also very influential. "There are over 42,000 different words used in the 37 plays, twice the vocabulary an educated person to university level will use in their lifetime." Shakespeare invented words...submerged, accommodation, assassination". At the National Theatre I asked Richard Eyre what the secret of directing was. His reply was "95% of directing is in the casting, get the right actors and directing becomes easy. It's as much about what you don't say as what you do." I still talk too much. He also said "Film is a voyeuristic experience, whereas theatre is a conversation between actor and audience." This reminded me of Ken's advice "audiences come to hear a play, from the word audio".
Having been an actor, I have always found it frustrating knowing how I want to play it but somehow not being able to get there. The director is there to "show you the way". As an actor, you can't be and observe yourself at the same time. That is why I believe it is very dangerous to act and direct at the same time unless you have a very good assistant. You need another pair of eyes and ears. Trust is very important, between actor and director. I take that trust very seriously. After all it is the actor who has to stand up there and do it. I will not ask an actor to do something I am not prepared to do myself. Acting is doing and if an actor starts to explain to me what they are going to do I will simply say "Show me". Procrastination is death to an actor. A state of flow is where the best creativity comes from; this is the zone between boredom and anxiety. My job, as director is to keep the actors within this zone, giving them enough of a challenge to stop them being bored and at the same time trying to keep them out of the anxiety zone.
With this production I have tried something which seems to be working. Rather than get all the company together for a first read through which I have always found intimidating I decided to work with each actor individually and start to bring in other actors when I felt they were ready. This allows the individual actor the safety to establish what they feel comfortable with. It also reduces the impact that other actors can have who sometimes impose their personality or ego on other actors through fear and insecurity. For me it is important that each actor focuses on their performance rather than on others and is able to react to their circumstances as we do in life. If as Shakespeare points out in Hamlet the purpose of theatre is "to hold as twere the mirror up to nature", then my job is to make sure that mirror is as distortion free as possible. I now believe that audiences don't see what the actor wants them to see or even what the director wants them to see, audiences see what they want to see. Each member of the audience experiences a different play from his/her neighbour because they see themselves reflected in the play. Madonna was right when asked what people see when she performs...."They see themselves".
Pace is very important to me. I try to emphasise this a lot to the actors. Remember the audience can think faster than an actor can speak therefore there is no need to slow it down. As an actor there is always a big temptation to eek your performance out, but this is often to the detriment of the audience's enjoyment. The number of times I have been to the theatre and screamed inside "Get on with it... I've got the point, you're upset/in pain/dying, so am I, move onto something else". This is why I enjoy the TV series "The West Wing" so much, the pace is cracking, so what if I sometimes get lost, that makes the second viewing more enjoyable.
The great pleasure of Shakespeare's lines is that they are, like life, full of ambiguity. Many actors and directors struggle to analyse and decide on definite meaning as opposed to emphasising the ambiguity of a line. For instance this interchange between Hamlet and Ophelia at the start of the play scene.
Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia: No, my lord.
Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap?
Ophelia: Ay, my lord.
Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters?
Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.
Hamlet: That's a fair thought - to lie between maids' legs.
Ophelia: What is, my lord?
Hamlet: Nothing.
is full of ambiguity. We can let the audience decide what both of these characters are thinking here. It has always amazed me that the phrase, double entendre, a French phrase, is such a British trait and beloved of audiences of Shakespeare to Carry On. British actors are consummately skilled at the double meaning; perhaps it is our cultural reserve that keeps us from saying what we really mean. Whatever the reason the audience gets two for the price of one....:-)..... perhaps we like a bargain....
If I've paid my hard earned to go to the theatre I want to hear every word therefore I have an old fashioned approach to verse speaking. The first priority is it must be heard, even at the expense of the actor's emotional response. I place great store on an actor who understands the importance of diction and projection.
After all, Shakespeare tells us how he wants his words performed, and I have found it wise to follow the advice of more advanced minds.
HAMLET: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
as many of your players do, I had as lief the
town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;
for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget
a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to
very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who
for the most part are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such
a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it
out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.
First Player: I warrant your honour.
HAMLET: Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion
be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the
word to the action; with this special o'erstep not
the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is
from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone,
or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful
laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the
censure of the which one must in your allowance
o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be
players that I have seen play, and heard others
praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely,
that, neither having the accent of Christians nor
the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of
nature's journeymen had made men and not made them
well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
First Player: I hope we have reformed that indifferently with
us,
sir.
HAMLET: O, reform it altogether. And let those that play
your clowns speak no more than is set down for them;
for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to
set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh
too; though, in the mean time, some necessary
question of the play be then to be considered:
that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition
in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.