Shakespeare and the well fitted jacket...

Taking on a full length Shakespeare is a huge task for a youth theatre…but Black Company like a challenge so that’s exactly what we are doing.  It’s a different sort of a process in some ways…progress is slow, as even the most confident experience actors have to spend much more time in preparations for rehearsals.  Lines take longer to learn and confidence takes a beating because the landscape is unfamiliar.  There’s no avoiding the fact that the text and language requires something more from the actors…something richer and invested.  I found myself at the last rehearsal creating a metaphor about jackets* to describe it…it’s work in progress but it has the potential to be useful…it goes something like this…

If we compare the ideal relationship of the text to the actor as a well fitting jacket that the actor feels comfortable in…at home with…confident wearing…the temptation is with youth theatre actors that in order to make the jacket well fitted they beat the text into a contemporary jacket with slouched shoulders and creases from wear.  They shrug as they perform the lines, diffusing the richness into casual utterances…subduing it to a level they are comfortable with.  In fact Shakespearean text needs to be a jacket that although well fitted makes the wearer walk a little taller, expand to fit its crafted lines and rich detail…a jacket that makes the wearer something more than they ordinarily are…is this making sense?  Perhaps I need the back up of the brilliant Cicely Berry the authority on voice and Shakespeare who writes in the introduction of, The Actor and the Text, that Shakespearean “Demands such a complete investment of ourselves in the words, because it is so rich and extraordinary we are forced to be bold and even extravagant.”  When it happens it’s a joy to be hold and the actors discover there is more within them that than they realised.

However at last nights Taming of the Shrew rehearsal we were also reminded of the similarities between working with contemporary and Shakespearean text.  That character is still the central issue, that relationships drive the actors journey through the play, that there is humour, longing, victory, challenge, adoration, rivalry, fulfilment and frustration to be delighted in.   The cast have a long journey ahead of them that will take huge amounts of work and investment on their part but the reward of creating something rich and extraordinary at the end of it is a worthwhile prize…put the date in your diary and see how they do!

*The relationship between this and my jackets and shoes metaphor about character is still to be developed…