Monday 2nd April Well, it's finally underway.听Monday night saw the whole company turn out for an inaugural meeting to launch the production, hear a few of my ideas for the show, and meet each other.听Which meant I had to give a speech of sorts!听 | "There are still many people who dislike anything other than very traditional Shakespeare" | |
It goes well - I think.听The production is going to be modern dress, both in terms of costume and technology, and my heart beats a little faster when I announce this.听There are still many people who dislike anything other than very traditional Shakespeare and I don't want anyone to lose confidence in the show straight away. Of course, Shakespeare was performed in modern dress at the time, i.e. Elizabethan, rather than the period the plays were set in, with costume used to denote status and character, so I don't think we are doing anything of which old Will would have disapproved. After the formal part of the evening we get measurements from the actors for costume, mingle and have a glass of wine.听They are a great, diverse bunch and I think it's going to be really enjoyable getting to know them all over the coming months. Tuesday 3rd April Tonight we all got together for a workshop prior to starting rehearsals next week.听A lot of people still don't really know each other, and there is a wide range of ages and experience, so I thought I would do a bit of general work on physicality and verse speaking to start things off.听 The physical stuff is interesting - most untrained actors are unused to doing this kind of work, so it's a new approach for some of them quite clearly.听I'm just trying to get them thinking a little bit about the way they use their bodies, particularly those of them who have to play more than one part and change age, class and even gender in few seconds.听The verse speaking part of the evening goes generally well - although as usual I talk too much. The language that Shakespeare gives his characters is some of the richest ever written, and it's important to me that we get as much out of this as possible.听There is a tendency sometimes for modern actors to think the form of the writing is unimportant and that you should play it as naturistically as possible.听But it's not written that way, and if you don't acknowledge the way the words are written and go with it, then surely you are missing a pretty big trick.听Fortunately, this message seems to go down pretty well, and I still detect a lot of excitement for what is to come in the room, even if a few are starting to realise just how much work we have ahead of us. Mark | 
