After the fun, “rom-com” feel of Act I- (Tom Morris’ phrase, not mine), this week we moved on to Act II, a less joyful affair. Nevertheless, we started off on Monday by imagining what the Verona Care Home, or the Verona Elder Care Unit PLC as it now called, might look like. We discussed our experiences of care homes and looked at photos to generate ideas that can be used by the actors as a hook into the Verona world.
Balloon Tennis-----------------------Disorientation------------staff---------------------too hot
Smell of cabbage-------------------Decay------------------Suffocation----------------conversion-build
Pissing in the vases-----------------noise----------------musak---------------------------sirens garden/trees------------------------------business plan--------------------------"Shall we end it dear”
As you can see, some of our ideas are very specific to our play, and others are more general. Balloon Tennis came from a cast member whose wife worked in a care home. To keep the residents active, they played tennis with balloons and apparently it could get quite violent! “Shall we end it now dear?” was a phrase that somebody had read in a newspaper article concerning a nurse who had been caught asking some patients if they wanted to end their long lives now, rather than wait any longer. This is a difficult dilemma and a modern one as people continue to live longer but their quality of life may not increase.
Tom was keen to stress that our care home is not an especially bad place. It has a private (Capulet) wing and a public (Montague) wing and differences between the two have to be clear, but overall the care home is not a bad place to be in.
Once we started to work this week, it became clear to us that the language and the feeling of Act II was very different to Act I. This after all, is the Act where everyone dies! But seriously, the language is, as Tom says, often ‘like wading through treacle’. As the week progressed we adapted to the different style and rehearsals progressed well. The last two scenes are the most heartbreaking, and I’m sure that the age of our Romeo and Juliet makes the ending more poignant. Tomorrow we have a “stagger-through” of Act II, which should be a great test of how the play is progressing.
Storytelling
This week the (how shall I phrase this?) “younger” members of the company had a meeting to discuss what the storytelling elements of the play could be. Characters such as the Nurse and Friar Lawrence are the ones who move the story along, creating situations and commenting on what is happening. One idea is that these characters could come together to form some sort of ensemble. Some members of the cast, Abigail Thaw and Tristan Sturrock, have experience of ensemble performing and others have hardly any, which makes for a great dynamic. Tristan and Tom both have experience of working with Kneehigh Theatre, and we talked about using their experiences of ensemble work to enhance our story. One idea involves moving pieces of set around by hand, which led one actor to ask “how deep is your rake?” which led to a chorus of “how deep is your love?” by the Bee Gees! They were worried about the scenery slipping down the rake into the audience, something we were assured would DEFINATELY not happen. But the storytelling element of the play is an interesting one and will certainly develop more as rehearsals progress.
Verse Speaking
For me, one of the most interesting half-hours of the week is our verse speaking session. This is a great opportunity to learn from some of the real pros, and listen to their own experiences of speaking Shakespearean language. Verse speaking is a mixture of technique, listening and imagination. By setting up the iambic pentameter, the audience gets a feeling for the rhythm, which the actor can then work with or against. The length of a line can correspond to the length of breath, but the actor can also find sound or pauses to disturb this. One analogy Tom used was jazz. Underneath every melody line is a rhythm, which is consistent, and once the singer or musician has this in their bones, they can start to play around with the melody, changing rhythm and tempo but always coming back to the original underlying rhythm. Once an actor has his/her lines, they can experiment with pausing and speed, finding their own way into the language. In the second session this week, we took this idea one stage further. It started with the whole company being given a copy of a sonnet (Sonnet 65 as seen below) and walking around the room stamping with the beat of the line. For instance, in the first line, you would take ten steps, but stamp on the stressed beats – “Since BRASS, nor STONE, nor EARTH, nor BOUNDless SEA”. We then repeated this exercise, keeping the feet on the beat, but allowing ourselves to play around with the words. This was not always easy, but you learnt so much in such a short time with this kind of exercise.
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
Ageing in the News
There has been a lot recently in the news about how we are going to deal with our ageing population. In rehearsals we have been talking about this a great deal...something to research perhaps...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8520800.stm
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article7008399.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/18/elderly-long-term-care-death-tax
Next week we move back to Bristol Old Vic to continue rehearsals. The last two weeks have been intense and sometimes difficult, but always good fun, I am excited to see how we progress…
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