The importance of knowing your script!

Now I know a lot of drama students (and professional actors) hate performing Shakespearean texts because of the flowery, poetic language that is sometimes difficult to understand, but for the few of us that adore Shakespeare (like myself!), the language is just something to get our teeth stuck into. 

I have just come back from a mini rehearsal with my duologue partner and I could not rave about the importance of knowing your text more than what I'm about to! We are doing Act 3 Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet (where the Nurse tells Juliet of Romeo's banishment and Tybalt's death) and we didn't know what the hell Shakespeare was on about when we read through it a couple of times. Then we thought, right, let's go through it, line by line, and try and decode Shakespeare's language. 

You would not believe how much you do actually understand of Shakespeare's texts! If you go through each line - make sure you are not reading the lines as they appear, but as sentences (so forget about the line break and just take notice of commas, full stops etc.) - you will actually be able to get a jist of what he's saying. For example, "What devil art thou that dost torment me thus?" simply means, "Why are you tormenting me and not telling me the truth?" 

Yes, it takes up a lot of time, but understanding what Shakespeare is saying helps you discover what the characters thoughts and feelings, helping you understand how you should play the scene. 

The next thing you should think about is where there are shifts in thought/emotions/goals. Where are the cues that tell you when to change emotions and physical memories? Go through the lines again and mark where these are! All the time you should be reading this over and over, making sure you make sense of what is being said and what your emotive memory should be picking up on so you can successfully portray the emotions needed for the piece! 

Even when you've done this for one scene, or only your scenes in the play, you MUST go through the rest of the play and create character profiles. Character profiles are a collaboration of every single detail about your character. Go through the play and write down all the things that have been said about your character, all the things that your character has said about themselves, and all the things that your character says about other people. 

Once this is done, collect all the given circumstances. These are all the details that are given to you in the text about the scenes, the places, the staging, the characters etc. Everything that is written is a detail about something. Character profiles help with this, but still, go through the text grabbing every single detail about the play, whether it's in the dialogue or the stage directions (obviously there are limited stage directions in Shakespeare but this works for any play too). Shakespeare gives a lot of information about the play in the dialogue so pick through EVERYTHING.

I know it's a lot of hard work but STOP BEING LAZY! If you want to successfully play Shakespearean text you have to put the work in! Work out what is being said, interpret the emotions involved (there may be several ways of going around this too so try them all!) and produce your own interpretation of the text. 

If you have any more tips and tricks on playing Shakespeare, please share them in the comments section or email me at the information at the top of the page! Also, let me know of your experiences with Shakespeare or anything else you find interesting in the world of theatre, film and TV.

:D

P.S. If you find on YouTube clips of the BBC's version of Romeo and Juliet, don't watch it, it's not as good as you might think! (I thought it was absolute rubbish because Juliet is a wimp!)

Pause for Thought

My workshop today informed me that we must take time to pause after each thought. So when we started this I thought, well, yes, it's common sense to pause after each thought. We were given this extract from Electra - Sophocles:

ELECTRA: Sometimes she would let me stay while she undressed. Sometimes she would sit here while I brushed her hair. My mother. She would let me open jars and bottles, sniff and touch, she would let me uncover close things from drawers, treasures, and tell me where they came from. 

Tell me stories of a life before. Sometimes she would hold out her hands for me and I would rub them with oil, taking the rings off, one by one, feeling the deep lines on her knuckles, shifting her skin, gently, over veins and bone. I wanted to climb back inside her, always, and settle down behind her heart. 

As we started reading through the dialogue, our tutor started shouting out more things to think about. 

• What can we gather from the words we have just spoken?
• How do I feel after saying this phrase?
• What is my relationship with the person I have just spoken about?
• How would I react to this memory?

Now when I started getting into this, I completely conjured up a situation that I hadn't ever been in, but still I was feeling emotions towards this situation. After every thought, I revelled in what I had just said, thinking out every possibility. It was quite nice to be forced into thinking about the text in hand, finding out every way you could interpret it. 

Once we had thought about our own little story, we performed them to the whole class. What was interesting about this was that no two stories were the same! Because of the gift of imagination, we were able to think of so many possibilities for this extract that we didn't repeat ourselves. This is why I believe it is important to use your imagination when interpreting a text. 

Normally, when reading a play you look into the given circumstances, which tell you the facts about the characters and their histories, but we were given a lot of freedom in this extract, and we were not expected to know the back story of Electra. If you are ever privileged enough to be able to do this please try what I have just done! 

1. Separate the thoughts in the dialogue
2. Really think about the possibilities of each thought in terms of emotion and physical movement
3. How would you react to these thoughts?
4. Revel in a moment of thought after you say the phrase
5. Stay in these moments throughout the dialogue
6. Repeat this over and over until you have your own story, whether made up or coming from your own experiences.

You may find that you have shifts in thought throughout your dialogue. THIS IS GOOD! Real emotional memories contain shifts in thought and this is the key to keeping the audience engaged and touched by what you are saying. 

All these techniques revolve around Stanislavksy's methods, using absorption, concentration and focus; engaging your imagination and separating your thoughts. Use your own emotional memory and use the words to engage with your own emotions, rather than manufacturing them. Be honest to the text and keep present in the moment rather than thinking ahead. Whilst using your emotional thoughts, find the impulse that makes you want to say the words you're about to say. 

I hope you find this useful! I did which is why I wanted to share this with you all! If you have any comments or questions about this, please comment below! Also if you have any other methods or exercises which you would like to share, again, comment below! If you don't understand any of the words or phrases I will be adding a Glossary to my site in due course which I hope you find helpful too! 

:D