Category Archives: Actors From The London Stage

“King Lear” Spring 2019 Tour – Entry #3

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By Tricia Kelly

As we leave Houston and the end of our first performance and teaching week, what have we learned?

First and foremost, it was a relief to find that we have a show that works with audiences. Until you do the first show, you’re never quite sure.

The Houston audiences have laughed and occasionally cried and given us genuinely rousing applause.

They’ve also been unbelievably generous in their hospitality. We’ve eaten Mexican, Pizza and had a wonderful BBQ at Fred’s uncle and aunt’s home who invited us out to watch the SuperBowl – a real American experience.

The biggest revelation for all of us, but maybe especially for me, has been to realise that what we thought of as a problem back in our rehearsal room in London – dealing with the transitions between characters when we are playing more than one in the same scene – is in fact one of the very things that the audience loves most. It’s part of the style and fabric of AFTLS work and the thing that makes the shows unique.

I’m still working to improve my transitions between Lear & Cornwall – I find myself getting too caught up in Lear and not nimble enough in my changes- but hopefully I’m a lot better than I was.

Jon, Richard, Fred and Ffion have lots more of them and are becoming really expert at the ease and wit with which they change characters.

We have all had delighted laughs at a transformation amid a really serious scene followed by silent concentration at the story unfolding. It’s gratifying when it happens.

Playing the part of Lear is a challenge every time. So many words, so much anger and explosive rage – especially in the first half. How to calibrate the playing of this in a way that isn’t just an exhausting series of rants for both myself and the audience is something I’m still exploring. Finding as many different shades as possible is one of my missions – always remembering that Lear has to have had loveable qualities to earn the devotion that makes Kent risk his life to follow him in disguise and Cordelia to want to rescue him.

But the fact remains he is a very angry man…. and playing him takes a lot of stamina.
I’m finding that I have to protect my energy and sometimes that means I need to withdraw and be quiet. Most of the company are less than half my age and can recover much more quickly!
Back in South Bend this week for our Notre Dame performances feels like coming home. We’ve already rehearsed there and we know the people and the campus.

Each week of the tour will have a different character, without a doubt, and that’s part of the joy of this tour.

Many adventures await. Blow winds…..

“King Lear” Spring 2019 Tour – Entry #2

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By Jonathan Dryden Taylor

68 Fahrenheit never felt so good.

Emerging from Houston Airport in our woolly hats, scarves and gloves, it was quickly apparent that we weren’t in Illinois any more, Toto. Having spent the weekend in a polar Chicago (braving the snow and ice to check out the jawdropping Art Institute, shows at Steppenwolf and Second City, and a Bulls game: we DID Chicago) it was a huge relief to be surrounded by air that wasn’t actively wanting to hurt our faces.

But once heavy sweaters and boots had been exchanged for t-shirts and sneakers, there were a couple of rather pressing responsibilities to deal with. Firstly, we had our first classes and workshops to teach. Secondly, there was the small matter of actually opening the play we’ve been working on for the last six weeks…

The range of topics covered by AFTLS classes is vast and, in the best possible way, challenging. This week alone we have covered- among other things- comedy improv, Tennessee Williams, directing photographic models, Shakespeare’s London, directing actors for film, critical reading of texts, and costume design for the stage. Fred and I had a fascinating session with some chamber musicians at the magnificent Shepherd School of Music, working on entrances, exits and taking the stage at recitals- and in return, had our mind blown by Hindemith’s Wind Quintet (check out the fifth movement, and you’re welcome).

The facilities available to US students continue to leave me wide-eyed. The Shepherd School, for example, has both a concert hall and a recital room, and a 1500-seater opera house is under construction. Our venue for this week’s opening performances of King Lear was the 475-seater Hamman Hall, a fantastic space which would make most UK drama students weep with envy.

And so, finally, we got to tell this story to a paying audience- and what an audience! For all three performances at Rice we had dream crowds. They were attentive, responsive, involved, and very free with their applause. After the Friday night performance, Fred, Richard and I were already starting a debrief in the wings when we noticed frantic signaling from stage management because the clapping hadn’t abated and we needed to take another curtain call. To have such a generous audience response is unbelievably helpful in the neurotic early stages of a run: we owe our Rice audiences a real debt of gratitude.

While I’m on the thanks (‘my mum, my dad, my agent and the Academy…’) it would be remiss not to mention Abigail, Claire and Sierra, our superb student stage management team who interpreted our regularly-rewritten prompt copy superbly. We don’t have many lighting effects but they’re important ones, and they were executed with a real feel for the rhythm of the show.

And as a running-time nerd- the kind of person who can get excited three months into a run if thirty seconds is taken off an act- I was delighted that by Saturday night our playing time was 2hrs 35mins. For comparison, last time I was in King Lear our first half alone was 1hr52… and the first stagger-through of this production broke the three hour mark. King Lear is such a vast play that the leaner we can make it, the better.

Speaking of lean… I’m glad I chose drawstring trousers for my costume. Houston, it turns out, is good, good eating. Carry on like this and I’ll have to book myself an extra seat on the plane home.

“King Lear” Spring 2019 Tour – Entry #1

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By Jonathan Dryden Taylor

The flying time from London Heathrow to Chicago O’Hare is nine hours, or, to put it another way, approximately three and a quarter performances of King Lear. But for our company, those nine hours represented more than just the passage of time.

There’s always a point in any production where you begin to realize that rehearsal isn’t just an end in itself; that you’ll have to be putting this work in front of other people at some point. Of course, you always know on an intellectual level that you’re creating work to be seen, but there’s something seductively private about a rehearsal room that can sometimes prevent that knowledge being absorbed emotionally. It can come as a shock when you finally have a full-bodied realization that, before too long, what has been an empty room will become an auditorium full of people.

Traveling to another continent really helps that moment to arrive quicker, it turns out! And once we’d arrived in Notre Dame, what had been a private group of five in London, rehearsing on our own without a director or stage manager, became gratefully absorbed into the wider AFTLS family. Finally getting to meet the people who help the organization to run so smoothly has given us a very welcome support network, but also reminded us that the first public performances are just round the corner.

Unpacking the suitcase containing the whole production in our new rehearsal room on campus helped us ground ourselves in these new surroundings. We may be five thousand miles away from where we first got this play on its feet, but finding all the costumes and props we’d gathered together over the last five weeks was an instant visual reminder of the work we’d already put in.

When there’s any kind of interruption of the rehearsal process- and a transatlantic flight is quite an interruption- there’s always a nagging fear that momentum might be lost, that you won’t quite pick up from where you left off. Fortunately once we started tentatively dipping our toes back in the choppy waters of King Lear, we were not only able to consolidate the work we’d done in London, but we found it was beginning to develop, to gather the kind of pace and energy any production needs as it approaches its first performance.

Maybe those nine hours in the air had allowed some of our ideas to percolate from our short-term memory into the long-term, maybe the excitement of arriving at Notre Dame had given a shot of adrenalin, maybe the approach of opening night had focused and concentrated our minds. Maybe it was a combination of all three. But whatever the reason, our play was energizingly and reassuringly taking shape.

But while it’s good to know that this production travels robustly, as we gear up to take it from coast to coast, that’s not enough. It’s our job now to take our solid but skeletal structure and flesh it out. Colour it in. Bring it to life.

“Hamlet” Fall Tour — Week 11

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By Grace Andrews

Wellesley campus holds Lake Waban, deep blue water which mid-fall is hugged by trees in blazing deep orange and red. Walking around it, the crisp Massachusetts air is warmed by the atmosphere of this place – alive and vibrant with ingenuity.

I was fascinated to visit an all-female college; interested to get a sense of how the young women interacted, the methodology in teaching and the appetite for learning. In a workshop entitled ‘Women Centre Stage’, I asked the group what they were passionate about. ‘Protest Literature!’, ‘Language!’, ‘Spoken-word!’, ‘Penguins!’. Initially shy and graciously polite, we spoke about what it was like to take up more space; to lengthen our strides, take in more breath, allow our arms to swing with more freedom. We experimented with increased direct eye contact – and asked the question, ‘When do we allow ourselves to truly be seen?’. We spoke of clothes that constrict our breath, cinched in our waists, our modern corsets. We discussed the pressure to be right, to be liked, to please, to serve. We engaged with the temptation to prioritise being interesting and impressive over being ourselves. We acknowledged the words we frequently chose not to say, and how they build up to form a fire which can erupt.

We allowed ourselves to breathe, and have the courage to just be. In letting this tension fall away, we came to the core of what it means to be female today, and we wrestled this with relish. I was astounded by the levels of generosity, kindness and respect in the room – not always a given – and the women listened to each other, and really listened, with keen empathy and sense of joy.

The Shakespeare Society at Wellesley is a further force to behold, with freshman and seniors working together to celebrate and indulge in the Bard’s canon. Their clubhouse is a perfect replica of Shakespeare’s birthplace, and the passion and energy fizzing within its walls is testament to the girls’ bright and wide-eyed hunger for bringing his language to life. They rehearse and perform plays in a beautiful upstairs stage area, complete with Elizabethan beams and ‘Juliet Balcony’. Fittingly, they’re currently rehearsing Romeo and Juliet – and there’s no question of gender-blind casting here – with fierce young women taking on Romeo like he was written for them.

I think of playing Ophelia and Laertes, and how every show I attempt to find a new and better way to tell their story. It seems too easy to simply change physicality. For Laertes I began by widening my feet, puffing up my chest, raising my chin and finding freedom in my gestures. Ophelia was much smaller, narrower, more careful in her movements. I found their scope of breath in their horizons, how Laertes can breathe with the sky as his limit – the ocean and world laid out for him as his playground – an opportunity he can reach. I imagine Ophelia existing within walls, rules, routines – and her breath would match her shallow room for growth. I thought of Laertes as a puppy, with bounce and vigour – and Ophelia as a caged bird, tethered, with a sense of missing something she never knew – flight. I thought of Laertes as earth or fire, powerful and unpredictable – and Ophelia as water, movable, changeable, malleable – and as strong as she is fragile.

Their gender does not define them, but as the actor is it hard to ignore – and I strive to find the truth in the masculinity and femininity – and how both exist within us all.

Laertes:
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,
And therefore I forbid my tears. But yet
It is our trick. Nature her custom holds,
Let shame say what it will. When these are gone,
The woman will be out.—Adieu, my lord.
I have a speech of fire that fain would blaze,
But that this folly doubts it.

As we pack up and leave Wellesley to go on to Tennessee, I walk through the hallways lined with black and white photographs of notable alumni spanning over 140 years. I wonder what these women didn’t say, what they held back, what stood in their way. What gave them focus, drive, what words they would have chosen for their passion. I think of the moment they left the world of Wellesley, and how they will have had to adapt, to shift, to grow even further to get their voices heard.