Web Diary
Show: Shakespeare's "Hamlet"
Role: Polonius (Minister to the King, Father of Ophelia and Laertes.)
Producer: Shady Shakespeare
Week Two: Rehearsals Begin!
After a week's break we have begun rehearsals in earnest. The first week is still a bit of "get to know you" combined with "get to know the script".
The first day had several parallels to Shakespeare Day in that we went around the circle asking questions of each participant. Also, there were presentaions by the designers and fitting were begun by our costume designer. This duplication was due to some of the participants not being at Shakespeare day.
It should be noted at the end of the evening the director, who is also the Managing Director, asked thos of us who attended, our feelings about Shakespeare day and if it was useful. All of us had opinions on the subject (to see mine read the previous diary entry). The gist was that Shady Shakespeare did not want to do things just to to them but wanted their actions to have benefit for both themsleves and those working with them. A healthy attitude! Will Shakespeare Day be back? Probably, but it will probably be called something else and be much better defined.
Day 2 started our first read through. This is not your normal read-through. After each scene the director would stop us and ask questions about how our charaters might relate to these scenes. Also actors who were not involved in the scene were still encouraged discuss. As you can guess this takes a while but can be very beneficial for the actor and diretor. It is interesting to note who has read the play previously and who has not. It is also interesting to note who is reading the play in the interest of their charater only and not in the interest of the story we are trying to portray. That is something that will be worked out by the director as the process goes on, I am sure.
Day Three saw the end of the first read-through and the beginning of the second, Second read-through?! I hera you cry? Yes, second read-through. Now while this may sound like madness there is method in it. During the first read-through we dealt with character issues. In the second read-through we concentrated on language. Our we pronouncing something right? Our we keeping things in meter? If there are tow ways to prononce something lets all agree on how we are to prononce it. Do we understand what we are saying? Shakespeare is like a secind language and need to be studied as such.
This works very well and certainly helps those actors who are trying Shakespeare for the first time. It also leads to consistancy. It also is time consuming, but ultimately worth it. However, we have started rehearsals approximately sevn weeks from production, so we have the time to do this exploration. This read-through takes us through day four into day five.
At the end of day five we all received some first hand lessons from our fight choroagrapher. This was lessons on basic things like throwing punches, grappling, kicking and such. It was very well done and gave us all something to work with. While we may not all be in fight scenes, it was again a good team building exercise with definite application toward the show.
Next week, blocking begins!
TTFN,
Ross Arden Harkness