Wednesday, 30th January 2008

It was to be expected that this session would begin with an in-depth discussion of the show at the Pleasance the previous Sunday. Not only was it natural that Louis would want to share his thoughts on his having compèred the event for the first time, but that he, along with those who had played at the Pleasance, would want to address the issues raised in after-show notes by TC, notes which, clearly, were heavily critical and expressed his disappointment at the way the team handled the new space and the unusually large numbers in the audience. For his part, Louis confessed to his having been “terrified” by the task of running the show. The comments made by the cast indicated a more positive view of the show than that of TC, several being those of audience members who had liked very much what they had seen. Among the praiseworthy examples from the show, Louis cited Jacob’s football game and, that outside in the court, those who couldn’t see well were nonetheless happy to listen. More than that, he said that one shouldn’t lose sight of the notion that this way of playing Hamlet is an extraordinary thing. In comparison with the performance at Southwark Playhouse, Nigel pointed out that, there, players were sitting, literally, “on the bench” and seemed ready and eager to play whereas at the Pleasance some of that keenness was missing.

Louis moved the discussion on to what would become the focus of our work later in the evening: using the space.

“Claim a spot and say: This is where I’m acting!”

Closing down the space seems natural thing to do, but Louis emphasised the the power of space, which is lost as it is closed down.

“Space is our friend; we can use the poetry of space”

JonO remarked that having a no-close-playing rule would be restrictive. It was agreed that once actors had established the parameters of the space, for example, by “pissing on the corners”, close playing could be positive, though not for extended periods. TC, by this time, had joined the discussion and gathered the issues together into a single phrase:

“Shared or not shared”

By this, TC meant that our task was to share our play with the audience, whatever the disposition of actors in the space and that we had to work harder to make sure that everyone in the space was included.

This led to some comments about the work of Mike Alfred and The Shared Experience. TC mentioned how Alfred would work with his actors on ‘points of concentration’, whereby they might run a play concentrating throughout on, say, “playing 360 degrees”.

Louis pointed out that the Hamlet project had now entered a new phase. What had been for six months an unknown quantity for our audiences was now an established form about which expectations were high. He noted that the vibe in the audience was not that of a usual theatre audience. No longer is it a “what?” vibe but “You gotta see this!” This puts different pressures on the players. Leading on from this, Jethro suggested that we might benefit from mid-play “huddles” between Acts. This was not universally accepted, TC noting that an unwritten rule for directors is that they don’t give notes during shows. There was general, if not passionate, agreement that getting together during a show to remind each other of our goals might be worth incorporating.

Louis, a softly spoken controversialist, raised the question of cross-gender casting. This is clearly a debate in progress, and it would not be helpful to go further here than an outline of the discussion. Louis felt that since the show is so “non-traditional and non-representational”, allowing women to play more of the male roles would not be too big a step. From there, the discussion covered areas such as: those roles whose sexuality was not clearly defined (Priest, Ambassador, Horatio, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern) as opposed to those in whom sexuality was an issue (Hamlet); unlike a a Historical Practice production, as at the Globe, we play ourselves, in our own clothes, which makes it more of a stretch for the audience to keep tabs on who is who; cross-gender casting could take us close to “interpretation” and might lead some auditors to infer a Factory “attitude” to gender, which would be unfortunate. (A group member’s allusion to certain “male characteristics” - fieriness and so forth - was vaporised by a scoff-happy Tamara). Furthermore, TC impressed on us that, despite our Hamlet’s being unconventional and daring, it had so far avoided any sense of the masturbatory and we would do well not to risk the ridicule often afforded to practitioners of solitary sex.

Likewise, as regards to age, the text of the play, which had informed TC’s thinking on gender casting, contains certain indications about the age relationships of the characters, and although there is considerable wiggle-room here - Gertrude could be as young as 34; Claudius might be a much younger brother of the deceased King - TC is not inclined to push the barriers too far on this.

At 8pm, and an hour and a half into the session, Marianne said: “Can we do some stuff?”

Taking up from the earlier discussion about space, Louis, less concerned with describing a problem than with working for a solution, set about creating a practical exercise. Posting Claudius, Gertrude, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to diagonally opposite corners of the room, he began work on II.2. “Welcome dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...” Quite soon, players began to drift inwards from the corners - to disadvantage for some watching the scene - after which Louis stressed the importance of movement as a gesture in order to achieve something. Whilst players don’t have to move from wide positions, if they do, it must be “to win”.

“Get something with that move!”

Louis stressed that, in the first place, Claudius and Gertrude must “get Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to do it” and in the second, it was not enough for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern merely to obey, they had to “step up”.

“It’s the big game on Saturday and you’re in the team! Are you up for it?”

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, being duly “up for it”, were owed Claudius’s thanks, which, Louis and TC insisted, should be given warmly and personally, as the player himself naturally would do in the same circumstance.

Further on in II.2, at Gertrude’s response to Polonius: “More matter with less art”, Louis managed at one and the same time to transform the phrase into a positive action, and to remind us of one of his special gifts as a teacher:

“Don’t just describe crap: make something better!”

Thus, in making Polonius clarify what he was saying, Gertrude played a positive, not a describing, action.

Moving yet further, Louis suggested that Polonius use the silent beats of the short line “Purpend” to find whatever he was using as a letter, rather than the more usual pause in the later line “hath given me...this!” Still on the question of using the space, Louis, with deft reference to the 12-tone system of serial composition, indicated that returning to the same spot for a new thought was less interesting than finding one previously unused.

It was Tamara who pointed out that Polonius says the phrase “I have a daughter - have while she is mine” to the King and Queen, both of whom know the fact full well. Telling them this, repeating the word "have" as he does so, he needs to give something more to them than a statement of fact and when he tells the King and Queen to “mark,” “gather and surmise”, he ignores his lower status and gives them orders.

“This court is fucked up”

Finally, asking Polonius to feed the letter, in the form of crisps, to Claudius and Gertrude instead of eating them himself, Louis left us with the dictum:

“The more we can think about giving to, the better we will be”

For what Louis has given us these past weeks, the better we are. We owe to him our thanks, and, to honour him in our work, our best.

Jox