LESSON ONE

LESSON ONE - HAMLETS ADVICE TO PLAYERS


Last session, we performed thirty seconds of our Hamlet speeches to the class. I chose the 'To be or not to be' speech. I felt I should learn this as I've always wanted to learn this speech out of fun. My voice was rather dry before performing as Shakespeare is quite hard. This definitely inhibited my performance and I need a well lubricated mouth to get my mouth around Shakespeare's language.

Teacher Feedback:

- Need to work on building up lung capacity as my projection isn't very strong.

Hamlet: Advice to Players

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, by use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak profanely), that neither having th' accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. Reform it altogether! And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready." 

In this short soliloquy, Hamlet gives advice to actors. Stuart taught us that all the advice we need to be a good actor is listed in this speech.

"As 'twere, the mirror up to nature" 
- Perform a reflection of real life, be truthful. 

"Trippingly on the tongue"  
- Be articulate when speaking. 

"I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines"  
- Don't shout your lines like the town crier.

"Whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness."
 - Be passionate when performing but not so much that you lose control.

"Suit the action to the word, the word to the action"  
- Make the movements have a purpose.

"And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them"
- Don't be a clown and improvise.

WEEK 0.5 AUDITION PHASE

Me in rehearsals, wearing a Nirvana shirt like Hamlet

Today we 'auditioned' for our parts. I chose to perform the To Be or Not To Be monologue. I chose this as it was a good window into the character of Hamlet, the character I wanted to play. In this monologue Hamlet talks about whether to live or die, to give up or to avenge his father. I felt that is summarised the emotions in the play and if I could do it with some respect then I should be able to convey the images that the audience would feel when watching the full production.

Also, this week we returned to find that Stuart had selected some scenes for us to perform. I was performing the bedroom scene with Steffi. In this scene Hamlet visits his mother Gertrude and kills Polonius who is hiding underneath a bed. Stuart wanted us to explore the sexual tension between Hamlet and his mum and how that affected the relationship between the audience and the characters. This change really made some of the lines have another layer of subtext. Lines that seemed seemingly harmless became rather disturbed. The physicality between Steffi and myself became rather dominant and submissive, changing from mother and son to more partners.

In the end, Stuart decided for me to play Hamlet, along with several other versions of Hamlet. The idea is that each Hamlet is a form of grieving and a different Hamlet that from the same mind. We will all be contained on a bed throughout the course of the play to show how we are one. I think this is a really interesting take on a teen angst Hamlet.