Week 1: Hamlet

In the first week expectant actors came

With hand-shakes and some introductions made

A cup of tea before the session starts

Then to the studio we made our way

And circle-sat, I spoke of Powerhouse,

And marked this night as the first moment that

Within this space we’d start a journey new

I said something about my hope that we

Explore attempts to find a way to speak

Shakespeare's words - with "acting not required"

And to discover what it's like to say

The words and mean them; and to find the life,

The spontaneity, and the sense of thought

That’s half-formed in the moment and is rarely

Contained and finished in a single line.

And that encapsulation of natural speech

Is ironically formalised within

The structure of five beats and then a breath.

And so the first thing that we did as a new group

Was practice speaking to the metre's beat,

By everyone explaining who they were

And speaking of themselves, while keeping time.

We stamped it out and tapped upon our legs

To fix the rhythm, then we placed our words

Into that beat, and learned more of each other

We noted first how difficult it seemed,

Yet when the rhythm caught our tongues, the words

Did flow with ease, and we were not required

To plan what we would say. The rhythm's force

Did drive us onward, and the pause, the breath,

The moment's space at every line's end gave

Us room to think how we might end our thoughts

Or start again with fresh and new intent.

Then something curious happened... we carried on

Conversing still within the metre's bounds,

Exploring how the rhythm might be kept

In dialogue. It started feeling good,

A comfort and a joy to keep the beat,

So much that we found trouble breaking free

And speaking once again in common prose.

We left our chairs and rose upon our feet,

And I presented then a challenge new:

To leap upon a chair at each line's end,

Upon the upward swing, the upward lift,

To pause in air, then step down to the ground,

The foot to strike the floor at first stressed beat.

(This exercise soon made us out of breath)

Then I produced another task afresh,

A bag of tennis balls for us to use.

The ball was tossed for every iamb's beat,

And higher tossed at each line's very end,

To give a longer moment for our thoughts

Before the ball returns to palm again

At the first stressed beat of a brand new line.

Then we did dive into the very text,

The speeches and the dialogue of Hamlet,

Exploring how two actors both could share

A single line of iambic structured verse,

Which drives the action forward with its force.

At session's end, the actors felt the weight

Of challenge and of effort that had been

Required of them within the first two hours,

Yet all expressed a thrilling sense of hope,

Delight and passion for the work to come.