Week 3: Hamlet
Week 3: a small contingent due to various school and college shows before the end of term.
Our natural prose naturally led to jumping into the work with no iambic introductions this time round.
We worked in the cozy confines of the library, surrounded by words words words.
We picked up where we left off previously, with Ben yet to do the object exercise.
And so he chose the speech of Horatio informing Claudius of Leartes return.
The random object assigned to him was an old vintage handheld tape recorder.
Again, we saw the actor go through the same struggles that Lou first encountered with the wig.
How to keep the object simple and used as it should be, without being busy, without adding more confusion; but bringing sense and joining the words to how the object might be used.
After all, we're not throwing in props for the sake of some silly impro. We are challenging ourselves to start uncovering the inventive brilliance and beauty of how all the random things that surround us as we speak the words can elucidate and clarify, whilst adding invention and spontaneity.
It was clear that Ben's role within this scene was to relay information and report; almost like a on the scene reporter, with his recording.
Encouraged Gertrude to listen to the chants that angry crowds were chanting: "Leartes should be King! Leartes King!"
The fact the recorder had no batteries and, in fact, no tape, meant we in the room could literally not hear any recording, so we explored the need for simplicity and working with each other as a pair to say "yes "to the simple offer, and to maintain the reality of that offer in the moment.
We found that Gertrude holding the speaker to her ear would suggest she hears it, without the need for the rest of us to hear it.
Then we moved on to a number of speeches of act 1.
Claudius and Gertrude speaking to Hamlet, enquiring as to his ongoing demeanour.
For this session, we explored the mechanisms of really tuning into.... what it's like to look into someone's eyes and ask them a question, and to notice EVERYTHING about that moment.
To notice what exists between the words.
To notice what exists between each line.
What do you notice about their face, their eyes, their hair, their breath, their clothes, their expression?
To truly be alive within each moment, and allow each moment to inform the way you speak, the way you interact, the way you ask, the way you respond, which forgoes any previous planning or interpretation.
What's it actually like to look at this person as you ask in this question?
What's it like to see them answer you in the way that they do?
...and to allow THAT moment to be discovered as a newly discovered moment... that informs the next.
We found for example that Claudius need not seem as some arch nemesis villain from the start, but a genuine attempt from him and Gertrude to be kind and understanding, and to get to the bottom to helping Hamlet in a compassionate empathic and human sense of care.
...And then, of course, it was important to point out that the beautiful tender work that that threw up is only one of a million potential ways to play it...so we threw it away and explored the same section as a loud, yelling, angry, combative domestic scene.
And both were fucking brilliant.