|
Ailsa Joy is in her second year of the BA Acting course, they are just about to embark on their first public performance.
|
|
Ailsa Joy, second year BA Acting student
These past 5 weeks...is it? It’s probably only 5 days but RADA does have a funny timeless quality. You’ll hear people say “The Real World” in reference to anything outside drama school. So. For a number of weeks, the Second Years have been working on 3 abridged Shakespeare plays, to be taken on tour to schools and performed for a few nights in RADA; Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night. Kelly Hunter directs the latter, Abigail Anderson: Romeo and Juliet and our own Nona Sheppard: Comedy of Errors.
I’m playing Olivia in Twelfth Night. And I can’t act anymore. I will stand up and words come out but it’s all terrible. Verity Kirk in the first year mentions in her own blog feeling like you can never improve— it doesn’t go away, no matter how much reassurance.
The process is very intense, involving all cast members in the room at all times, so what we create is an ensemble piece, discovering movement, intonation etc It’s a wonderfully organic form of Shakespeare. It’s also very musical as our multi-talented cast whip out guitars, mandolins, bodhrans, violins and recorders. (Our Antonio, who doubles as Orsino, at one point was so wrapped up in his bongo playing that he almost forgot to rescue Viola from death-by-lancing.)
Kelly is amazing— a member of the current RSC company, she has both a director and actor’s perspective, so not only does she have the sense of a scene from the front row, she lets us find enormous amounts on our own. An actor, particularly in training, must expect to do much of the work themselves— and not just line-learning. Hence my panic— it’s easy to mistrust yourself. After 2 years of training, about to be sent out to The Real World, are we any good?
Shakespeare is deeply comforting in this respect, however. It’s all poetry. It’s all insight into the human soul. The language, ideas and characters are beautiful and true. Kelly described our Twelfth Night as a comedy with a heart of truth. There’s plenty of tragedy too; the gulling of Malvolio, the loneliness of Aguecheek, the mourning of brothers. So it’s far simpler than I’m making it— it’s all real. Just because it’s in verse, doesn’t mean these aren’t real people.
Are we any good? Who knows? But Shakespeare is timeless. Less than a week until our first public showing! I reckon as soon as I learn to trust that those 2 years of work are in there, I’ll be fine. Besides, I’m looking round a room full of my peers thinking how wonderful they are, how far they’ve come. Maybe that applies to me too? (Or even if it doesn’t, the others’ll be so good, no one will notice)
Viola has cut her hair for the part, Aguecheek has his bathing suit, we have Olivia’s ring, there are party poppers and Twiglets. Here we go...
|
|
|
Ailsa Joy, second year BA Acting student
We’re suddenly up and running! For all the nerves, it’s a big relief finally being able to share work with an audience. Our first night in the Jerwood Vanbrugh was wonderful— it’s quite a powerful tool, like Thor’s hammer, being able to make people laugh. Our Sir Toby’s mum was watching and was on her feet most of the time, just beaming!
Taking Twelfth Night to schools is hard but rewarding work. We start the show speaking to the audience in character, and thus we began our first school run. Thinking to endear myself, wreathed in smiles (I find when I’m nervous, I give that chimpanzee smile of defence that says “Please don’t rip my throat out”) I offered an apple to the nearest student, “Would you like an apple?”
“No.”
...Not an auspicious start. But then, students aren’t obliged to like Shakespeare. My English teacher once said, at our plea to perform a scene from the text we were working on, “I don’t think Shakespeare lends himself to theatre.” So sometimes even your teachers are against you. No one is born with a reverence for Shakespeare and unless you see a good play, you probably never gain one.
What we loved most was that the students kept up a running commentary. Telling each other the story (“They’re twins! That’s why they’re hugging!”) and learning to love or hate the characters; when Malvolio came in to break up Toby Belch’s party, a distinct voice from the darkness called out “Oi oi.” I can’t tell you how gratifying that is. By the time we’d finished, they were whooping and cheering.
We also took Twelfth Night to Regent’s Park last Thursday for a small band of parents and loved ones. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. In promenade, we set Orsino’s court in the bandstand, had Viola shipwrecked on the shores of the boating lake, actually hid characters in a box tree! With every piece of theatre, you must play— you must enjoy yourself, you have to perform it thinking what a fantastic play it is.
Sadly, our director has had to fly to New York (she’s performing in the RSC’s Lear and Winter’s Tale) Maria gave Kelly her very own box tree whilst Sebastian gave a collage of the photographs taken of rehearsals and production. We’ve only two shows left in the Vanbrugh and two more schools but we’re certain of our ‘Twelfth Night’s fantasticness' now, so all we need to do is show everybody else! |
|
Ailsa Joy, second year BA Acting student
It’s a limbo time after a show— no purpose anymore. Despite being gloriously tired, we partied last night (at our Twelfth Night’s Sebastian’s house) to give the Shakespeare’s and second year a good send-off. Romeo and Juliet and Comedy of Errors were wonderful, and Twelfth Night went out with a bang— they’ve been very important projects for all us.
Twelfth Night’s final school visit was... eye-opening. In such a vibrant, fast-paced caper as Kelly Hunter’s production, there’s a lot of physical comedy as well as the wordplay and one-liners of Shakespeare’s text. So it borders on alarming when your audience doesn’t laugh. It is as disconcerting as if they did laugh through a tragedy. But Viola and myself were soliloquising our hearts out to a sea of blank expressions. I’m ashamed to say I corpsed in my second scene, just out of sheer disbelief as act by act went by, deafened by silence.
The artistry and difficulty of our profession has never been clearer to me. There is such a delicate thread between the actors and audience. It needs gentle handling. And as we discovered, pleading with your eyes, “Please laugh! Please react in any way!” does not work.
We’ve had our first talks about third year in this final week and we each have a mock audition coming up with a panel of staff. It’s an interesting return from a whole play back to speeches and many people have relished the chance to work on classical text from scratch after learning all they have from the Shakespeare projects.
You sometimes stand back from yourself in RADA and go “Wait. I’m a grown-up. What on earth am I doing?” Especially when Andrew Aguecheek makes for his entrance, and promptly crashes to the ground having fallen over a ladder— and nobody stops what they’re doing. We pick him up and carry on pretending to be in Illyria.
I like to imagine our Illyria somewhere, covered in dead party poppers, a couple of guitars propped up by a wall, the Fool packing things away into a chest. It’s nice to think the characters (even if we don’t get to play them anymore) are carrying on with the story somewhere. I’ll miss them. |
|
|
|
|
|
