Sunday 18 October 2009

Interpretation

The A level Drama specification talks a lot about a director’s interpretation. At a macro level, I suppose that means “Let’s do Romeo and Juliet and make the Capulets white and the Montagues Asian” – or whatever. (By the way, surely the whole point of the feud in Romeo and Juliet is that no one can remember why it started? If you make it animosity between the families about race, you’ve got West Side Story. Which is one of the great pieces of 20th century theatre but the poignancy of the tragedy in Romeo & Juliet is that no one remembers why the feud was going on in the first place.

So, yes, the director’s concept (which I’ll write about soon) is important. It may throw light on the play or it may be gratuitous and imposed on the text, but it’s important.

But, at a micro level, it’s worth remembering that, as an actor, you interpret every time you open your mouth. You interpret every time you chose to move. You make a choice. That’s interpretation, pure and simple.

Monday 12 October 2009

The importance of hearing a play read

Plays exist in 3 dimensions. Everything communicates meaning. Tone of voice, gesture, expression, proximics (that’s the distance between performers). And that’s before you get onto set, costumes, lighting, sound and how they add to the atmosphere. Making decisions about all those things, bringing them together, putting them together – is both the interpretation of a play and the end of the creative process.

Plays are written to be heard and seen, not read. Me, I find reading plays difficult, especially plays with complex language and long speeches. So I get a group of actors together to read them early in the creative process. The reading of Doctor Faustus was very helpful – not least because of the insight the actors bring when we’re chatting after the reading. The comic characters, as one actor pointed out, do what most of us would do if we had access to magic: use it to get rich and have lots of sex. Or dream of it. Another pointed out that most tragic hero’s don’t make their fatal mistake until well into the play, whereas Doctor Faustus makes his crucial decision in his first speech in his first scene!