What do I fear? myself? there’s none else by:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I. -Richard III, Richard III, Act V, Scene III
I am sitting on the couch in the common room of our London student townhouse, reflecting back on today, our last day in Stratford and last day of working with the RSC. Myself and my fellow undergrad, the graduate students, and the MFA actors got the incredible opportunity to work with RSC Associate Artist Alison Bomber in a prolonged acting workshop.
The theme of her work that sticks out for me is a phrase she repeated multiple times: “The Architecture of the Language”. The whole workshop today served to help us to discover and make the most out of this architecture, this concrete structure, through physicality, voice, and visualization. There are two exercises from today which really stick out to me and which I think really speak to the architecture of the language.
The Shakespeare quote above comes from one of England’s most bloody and cruel tyrants. After doing several exercises to get us into the text including reading it aloud and stopping at end punctuation and turning on other punctuation marks, Alison had us try staying in place and reading the monologue. Here’s the catch: on the first line we had to connect with one of our imaginary audience, and deliver that idea out to them, then on the second thought we deliver the line inwardly, as if taking it from outside ourselves. It was tricky to get a hang of this exercise at first, but it did a lot in helping me to see the possible meanings and motivations in this text I had never studied before.
The most interesting moment I had came from the line above:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
When I first did the exercise, “Richard loves Richard” and “I am I” were taken outward, so it took on this sort of “think what you will, this is who I really am” sort of tone with the “that is” in the middle spoken inwardly showing a certain level of inner uncertainty Richard might not be willing to share with his audience. The second time we did it, the main phrases were taken inward as if the first phrase slipped out unexpectedly, the middle was a clarifier to the public, and the final was an acknowledgment inwardly that what was said first was true if not shocking. Playing with the text in this way, Alison told us, allows us to not get too bogged down in the meaning of the text but rather to focus on the language first and on finding meanings and readings naturally that our judgmental actor brains may have prevented us from seeing otherwise.
My second favorite exercise of the day happened right when we got back from our lunch break. She had us partner up and hug our partner. First we just did this simple action which was actually difficult for a lot of people in the room, myself included, because of the level of knowledge we had with our partners. I suppose it was a great exercise for something Aileen talked about as well–in the room, you are two actors and nothing should be taken personally. After simply hugging, Alison gave us the directive to hug on an exhale and hold the hug until we ran out of breath. After doing this a few times we moved on to hugging on an inhale and releasing when all of the breath had been breathed. Finally we hugged and held our breaths, the pair deciding together when to release.
Though this exercise really necessitated me breaking out of my comfort zone, I got a huge amount of use out of it. She directed us during this process to allow our actions to create a story if they do for us naturally. I was stunned at how different each type of hug was. The exhale hugs felt soothing and comforting, like I was releasing a trouble that the other person was going to help me bear. The inhale hugs, contrastingly, felt like the moment of contact had urgency and a sort of fullness of tension. Finally, the held breath hugs felt massively emotive. Simply the physiological shift of hugging without breathing in and of itself caused to to be at the brink of tears. Those hugs felt saturated with heavy, dramatic emotion.
Both of the exercises above as well as many others Alison did with us focused on directing attention in different ways. In the first it was inward versus outward. In the second it was inward, outward, and stopped. She really opened up a whole new world of possibility when it comes to line delivery in Shakespeare for me. She unearthed this concrete structure for us–the architecture that lies beneath the poetry we see–and it is such a tactile and playful yet incredibly intelligent way to approach a Shakespeare text.
As our session with Alison concluded and we boarded the train to London together, with Stratford getting ever-farther in the distance behind us, I sat and reflected on the many encounters with amazing artists I have experienced throughout this week.