#refugee week
Brendan O’Hea is directing our touring productions: Twelfth Night,Pericles, and The Comedy of Errors. A company of eight actors, two stage managers and one wardrobe manager are taking these tales of home and belonging across the world, performing to audiences familiar and brand new.
In this blog Brendan talks about the importance of these plays, performed by this cast at this moment in time and in particular in Refugee Week.
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Shakespeare is an international language. I discovered this when I toured A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Russia and China. Everyone knew his plays. I met a self professed hitman in Ekaterinburg who was incensed at the length of time it took Hamlet to kill Claudius. And I was introduced to an eleven year old in Shanghai who was able to quote the entire role of Fluellen at me. But it was my work with Globe Education that really opened my eyes. Over the years, I have had the privilege of teaching hundreds of students from across the world, and have constantly been dazzled by their open-heartedness, enthusiasm, and encyclopaedic knowledge of Shakespeare. His words cross borders. It was this that made me dream about forming an international company.
We were aware that this year’s touring shows would be playing at the Globe during refugee week, and so we chose Twelfth Night,Pericles, and The Comedy of Errors. All three plays involve shipwrecks, displacement and an examination of how one absorbs and adapts oneself into other cultures. They are an exploration of otherness and assimilation. Shakespeare is always relevant, but these three plays feel particularly timely. When countries are becoming more isolationist and inward looking, it seemed like a good idea to investigate what links us, regardless of where we come from. I also find something poetic in the idea of a company touring the world performing plays that explore the idea of home.
I’ve always approached Shakespeare’s plays as orchestral scores. There are trios and duets and arias, and there’s prose and verse and rhyme. It would be a pretty dull orchestra made up entirely of violins. We need different instruments. So when casting, I’m always listening out for the blend of voices, seeing how they might work together. Touring - especially touring three shows - forces one to be economical with the set, costumes and props. But this means an even heavier reliance on the actor’s voice (and body) to communicate the play. And so the actors we auditioned needed to be vocally (and physically) flexible.
For their auditions, the actors were asked to prepare two characters - one part they felt was a natural fit for them, and one they could never imagine playing. Depressingly, too many actors - and predominantly young women - would say ‘the part that I can never see myself playing is Viola or Adriana’. And when asked why, they would say ‘Because I’m the wrong size, or I’m not attractive enough.’ I found this profoundly depressing, as this was young people at the start of their careers, who were already putting limitations on themselves - or at least allowing others to put limitations on them. We can be whatever we want to be. (Incidentally, I rarely know which part the actors will play when I invite them to join the ensemble. This is done much later, once I know they are on board. And this is a testament to the current touring ensemble - they all accepted the job on faith, without knowing what line of parts they’d be taking on).
Someone asked me the other day how my ‘little plays’ were going? There is nothing ‘little’ about touring three plays across the world. We have two wonderful stage managers who shepherd the ensemble through airports, put up the set and are always the first to arrive and last to leave each venue; a superb wardrobe manager who, in Pericles alone, juggles seventy eight costume changes; and an extraordinary troupe of eight actors - some fresh out of drama school, some speaking in a language other than their mother tongue, or some playing an instrument for the first time. And all eleven of them committing to the work with a passion, good humour and grace. There is nothing ‘little’ about what they’re doing. I think they’re pioneers.
Refugee Week 2019 runs from 17-21 June. Globe on Tour will be at the Globe in this week before continuing their international tour.
Photography: The Comedy of Errors and Pericles, photographed by Marc Brenner.
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As part of Refugee Week 2019 (17-23 June) Voices in the Dark: From Around the Globe will showcase the work of young people - users of the British Red Cross Young Refugee Service, who have taken part in workshops led by theatre company, Compass Collective.
Here we take a look at day one of rehearsals. You can catch the results of this collaboration on 22 June in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
Compass Collective are gathered in the Globe’s brand new rehearsal space to begin devising a play, and they don’t know yet who might turn up to be in it. So there’s a little nervousness about numbers. The four day rehearsal is planned during half term in order to have the best turn out, but it’s Ramadan. Having run evening workshops across five London boroughs at the British Red Cross Refugees and Befriending sessions for the past two months, they know the amount of energy involved to take part and fear it may put off some of those who are fasting.
Nevertheless 11 o’clock comes by and participants start filtering in. Some have met before through previous befriending sessions there is a sense of familiarity in the room, making the name games easier when they begin.
Half an hour later, Matilda, a producer from the Globe arrives to give the group a tour of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Even without the candles which light it for performances, the theatre is magical. Each of the boys has their opportunity to speak on the stage, taking it in turns to say their name and their favourite thing (‘music’, ‘football’, ‘education’, ‘this whole building’) before swapping and experiencing the space as an audience member. To illustrate the acoustics of the space Leila from the Red Cross leads a song. There are laughs as the group tries to fit Solomon’s name into a structure that only seems to have space for two-syllables.
Back in the rehearsal room there is a buzz as the young actors mark out the stage on the floor with tape, while others play on the keyboard and cajón brought along by Tom, Compass Collective’s musical director. As lunch time calls, half the group peel off to the Prayer Room, while others juggle plates of pasta (donated by a local Carluccio’s) while dribbling footballs across the space.
In the afternoon, the group has been offered a ‘Heaven and Hell’ tour, which explores from the Globe Attic down to the underbelly of the Stage. These aren’t available to the public, so it’s a really special moment. Entering through Stage Door, Patrick from Compass Collective points at one of the archive photographs of raucous Jacobean comedy The Knight of the Burning Pestle and starts attributing each of the actors in the picture to one of the boys.There’s lots of laughter and it’s beginning to feel like a company.
On stage, the sense of excitement builds: one of the boys begins climbing a ladder to the Musician’s Gallery, and others mill around on the stage taking selfies and commenting on the flags that are hung around the auditorium for the performance of Henry IV Part One that will take place later that day.
The stage meanwhile is set up for The Merry Wives of Windsor. Downstairs in ‘Hell’ the stage above only leaves around 5 feet of headroom in which the boys, full of teenage growth, awkwardly try to avoid bumping their heads.
Backstage, a thunder sheet becomes a source of great interest, before props take precedence – the live plants and flowers that populate the The Merry Wives of Windsor set are particularly pleasing – and someone becomes transfixed by the tannoy which calls actors to stage. ‘Is this for the sound?’ he asks. ‘Yes’, Patrick says, whisking him away before curious hands can interfere with the cues for tonight’s performance…
As the day draws to a close, the boys are shown to the nearest tube stations and Compass Collective sit down to debrief and plan the activities for the following day, the rehearsal space already looking significantly more lived in. Only a few days to go…
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