Although Clint Bolster and Stephen Daniels are very different in their physicality, considerable work has been done to unify some aspects of their movement to enhance the sense that they are brothers.  In a play heavily populated by siblings, they are the only ones who are seen together throughout; and theirs is the only relationship that is played as being stable (as far as humanly possible with brothers) throughout the confusion.  To enhance this connection between the two, Rob was employing some exercises to find “fraternal similarities”.

Part of the process was to get one actor to incorporate the stance and movement of the other during a scene run, and then to swap.  This meant that Clint needed to incorporate some of Stephen’s centred grounding, and Stephen had to assimilate some of Clint’s high physicality.  While in the result as unlikely to cause confusion between the two, there was a suggestion that they had come together in some of their movement.

During this process, I discovered that the company was using movement as signatures shared by the twins, to enhance the sense that they could be twins.  This production will follow in the tradition of using pronounced visual similarities such as costume and hair to signal which characters are twins (although not the oft used shock of red hair), which compensates the fact that the actors are actually far from similar.  Indeed, if a production was able to find two sets of highly identical twins, it would run the risk of confusing the audience to the same degree as the characters; since we need to be able to differentiate in order to laugh at those who can not.

The use of gestures as signatures is part of the less obvious devices that QSE is using to set the convention of the twin; incorporating the almost subliminal device of establish a vocabulary of gestures to connect the twins.  According to Anne Pensalfini, she and Joanne Loth had begun an exchange by each contributing two gestures to their shared vocabulary, and sometimes I have spotted one actor watching and imitating the other during rehearsal.  To a degree, the larger scale at which Sarah Ogden and Jane Barry’s twins operate has afforded them the opportunity to develop an eloquent vocabulary of gestures. 

I will not list what the gestures are, even though Anne was able to clearly demonstrate some of those that she and Joanne have developed; in part because my description would be unlikely to make riveting reading, but mostly because it would present merely a prosaic treatment of part of the craft that they use to create their performances. 

I saw part of the process of developing a shared physical vocabulary during the warm-up before the brother’s rehearsal.  Since Rob had said that they would be concentrating on the brothers’ movement, I was not surprised to see the “mirror exercise” as part of the warm-up, with Clint and Stephen swapping control of actions back and forward until they were simultaneously in control and following.  Rob then introduced something that I hadn’t seen before: while one actor had control of the movements, rather than imitate, the other actor had to reinterpret the movements.  This had the effect of greatly freeing up the exercise, particularly because they didn’t have to worry about performing moves that could annoy a partner who could respond with more challenging demands.  Instead, they were watching each other and reacting physically and freely with their own interpretation; and this exercise appears to continue to influence their physical responses to each other, even when their attention is directed to a third person.

According to Rob, this approach to movement is an example of the amalgamation of techniques and influences that members bring to the Ensemble and has been informed by Joanne Loth, based on her training with Enrique Pardo of Pantheatre in Paris.

Filed under: None | Posted by John Anderson at Friday, 28 October 2005 3:41 PM

For a director who pays close attention to all aspects of the language of the play, Rob asks the cast to drop the use of words surprisingly often. The first time that I witnessed it, the cast had just completed a run-through of a scene and Rob asked them to run it again, but with one difference – he wanted them to perform their lines as incomprehensible gibberish. Before you could say “I beg your pardon?” the actors had already begun to perform their carefully crafted lines as nonsensical sounds.

The obvious result of this exercise was an expansion of the physical expression by the actors of much of the actions within their lines. As I watched them replace the words with babble, I could see that they were still trying to project the meaning and action physically and through intonation – in fact, it was found that an entire line could be cogently replaced by blowing a long raspberry. At the end of the run-through, Rob returned to them their power of speech but asked that they retained the same level of physicality.

The next time that I saw the use of gibberish was even more complicated, but was equally taken up without so much as a quizzical expression. It was the first advanced run-through of the entire play I had seen. There had been one before but, since I did not wanted to wear out my welcome by introducing my cold to an entire cast in the latter stages of their rehearsal, I was unable to attend. I was disappointed about missing this first full advanced run-through because Rob was certain that it was going to be interesting to watch how the cast interlaced the actions and the energies that they had rehearsed in isolated beats into one continuous flow. He was particularly chuffed about how it had gone, so I knew that I had missed out on something rather special.

In the run that I saw, Gavin Edwards was unavailable, as he was performing in This Way Up for theatreANYPLACE at the Brisbane Powerhouse. Apart from performing as a musician in The Comedy of Errors, he plays the small but not insignificant role of the courtesan – a role which the genre switch has given an added frisson. Instead of having someone stand in for the courtesan, Rob decided that those who had dialogue with this character would, during those parts of a scene, turn to the audience and tell the story of this interaction – and do it entirely in gibberish. This was an added complication since they were not simply translating their lines into actions and intonation; they also had to devise the story. While it was not possible to decipher the finer points of their recitation, they were able to communicate that their character considered the courtesan to be an agreeable companion.

As a spectator, watching the gibberish exercise had an additional effect: I noticed more of the background actions. Even though I have observed this rehearsal many times, my attention continues to be drawn to those actors speaking. A major reason for this is the rate at which all the roles are developing. Even though I am watching a performance under less than ideal circumstances, the increasing amount of new material and evolving interpretations has its own compelling energy, and my attention is still drawn to the central action. During the gibberish rendition of an entire scene, however, I noticed more of the reactions and interactions of the rest of the characters in the background. While it is right and proper that background action should remain there and not pull focus, I can report that there will be some lovely business going largely unnoticed.

Filed under: None | Posted by John Anderson at Sunday, 23 October 2005 08:58 AM

The next time I see Joanne at a rehearsal, she is still bruised and sore from the accident.  It must have been nasty because, after more than a week, she is still too tender to be able to fully throw herself into the physical activities.  At the end of a long physical and vocal warm-up, Rob had the cast perform an exercise that could be best described as reciting their lines while imitating circus horses.  Everyone circled the performance area and, as they ran through their lines for the scene that they were about to rehearse, they had to physicalise the rhythm by stepping it out; all the time moving together at the same pace.

The QSE makes it their business to understand the tools within the verse of Shakespeare.  When I asked Rob to place the company’s approach to verse within a spectrum which has Gielgud’s immaculate recitation at one end and the mumble-and-scratch school of highly realistic acting at the other, he placed the QSE somewhere in the middle.

In spite of the archaic language, a highly realistic approach to performing Shakespeare is possible, even enticing, because of the complexity of the characters; Olivier was famously able to bring Freudian interpretation to the actions of Iago and Hamlet (as if they didn’t have enough to contend with).  Indeed, the QSE cast often discuss a character’s back-story as they delve into the rich potential of the play and, even in this farcical comedy, no character is a simple stereotype.

On the other hand, Rob argues that the artifice of the verse is there for a reason, and it carries a rich energy when used in performance.  After all, Shakespeare went to considerable effort to write it, it would seem rude to try to ignore it; and there is enough prosaic sentiment expressed in simple prose to suggest that he realised that the form was an option.  It is Rob’s position that the poetic construction is a powerful form with which to give expression to the big ideas and to the larger-than-life characters living within the heightened state at which Shakespeare’s plays operate.  While Shakespeare’s characters certainly have a richer internal life than those of many of his contemporaries, they are still drawn on a big scale, taking everything very personally and holding very little back.

On the modern stage, the closest we see to a Shakespearean scale of character and narrative is in the big commercial musicals.  While the musical is, not surprisingly, more overt in its use of poetry and rhythm, Shakespeare’s plays also employ these tools to create performance energies; anything from the lyrical or the driving beat, through to the fractured and discordant.  These energies are available to the production that can play upon the resonance within the text, and the training that the members of the company do together, based on the work of Kristin Linklater and John Barton, is designed to attune the actors to these cadences.

When I reported to Rob that many have said to me that Australian actors do not have a grounding in speaking the verse “correctly”, he agreed to a point.  He argues that there is little training in the requirements of Shakespearean verse because it is almost the polar opposite of the modern approach to language in performance.  In modern dramatic performance, particularly on the screen, language is often an unreliable expression of the thoughts and feelings of the characters and, whereas the most desirable seats in the Globe Theatre were believed to be the Gentlemen’s Rooms (close to the side of the stage for those who came to ‘hear a play’), today it is almost more important to see the action since that carries the ‘truth’ of the performance. 

I guess in these days when every public utterance seems to be crafted by a media consultant, and books are written about the methods in which language is carefully managed to mean nothing, it is not surprising that language can become distrusted; particularly since we are surrounded by it daily.  Perhaps nothing would better illustrate the difference between Shakespeare’s time and ours than the recent announcement that the Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to Harold Pinter, a playwright famous for writing in silences as actions and who (according to the citation for the prize) “in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle…” 

The great pleasure of Shakespeare’s work, however, is best realised through participating in the love of language that accounted for much of Shakespeare’s box office success.  Even today, no writer is more quoted when giving a nobility to our everyday experience, and it seems natural that poetry should carry this heightened state of being.  While the QSE could not be accused of performing the verse with an exaggerated ta-tum ta-tum delivery, the prancing pony exercise was a very physical reminder of the rhythms running through their lines and, since they were all moving together, they were physically experiencing and internalising the rhythm and the pace of the scene as a whole.

After this process was done, and the finer points of the rhythms and their effects and possible meanings were discussed, the cast then moved on to rehearsing the comic violence.  Since Joanne was unable to fully participate in the very physical movements, Sarah Ogden, who is the recipient of many of the blows, had to compensate as Joanne tentatively practiced the sequence.  The move from the sublime within Shakespeare’s verse to the ridiculous within the physical comedy (also important to the repertoire of Shakespeare’s company), was made complete as I watched Sarah virtually slap herself about and drag herself offstage by the ear.

Filed under: None | Posted by John Anderson at Monday, 17 October 2005 05:25 AM

As the brothers Adriano and Luciano, Stephen Daniels and Clint Bolster have developed a comedy team.  While the relationship between the twin masters and their twin servants is constantly disrupted (which is, after all, what the story is about) the brothers maintain a stable relationship throughout: and the two actors appear to be developing an identity based on that consistency – it is possible to imagine them as brothers with their comfortable similarities and chaffing differences.  

When I suggested this to Rob, he agreed but added that, while the relationship is the only stable one, it does change over the course of the play.  “It is constant in the sense that is not disrupted by the confusion and the new attractions that face the four lead characters, but it is not static either. The relationship begins with Luciano teasing and even criticising Adriano. But when they are in public, Luciano readily leaps to his brother's defence. As the play continues, Luciano takes up the bat for Adriano more and more readily and frequently. He stands up to the Abbot with great strength.”

I had the feeling perhaps that, as brothers, this team could possess greater force than as sisters.  In the gender switch, the modern audience will not have a difficulty accepting the females in the male roles, and there seems to be very little comic incongruity in that swap.  As males taking on a traditional female role, particularly when they express, even honour, a submissive role in marriage, there is rich material; particularly for the modern audience.  When one sibling chides the other for expecting an equal relationship, it seems like going over old ground as sisters but, as brothers, there is an incongruity that is both comical and disruptive.  At this point, perhaps more than others, it is evident that the genders have been switched in this production, and that the males have been left with Shakespeare’s lesser female roles.

Physically, both Stephen and Clint are well situated to play up this incongruity.  Both dominant the space; Stephen with his solid build and open stance, and the wiry Clint with his high physicality; and both are impressively taller than the rest of the cast.  These physical attributes, while perhaps seeming comical in the submissive role, also have the effect of naturalising this world in which the institutionalised dominance of women is unquestioned.  Since they are not puny men who could fall into the old role of a frightened subservient weakling in a comically inverted relationship (dating from the good old days when domestic violence was funny), such an easy interpretation is undermined.

Filed under: None | Posted by John Anderson at Sunday, 9 October 2005 6:36 PM

After a few week’s absence, I attended another QSE rehearsal.  According to Rob, I had not missed much because the rehearsals had slowed their progress while many in the cast meet some of their other commitment.  Anne Pensalfini, Stephen Daniels, Sarah Ogden and Rob were all involved in QSE's The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisby for a corporate client, an arrangement which struck me as almost Elizabethan in itself.

When I arrived, an hour later than I intended, the rehearsal had only just started.  It was that very windy Saturday and one of the cast members, Joanne Loth, had been badly injured by a piece of scenery left outside the QUT Creative Precinct, where the Ensemble conducts most of their rehearsals.  The wind had lifted the scenery flat, narrowly missing Stephen, and knocking Joanne to the ground.  She was so badly hurt that she had to be rushed to hospital, and, when I was leaving that afternoon, I noticed blood outside where I guess they must have waited for the ambulance. 

Filed under: None | Posted by John Anderson at Saturday, 8 October 2005 08:01 AM

The second day that I attended a Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble rehearsal, they were engaged in a process that, on the face of it, seemed remarkably scholarly for a rehearsal of a comedy. Rob Pensalfini was leading the cast through a meticulous examination of the first folio printing of The Comedie of Errors, using an edition in which the f’s and s’s had been untangled, but the archaic and anarchic spelling, and as much of the original layout as possible, had been painstakingly replicated in modern type.

I have always been a little intimidated by references to the first publications of Shakespeare’s plays, in the various quartos and the folio and the use of ‘foul’ and ‘fair’ papers, prompt copies etc; and I’ve always thought that the term ‘bad quarto’ suggested a naughty version, in which we see Romeo and Juliet doing it. The intensely scholarly work of researchers of the quartos and the folio seemed so daunting that I decided it was an almost criminal complication of the appreciation of Shakespeare, and therefore felt justified in ignoring it. After watching the QSE putting some of that research into practice, however, I understood the pleasure of looking for evidence of the ‘fair copies’ from the man himself: a playwright writing to the actors of his day.

Rob’s approach to this text is based on the work of Neil Freeman who argues that the first folio has largely reproduced a form of notation for the character’s thoughts and feeling in the use of sentence and line structure and the spelling and punctuation; and that this intent would have been obvious to an actor of the day. Much of this information no longer exists in modern editions because, when preparing a modern edition, editors (argues Freeman) are focused on readers other than on theatre companies, and the lose is due to attempts to ‘clean up’ the messiness of the various sources (such as the folio) to accord with the conventions of poetic construction.

In the gentrification of these plays, some of the blame for the presumed messiness has been shunted onto the hapless compositors who prepared the type-trays for the presses. There appears to be a whole industry devoted to identifying the compositor responsible for every part of the folio; possibly with a view to locating and suing their descendants. While there are plenty of examples of where the compositors have made mistakes (particularly in the case of Compositor E where you need to look for examples where he got it right), they may often be unfairly condemned because the significance of some of the irregularities is not understood.

The central point of Freeman’s argument is that Shakespeare and his associates were schooled more in the principles and conventions of rhetoric, and less on the niceties of grammar; and that much of the ‘ungrammatical’ punctuation of the first folio is evidence of the rhetorical use of speech. Freeman argues that the printers may have replicated sentences written to an actor, not to a reader in an armchair. Modern editions, for the most part, make it their business to direct the work to the armchair reader, and so, according to Freeman, those on the stage would do well to get as close to the working drafts as possible.

After reading Freeman’s introduction to the first folio, what looks poetic but almost unemotional in a modern edition can suddenly crackle with underlying emotions when read in the unimproved text. A sentence filled with a messy array of colons and semi-colons can read as a character being swayed by competing thoughts and feelings. By reading aloud a sentence with little punctuation that goes for ten lines, the unbroken outpouring can speak against the supposed composure. The carefully composed sentences that modern editions strive to create throughout may have been, to an Elizabethan actor, a clear indication that their character was carefully composed; maybe even a cold fish.

Watching Rob take the cast, step by step, through some of the evidence for this notation, and running through exercises using their own characters’ lines, I felt that Shakespeare had moved a little closer; and I am looking forward exploring the plays with a new and heightened awareness of the comma, the colon and, most exciting of all, the semi-colon! While I still unlikely to get heated on the subject of whether Hamlet was meant to say “too solid flesh” or “too sullied flesh”, and I wouldn’t care if Compositor E was actually Compositor D after a heavy night on the mead, I will enjoy reading the first folio copies while imagining myself an Elizabethan actor who must quickly memorise his lines before the three days of rehearsal normally set aside for a new play. I have already ordered my own copy of Neil Freeman’s The Applause First Folio of Shakespeare in Modern Type because, even if I never read it again, it will look mighty impressive on the bookshelf.

Of course, when my copy arrives, I will be reading it in an armchair; for the actors currently rehearsing, it is available for practical application. During the exercises, none of the actors found reason to radically reinterpret their characters but they did report that they found more drama written into the lines; in some cases suggestions of higher emotional states than they had, as yet, invested into their characters. As Rob wrapped up this part of the rehearsal, he reiterated that the purpose had been to direct attention to the availability of this resource; not to attempt to replicate an ‘authentic’ performance. The first folio copy was put to one side as they cleared a space for a full run-through.

Any lingering misgivings I had had about the rather academic approach to interpreting Shakespeare in the rehearsal for a comedy was thoroughly dispelled when the actors took to their feet. Even though this was possibly the first full run-through, and not all of the cast was available, and only a fraction of the lines were memorised, it was both an entertaining and enlightening experience for me as a spectator. Since I was primarily a spectator of the company at work, rather than a finished performance, I found it particularly interesting to watch the ease with which the company worked together; even at this early stage. No actor had memorised all of their lines and, since it was obviously policy that no scripts were to be held during a run-through, some needed another member of the cast to follow them feeding them each line; and in spite of this, the cast still felt comfortable enough with each other to experiment (sometimes wildly) with the dramatic and comic material. Even the experimentation being done by the actors who were standing in for absent cast members seemed so uninhibited and productive that I hated to think that it might go to waste. Perhaps this is one of the great benefits of the ensemble: even the material that doesn’t make it to the stage does not go to waste because it expands the company’s knowledge of each other’s capabilities.

Of particular note must be the extravagant experiments of both Sarah Ogden and Jane Barry as they prepare to play the Dromio twins – renamed Dromia. As I watched the women call upon their considerable clowning skills, I realised how desperately they are going to need them. It seems almost paradoxical that the characters to which Shakespeare delivered the greatest amount of his comic lines now represent possibly the hardest for the modern actor to get a laugh from. While the gags may have been sure-fire zingers in their day, they now present a considerable obstacle for the comic actor; and the skilful but archaic wordplay often leaves an audience unsure of what the other characters are laughing at.

The Comedy of Errors remains, however, a popular Shakespearean comedy because the characters perform their farcical shenanigans under the constant threat of violence and death; which has always been a rib-tickler. I would go so far as to argue that it is Shakespeare’s use of comedy, even in his tragedies, that has contributed to his ongoing popularity because, when you find yourself laughing with Shakespeare, he feels a little closer.

Filed under: None | Posted by John Anderson at Tuesday, 6 September 2005 8:54 PM

My first day observing the rehearsal process with the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble was, in retrospect, an ideal introduction to the company; although at the time I found the experience a little perplexing. As I walked to the rehearsal rooms, I knew very little about the company, apart from having seen their production of Coriolanus two years prior, and I wondered about the wisdom of walking into a rehearsal cold.

The rehearsal is a uniquely personal time for a production and can sometimes seem like the group equivalent of being left at home alone with an active imagination; I say this as someone who enjoys the diversions of experimenting with a range of character voices or the occasional interpretive dance; given sufficient personal space. For this reason, I steeled myself to be confronted with anything ranging from uncomfortably voyeuristic “group trust” exercises through to pseudo-religious rituals; in the face of which any show of embarrassment by me could be seen as a sign of weakness.

I walked into a room in which the director, Rob Pensalfini, was talking to two of the actors, Anne Pensalfini (Rob’s wife) and Jane Barry. After greetings and asking the actor if they were comfortable with me observing, he welcomed me to stay for their “dropping-in session”. This sounded reassuringly casual and I relaxed in the belief that they had dropped by to discuss their characters and perhaps explore issues within the play.

The actors ran through a few stretches, grabbed a couple of chairs and sat facing one another. Since they were very deliberate in centring and grounding themselves in their sitting position, and aligning themselves exactly opposite each other, I assumed that this was still part of a warm-up. The director then sat to one side and, looking down at the script, began an hour-long process that went something like:

Director: I. What colour are your eyes? I!

Actor: I!

Director: What colour are her eyes? I!

Actor: I!

Director: What is your name? I!

Actor: I!

Director: Do you like yourself? I!

Actor: I!

Director: Find. Have you ever had an unexpected windfall? Find!

Actor: Find!

Director: Have you ever gotten a parking fine? Find!

Actor: Find!

Director: Have you ever gotten lost in the woods? Find!

Actor: Find!

Director: Father. Do you know who your father is? Father!

Actor: Father!

Director: Would you like to have children some day? Father!

Actor: Father!

Director: Is your father a kind man? Father!

Actor: Father!

Director: Did your father ever hit you? Father!

Actor: Father!

Director: Sister. Do you have any sisters? Sister!

Actor: Sister!

Director: Would you like to have a sister? Sister!

Actor: Sister!

Director: Is she older or younger? Sister!

Actor: Sister!

Director: Do you get along with your sister? Sister!

Actor: Sister!

Director: Do you ever fight with your sister? Sister!

Actor: Sister!

Director: So I, to find a father and a sister!

Actor: So I, to find a father and a sister!

As they began this process, I was careful to maintain an air of professional interest, as if I was aware of this technique and welcomed the opportunity to see it in practice. Meanwhile, internally, I was looking for the nearest exit.

For every word, or occasionally a phrase, the actor was prompted to repeat it after first being asked an open-ended, often rhetorical question. While some of the questions may have related to the character’s or actor’s reaction to elements within the scene, most seemed to use wildly divergent interpretations of the same word, most often not relevant to the action. It may have taken me longer to realise what was happening if I had not known that Rob Pensalfini is also a prominent academic in the field of linguistics.

At first, I imagined that this process was devised by Rob to focus the actor’s awareness of the individual words and to open up the meaning. I was half right: the process was designed to focus on every element of the language but it was not a process designed by Rob. In fact, it was based on the work of Tina Packer and Kristin Linklater during the formation of Shakespeare & Company; the company with which Rob has done much of his performance training.

Not being familiar with Shakespeare & Company, I looked at its rather inspiring website. Judging by its history and by its crowded training, education, and performance schedule alone, this company, based in Lenox, Massachusetts (a city which boasts a “summer population of 35,000”) is yet another example of the astounding power of Shakespeare’s plays to attract large numbers of dedicated artists and audiences to seemingly inappropriate regional centres. The “dropping-in” technique, prompting the actor to experience the text word-by-word, is only one of the techniques, perfected within Shakespeare & Company, which Rob brings to the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble. However, I feel that I can be forgiven for thinking that it was Rob’s technique because, as he points out, while it was not devised by qualified linguists, it is the product of a deep passion for language.

Rob’s dedication to the work of Shakespeare is not an unbroken narrative. Like many of us, his appreciation of Shakespeare suffered the battering that comes from being taught Shakespeare-as-Literature in school and, like many people who are currently bringing the plays to the stage (and even the screen), he had first to rediscover Shakespeare-as-theatre-practitioner. Having first joined Shakespeare & Company for performance training, with a view to later pursuing his interest in ensemble theatre, his experience there made him realise that the plays, which had been originally written for and within a company of actors, were ideally suited to ensemble theatre. This understanding of their construction, along with a belief in an importance of re-enacting the old stories, is the principal reason for choosing to focus on the plays of Shakespeare; his core motivation remains a dedication to the principles of ensemble theatre. It is from ongoing development within a local ensemble that Rob believes that words can be best interpreted and spoken in our own voice.

When Rob returned to Australia, he and the others of the founding team, including Sue Mahoney and Suzanne Little (Rob’s co-artistic director), formed the basis of the Ensemble which has been training, performing and developing since 2001. According to Rob, the ensemble has, with each year, developed the sense of its identity and has established a core team of artists who run all aspects of the company. The strength of this team will be an important element in the ultimate goal of attaining professional status in the next few years. This difficult transition (the dream for so many of us who have known the profit-share experience) has recently been made more tangible by being selected for Metro Arts' arts business incubator program: which is schooling the company in the more prosaic realities of a commercial entity.

In the rehearsal room, however, the company continues to find its identity as an ensemble through working together on productions and through training together using many of the methods which Rob has brought from his time with Shakespeare & Company. As Rob points out, he is not the only one to bring expertise to the Ensemble, and that other members have extensive training which they contribute. However, this is something that I am yet to see in action since, as they currently in production, all energy is focused on opening night and, as director, Rob appears to take much of the running as the company goes through its paces.

At this early stage in my association with the company, the most tangible example of the group creating its own interpretation is the decision to stage an inverted gendered production of The Comedy of Errors. The simple fact that they had four people who could convincingly play the two sets of twins meant that this play became available to them, and the minor detail that they were female meant that they would have to make a few changes. The decision to invert the genders, rather than playing in drag, was made by the Ensemble in pre-production; and this decision could deliver some interesting material. The swapping of the otherwise awkwardly dated power relations between the sexes might produce additional potential for comedy; if only by allowing people to feel more comfortable laughing. The final interpretation of this play, with its exploration of new comic potential and philosophical issues, will have had its starting point in the simple fact that Anne Pensalfini and Jo Loth look vaguely similar and so do Jane Barry and Sarah Ogden. The largely female cast’s entertaining treatment of the good looking Gavin Edwards, who has been brought in expressly to play the “courtesan”, is a show that (sadly) will not make it to the stage.

After an hour of the dropping-in session, the actors then made a clearing amongst the chairs and began to recite their lines while moving energetically throughout the space. Paradoxically, the physically relaxed and almost hypnotically rhythmic process of the dropping-in session seemed the more exhaustive workout. After listening to every word having its meaning questioned with a delivery that was calm and supportive but with a response that was sometimes so focused and intense that Rob had to remind them to breathe deeply, I came away feeling that, if I were given the lines to speak, those words were fully mine to interpret and to speak in my own voice – all except for the word “heady-rash”. 

Filed under: None | Posted by John Anderson at Wednesday, 31 August 2005 9:25 PM

This blog will document my time observing the work of the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble as it prepares for a production of The Comedy of Errors. It is intended to be a real-time observation of their process of rehearsal and to give a fuller understanding of this emerging company.
Too often, we come to a performance with very little background to the production – and this is often a problem when choosing which shows to shell out large sums of money for tickets. With cinema, this need not be the case since there are plenty of publications that cater to the interested observer– from journals that will dissect the approach of the Director of Photography through to magazines that will reveal who was seen snogging while on location. In theatre, sadly, even our snogging goes unreported. This blog, in its small way, is an attempt to use the web to give greater access to one of our theatre companies and to be a considered insight into the development of their work. While there will be no attempt to critique their process, simply to observe, I hope that I am able to give some critical insight into some of the processes of their rehearsal.
I certainly hope that this initiative will be beneficial to the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble by encouraging many people to attend their performances, but my greatest hope is this will facilitate a fuller experience for those in the audience who, like me, enjoy theatrical performance on many levels.

Filed under: None | Posted by John Anderson at Tuesday, 30 August 2005 06:59 AM