In Performance

A young actor. 1606.

It is midday and I’m standing before the Globe. I’ve just spent my last two pence on a small jar of lollies---all I got left after giving the master my two shillings. It is still another two hours until the show begins but Mr. Burbage says it’s important to feel the theatre first, especially someone play acting in front of a real audience for the first time. (I’m also lucky that my first performance will be to a full house of 3000!)

I can see the sun moving to where it’s supposed to be, high up in the sky and away from the Globe’s pillars. Mr. Burbage told me that once, a very long time ago when he was still a boy player, the sun wasn’t where it was meant to be and he had to stay under a pillar shadow for an entire two scenes! What a shame for nobody would have seen him! But I know better. I’m not hiding behind some shadow for nothing!

Mr. Burbage and the theatre owner told me I had a very pretty face so I’ve been charged to face the Lord’s Rooms whenever I could. I have 23 lines, you know, and they said I should deliver them to the richer folk because they would probably be more “relevant” to them. Gangly Tom has to face the Groundlings, poor boy. I hope they don’t throw their nut shells at him (I think he still has a bruise from a rotten apple hurled at him the other day)! He isn’t very good (I cannot understand why the King’s Men continue to train and board him!), you know, and has only seven lines which have to be delivered to the poor folk. Tom is great friends with the Prompter though, because, goodness knows, he always forgets his lines! 

Oh, look! I can see Nathan Field sitting by that tree reading his part. The scroll sure looks awful long; his part must be very big in the next play! Nathan is three and a half years older than I am and was one of Mr. Burbage’s favorite apprentices. I hope I could be like him one day and get big parts in Mr. Shakespeare and Mr. Middleton’s plays. Or maybe I could play heaps of different parts like he did years ago during Julius Caesar! There were more than 40 roles in that play and Matthew was one of the lucky 15 to have been chosen to form its cast. His acting style had been so different for each role, I never would have guessed him to be the same person the whole time!

A young actor. 2011. 

This has to be the best excursion ever! I just performed Viola’s monologue at The Globe’s stage and am now waiting for my director’s feedback. This stage is really strange! The audience pretty much surrounds me which makes most modern acting techniques useless on this stage. There are audience members positioned to the very ends of the round apron who would be looking at the show almost completely from behind! The “No backs to the audience” rule today would be completely laughable to the Elizabethan and Jacobean people. 

I’m standing on the front corner of the stage instead of downstage centre because the pillars would obstruct me from half the audience---not that it matters too much anyway because this style focuses more on being heard than being seen. 

A bright side to this space is how unbelievable the acoustics are! The Globe’s oak frame projects anything. I learnt that the hard way. The director said I practically yelled the first section of my monologue. Everyone did that, though, because you couldn’t tell from the stage.

Ugh, there’s Cassie, talking on her Iphone, as per usual. I suppose I can’t complain though. “Groundlings” back then could lean on the stage and yell or whistle at the actors if they wanted to. It was even encouraged by the Artistic Director! Can you imagine trying to perform like that?! The people in front of you are consuming and selling nuts and ale, your stuff is being stolen by pickpockets and prostitutes hang around, looking for customers! These days, you’d be feeling the glaring hatred of people around you just for eating Malteasers because the packet makes too much noise!