With less than a week before rehearsals begin for our production of HAMLET at the Riverside Studios, we thought it was time to check back in with our brilliant Artistic Director and Founder of Hiraeth Artistic Productions, ZOE FORD. Zoe will be allowing us a sneak peek behind the scenes of the creative process for HAMLET in this new series: THE DIRECTOR’S DIARY. This week, Zoe explains how her role as Text Assistant at Shakespeare’s Globe has changed the way she interacts with text.
Image: Indira Varma as Tamora, in ‘Titus Andronicus’ at Shakespeare’s Globe. (c) Simon Kane.
GILES BLOCK, THE GLOBE AND ME
While the internet and news buzzed with celebrations of Shakespeare’s 450th birthday, I was one of the lucky few watching Dominic Dromgoole’s Hamlet at a sold out and positively packed Globe Theatre.
This week has been my third as Text Assistant to Giles Block at Shakespeare’s Globe; a position I happened upon through many, many twists and turns of fate (and nothing to do with obsessive emailing).The Globe is a mecca for Shakespeare lovers, and it had always been an ambition of mine to hustle my way through those heavy set wooden doors – what I hadn’t planned on, however, was that gaining a position at the theatre would coincide with my biggest directing project to date: Hamlet at the Riverside Studios.
Scheduling complexities aside, this coincidence has been a considerable blessing; it has taken my exploration of the text to a whole new level. Hiraeth Artistic Productions, which I founded in the hope that it would become a hub of theatrical reinvention, has, in many ways, gained a reputation for bold, fearless and visceral work. My approach to directing Shakespeare has always been that of a street fighter – no rules, no boundaries and a lot of swearing! Whilst I intend to keep the lack of boundaries and surplus of swearing, my time at the Globe, and more specifically with Giles Block, has deepened and broadened my appreciation for the detail and majesty of the text.
Giles joined Shakespeare’s Globe whilst it was under the Artistic Directorship of the legendary Mark Rylance. He is most definitely one of the world’s most knowledgeable people when it comes to the intricacies of the bard’s words … and, my word, is there a glut of intricacies?! Giles guides actors and directors through a labyrinth of iambic, forms of address, thought units, thought shaping, pop up thoughts and top up breaths with an ease and gentleness that would astonish the most mild amongst us.
His humble approach has exploded my preconceived notions of established Shakespeare and triggered a shift in how I wish to explore Hamlet. With my previous productions of Shakespeare, I have adapted them with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball, allowing my creative ideas precedent over the text. This time will be different: I am seeking to challenge myself. The creativity and boldness of previous productions will most definitely remain, however, this time my task is to retain the ingenuity and reinvention of the story whilst operating within the parameters of the text.
To clarify, I will give you a small example with reference to Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship. Originally I intended to expose their pre-existing relationship with snippets of intimate moments; I felt I never really understood what the hubbub was surrounding them. If the audience never sees them together until the nunnery scene – how can an audience understand his rage and her devastation at the breakdown of the relationship?
However, after talking at length with Giles about the text, and mining through a magnitude of linguistic clues in the bowels of the Globe library, I realised that all the previous scenes with Ophelia, Laertes, Polonius, Claudius and Gertrude are taster sessions, leading up to the explosion of the nunnery scene. Ophelia has told her father she has repelled Hamlet’s tokens to her as he asked (he hasn’t asked and she hasn’t given them back yet); she refuses to see Hamlet any more, after which Hamlet then forces his way into her room distressed and behaves outrageously – the next time they see each other is in the nunnery scene.
Suddenly those first moments (‘how does my lord’) have outrageously high emotional stakes and the weight of her returning his tokens is much heavier – the last time she saw him he was distraught and now she is an integral piece of a plan to spy on him, during which she chooses to give him back tokens of his love. It is a dangerous scene fraught with guilt, love, hate and untruths. It is the peak of their story; the most tantalising snippet of their life together. To visually expose their previous intimacy would be soften the power of this scene. All we need to know about their relationship is there in the text, waiting for artists to uncover and explore it.
Shakespeare is a genius and Hamlet is a stunning work of art. It is a wonderful twist of fate to be at the Globe, learning and accessing their resources, whilst attempting to understand and stage this piece – hopefully Hamlet is the beginning of a new creative era for Hiraeth Artistic Productions.
By Zoe Ford (@ZoeTheatre)
Hamlet runs from the 28th May – 22nd June 2014 at the Riverside Studios in London.
For more information and to buy tickets, please go to the Riverside Studios website at: http://www.riversidestudios.co.uk/cgi-bin/page.pl?l=1394110917
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