� In Conversation Giles Block - Master of Play "Hamlet"

This is your second season at the Globe. How did your relationship with the theatre develop?

For a number of years now, I've been fascinated by Shakespeare - in particular Shakespeare's verse and how it should be approached by actors. I first met Mark Rylance, the Globe's Artistic Director, when I was leading a workshop at the Globe about eighteen months ago. To my amazement, Mark invited me to become Master of Verse for Julius Caesar and Master of Play for Antony and Cleopatra. I had a very enjoyable time last year on those productions. To my delight, this year Mark asked me if I'd like to direct Hamlet. Of course I said yes.

What did you learn about performing at the Globe Theatre from directing 'Antony and Cleopatra'?

I think that the Globe is quite an unnerving space. All of the control that one normally has in the theatre - with lighting in particular - is suddenly absent. In the beginning, the Globe stage seemed enormous. There was a kind of boldness about it - this huge rectangle with two huge pillars. I had to learn how to make that space work.

I formulated one guideline for playing at the Globe: 'possess the stage'. 'Possess the stage' seemed a useful phrase for me in dealing with Antony and Cleopatra in particular. All those characters contest with one another: Antony, Cleopatra, Caesar and Pompey. All of them want to possess that space. I wanted the actors to take control of the stage - every corner - as if they were marking out their territory. Once the actors embraced the idea of saying, 'This stage is mine - all of this space is mine,' there was a kind of liberation about the size of the Globe stage, and the actors could march across it. Communicating a sense of possession energised the space.

I learned the most about the play after an audience was present. Because the Globe has no artificial lighting, the focus on stage is created by the audience, by the audience's eyes being drawn to the action. I found it amazing to watch the play in performance from the Lord's Room above the stage, where I could see the concentration of the audience and the focus that the audience gave to the play. 

At the Globe, the plays communicate most intensely to the groundlings, the people who stand in front of the stage. Watching the groundlings was very instructive for me. When their heads dropped, I knew that the performance had lost their attention for a moment. 

There has possibly been more commentary written on 'Hamlet' than on any other work in the English language; yet, since the closing of the original Globe, it has never been performed in the unique space for which it was intended - until your production. Do you think that the open, interactive relationship between the actors and the audience that the Globe fosters will prove especially poignant with 'Hamlet'?

Yes, I think that it may. When you think of this play, inevitably you think of Hamlet alone talking to the audience. On the Globe stage, I think that Hamlet's relationship with the audience will be enormously exciting and involving, especially with Mark Rylance playing Hamlet. Even in an intimate scene, there is this awareness of an audience watching, and that the purpose of the playing is to bring that audience into the scene. The actors not only sense the audience is there - the actors can see the audience there. In the most real way, the audience is part of the experience.

Like all of Shakespeare's great plays, there is variety in Hamlet. Hamlet's relationship with the audience is one aspect, but there are others that will also work uniquely in the Globe. One is the 'play within the play'. The audience is watching a play, and at a crucial moment in the story, the actors are also watching a play. When you are in a darkened theatre, you're unaware of your fellow audience members. At the Globe, people can watch each other, so awareness of the play within the play at the heart of Hamlet will be more acute. 

You've worked on 'Hamlet' before. How has your past experience with the play influenced the way you are approaching it now?

Hamlet is a play that has, in a sense, been with me all my life. I started my career as an actor, and I have appeared in Hamlet a few times. I learned a great deal about the play when I played Hamlet, at Ipswich Theatre, where the play was directed by the theatre's Artistic Director at the time, John Sargent.

There are a number of imponderables in the play. For example, why does Hamlet behave the way he does to Ophelia? I don't think that I, as director, should present any particular argument about the play. I don't want to defuse the mystery. I believe that audiences need to be able to make up their own minds as to why Hamlet behaves as he does. 

I hope that this production is passionate and exciting - it has to be exciting, because the play is a thriller. To me, the greater the play, the easier it is to direct. I simply want to release the play through the actors.

Do you believe this production should be in period or modern dress?

At first I thought that we should perform the play in period dress, because there are lines in the play which obviously refer to period dress. In a sense, I suppose I was arguing for the safer approach.

My mind is changing, because other people involved in this production are providing a strong case for a modern dress approach. Their idea is to make the play more relevant to the lives of the audience, to show the enduring potency of the character of Hamlet - the fact that he's still a symbol of our search for meaning in life. The production should not, in any sense, hide the roughness, the emotions of the play.

I think that, in a modern dress production, we must show those gradations which dress can reveal - like kingship. Unlike the past, when certain clothing was reserved for royalty, kings today dress in the same fashion as chairmen of major corporations. Similarly, when you get on the tube in the morning, nearly everyone is dressed in black and grey - so how then will we have Hamlet's costume set him apart? We will have to find how modern dress helps us to tell the story - because I do believe that how you dress your characters is a large part of telling the story. 

You specialise in teaching actors how to speak verse. How does that influence your work as a director?

I want the actors to understand the verse for what it is - people communicating spontaneously, 'being in the moment', thinking on their feet. Verse isn't elevated language - it is passionate, involved, potent language - language absolutely based on speech rhythms. The actors' speech needs to be real in that respect.

Not long after Shakespeare died, the theatres closed, and when they reopened, plays were usually written in prose. Verse became the medium for 'heightened speech' - not for popular plays. People lost sight of what Shakespeare had been doing with what is called 'verse'. 

Shakespeare's verse is a structured form of language that mimics speech rhythms, mimics the way that we as human beings think and speak at the same time. We do not speak in prose. Shakespeare's verse reveals spontaneity, it reveals immediacy, it reveals the actor thinking in the moment - it's real life. 

In the end, why did you want to return to the Globe for a second year?

I love these plays. I want to share the thrill that these plays give me - the excitement of them, the subtlety of them. It's a privilege to be here at the Globe, because it is here that I sense the plays have the maximum ability to speak to an audience, to influence people - and to change a few lives.