� In Conversation Mark Rylance - Master of Play in "Julius Caesar" / Cleopatra in "Antony & Cleopatra"

This is the 3^rd season of plays at The Globe. As an Artistic Director and an actor, what have you learnt or discovered from playing in the Globe during that time?

The main thing I’ve learnt is that sound is much more important here than in most theatres. It’s important in all theatres with a Shakespeare play, obviously, because he wrote for the ear - that’s mainly how you receive the words he’s written. But it has become very clear that at the Globe, your most powerful tool as an actor is your ability to move people - to affect their minds and emotions with the way you speak.

I have become fascinated with the word eloquence, which I always thought meant ‘fancy talk’ or ‘fakery talk’, to hide something. I looked eloquence up in the dictionary and it means to speak or to write (though, you could apply it to any art) with force, fluency and appropriateness, to affect the reason and to move the emotions. I think that is verbatim, from the Oxford English Dictionary. That definition of eloquence is great, that’s exactly what actor’s learn here and we need to learn more this season. It’s that kind of actor that I think Shakespeare was writing for and indeed it’s that kind of environment which inspired his plays. Shakespeare’s plays, which we admire now as written texts, were really written in the way songs were written, they were written for the ear and for the bodies of the actors and the audiences in theatres like the Globe. I think that is the main thing that I’ve learnt and the main area where I think we need to grow. I suppose if people looked back in twenty years at the effect the Globe Theatre has had on the modern theatre world, I hope it might have had that effect - that we will have re-found an acting tradition that is very strong in speech.

The other main thing about this space is that I hadn’t realised how much the behaviour of audiences, and the way the theatre treats audiences, had changed since Shakespeare’s time. The experience of being an audience in the Globe theatre is very different to what it has become in ‘normal’ indoor theatres. Our modern indoor theatres have moved even further away from proscenium theatres as they were first known in this country. I understand that for many years audiences in proscenium theatres were lit during the performance. I visited the Kabuki theatre this year in Japan, there the whole theatre remains lit throughout the show. It is a very modern thing to place the audience in darkness, maybe it is the impact of cinema. Darkness has two effects, it isolates you in the audience, so you can’t see other people around you and your eyes become very sensitive to any kind of light, even a candle. As a result of this the ear is not as active as the eye, and many theatres are not built very well for the ear anyway. But the main thing is that you are isolated, and you are in a physical position in which you can fall asleep very easily. The whole physical experience is very passive, you don’t have to think at all about supporting your body, so the main sensation of going to theatre becomes more about the intellect and the head and the mind. That’s clearly not what this theatre is about; it is a place where you can think about the plays and enjoy them intellectually, but you can never forget your body, whether sitting on a bench or standing in the yard. If you are not aware of your spine you fall over. If you fall asleep and you’re not leaning on something you fall over, so you stay physically aware.

In the Globe Theatre space you are aware of everyone else, you are not isolated, you are not in darkness, it is an emotional space. When there is laughter in the space it is not divided into different tiers, everyone is laughing and when you turn and look, you see other people laughing, it is a collective space, it is a place where things are very easily shared. All those things add to a quality amongst the audience which is more active. The audience are in the imaginary world, they are lending their imagination to the play more than normal, because there are other things that are going on. They are within a circle, they’re not in a box aimed at one thing where the play is happening, we are all inside a circle where the play is happening, not only on the stage but very much in the active imagination of the audience. The excesses of that are that they shout out at times and speak, those things are not always very deep comments about the play, sometimes they are disruptive comments and shallow comments, but at least the audience are playing again. That’s a big thing and a delight and I can’t imagine going back to a theatre now where the audience wasn’t liberated like that. I think that in twenty years time people will look back and say - the Globe reminded us that audience’s have more of a say – theatre involves a more active interaction between actor and audience.

I guess, the third and final thing, which is also nice too, is the fact there isn’t a roof on the top of the theatre and the elements are let in. The fact that the Globe is an amphitheatre means there is a sense of roughness, you can’t control the experience. In film you can control the experience really, it can happen the same way every time, television too and theatre is going more and more that way, in black box theatres. When I hear it or see Shakespeare now, it often seems over-prepared, over-controlled over thought. In the Globe, because of random events like a rain storm, or the active and different nature of the audiences, there is a bit more sense of spontaneity – there could be more spontaneity really, which would add more speed and more enjoyment as the people play act.

You have chosen a season of Roman plays. What is your reason for this choice?

Most obviously, because it is our anniversary season, it’s 400 years since the Globe was first built and it’s a great delight that 400 years later, (for me in particular because I’m alive now!) that it’s built here again.

We know when the first performance at the Globe was because a man called Thomas Platter wrote about a visit to the Globe. How he and his friends, at about two o’clock got in a boat, came over the river to the house with the thatched roof and there saw a tragedy of the Emperor Julius Caesar acted by a company of fifteen actors. Those actors came out and danced when the play was done, two as men, two as women. Platter recalls that it was a good play, but he really liked the dancing, it was excellent. That’s the first reference to Julius Caesar – 21^st September 1599.

We’ve done a tragedy at the Globe before with The Maid’s Tragedy and we’ve done serious plays here, but we haven’t done one of Shakespeare’s tragedies and Julius Caesar is arguably one of his first heroic tragedies. Before this period he’s really doing histories and comedies, but Julius Caesar was a brand new kind of play for Shakespeare. Also all the topical stuff in Julius Caesar made it seem an appropriate choice. For example you could say we are moving more and more to a centralised state and to a Prime Minister who is more and more like a President. There is also the whole question of reform of our Government and how much do we want this kind of - not quite Emperor or King - but leader with enormous centralised power - which we saw in Thatcher and now we’re seeing again in Blair. So there are lots of things that are topical now that were topical in Shakespeare’s time too - the Empress Elizabeth had become very powerful. Julius Caesar seemed a good play to do and from that came the idea, well why doesn’t the Season have a Roman theme? We’re going to celebrate the Millennium because of the Roman’s, they’re the ones that set the date at the month of Janus, and so they’re kind of present, (not in this millennium) but there is a two thousand year aspect to it, looking back to where we’ve come from. The whole season came out of that. It seemed right that Julius Caesar should be the production with which we explore original practices, e.g. trying to guess how they would have clothed it, was it Roman or Elizabethan?

After Henry V I also wanted to explore working with all male companies, because of the wonderful thing with the audience, with make believe - knowing that it’s a man playing a woman, but if the person’s good enough, then going with it and believing it. That was interesting in the Opening Season and I wanted to push that exercise a bit further. Antony and Cleopatra goes very nicely with Julius Caesar, it completes a longer story about the effects of assassinating an Emperor. I suppose also one of the big questions when you question whether men can play women, is yeah okay, to play Princes Katherine and even to play Rosalind, it has been done - but did they have a boy to play Cleopatra, how did that happen? I’m not a boy, but we’ll see what that casting can throw up in the play. We also decided to explore ‘original’ clothing in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra - because the same armour and the same clothing can go into both shows. This enables us to use our resources more effectively and for all the crafts people we have gathered here to have a whole summer of work.

On the other side I wanted it also to look at why Shakespeare was so interested in the Roman theatre? The amphitheatre, this form of theatre, which was the first building, built just for telling stories since the Roman times. There is really nothing in between built just for acting, other than the old remains of the Roman amphitheatres. When The Curtain and The Theatre were built in Shoreditch, they provided what’s really a very profound root of all the theatres since that time in this country.

I looked at The Comedy of Errors which is based directly on Plautus. It’s not a play that was done in the Globe like Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, but it shows how as a young author Shakespeare was inspired by Plautus and by that kind of sense of humour as well as other things that are in the play. The actor Marcello Magni last year had a great success with Launcelot Gobbo, his style of European acting, his training with Le Coq and his experience as co-founder of Theatre de Complicite clearly worked a dream in this theatre. Coming from Italy it seemed that was a great marriage, so when his partner Kathryn Hunter, the great actress, was interested in directing The Comedy of Errors, that seemed like a great decision and so The Comedy of Errors became the other Shakespeare play in the season.

But, the most exciting thing for me this season is the fourth play, which is a new play. Since I have arrived here I have wanted to produce a piece of new writing especially for the Globe. This will finally happen in this Anniversary season, which is perhaps the most suitable time for us to have a new play here. We know that Shakespeare’s Globe was a home for actors and audiences, but really it was most famously the home of a writer and I hope if Shakespeare is looking down on us, he’ll be pleased that we have a writer on our payroll! More than that we have a writer of verse - that’s why I have chosen Peter Oswald. I have been working with him for about a year and a half on different plays – Mavria which was a play about political revolution we eventually put to one side because Peter got excited about the Venerable Bede. The Venerable Bede is the only Englishman that Dante thought worthy of being in Paradise. That’s because Bede wrote the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. That doesn’t sound a very dramatic book, but Peter Oswald used the first two books as a source for his play, very similarly to the way Shakespeare took stories from Hollinshen or North, or Plutarch (in the case of the Romans) and made plays out of them. That’s the model we’re following. Peter has taken the story of St. Augustine’s visit to England. Primarily that visit was an attempt to re-unite the Celtic Christian Church, with it’s druids and it’s Bardic Tradition, which the Celts felt was older than the Roman Church, but celebrated Easter on different days and had certain different traditions. Augustine comes to try and meet both churches and eventually they do meet under an oak in Wessex, so the play is called Augustine’s Oak. It is very much about this mission.

As well as making the Celtic’s Christians Augustine also first lands in Kent - a little home county in England – it’s rather amusing to imagine Kent being full of pagans which it was at that time. He met with the Pagans and there is the interaction I’ve just described. Eventually the play moves up to Northumbria, following the path of the Princess of Kent who is an atheist, or agnostic - a humanist really. What the play is exploring is a multi-faith society and the roots of Christianity in this country. This country’s accepted state religion is Christianity and as we come to the Millennium that poses a question - why is that the right religion for this Country? Actually the society is multi-faith….. what is the best way for this country to express it’s spiritual belief? Celtic Christianity is a very interesting Christianity which is Polytheistic – it has many Gods - compared to the Roman Catholic Christianity which is Monotheistic. So the play is really about ÈmigrÈ religions meeting with other religions and how that impacts on people’s lives.

The play is written in verse as I said, in iambic pentameter as well as the bardic verse which has six beats, and prose. Obviously it has a Roman connection as Augustine comes to England from Rome.

Neatly the whole season connects with Rome and that connects with the decorations of the theatre which are Roman, and the depiction of Roman Gods.

You are directing Julius Caesar which will be the opening play of the ’99 Season.  How do you think your experience as an actor will inform your work as a director?

I want to work a lot with focus. Increasing the actor’s ability on stage to give focus to each other and to create focus. I want to work more with a collective sense of storytelling so that there is a more collective sense of the pace of the story – of when we stretch things out and when we move through things more. I have divided the role of director in all the productions so I am not calling myself director, but Master of Play, responsible for the story and the quality of play. I am partnered by a Master of Verse, who is responsible for the actors connection with the verse, with the understanding of the form of the verse and speech.

Obviously I hope the fact that I have played in the theatre and I know what it feels like to be on that stage will be of assistance. Julius Caesar is a very, very exciting play to work with in this space because with 15 actors you certainly haven’t got a crowd, which is one of the traditions of the play. But at the Globe we have a 500 strong audience in the yard and many in the gallery - that’s clearly a crowd those are the people that Mark Antony has to convince. The audience are the Senators who are in the Senate watching when the assassination actually happens, they are the soldiers that Cassius and Brutus say we can’t have this argument in front of, so they move inside the tent. I will work very much on the relationship between the actors and the audience.

Can you explain the system of Masters you referred to earlier, that will operate for the first time at the theatre this season?

I have always felt that directors have too much responsibility, it makes for too much pressure on them, often they have individual strengths too. I have worked in different ways from the beginning of my career - first of all with a company without a director, like a rock band might work before they have a manager. It became clear that a director will arise if you leave a hole where the director should be, someone will fill that gap. So, better to consciously think what is the best way for someone to lead. I think actors need to take more responsibility for their work. Good shows happen when actors are committed - if a director takes all the decisions themselves then you get actors performing, but it might not really be what they believe, so you need a system where the actor is clearly the main creative artist. Theatre has moved very much to directors being the main creative artist and being responsible for everything and that’s how it is often perceived. I like collaboration and when I look back to Shakespeare’s time there aren’t any directors - we’ve got Quince and Hamlet who are the only people who offer advice on acting. We don’t know who directed, I guess we assume Shakespeare and Burbage had a lot to say. So, it seemed an opportunity to explore a different way of looking at the role of the director. From feedback I’ve had from the actors, (each season we review our work) this new system of Masters seems a way of answering some of the concerns the actors have when things haven’t worked out between them and the directors.

When I use the term ‘Master’ I don’t mean like a Master in a School or a Master of slaves! I mean a Master of a craft, someone who is good at this thing and will be responsible for helping the actors. So I am Master of Play, I am an experienced player and it is my job to make sure the play is good and remove obstacles to the play. The Master of Verse has a great ear for verse and knowledge of verse and how we work with that. We also have a Master of Design, Master of Voice, Master of Dance and Master of Music, male or female, they are all Masters of their particular craft. I am really defining the way we work around the actors, they can go to different people for help with different things. The plays will not have one person’s vision, there will be many visions coming together to make a play. If a final decision needs to be made then the Master of Play will make that decision because the play is the ruling factor -what serves the play decides, not what serves the individual.