We've had a bit of a dive into the "hospital" plot of this play. The quotations will make sense when you see the play, this ain't a place you want to be treated. Anyway; I'm really looking forward to discovering more of this place and a potential new character to dissect? Yes please! Watch this space 👀
Alex Bird (Alonzo)
Today marked us (pretty much) finishing our first forensic deep dive into the play. We got the confrontation between Alsemero and Beatrice up in the space. Questions around characters’ problem solving abilities came up.
These folks often make their biggest decisions under immense pressure, thus their solutions become increasingly more ludicrous: “Enter my closet.” That particular moment stuck out as a key indicator of how little they logicize. They’re gut-driven animals deep down, even if Alsemero spends his whole life trying to deny it. This opened up further questions about Beatrice - how attached is she in this scene to preserving her relationship with Alsemero (supposedly her initial motivation) VS simply preserving herself?
I can’t shake the idea that, for Alsemero, God is revealing himself to be the devil in disguise at the same time as Beatrice reveals herself to be a murderer. “Twas in my fears at first” - yes, the omen was real. Everything’s at stake and nothing makes sense. “Here we are lost.” He’s so far from home, from universal truth, from solid ground entirely, like a scientist in a Lovecraft story having their mind melted after receiving a glimpse of the universe in its true unfathomably chaotic form. That’s a pretty rough predicament to ‘rationalise’ your way out of. If only Alsemero went with his gut more often, he’d be half way to Malta by now instead of locking women in cupboards.
We played this scene a few times, each time the words became more weaponised. It was lovely to mess around with some Pinter pauses and physical touch too, testing the boundaries of space between the lines, each other and experimenting with all the which ways to generate pace. By the end of the day, the playing space had become a boxing ring, the top rope made of red marker tape. I’m looking forward to getting back in the ring tomorrow.
Mylo McDonald (Alsemero)
A morning at home today with 5 hours of completely focussed solo work and headspace to consolidate everything we’ve done so far, and unpick Vermandera in even greater detail. Feels like I am entering the phase where I am beginning to absorb her - looking at all this evidence and holistically starting to form a broad sense of this phenomenal matriarch. Her character, her essence, how she ticks, her predicamants, the opportunities she seizes. It's that transition phase where the detail starts to give the high level signposts, which then point you to even greater granularity. It was five hours well spent at the peace and quiet of my kitchen table (the kids are FINALLY back at school!!) - some time to just think it all through. Heaven. And then a great afternoon of text work. I then swung by Foyles on my way home to investigate other versions of the text and materials that might be of use - I’m reading The House of Bernarda Alba as part of my character prep which is proving really helpful in terms of understanding the context of patriarchy, matriarchy and societal norms and expectations governing female behaviour. Shocking to think that the Spanish Penal Code of 1870 - which allowed a husband to ‘cleanse his honour with blood” should his wife commit adultery or his daughter or wife be raped - was only repealed in 1963. Yes, you read that correctly in 1963. The year of the code - 1870 - is obviously after this play but it evidences what the culture must have been like in the period leading up to that….horrific. But certainly helps us to understand what was at stake for some of these characters. I think one of the things I love so much about my work as an actor is precisely this constant process of learning, the reading, the exploration - every character, every play brings with it a huge opportunity to acquire knowledge, to learn. Lucky.
Emma Wilkinson Wright (Vermandera)
