Titus

As a production Titus Andronicus, which finished its 8-night run at the Ramshorn Theatre last night, was a massive hit with audiences. I regret to say it was a far from easy experience for me personally as an actor. I couldn't help but feel disappointed in the lack of detail and nuancing in my own performance. Having a very heavy cold certainly didn’t help matters either, but it really compromised my energy levels and my vocal delivery. I longed to inject more subtlety and colour into the verse, but being below par health-wise I felt constrained by my limited pitching, and the ‘rasping’ timbre and course texture of my voice which made me sound far more forced and aggressive than I wanted. A bit like trying to play Mozart on an out-of-tune, broken fiddle.

At the start of rehearsals I had high hopes of giving an interpretation that vindicated my character far more, but ultimately I fear Titus came across as a bit intransigent, cold and rigid. He seemed outside of all the groups and factions in the play- separate from the Goths, the tribunes, the Romans, even his own family. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I felt vaguely estranged and at odds with everyone else in the cast and crew, outside of the production even. (It may just have been an oversight on someone's part but why wasn't I even asked to contribute money to the purchase thank you gifts for the director, stage management, Frankie etc! Who can tell me who should I give my money to?!)

The actors playing Tamora, Marcus, Lucius, Aaron, Chiron, Demetrius and Saturninus were encouraged by our director to be much more integrated, strong and likeable, and so were able to stake their claim on the heart of the story. From my own perspective- (Forgive me, while put my ‘director’s hat’ on!-) this unbalanced the key relationships which underpin Shakespeare’s moral schemata. It seemed to be Peter’s vision to fully humanise the baddies, and by the same token de-humanise Titus by undermining his centrality in the story. Audiences always love baddies more, but Titus was left floundering, looking too morally ambiguous for an audience to form an opinion about one way or the other. I felt invisible. Peter never really admitted as much but I feel sure that was why he had me dressed in a Nazi Schütze's uniform (not a high status General’s uniform), and he also completely cut the only scene where we see a fully empathetic Titus, as he eats dinner with in the family home (3:2). In these and in countless other little ways it slowly became clearer to me that Peter’s approach to the text was designed to encourage the audience to sympathise more with the drama's antagonists. He seemed to spend a far more time directing the actors playing those characters than he did me as the titular hero. I was mostly left to my own devices while he urged them to play the passions and the motives behind their vengeful actions with much more intensity and conviction, and play their scenes with grace and beauty of movement. He clearly sided more with the violent ‘baddies’ than my victimised protagonist. The notable exception to this was Lavinia, played by the excellent Natalie Clark, but even this really didn’t help my own character to be seen in a positive light, especially when Titus just kept weeping and bemoaning how hard done by and wronged he was after she is raped and mutilated! As a result Titus came across as weepy, carping and far, far too self-pitying- surely the ugliest and most alienating of all emotions in the theatre!

So my Titus was never properly sympathetic and I failed to discover a way of making him sound anything more than a bellicose, over-the-hill, politically naïf, an emotionally self-indulgent, egotistical and intransigent victim! It continually felt like I was having to fight extra hard to coax any sympathy at all from the audience for the man’s suffering. Other characters got emotive music played under their big moments. I was left to fend for myself- at least that’s how it felt!

Whilst not a complete failure, my acting in this didn’t come up to the standards I usually set for myself, and unfortunately it winded up being a rather frustrating experience creatively.

But as a whole the production seemed to go down extremely well with the audiences. They heaped praise on the other actors and Peter’s sound and lighting effects. I couldn’t help but feel jealous of all the attention they were getting- not that it really should be about that of course, but it was a bit uncomfortable being more or less completely ignored! My friend Max- a man in his 60s- found the intemperate nature of the stage violence so distressing he had to leave at the first interval. Another, a very seasoned theatregoer, was still traumatised to tears by the rape scene, even when I spoke to her about it many hours later. She was another who had to leave the auditorium. Several others thought the graphic nature of the ultraviolence was a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and suggested it might have been portrayed more successfully depicted by leaving much more to the imagination.

The plastic, bewigged, decapitated, goggle-eyed heads of my two ‘sons’- christened “Francie and Josie” by one backstage wit) - got laughs when they were brought on by the Messenger in Act 3 Scene 1. Every night this threatened to completely undermine everything I had been trying to create in the scene up to this moment. This could have been an infinitely more heartbreaking and poignant moment if only they had been placed in bloodied muslin bags; but for reasons Peter never revealed he was adamant that these heads remained fully visible.

The show had a very long running time and there were some evenings when performances lasted three and a ½ hrs, and what with temperatures in the 80s it became an endurance test for everyone concerned. But for those who stayed to watch it all they seemed to have been greatly entertained by the production. So what do I know? The punters are always right!

In the final analysis it was Tamora her two sons, Lavinia and Saturninus who stole the show; and Ithe rest of us were their supporting players. At least that’s how it felt.

Now this is the very last show I am likely to act in before I start at the RSAMD in September, and I wish I could have left on more of a high after my 15 years association with the Ramshorn, but looked at as whole, all I have done there- both as an actor and a director- adds up to a body of work I can afford to take some pride in. I have learned a great deal in my time there, and they've allowed me to work on such an interesting and varied diet of plays. The kind of rep training that simply doesn't exist any more. Looking back now, my high points as a director were The Crucible, A Hard Heart and Tally’s Blood: and as an actor, my achievements as King Lear, Spooner in No Man’s Land, George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and the Player in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead will remain with me; but there are many others I will recall with just as much pride, affection and gratitude.

I guess this is the closing of a chapter, and that makes me just a little melancholy…

But, hey, upwards and onwards!!


“For it now is done.”

Titus Andronicus

I am in mid-rehearsal,playing the leading role in Shakespeare's earliest tragedy, Titus Andronicus, to be staged at the Ramshorn Theatre in Glasgow from Fri 29 May- Sat 6 June, and I would love anyone who's interested to come along and check it out. With less than two weeks to go it's perhaps still too early to say how good it'll be. As it is I'm really only just off book and we finished our first full run-through just a couple of days ago, but it's seems to be shaping up well apart from the odd bit of over-acting (mostly from me, it has to be said- although the piece does seem to merit it!).

TITUS: "Art thou Revenge?.. Welcome, dread Fury, to my woeful house." (V ii)

(with Frankie MacEachen as my nemesis, Tamora)

TITUS: "And in the emperor's court there is a queen attended by a Moor." (V i)

(Daniel Sweetman as Aaron and Frankie MacEachen as his lover, Tamora)

TITUS: "I am the sea; hark how her sighs do blow..." (III i)

(with Natalie Clark as my daughter Lavinia)

The storyline is extremely straightforward and even for those dyed-in-the-wool Bardophobes among you it's a highly entertaining romp about vigillante violence, serial rape, vengeance and homicide, ritual dismemberment, assisted suicide and slaughter. It is by turns disturbing, hilarious, heart-breaking and thrilling. Imagine, if you will, Quentin Tarantino in blank verse. Do come!

Fun, fun, fun for all the family!
:-)

Natural High

So much has been happening over the past few weeks, both inwardly and outwardly, and I suppose I have been living very intensely. I wish to reflect on things a bit here and maybe tie it all together, if I can, before I return to teaching on Monday. Forgive me if any of this comes across as self-indulgent, ignorant or naïve- or all three!

I have spent the last 2 days taking part in a voice workshop led by the inspirational expert Nadine George. It’s her work that provides the foundation methodology for all voice teaching done with students at the RSAMD over the past decade by among others my friends Bill Wright, Susan Worsfold and of course Ros Steen (who was also in attendance, along with five other voice teachers from drama schools all over England), and now internationally- in the national theatres of Scandinavia, France and Brazil. Nadine’s ideas challenge many of the dogmas about the use of the dramatic voice, such as “ adequate support” and “misuse” propounded by the likes of Linklater, Rodenberg et al. By the end of the first day the majority of my fellow workshop participants looked very worried, as if Nadine were some kind of antichrist spouting vile heresies. But by the end of the two days I know we all felt immensely grateful for the way she had managed to liberate us from many of our received notions and prejudices, and had re-inspired us. I am left feeling immeasurably courageous and hopeful, aware of the possibility an infinite number of choices which I thought had been closed off to me as an artist long ago. My God, if that was just a wee taster of what I can expect to get from the Masters in acting at the RSAMD I am going to be in paradise next year!

She made me confront the notion of what an incredibly good actor I am. I have become increasingly hardened in recent years to any kind of adulation, blandishments or flattery about my work. Instead I always seek to know how I can do better, and have always felt I can do this only when I am criticised. My dear Karen often berates me for always being much more interested in getting feedback from all and sundry about my flaws and in the process making myself completely deaf and blind to any admiration from others.

But Nadine George was so inexorably positive and affirming. She somehow correctly intuited my ingrained resistance to her “Amazing!… Extraordinary… Absolutely tremendous… Bloody marvellous!” comments. My intrinsic scepticism is a peculiar manifestation of my very English, and yes egoic fearfulness of any kind of praise. My somewhat unreliable bullshit-detector was sounding its alarm bells. I have had some very ugly experiences in the past at the hands of people who have flattered my ego and then used it as a tool for manipulating me, and eventually turning against me. I have come to suffer from a deep suspicion of any kind of congratulation or commendation about what I do. I immediately suspect the motives and even the taste of people who say I am good- as some people have in the past ended up using that as an insidious form of control over me, and my feelings. So you can perhaps imagine my reaction when, after performing my Aegisthus speech from Ted Hughes’ translation of The Oreistia, Nadine showered all this praise on my ‘embodiment of the text’. It made me feel extremely uncomfortable, though I adopted what I thought was a convincing mask of gratitude. She had similarly eulogized everybody else’s progress so when she said I looked like I didn’t believe her I apologised and blurted out that I had some doubts about the reliability of her feedback.

I said, “It’s really fantastic how you provide such a supportive and lovely atmosphere in this class, Nadine. It's great, but I’m not used to it! Surely if everyone is wonderful and special then in the end nobody really is. Never mind the raptures, what I want to know is what isn’t wonderful... and what must I work on to improve it.”

She became very serious and responded very slowly, “Improve?? Mark… Mark. You want me to tell you it was shit? It wasn’t shit, Mark! It wasn’t shit. That’s the fucking understatement of the year! Christopher-bloody-Columbus!! Do you not know that? You need to have a clearer understanding of what you are, Mark, what you are capable of, my darling… I love you! I adore you!! You were wonderful. Wonder-ful. You need to know that about yourself, Mark. You are an extraordinary actor. A wonderful actor! I mean it. Do you see? Do you get me? Christopher-bloody-Columbus!!” etc…

Eventually at the end of this rant she held my gaze and leaned forward, adding quietly, “Listen to me; if you work from a level of love then miracles happen. Do you get me?”

The scales fell from my eyes.

BINGO!!!!!

Suddenly I felt like all the various strands of me came together- like the fireworks of some ecstatic religious/ or exquisite drug epiphany!

Hearing just those words chimed with so many, many things that have been percolating and bubbling below full consciousness for me about the art of acting, the art of being, for a very long time but hadn’t really pierced me as deeply until that instant. I felt my heart and mind explode and expand at the speed of light- un-chained, utterly liberated. The feeling hasn’t gone away.

Deep changes will inevitably ensue; Nadine predicted this for us all in our own unique ways. She’s no guru, she says that herself. She's just a wee woman. She’s not interested in abusing her power or manipulating anyone.

But as she said I was present at that workshop for a reason. And, my God, was she right.

The experience was quite literally unforgettable.

Nadine’s work draws on primeval, animalistic forces, the archetypal male and female energies in the voice, body and spirit. It’s not bollocks. Of course this workshop made me hyper-aware of the profound importance of all of this to Titus, and occured at precisely the right time for me as I launch myself back into acting after a year away from the stage. A divinely meant encounter, I’m sure of that.

The character of old Titus has such a disproportionate Yang imbalance, and he has to undergo the emotional and physical torment of hell, similar to old King Lear, before he can move into the Yin dimension. The voice work I did wth nadine will feed into that. But much much more than that, I know the implications of this Easter-time experience will not just embrace Titus but extend into the rest of my life work from this time on. And as completely naff as it’s likely to sound… fuck it, this was a genuinely heart, mind and soul-altering experience for me. I can’t be the same ever again. So thank you, Nadine… And thank you, God.

Regular readers of this blog will know I am, and have always been, attracted to the spiritual aspects of acting, but more and more so as I age. And having become a Quaker in the last 18 months I am convinced in my heart- in ways I can’t really begin to justify in words- that the theatre really has far more in common with religion- specifically mysticism and the sacred- than it does with ‘art’ or ‘entertainment’. Both are about the ritualistic dissolution and transfiguration of the Ego, and the reconnection with the Divine. It is not about the pursuit of joy or tranquillity- if it ever was- for that goal too has to be transcended eventually. For me it is clarity, and above all Truth that is the Holy Grail. And paradoxically I seek the path beyond the ecstasy of transformation into a state of oneness and universality where notions of human identity and uniqueness become worthless and immensely precious at the same time. That is what religion does too. (I know, I know, this sounds like wank. I can see my pal Mark Westbrook banging his poor fists off the computer screen as I write this!! Sorry, Mark!)

Actually I wonder if this is why so many actors and artists get sucked into using drugs and alcohol, because they long to experience that sense of otherness- a sense of joining together- on a regular basis, even if it is only a chemically-induced illusion, and lasts just a few hours. But somehow to me that particular way of living has always struck me as terribly selfish, a form of cheating and- not to put too fine a point on it- bloody dangerous. And the results- because they don’t actually serve anyone else but the substance-user himself- can’t ever be sustained. It’s like that analogy my old history teacher Chris Wilshire used when talking on this subject: like getting the fuel to soar in a helicopter to mountaintop rather having the determination, guts and the spiritual strength to climb it step by step under your own power. Any lasting sense of achievement, ownership or meaning is absent from the person who gets there by assisted means. Sorry but I can see nothing real about that dummy-sucking, ‘PLUR’ world, no matter what anyone says. It’s a kind of sordid and treacherous fantasy life of happiness without any true fulfilment or purpose. I’d be the last person to deny anyone their bit of fun, but when it starts to become a philosophy you think is worth defending, well then your life is spirally slowly into the pit. Thir work becomes shit. I’m old, and it’s a tragedy I’ve seen repeated more times than I care to remember to some of my most gifted and talented friends and colleagues.

But then again many have said exactly the same thing to me about what I do as an actor. "Just escapism from feelings of insecurity! For children!" So there you go! Fie diddly dee!

Other stuff to look forward to in the near future includes my production of The House of Bernarda Alba at the Eastwood Theatre, opening next week; returning to school on Monday for my last full term of teaching (ever!), developing Mamet’s Duck Variations with comedian-actor Ian Watt and director Mark Westbrook of Spartan Productions; a forthcoming audition for a major TV series set in the legal world of 1780s Glasgow; playing Titus in the mammoth Titus Andronicus opening at the Ramshorn in 6 weeks time; organising and speaking about worship at the sereis of weekly Glasgow Quaker Quest evenings, starting May 6th… Oh and of course, last but by no means least, drama school starting in September. :-)

But right now…? Right now, I am living in the blessed Nowness of the Now.

And loving it.

Only Once

Death either destroys us or unmasks us.

Seneca

It is nothing to die; it is frightful not to live.

Victor Hugo

These quotes may strike the reader as somewhat morbid. They’re not really.

Three or four weeks ago, a couple of days before my audition for drama school in fact, my younger brother Paul suffered a severe asthma attack. He was rushed at high speed to Kettering hospital and died of respiratory failure in the back of the ambulance. The paramedics were able to resuscitate him, thank God, and he spent the best part of a week in ICU. Naturally, Marion, his wife, along with James and Katherine his 2 kids were all most concerned- as were my other brothers and sisters- and I of course, especially being so many hundreds of miles away. But he's pulled through, and has returned to running his business, albeit working from home now.

The knowledge that my brother was seriously ill in hospital galvanised my acting in the RSAMD audition. It’s a terrible cliché but such incidents are a salutary reminder of just how precious human life is. As alarming as it was, Paul’s brush with the grim reaper jolted me out of spiritual/ creative torpor. The fact is we are, each one of us, so fragile; knowing how it can all be snatched away from us in the blink, forces one to appreciate just how dear consciousness and being is. We awaken and become intensely grateful even for the mundane and tiresome bits of existence. I since find myself thinking several times each day- What if this was my last moment; would I want to be taken now? Is there something else I should be doing, saying, thinking and feeling at this instant? If so, why then aren’t I doing that?
This urgent questioning, a sense of grappling with existential issues, already shows signs of waning, but I have made a solemn undertaking not to drift back into complacency again. To be honest, remembering I’m not immortal is actually a really inspiring thing, and I don’t want to lose that awareness.

What a fabulously liberating and useful corrective Death is~ at least the contemplation of it~ to procrastination, hate, pettiness, worry, anger, to empty abstraction, distraction and silly self-righteousness! Death has the power to make us fabulously creative too, as it urges us to be more fully present. Viewed rightly, death is surely the most precious human blessing. A beautiful gift in fact because, as Seneca says, it unmasks us. It shines a searching light on all our purposes. It makes us true. Paradoxically, it makes us more alive!

Actually Seneca is an unmistakeable influence on Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.

Titus is a play that has a total of 14 deaths in it, most pretty gruesome -so gruesome in fact the action starts to become quite comic after a while. Many of the characters are caught up in a spiralling maelstrom of serial and macabre vengeance- including rape, decapitation, self-butchery, cannibalisation, assisted suicide, various mutilations including beheadings, people's hands and tongues cut off, etc, etc. The energy of the play moves through being celebratory, then mournful, frightening, thrilling, gleeful and even sexual, despairing, silly, sickening and ultimately quite numbing. The poetry is clear and the plot is very easy to follow. It’s a fountain of blood, and quite literally merciless. It's about the human longing for the escape from violence even while as humans we escalate it. It's about how we yearn for the Divine to inflict horrible punishment on those who hurt the ones we love.

I think it’s a great play, though modern critics and the academics don’t agree. For audiences right up to the mid-19th century it was by far Shakespeare’s most popular drama. Nowadays it is one of the least regarded. I think that's because we prefer as a culture not to be reminded of death. Its images are taboo. They would remind us that we are guilty of not really living fully. Such knowledge is scary, but when looked at unflinchingly potentially extremely empowering.

After a year away from the stage, I feel a bit like a Lazarus, if that doesn’t sound tawdry. I intend to make the very most of this wonderful opportunity.

And I feel the exactly same about the chance to go to drama school in 6 months time.

Of course I am beseiged by worries that I don’t remember how to act, but I’ll be fine.

No, more than fine~ great!

I intend to relish every single bloody moment- even when- as they surely will~ things get fraught and thorny. Anthony Hopkins wanted to give up acting and suffered depression when working on the Titus movie. Psychologically speaking it’s a hugely challenging and dark journey the character takes. I know I didn’t have a happy time when I last played him 9 years ago.

But now playing it for a second time I have to keep remembering...

You only live once!!

Glad Tidings

I received two wonderful bits of news yesterday.

Firstly, formal notification by letter of an unconditional offer of a place on the MA Contemporary and Classical Text (Acting) course at the RSAMD, starting in September!!

It's not really hit home yet. Karen opened the envelope while I was scoffing my egg and cress sandwiches on yesterday's lunch break, and read me the contents of the letter over the phone. It's strange, but I wasn't anywhere near as jubilant as I thought I'd be. Of course it was a relief that I will not have to endure months of waiting to find out, but when I received the news I did so completely impassively. I'm still at a loss to understand why. Maybe because it all had a whiff of destiny about it- as pompous and arrogant as that might sound. I somehow knew in my heart I would get in. Or maybe it's the thought of the £9450 we will have to find in order to finance my studies, as well as feeding and housing ourselves on thin air for a year. On Tuesady this week we had been informed by Scottish Gas we'd need to fork out £600 on repairing our central heating system. It couldn't have come at a worse time.

We just have to continue to trust that things will work out for us. And I have to stay sensible. And so I am being uncharacteristically dispassionate and somewhat decorous about the whole thing. I've been beseiged by good wishes from friends, family and colleagues- who are all so much more excited about this news than I- an avalanche of congratualtions and well dones! Maybe that's because they're not the ones who'll end up paying for it! I opened a bottle of Becks when I got home from the voice workshop at 11pm, but couldn't even finish it before I fell asleep.

I guess I'm not what you might call a party animal.

Today I drafted and then submitted my request to the head teacher and South Lanarkshire Council for a one-year career break from teaching starting the end of September. The authority and Calderside Academy have promised to keep my job for me, but I secretly hope that by the end of my time at RSAMD I can safely leave it all behind and survive as a fully professional actor again. Please God...

And the second exciting bit of news...?

Before going along to Hilary Jones' excellent voice workshop at Giffnock last night (which offered me a tantalising taster of the Nadine George techniques I will be taught next year) I went along to audition for the Ramshorn Theatre's production of Titus Andronicus. Because the director, Peter, knew my work- having directed me in King Lear and also as Spooner in No Man's Land - as well as acting alongside me over the years in such productions as Glengarry Glen Ross, The Homecoming and 12 Angry Men- he didn't ask to hear my audition piece (I'd actually gone to the trouble of learning a speech from The Orestia), or even get me to read from the play in the end. I thought he was then just going to say sorry, but that because my availability was in question, directing The House of Bernarda Alba until the end of April, that he couldn't really take the risk of casting me. You can imagine how stunned and delighted I was when he asked straight out if I'd accept the lead role!

"Well let me think. Yes."

I feel enormously grateful for the opportunity to revisit the challenges of a role I first played nearly a decade ago in the Botanic Gardens. My acting then was necessarily forced and hammy given the outdoor setting, the promenade staging and the ill-judged direction, and I think that the opportunity to try it again- in the intimacy of a small, atmospheric studio space, and with just a little more experience under my belt (especially having since played Lear- a very similar character in some respects)- will help me to play Titus with a bit more economy, truthfulness and integrity this time.

But what a joy! After a year's hiatus I am acting in the theatre again! And you know what...? Right now it's this which gladdens my heart more than anything, including the news I have been accepted into drama school.

But you have much to be grateful for and plenty to look forward to in the coming months, Mark.

So I thank you, Lord! Just keep looking out for Karen and me, Big Man, eh?