'Memory Ghosts' in Shakespeare's Globe and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

As a movement director, the physical stories one can help actors discover in the text come from many angles. These angles are often surprising, sometimes revelatory and can happen whenever there is time and focus given in a production or workshop to a physical exploration of the play. Sometimes it’s the direct connection to the images the words provide. Sometimes the physical life of ‘a beat’ or phrase is found through the energy the sounds of the words make as they hit against one another. And sometimes, as in the case of both the Globe spaces, (The ‘Wooden O’ and The Wanamaker), it is these buildings themselves that offer discoveries. Beyond the structure, the shape and the decoration within, sits memory. Memories in the wood, memories in the places where the stages now stand.

I think the Globe is special in this respect. By this I mean in its ability to hold memories which help give substance to the stories one discovers and tells there. Whilst these stories come from the text, the company of actors and vision of the creative team, as well as from the audience once the play opens, there are ‘memory ghosts’ in the fabric of the buildings which offer something extra. And when these surface they can enrich, delight, strengthen and renew connections to story for the actor, and thus for the audience.

Two things happened last week which have prompted this blog.

Firstly, in a job unrelated to the Globe, I worked with a wonderful actor, (whom I’ve seen in lots of stuff but never had the chance to be in a room with before), who is playing in the current Globe season. It’s her first time there despite an extensive, exciting and constant career, and she told me of a personal link she had to the building that goes back to its construction. She knew someone involved in building of the Globe, who worked with the oak of the theatre right at the beginning. It seemed this memory, which had such wonderful detail and resonance, gave her an added sense of being supported by the very wood of the building. And this is something quite specific- in addition to the age of the oak- which must hold memories and connections enriching so many of the stories told there.

Secondly, a ‘memory ghost’ of my own that happened in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse last week, working on text from The Winter’s Tale.

‘Now take upon me, in the name of Time/To use my wings.’ (4:1.3-4)

Standing on the stage and looking up I was catapulted through Time and reminded of the shell of that theatre before it was built. In the space where the painted canopy is and beyond it, lies memory. In the first decade when the Globe was open, fund raising was constant to build the ‘Inigo Jones’ (which became the Sam Wanamaker), and in this temporary space so much happened. In the vaulted heavens above the current stage were rehearsal rooms. The exhibition space was there in the early days too. During this time, Mark Rylance then artistic director, supported the idea of regular warm up sessions. For anyone in the building, whatever one's role there- musician, technician, actor in the season, member of the finance dept, theatre dept, exhibition or education department, if the timings worked, they could join in a session. And so it was somewhere in that lofty height of the now SWP, I sometimes led warm ups. Through these sessions staff and freelancers came together in one space, adding a layer of story to the building.

So, more than two decades later leading a movement session in the softly lit SWP, with my focus on The Winter’s Tale, my thoughts wheeled high and back to what was there in this space before. This arc in time doubled with the arc of Time charted in this play. It is that wheel which spins us forwards 16 years to Bohemia. It is Time which is necessary for the redemption this play delivers.

These ghost memories which come from within the space we are working can offer insights and connections which anchor our discoveries for the stories we are telling.

Leontes “ O Paulina

We honour you with trouble. But we came

To see the statue of our queen: your gallery

Have we passed through, not without much content

In many singularities; but we saw not

That which my daughter came to look upon,

The statue of her mother.”

(5.3.8-14)

The wonderful image of white bear and crows is by generous permission of photographer Veijo Toivoniemi