In our previous post, we launched #lockdownshakespeare, an initiative seeking to promote the work of South African theatre makers during the difficult Coronavirus lockdown period and to provide some modest financial support.
Video submissions of monologue performances have come flooding in, and we have been delighted to include many of them in our Resources pages. You can watch a selection of the videos in the What’s On section or on this dedicated #lockdownshakespeare YouTube channel.
We also asked actors to give us some insight into their approaches to the speeches and the roles they chose, or to share some more general thoughts on performing Shakespeare.
Here Luntu Masiza, who chose Caliban’s “This island’s mine…” from The Tempest, tells us what the character and the play mean to him.
Don’t forget that you can contribute to the #lockdownshakespeare campaign by scanning the QR code above or clicking through to BUSQR!
Anele Nene performed Mark Antony’s famous “Friends, Romans, Countrymen…” funeral oration from Julius Caesar. He set the scene at night, but also sent a video from earlier in the day sharing his rehearsal space.
Nomthandazo Shandu chose Juliet’s speech from 3.2, “Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?”
She writes:
“With Juliet being such a vibrant and rebellious young teenager I chose to approach this monologue showing rage, pain and confusion, especially because Juliet is speaking to the Nurse here - the one person she confides in. The Nurse has just told her about Tybalt’s death and Romeo’s banishment, asking how Juliet can defend Romeo for killing her own cousin. Juliet feels betrayed and is also scared of losing the love of her life.”
Anele Situlweni performed a speech by Romeo that comes earlier in the play - at a much happier moment. But he also found that current circumstances cast a shadow over his Romeo’s delight:
“My particular angle was that of LOVE IN LOCKDOWN: Romeo admires Juliet from afar, which resonates with social distancing imposed upon us as a curbing measure for COVID-19.
The beautiful extended metaphors in this speech gave me an opportunity to draw parallels between our present circumstances and the text. One stark example is Romeo referring to the moon: ‘her vestal livery is but sick and green’. That image to me conjured up the horrid nature of the illness that can be caused by the Coronavirus.”
Bryan Hiles and Cara Roberts, who play Hamlet and Ophelia in Think Theatre’s traveling production of Hamlet, discuss their respective approaches to these roles - and to “doing Shakespeare” generally.
Soyiso Ndaba situated the conversation between Cassius and Brutus in the opening act of Julius Caesar inside a car, cleverly filming his Cassius in the rear-view mirror. He notes:
“Cassius’s main objective in this scene is to get Brutus to think about his own interests and to remind him that Caesar is not a god who should be all-powerful. Cassius tells Brutus that he is as good as Caesar, referring to an incident in the past when Caesar challenged him to a swimming race, then almost drowned and asked Cassius to help him. Cassius knows that Brutus is a man of honour, so he uses that to get Brutus`s attention (‘Well, honour is subject of my story’). Caesar’s sudden rise to power annoys Cassius because they have been equals for most of their lives. What Cassius is doing is exactly what politicians do when they want power or want someone close to them to be in power. They conspire, lobby and use anything to win.”
Amanda Seome’s KaMadonsela / Lady Macbeth is “a very strong character, ambitious and ruthless. She is also very manipulative - she knows her own strengths and uses them to persuade Macbeth into killing Duncan. But later in the play, she is unable to cope with the legacy of their crimes and she ends up killing herself. Hungry for power, there’s nothing she wants more than being the Queen. So her ambition is driven by her hunger for this position …
… In this scene (1.5) we see how cruel she is, when she sacrifices her soul to evil. She wishes she were a man, asking dark forces to give her the strength of a man so she can do her evil plotting without feeling guilty or being scared. My approach to the scene is that she goes into a complete trance/transition: the audience don’t only see her but they also see how she gets possessed by the dark forces of the unseen world. I want viewers to feel and see the power of the dark from just looking into her eyes, how they change to red, a symbol of blood and evil. Then it goes down through every inch of her body; we see that she is not alone anymore, but there’s a bigger power.
My translation of this piece was inspired by Welcome Msomi’s uMabatha, an adaptation of Macbeth into a tribal Zulu culture.”
Leatile Mohale chose the same speech from Lady Macbeth. She took a slightly different approach:
“Lady M is getting ready for a dinner party (with King Duncan). She's a person of high status and needs to show it. Her make-up suggests that she wants to be charming to the King. Bold eyes and thick red lips. Long flowing dress. She hears of her main guest's arrival and instructs that he be attended to accordingly. In the mean time, she will perform a ritual to invoke dark spirits to help her and the knife do the deed (something which she has done many times before). Artaudian approaches came to mind...
… There is darkness and candle light. The red light represents the evil motif that runs through the speech. The knife (which will later haunt Macbeth), the instrument of the deadly deed, is uncovered and infused with evil too. I chose to have her cut her hand/wrist and block the blood from gushing out so as to portray her not wanting to feel pain or see anything that might stir up feelings of shame, which might hinder her plans. She runs her cut ‘unhurt’ wrist over her breasts and sprays more ‘muti’ over her to further numb her from the horrors of it all. She finishes by speaking to the knife and then conceals it again. (She will come to collect it shortly.) After the ritual, she puts on her lipstick and proceeds to go and charm her guests.”
Sarah Richard says Lady Macbeth is “the greatest female character that Shakespeare ever wrote (and should be in any actor's list of Top 5 favourite characters of all time)”:
“I really love the character of Lady Macbeth - to me it seems as though she is the engine that drives the action. When I performed it a few years ago, I loved the strength of the woman, despite her living in an era where she would have had less societal power than a woman today. As a performer, I enjoyed it because she never just takes one road to get what she wants; she explores all her paths before making a decision, which I feel is prevalent in the monologue I performed. She quickly adapts from one tactic to the next in order to get what she desires from Macbeth - no easy feat!”
Phumelele Majola chose Lady Macbeth in her final moments - the “Out, damned spot” speech. She recalls how,
“In high school, Macbeth was always my favourite Shakespeare text; maybe because it was my English teacher's favorite text and she always had a way of making us all fall in love with Shakespeare, or perhaps it was because it's a classic tale of ambition - in all its guts and gore, kind of like an early modern version of Tarantino. Finally, however, I've come to realise that it appeals to me really because of Lady Macbeth: an ambitious woman who knows what she wants and goes after it. We see a woman who is the key to the success of the mighty Macbeth. My approach to this speech in particular was to showcase a woman who, as much as she has ‘lost it’ and the guilt has overcome her, remains calculating, almost as if still trying to be in control of the situation. I also chose this particular monologue because I wanted to show, in the same breath, her vulnerability as a woman.“
Lee Roodt, who performed Antony’s “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war” speech - delivered standing over the body of the assassinated Julius Caesar - describes in this video how he sees and hears the language of Shakespeare all around him: from kids busting rhymes on street corners to elderly uncles offering advice!
Finally, and fittingly, Inge Crafford-Lazarus tells us about Prospero’s (Shakespeare’s) valediction in The Tempest:
“This speech comes as Prospero has to cut short his daughter’s wedding celebration. He has more urgent matters to attend to (a plot against his life), and the festivities come to an abrupt end. He reminds his new son-in-law not only that all good things must come to an end, but of the temporal nature of all earthly things. Prospero tells Ferdinand to be cheerful, even though the party is over. It was not going to last forever, as Ferdinand might have wished. Prospero and his spirits were merely putting on a show, and the entertainment disappeared without a trace.
What remains after any ritual, celebration or play has been performed? The participants and spectators’ memories of it, and whatever meaning they found in it, perhaps. Events and stories live on in the invisible files that are our thoughts and dreams. So do monuments, even when they have crumbled. So do people, after they have died. Shakespeare’s description of everything dissolving is not unlike the biblical image in Ecclesiastes 12:7, ‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.’ The physical remnants return to dust and the spirits ‘[melt] into air, into thin air’.
Prospero knows to value that which lives on in the invisible (spiritual) realm, where we can no longer perceive with earthly senses, but are conscious of that which matters. He believes we all belong to that realm. We are of its stuff. Our life is short and bookended by this realm. Therefore we must be made cheerful by everything that enriches it, expands our knowledge and feeds our souls, so to speak. We can be glad of all such experiences, however brief they may be. Nothing lasts forever ... except that we might ... and so might all the knowledge we'll take with us into the invisible place some call Paradise.”