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Shakespeare’s Globe / QMUL / KCL / Collaboration Text, Space and the Performance of Violence: King Lear

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Table of Contents

I. Workshop Overview 3

II. Session Outlines 4

III. Responses 6

IV. Report by Participant 8 – Penelope Woods 22


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I. Workshop Overview Workshop Leader: Catherine Silverstone, Queen Mary University of London Participants:

six students enrolled on the MA module Early Modern Drama in Performance at Queen Mary, University of London (students can take this module as part of the MA Theatre and Performance or the MA Renaissance and Early Modern Studies);

one student from the KCL/Globe MA Shakespeare Studies: Text and Playhouse;

two Globe collaborative doctoral students: Sarah Dustagheer (KCL/Globe) and Penelope Woods (QMUL/Globe)

The workshop aimed to consider relationships between text, space and the performance of violence with particular reference to 3.7 of King Lear. The workshop was preceded by a seminar/workshop at Queen Mary on 21 January 2009 on early publication and performance practice. We also carried out a performance exercise which aimed to explore the performance space at QM in order to create a point of comparison for our work at the Globe (see session outline below). The workshop was followed by a session at Queen Mary on 4 February 2009 that sought to analyse the workshop especially in relation to writing about the Globe (see session outline below). We initially intended to contrast our work on Lear with a consideration of how extracts from Sarah Kane’s Blasted and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex might be performed on the Globe’s stage. Due to time constraints we were unable to carry out this part of the workshop. It’s important to note that the terms of each session were (and are) open to interrogation and analysis. Thanks are due to Farah Karim-Cooper and Globe Education for supporting this research workshop.


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II. Session Outlines Session 1: Early Publication and Performance Practice Wednesday 21 January 2009, QMUL This session is designed to lay the textual groundwork for our practical workshop at the Globe in Week 4. We will consider early publication and performance practice and explore sections from King Lear Q1 (first Quarto) and F (Folio) with particular emphasis on stage violence and space. We will also carry out a practical exercise designed to explore the performance space at Queen Mary. This exercise will act as a counterpoint to our work at the Globe next week. Reading: Shakespeare, William. King Lear, F and Q1 (these texts are printed on facing paces of the

Norton Shakespeare). Please pay particular attention to 3.7. Kidnie, Margaret Jane Kidnie. ‘The Staging of Shakespeare’s Drama in Print Editions’. Textual

Performances: The Modern Reproduction of Shakespeare’s Drama. Eds. Lukas Erne and Margaret Jane Kidnie. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. 158-77.

Stern, Tiffany. Making Shakespeare: The Pressures of Stage and Page. London and New York:

Routledge, 2004. 137-59. Weingust, Don. Acting From Shakespeare’s First Folio: Theory, Text and Performance. London:

Routledge, 2006. 1-29, 64-71. Session 2: Text, Space and the Performance of Violence Wednesday 28 January 2009, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre Aims: To explore relationships between text, space and the performance of violence at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre with specific reference to 3.7 of King Lear. Research questions:

A. In what ways, if at all, does performing in the space reinforce performance choices suggested by the textual analysis and performance workshop conducted at QM?

B. In what ways, if at all, does performing in the space suggest alternative performance choices?


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C. To what extent does performing in the space offer a means by which to historicise early modern performance practice? What are the strengths and limitations of using performance at the Globe as a means for this kind of work?

D. What possibilities for the performance of violence does the space offer contemporary drama? [due to time constraints we were unable to test this question]

Reading: Shakespeare, King Lear, Q1, F (focus on 3.7, the eye-gouging scene) Session 3: Shakespeare, Heritage and Tourism Wednesday 4 February 2009, QMUL In this session we will analyse our workshop in relation to the research questions and a selection of critical writing on the Globe. We will also consider relationships between Shakespeare, heritage and tourism with particular reference to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and Stratford-upon-Avon. Visit: Shakespeare’s Globe Exhibition (£8.50 student price) http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/tourexhibition/visitingtheexhibition/ View: King Lear at the Globe Archive Reading: Worthen, W. B. Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,

2003. 79-116. Kennedy, Dennis. ‘Shakespeare and Cultural Tourism’. Theatre Journal 50 (1998): 175-88. Further Reading: Silverstone, Catherine. ‘Shakespeare Live: Reproducing Shakespeare at the “New” Globe

Theatre.’ Textual Practice 19.1 (2005): 31-50

http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/tourexhibition/visitingtheexhibition/


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III. Responses

On completion of the three sessions, each member of the group was invited to respond to the research questions (listed above) and a series of additional questions and tasks (see below). The questions and tasks were designed to invite students to record their findings from the workshop and also to interrogate the terms of the workshop. The following section records each participant’s responses. Please note:

Not all participants chose to answer all questions/tasks (one participant chose not to respond at all);

the following responses have not been edited, except for the purposes of formatting;

all participants but one requested that their responses be recorded anonymously. While the identity of each participant is protected, readers of this report can track a particular participant’s responses across the range of questions/tasks.

The responses have been collated by Catherine Silverstone A. In what ways, if at all, does performing in the space reinforce performance choices

suggested by the textual analysis and performance workshop conducted at QM? Participant 1

I found that the grid exercise conducted in the Queen Mary classroom, in which we had to imagine walking along the lines of a two dimensional and later three dimensional square grid, reinforced my use of space on the globe stage. I found this was particularly because it made me aware of the size and the limitations of the space we were using. Even though doing the gird exercise in a much larger space made me consider how much more space was available, for example from coming into contact with less people, less competition for space and so on, I also found that as in the way the classroom space was limited by the classroom equipment around the room, in a slightly different way, restricting circumstances that affect the stage such as the weather causing the slippery surface made me very aware and restrictive of my use of space and very aware of my personal safety and how this affects the performance and performance choice. Participant 2

At QM we imaginatively, and initially subconsciously, overlaid the neutral performance space with a conception of the Globe stage. I think that this is quite an interesting occurrence – did we do this because practically we knew we would be performing the scene at the Globe the next week, were we staging a mocked-up space rehearsal? Or could it be that for some members of the group attempting staging using early modern text as part of an experiment concerning original playing conditions automatically brings the Globe stage to mind?

We considered how to stage entrances uses the two stage right/stage left doors and how we would negotiate the pillars of the stage. So in some respects working on the Globe


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stage was the realisation of our imaginative assumptions. We spent a lot of time deciding how entrances should be managed – who should enter first according to status, for instance. We also considered how stage positioning affected the performance. In the first part of the scene Cornwall has lines which are directed to a variety of people onstage – the servants, his wife, Edmond and Regan. The positioning of these characters affected his movement during these lines. Participant 3 (this response considers questions A and B together)

Performing in the Globe space seemed to destabilize the performance choices that the text seemed to be making when we were in the classroom and not on the stage. For example, initially the scene seems to be an incredibly intimate one (proximity wise), and looking back over notes, it seems we emphasised the intimacy quite a lot. The text itself, or I should say texts, do read in a very claustrophobic manner with Gloucester’s attackers closing in around him. However, as is usually the case multiple readings of the text, for each of us, produced different interpretations of the physical movement of the scene. Once out on the Globe stage, those alternatives and the inherent instability of the texts (not only with varying versions, but also stage directions) we were using seemed to open up more possibilities for interpretations of what exactly “intimacy” meant in performance. We tried performing close together and then far apart and each time the intimacy didn’t really change, but seemed to shift to include not just those onstage, but the rest of the space as well.

Questions came up as to whether or not there was an ability to perform intimacy on the Globe stage, or what a person’s proximity to another had to be, or how “privacy” worked in such a large public space. Thinking about the stage as a grid and having to concentrate on that grid helped to get across, at least to me, that the “intimacy” is not in the actions but rather in the words or lines. Grid work compartmentalized each character, which in a way diminishes the intimacy between them, however, I felt it forced one to listen rather than react (physically) and therefore created a much more active participation in the dialogue, rather than in the performance. Participant 5

It made me more aware of the space available and when we were working in the QM space we were aware of the three entrance options onto the stage so we were able to incorporate that into the scene when we were acting on the stage. The essence of history and the historical perspective gave a more prominent feeling when we were on the stage and authenticated a lot of the performance choices that we made. Also walking the grid in our QM space allowed us to be more aware of the extra space available and gave us a better view of the audience areas and in addition to this, allowed us to be more aware of the bodies/classmates that surrounded us.

Participant 6 In basic terms it reinforces the choice we seemed to make automatically – to have the

characters enter from downstage and play the scene (fairly) upstage centre. Some of which is dictated by the Globe stage but wasn’t by the space at QM.


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Participant 7 During the QM workshop we devoted a great deal of time to deciding how the

characters would enter- who would enter together, would they all come from the same direction, where are they entering from and into?- as it was not suggested by, or was ambiguous in, the text. As a result we needed to make deliberate directorial decisions as to where the entrances/exits would be. Performing on the Globe stage both simplified and complicated the choice of where we would enter/exit. The stage provided us with three doors but there was also the option of entering/exiting from the audience. The stage and its multiple viewpoints also afforded to us the possibility of characters being on the stage but unseen to other characters. And the size of the stage and the option to exit via the auditorium meant we could play with the time it took a character to exit. As an example, we decided that Cornwall’s second ‘Edmund farewell’ was there to usher Edmund from the stage. To make this line necessary Edmund exited via the audience as this would have taken him longer and required Cornwall to hurry him. B. In what ways, if at all, does performing in the space suggest alternative performance

choices? Participant 1

The fact that the space is noticeably bigger than the Queen Mary classroom made me feel that the action could spread out across a larger space rather than being confined. In fact, the space seemed to demand a spreading out of the performance for audience visibility and impact as almost half the circumference of the theatre had to be performed to. In practice, I found that as a servant having to bring in Gloucester, it was a fairly substantial distance from the back of the stage to where the other characters felt the main action should take place in order for the scene to be fully appreciated, as opposed to the classroom space. Participant 2

We could not imagine in the QM space the vastness of the Globe stage and how that affected the performance. Visually and arguably for those watching the performance, the size of the stage necessitated having more distance between performers onstage engaged in dialogue with each other. Yet as a performer onstage having such space and distance between another character felt odd – against our modern instincts and perceptions about the distance between performers onstage in personal, intimate or important dialogue. Participant 4

Queen Mary discussion of who enters where challenged by centre doors, limiting choices – it would make no sense for party to come from different areas, given such a large entrance, and such a stately entrance. The number of servants was still in question, (we had enough actors for four servants) and their placing was discussed. They (we) were set at back of stage just inside pillars. In fact Globe made it easier to place characters – main action in centre of stage. Servants upstage left and right balancing the picture, but keeping out of the action. The relationship of audience to stage made a clearer decision to act out to the yard and galleries. Playing a servant during Globe workshop I came to recognise there might be restrictions on movement etc, in line with EM rank and propriety which might keep a servant in a particular position and even stance. Some research might give more clues, but there would still remain an absence in the desire to complete understanding of how they might have been.


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In QMUL workshop we did not get to the eye gouging scene, as we spent so much time

discussing how all would get on stage. I was interested to experiment with responses of characters to events – the larger size of the stage and its obvious theatricality (as opposed to the smaller RR1 with lecture tables etc) gave a greater freedom to explore theatrically and take actor role more seriously.

In our group many of us had ideas, we needed to find a framework where we could

listen and negotiate. We worked through the scene – the most tricky [sic] staging problems were how to make the eye gouge scene powerful and convincing at the same time as being safe.

In terms of the text, it was time consuming to experiment and make staging decisions

without considering the smaller differences in the texts such as commas in different places and line endings. We worked on the quarto text and in material terms this was easier as the printing was bigger. This gave rise to considerations of how easily changes might be made by actors unable to read handwriting, which might give rise to some difference in meanings made.

Working from cue sheets might be an interesting progression in attempts to historicise

the process. To really identify the significance of the differences, you could direct each piece in the

same way, with the same company, over time and explore what emerged. You would also have to consider the character roles of the company and the level of their engagement with the experiment – i.e. their desire to work through the minutae of a comma placed differently, or an entrance a line later. There is a question about who would find the smaller differences between folio and quarto significant and how worthwhile spending time on this would be in terms of a significantly different reading or the discovery of a more authentic text. Perhaps it would be more productive in terms of possible meanings and verification of authenticity to concentrate on re-enacting the 300 extra lines in quarto v/s the 100 in folio. Many other variables would still bring to bear on this – in terms of more effective meaning making, theatrical conventions and expectations at a particular time, alongside social, cultural and historical factors. In terms of a more authentic text, comparisons with other texts by Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s source material and production history of Lear.

The Globe was more robust and rustic (and cold and damp) than RR1 – it was a more earthy environment which asked for a simpler and less tricksy performance style – it would have been fun to experiment with more challenging staging decisions but the basic job of getting lines read and blocked and a large team negotiating decisions and characters made further complicated experiments quite difficult. Participant 5 It causes one to question such aspects as space, audience participation and their experience of the plays being acted out. The positioning of props and actors entering and exiting the scene also came to the fore.


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Participant 6 The sheer size of the stage and range of potential audience viewpoints both allow the

scene to take place in a number of positions and constrain where those positions can be, in terms of visibility and effect to all members of the audience. The size of the stage also allows for wider, more energetic movements, esp. out from the eye-gouging group when Regan and Cornwall are taunting and in the fight...

Participant 7 As above, it gives the actors and director the opportunity to experiment with which

characters are seen to the other characters on stage and to the audience. It also allows them to control or obscure the movements and actions of those characters. During our Globe workshop we experimented with positions of power on the stage, adopting the positions on stage we felt were most and least powerful and having these positions read by someone in the audience space. This allows the players the mechanism to assert their character’s status spatially. It also allows them to experiment with their relationship to the audience; certain of the spaces on stage may imply complicity with the audience for example. Through their use of space they are able to establish various relationships between characters and between the action and the audience.

C. To what extent does performing in the space offer a means by which to historicise

early modern performance practice? What are the strengths and limitations of using performance at the Globe as a means for this kind of work?

Participant 2

The experiment revealed to me that in many ways what is most significant about working on the Globe stage is identifying and exploring what modern performance assumptions the space challenges and undermines. It is precisely in the gap between the modern and educated guesses about the early modern that the differences, and similarities, between performance modes can be fruitfully discussed. I think that there are many methodological issues which make using the Globe as a tool to identify historical practice difficult. The instability of the texts we have, the lack of knowledge about the exact design and structure of the theatre and also the irreversible shifts in culture, performers and audiences from early modern to modern. Perhaps the Globe says more about our desire to historicise early modern performance practice and the nature of the illusion we created about early modern performance or ‘original practice’. Participant 3

Performing in the space historicises early modern performance in the sense that (at least for me) it makes one think about the text in a different manner. Not being an actor, I don’t really know what it is like on other stages, but by trying text out on the stage it helps to take abstract ideas and make them clearer. Ideas don’t become concrete, but it forces one to think about what in on the page in different ways, which can be interpreted as getting into the heads of early modern actors. Original actors knew the space they worked in quite well and to try to learn that space as well by physically moving in it helps, perhaps in some small way, understand


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better how the words become performance. The danger is that the ideas do become concrete, rather than evolving and one can come to “conclusions” about how everything worked. One aspect I liked about the workshop is I went away with more questions than answers which is how I believe working on the Globe stage with texts should work. Also, the workshop got me thinking about the space of the stage in a different manner, in a grid rather than in curves. Altogether, I found the workshop useful, especially going from classroom to stage, it helped to break down some ideas I had of how stages worked and also I liked the focusing in on text as the cues for performance, the text acting as a director rather than a person. I hope to do more workshops such as this one. Participant 4

Idea of historicisation interesting because on stage you have to confront lack of technology, setting potential, and the co-presence of standing audience very near, noise of being outside, the air, the weather, the street. The space seemed to demand a possibly more burlesque, certainly robust performance style. It also suggested Elizebethan costume and mannerisms eg courtly bows, which we can reconstruct to some extent. It doesn’t suggest modernised versions, rather it seems to pull its audience back into a potentially rowdy past. This runs the risk of downgrading the habits and manners of those in the Groundling area which we cannot really know, ie we cannot know the level of sophistications, or whether they shouted out, or what exactly they did - but the galleried audience will have been watching them as well as the actors on the stage.

It is excellent to use the reconstructed Globe in terms of entrances, potential exits, sunlight and sky and rain, audibility, etc. It is not actually performing at the Globe that is a limitation, but that we can’t exactly know original audience response, performance style, etc. It would be interesting to work on a comparative performance in say an inn yard or other space similar to those used as Elizabethan performance spaces, particularly to get a sense of potential differences in actor/stage audience relationships during the Early Modern period. Participant 5

Awareness of the stages recreation historically allowed us to be more creative when acting out the scene. When studying and performing a Shakespearean play in the Globe, the fact that we were in the Globe immediately heightened and strengthened our participation. The limitations of the stage were the obvious closeness of the audience to it and the possibility of distractions from them. Also this public space was designed for epic plays which immediately caused limitations due to the intimate space. The external conditions that were at work the day of our workshop i.e. the cold and rain caused limitations and conscious theatricality to take place Participant 6

To an extent design, lighting etc force certain choices to do with positioning, the kinds of movements actors can make and so on. Performers in this space face similar limitations to performers in the early modern theatre, whether or not we choose to stress this fact. There are some limitations that can be sidestepped or overcome – for example, the use of electric lights in night time performances – but directors and performers can choose to keep to more ‘early modern’ performance conditions.


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One of the strengths of using the Globe for such work would be that this sort of

historicism and experimentation is sanctioned by the space and its stated purposes – however this would also limit the effectiveness of such experimentation as it creates anachronistic expectations in both audience and performers... Coming to the Globe (for whatever purpose) we also unavoidably bring ideas about performance from more familiar stage spaces that will inform how we consider Globe performance, even if it is through contrast. At the same time, audiences and actors may be unaware of conventions particular to early modern staging, such as the use of torches to indicate night scenes – staging the action in this space does not provide a framework to make these conventions clear and useable. We are at a remove from early modern performance ‘language’ that the space of the Globe, however ‘authentic’, cannot bridge – and our expectations of ‘authenticity’ can obscure such problems of translation.

Participant 7

Obviously the Globe is a close reconstruction of an early modern performance space so you we can gain a pretty good sense of the kind of spaces used. Using this space may help us to understand the pragmatics of putting on a performance in this kind of space- for example if everyone needs to see a character on stage where might they stand? However, assuming that the space itself can teach us about EM practices is problematic. Our assumptions about space and its use are arguably informed by contemporary concerns. Just because we are using the same space is it reasonable to expect that our questions around that use of space would be the same?

D. What possibilities for the performance of violence does the space offer contemporary

drama? Participant 1

The space, obviously offers a much wider space in order to perform violence, but I also think from a more illusory point of view the historicised space and possibly audience knowledge of the Early Modern performance restrictions on some globe performances, space and props may give a contemporary drama less of a sense of exploiting modern special effects and therefore make it seem more vivid and skilfully done for a contemporary audience. It also of course does this because having no curtains and the stage being fully visible at all times to those seated within the performance area, there can seem to be the illusion that the producers cannot hide anything with curtains, modern techniques or even large props on stage as even hiding an act behind a large prop on the stage or even the pillars will still be visible to at least some of the audience. Participant 4

Performance possibililities were raw and plain – there is no cover up by lighting or tricksy music – I wanted to make the violence as clear and extended as possible to give the audience maximum opportunity to grapple with uncomfortable feelings. In fact, when 3 vii was played quickly it seemed to work more effectively. I wanted all actors responses to be very emotionally clear, but actually given circumstances it seemed servants who might have a strong reaction, could do little. I would like to work the scene in a more physical and stylised way emphasising participants response – after all what can be at stake in this scene – audiences


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witnessing the actions of torturers used to such actions? Acceptance that such acts take place in an increasingly violent society? The complicit engagement of unwilling participants – the servants?

The space is not sophisticated, it is deliberately historicised through building practice and ornamentation – it would be hard to stage Kane’s Blasted given ostentation of faux marble pillars, hand hewn beams, and a renaissance painted sky scape when a beige discreet hotel room is demanded, a bath running and so on. Kane’s play is quite intimate, and this is a public space for dukes, kings and battles. It is an undetermined space which can be anywhere, and it is overwhelmingly wooden and not synthetic. This makes is challenging for contemporary, interior dramas with small casts, and little change in environment. Participant 5

Audience perception of the angles available to act out the violence i.e. the eye-gouging scene in King Lear would have been a possibility that would have been taken into consideration when acting out a violent scene. The possibility of audience participation during the play e.g. shouting out, reaction such as laughter, etc; may have caused a reaction by the actors that would have influenced the flow and the interpretation of a play. An example of this would be if the audience laughed at a particular point of violence within a scene that was not intended to be perceived as comical would influence the audience’s interpretation of the meaning of that particular scene, which would have influenced their interpretation of the entire play. Write a short response which outlines your discoveries, if any, from each of the workshop activities (grid walking, ‘power’ positions, acting out the scene, performing the scene on the grid, performing the scene from memory). Grid Walking Participant 2

I found the grid walking a useful exercise to do because, without the pressure or self consciousness of performing the text, it encouraged me to explore the entire breadth and depth of the stage. Counting how many of my steps were needed to cover the width and depth of the stage gave me a tangible and personal way to conceptualise the size of the stage. After having an initial run through the scene, performing the scene on the grid meant that when we next did the scene off the grid we were braver and bolder in our use of stage space. Performing the scene on the grid, without a logical sense of audience and other performers, encouraged us to use the entire stage and so hear the lines from unusual positions. In turn, this may have given us more confidence to use the space when we returned to performing the scene off the grid. Participant 4

Grid exercise was engaging and playful both times. In RR1, once we were physically at home with grid, used it to experiment with people watching, copying, surprising, making up small stories. Loved the larger grid at the Globe – ‘running, being more energised for performance, similar play opportunities – watching, sneaking, using pillars and edges of stage as hiding places, using distance and proximity, stalking, being stalked, finding another servants rhythm and adopting it – “jobs worth”.


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Participant 5 The awareness of space forced us inwards creating an idea of intimacy within the

vastness of space, especially when acting out a scene of violence which would draw the audience in. The intimacy was controlled via tropes in particular. Participant 6

Grid walking enabled us to get a feel for the space and its possibilities (and potential dangers, such as falling off the edge of the stage!). It felt more like a performance than the same activity at QM, possibly because of the fact that it’s a real stage with an implied (if not actually present) audience – I think we had the idea of audience viewpoints in mind much more than we did in the rehearsal room, and moved accordingly. The pillars on the stage were worked into the movements in interesting ways. The lack of a low ceiling and close walls felt quite liberating, inviting you to stretch up and walk quite tall... Participant 7

The different levels of the audience in the theatre, and the fact that it is open air, made it seem more appropriate to explore the different levels of our physicality. For example playing to the heavens (using a ‘high’ physicality) felt very different to playing to the groundlings (using a ‘low’ physicality). This made me think of the necessity of playing to the different levels in the Globe and made me question whether this use of space is a separation from contemporary practices where audience interaction is not typically sought. ‘Power’ Positions Participant 2

Positions of power was an interesting exercise regarding performers’ relationships to the audience. I felt more powerful in a position centre stage, a few metres upstage from the pillars where I could see the majority of the auditorium. For me, then, power meant addressing the most amount of people in one position. However, others chose positions of power closer to the edge of the stage perhaps implying that their conception of power meant addressing audience members as directly and personally close as possible. Arguably both positions are powerful but in different ways and perhaps reflect potential different types of power positions open to performers on the Globe stage.

Performing the scene from memory highlighted that what we remember are the scene’s key dramatic peaks – the first eye gouging, the request to take out the other eye, the fight, Gloucester’s appeals. The flip side of gratuitous violence is often black humour (which Quentin Tarantino exploits so well in his films) and it was interesting that without the text to ground or root the scene the farcical and melodrama of the scene emerged. Participant 4

Power positions on stage interesting – upstage centre at Globe seemed more important and less easy to undermine through other action elsewhere, partly because pillars make you keep down stage, partly I think you would be better day lit near the front (though I understand upstage centre most powerful space. Central doors are the entrance of power, – three doors in


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a row, the middle bigger, seemingly for more important people. Symmetry of back wall seemed to offer less visually interesting staging possibility in terms of triangles and other shapes. Participant 5

The power position, in my opinion, is quite and obvious one. It was in the centre of the stage just in front of the trap door. This is because I believe that it gave a perfect view to the entire audience both visually and audibly. Participant 6

Power positions really revealed people’s differing kinds of familiarity with the space – a number of us seemed to choose positions based on the places we are used to sitting or standing as audience. Participant 7

We discovered that finding a ‘power’ position on stage was actually contingent on a number of factors. Is the power over the other characters on stage or the audience for example? The stage positions were powerful from different perspectives which implies that deliberate directorial decisions would need to be made as to where in the audience it is most important that they appear powerful. We were asked to identify (as actors) where we felt the most powerful position on stage was from various audience perspectives. Someone in the audience then read these positions. Often there were discrepancies between where the actor felt the power position was and where the audience identified it to be. As it seems to be problematic when put into practice in an early modern style performance space, it made me wonder whether this concern with spatial power and positioning is actually a contemporary one? Acting Out the Scene Participant 5

The complicity of each character and the production in general caused us all to re-interpret the authenticity of the text and its various forms i.e. the quarto, folio and conflated text. The idea of the textual variants and authenticity was a large subject to debate in the short time that we had when carrying out the workshop but we did interpret it to the best of our ability. We chose to work from the Quarto while still keeping the folio and its differences on our minds. The positioning of the chair and the audience perceivance of this also became quite prominent in our discussions in reference to the eye-gouging scene of King Lear. Participant 6

This suffered a little from the fact that we were reading the lines – if we had learnt them we would have been more at liberty to think about performance choices, but this was unavoidable. A number of the ways in which the space shaped the performance possibilities became evident – for example, the large space that needed to be crossed to get actors and props upstage required movements and lines to be adjusted to suit the pace required. Participant 7

It seemed to me that we reverted to a comfortably contemporary use of space. We played directly to the front with little or no concern given to other audience perspectives. The


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use of space was static, I suspect due to the fact we still had our scripts in hand, and we used very little of the playing space available to us. Performing the Scene on the Grid Participant 4

Acting the scene on the grid was a good way of moving the scene physically and exploring other physical and emotional possibilities without being in the eye of the director and without every action being scrutinised by cast. Participant 5

All the above factors came to the fore again but the idea of intimacy and power was prominent when performing the scene on the grid. I was more aware of the bodies around me also. We perceived intimacy as a cultural history and not an individual thing and its co modification within a public place allowing it to be perceived and experienced by the actors and the audience. Participant 6

I felt that performing the scene on the grid was one of the most interesting activities we did – it was quite liberating to concentrate on movement to express emotion rather than on the movements required for the plot (especially as Gloucester doesn’t get to move much – it was interesting to think about his emotions in terms of movement, which could then be altered and scales back to fit the (literal) constraints of the actual scene)... Participant 7

We allowed the dialogue and text to inform the pace and position of movement which forced a relationship between the text and physicality. As the exercise demanded that we move throughout it meant that the ‘static’ could not occur.

On playing the scene after this exercise the performance seemed a lot more dynamic.

Our use of space increased and the actors seemed more comfortable applying physical movement to the text. This gave pace to the dialogue and emphasised significance. Performing the Scene from Memory Participant 4

Final scriptless improv was fun; it also raised the question of the line between profundity and the grotesque. Participant 5

When we performed the scene from memory we used more theatrics and comedy when acting out the eye-gouging scene. In addition to this we also used modern English rather than Elizabethan English. More use of the stage and props were also used as we felt more of a freedom to the scene and the stage space.


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Participant 6 Performing the scene from memory – probably the most striking aspect of this was the

use of humour! It made me wonder if we remember language and dramatic action rather like we (apparently) remember faces, as a set of features that are exaggerated to make them easier to identify, like a cartoon. It also played up an aspect which is a possibility in the text – the idea that this could be suffused with dark, violent humour... Participant 7

This exercise completely changed the pace and the dynamic of playing. Possibly because we did not have the obstacle of the script to consider. Rather than being led through the scene by the text the impetus was physical. This highlighted the most significant moments where decisions about space and physical relations actually needed to be made. Without the limitations of the script the use of space was much more free and perhaps more intuitive. Consider the assumptions that underpinned our workshop (eg. about acting, rehearsal etc.). Participant 2

Modern assumptions about the distance between characters engaged in conversation affected our work on the Globe stage, inhibiting us from using the entire space. Also, modern concepts of ‘realism’ influenced our approach. For instance, Gloucester has a long speech in response to Regan’s ‘Wherefore to Douer sir?’ (H1v). Our immediate response was to ask why Cornwall and Regan would allow Gloucester to speak for so long and what they were doing while he spoke. Within a realistic conception of the scene it seems odd that they would allow their prisoner Gloucester to speak so extensively and therefore we tried to search for a realistic solution to this problem – i.e, they are not listening to him speech but planning and preparing to gouge his eyes out. In our discussions about placing Gloucester onstage and where the eye gouging happened we implicitly had modern assumptions about making the event visible to a large majority of people. Sometimes we had modern, again realistic, instincts to always perform lines directed towards other characters onstage, as opposed to addressing lines towards the audience in the tradition of early modern direct address. Participant 4

Most actors assumptions were based on a presumed naturalistic acting style, indoor room, what it felt like rather than a self conscious experiment with the theatricality of the scene and its potential as stylised theatre. We didn’t discuss audience and what meanings they might make, rather what characters would do and where they might be. Participant 5

The spatial and textual aspects of our workshop in QM held true when we were at the Globe as it allowed us to compare and contrast them. The textual variations and scholarship of the various forms of texts when rehearsing the play in QM, allowed us to interpret the various options for acting out the scene and the positioning of the actors.


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Participant 6 I think we did come to the Globe with certain (not unfounded) assumptions about its

ability to help us ‘historicise’ the performance of Lear. However, we did act out the scene with a very ‘modern’ sense of it being a cohesive entity with a certain shape to it, which had to be agreed on before we started and constructed through the combination of each separate person’s performance – a more holistic approach than that created by the early modern use of cue scripts. Write a short critique of the Globe's eye gouging scene [available from the Globe Archive]. What performance decisions were made? How do these operate? Participant 2

All the characters entered through the middle doors of the stage. These central doors are often used for strong, powerful entrances of large groups, often royalty with their train, and this entrance underlined the power that Cornwall and Regan wield during this scene. The order of entrance also represented a power dynamic with Cornwall and Regan entering before Gonoril and Edmond, followed lastly by the servants. Cornwall and Regan immediately took centre stage, whilst Gonoril and Edmond – in preparation for their imminent exit – remained up stage. The servants lined themselves across the tiring house wall -visually representing how they are part of the scene but distance from the action by their social status but, potentially, their moral ambivalence to the scene’s events. Gonoril and Edmond exited through the central doors, the Steward entered through the stage right door and the servants directed to get Gloucester exited and re-entered with the prisoner also through the stage right door. I think our use of both central and stage right door gave a sense of the busy comings and goings during the scene’s opening. However, we did not create an internal spatial logic in terms of our choices. The initial central entrance of the group, from another part of the house, established the central opening as an interior door so it is illogical for Gonoril and Edmond to exit through this door.

When Gloucester entered the servants began binding Gloucester but Cornwall and Regan became involved in this process with their lines ‘Bind him I say’, ‘Hard, hard O filthie traytor’, ‘To this chaire bind him’. A servant brought a chair which had been placed for the scene against the tiring house wall, stage left. Cornwall’s and Regan’s lines seem to imply that the servants are not binding Gloucester quickly enough or in the desired manner, or that the couple are frantically excited by their actions and keep repeating the command. There are four commands to either bind, or bind in a particular way (‘hard’, ‘to the chair’) in the space of 7 lines.

Once Gloucester was bound to the chair, situated approximately centre stage, Cornwall and Regan delivered their lines circling around the old man, vulture like, in ever decreasing circles. This was quite a menacing staging effect. During Gloucester’s long speech (H1v), Regan and Cornwall walked front stage, whispering and looking intently at Gloucester but not listening to him. The implication was that they were planning the eye gouging. Alternatively, during one run through we staged it so that Regan and Cornwall were listening and growing increasingly angry at Gloucester’s comments. During Gloucester’s speech the couple menacingly and slowly made their way from the front of the stage stalking towards Gloucester. For the moment of eye gouging Gloucester was tipped back in his chair, so he was laying on the stage floor making


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Cornwall’s reference to setting his ‘foote’ on the eye a case of easily stamping on Gloucester’s face. Regan delivered the line ‘One side will mocke another, tother to’ directly to the audience in a comic tone which might encourage disgusted laughter. Through this direct address Regan moved downstage from Gloucester’s chair, freeing up space for the servant to come forward and challenge Cornwall. While servant and master were engaged, Regan moved upstage right, acquired a weapon from a servant standing along the tiring house wall and then approached the fighting servant from behind to stab him. Cornwall stagger back, towards stage left from the centre, struggling with his wound. The servants reluctantly picked up and escorted Gloucester offstage, with Regan and Cornwall remaining stage right and stage left of the centrally positioned chair, respectively. When Cornwall reveals that he has ‘receiu’d a hurt’, Regan moves to support him and then exit through the central doors. Their exit enabled Servants 1 and 2 to come forward from the tiring house wall and survey the scene of carnage before them – the ropes and chair which bound Gloucester and the body of the dead servant. Participant 4

Globe eye gouge scene – Regan was psychopathic, excited. She was amazed and impressed when Cornwall popped out Gloucester’s eye. Cornwall brought forth the chair with deliberation. It was like a dare game, spurred on by sexual challenge (the intensity and desperation of the kiss by the pillar), as if they needed to work up their lusty desire before the act happened. Problem of Gloucester’s long speech same as ours – Cornwall dealt with it by taking off his jacket and getting ready for his work, ignoring it really. He signalled a medieval band to play nice music, reminiscent of Dr ??? in playing Wagner as he tortured his victims? And also scenes described in Death and the Maiden by Dorfman. Gloucester’s chair faced us – Cornwall put his knee on Gloucester’s. Should audience wonder what is the level of pain of that action. (thought the same in watching Reservoir Dogs ear slicing scene), makes me squirm ! Regaas well as thinking why? Regan gouged the other eye. This seemed appropriate in that they share the action, the lust, the anger. Cornwall looked mortally wounded and I felt glad. The text says “I bleed .(a lot). There were spare servants to help Gloucester off, the Folio version. I think its hard seeing action made for stage on screen – shots are open, there is no focusing as with eye. The scene seemed unsophisticated without contemporary focusing lighting, and sophisticated colours and costume (to which I am used). There was some acting with backs to us which worked effectively, and there was quite a lot of movement, especially from Regan, making the scene interesting. Participant 5

The major decisions that were made were that we decided to position the chair for the scene in the centre of the stage as we agreed that this was the most prominent position for audience perception and visibility. We also decided to place the chair on its back so that Gloucester’s face was facing towards the audience but his body would be facing away. We used the quarto due to the stage direction and punctuation differences visible between the quarto and the folio which allowed us to make various interpretations. It was also chosen due to the additional lines that the servants speak which interested us due to the scene being a pivotal one and not having a prominent character ending such an important scene raises a lot of questions as to the possible revision of the folio by Shakespeare and the many other figures involved in the production of the manuscript as a both a text and a play. Punctuation and capitalism were also taken into great consideration by our class as we had studied the differences between the


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folio and the quarto and the outcome of these interpretations when studying the work as a play or a text. Participant 6

One of the aspects that we all found striking was the ‘Reservoir Dogs’-like cueing of music. This also made me think of other moments in Shakespeare when music is called for – for celebrations, or most famously in Twelfth Night as an index of self-indulgent melancholy – always specifically linked to emotions, as a direct expression of them. The use of it here was intensely dark because of its disjunction with the mood of the characters and audience – the onstage harmony was disrupted and disorientated. The courtly action of calling (albeit with a click of the fingers) for music reminds the audience of the context, and of the ways in which Regan and Goneril have twisted and debased their father’s courtly world, first by expelling him from it, now through horrific violence, later through attempts at adultery. The presence of the musicians also gave the scene further implicated onlookers, who overlook the action and later play again, uncued and seemingly separated from the actors, offering a comment on the action and a transition to the next scene.

The sexual tension between Regan and Cornwall was stressed so that the violent acts seemed like incredibly twisted foreplay. Gloucester’s body became a site for their interaction, with the violence enacted upon it serving primarily as communication rather than punishment. The focus lingered on their actions and reactions, returning almost guiltily to Gloucester’s suffering only after they left the stage and the audience were directed to his plight by the Quarto’s kind servants (an ironic effect of this ‘compassionate’ aspect of the Quarto text that I had not expected). This had the effect of stressing the audience’s complicity – we almost lose sight of the suffering figure at the centre of the tableau (making something of a virtue of the practicalities of staging, as Gloucester is obscured from view repeatedly by his torturers) and focus, fascinated, on the couple and the gory effects of their actions. Said gory effects have a dehumanising effect – the onlooker is repulsed by the ‘eye’ held up by Cornwall and forget, in this repulsion, that it is part of Gloucester.

Participant 7

The inserted kiss between Regan and Cornwall, and the physical contact between them during the eye-gouging, added an association between sex and violence that no one in the group had picked out during our analysis of the scene. This implied a sense of directorial freedom over stage direction.

In this recording of the performance, violence seemed to be an issue of scale. Perhaps this was something to do with the performance being mediated through the recording but the instance of the violence seemed to be quite closed in and small scale. This made the verbal reference to eyes and eye gouging especially pertinent in helping the audience to understand the nature of the act of violence that had just been perpetrated. Participant 8 – Penelope Woods

Following the stage experiment we watched Globe archival footage of this scene in the 2001 and 2008 productions of King Lear. They were hugely divergent int erms of audience response, with essentially no laughter in the 2001 production and lots of laughter at the 2008 production. However there were marked similarities of staging, where the exit of Goneril and


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Edmund marks the exit of all servants, serving to ‘recode’ the space as a domestic/intimate one through Cornwall and Regan’s passionate kiss. When the servants re-enter with Gloster the space is charged with a sexualization, perhaps therefore an intimacy, certainly with an ownership of it by Cornwall and Regan, despite it being ‘Gloster’s house’ within the fiction of play. In both productions Cornwall and Regan moved around all over the stage, directing their lines almost exclusively to one another. This re-coding led to lively post-experiment debate about the intimacy of witnessed violence itself, and feeds into ongoing modern concerns about the possibility of achieving ‘intimacy’, a thing apparently desired, in the Globe space. I think the perceived difficulty arises from the multiplicity of viewpoints, the availability of distraction in an open-air equally lit space, and the politics of the space where the stage is large and bare and some people are sat a long way away. Can a sense of intimacy be transmitted/spread by those who ‘feel’ it, viscerally, at the front of the yard? The need to historicize the term and concept of ‘intimacy’ was raised.


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IV. Report by Participant 8 – Penelope Woods The experiment Rehearsal and performance of 3.7 of King Lear on the Globe stage, in the context of other dramatic eye-gouging scenes in time: Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (429BC) and Blasted by Sarah Kane (1995). (while this timeline of diverging places, cultures, and performance conditions for the rendering of violence on stage were considered in discussion the only performed play text was Shakespeare’s King Lear). The scene was tried out in a classroom at Queen Mary’s and performers encountered difficult textual decisions and choices to be made in exploring Q1, Folio and the Norton edited version. These varying forms of the text complicated performance decisions in the following ways:

Anonymous, numberless servants cued or not cued for entry, but required for stage action.

Variations in punctuation suggesting different characterization ideas: ‘A pezant stand up thus, give me thy sword.’/ ‘A pesant stand up thus. Give me my sword’. ‘Yet you have one eye left to see some mischief on him’/ ‘You have one eye left to see some mischief on him’.

Servants have final word in Q1 but no words at all in F. (apart from servant who ‘enters action’ in attempting to stop Cornwall).

While some of these difficulties were reduced by the closed set of options working on the Globe stage- numbers and types of entrances, time to get across large stage to deliver line etc. Some remained an issue for ongoing discussion.

Other complications encountered included the lack of stage directions and difficulties around unpicking what is coded in the text and necessary for stage action:

‘tie him to that chair’.. what chair? Where did it come from? How did it get on stage?

‘Ile set my foot on them’- Gloster’s blinding, how is it actually carried out? Modern editions have Cornwall stamping on his eyes/ plucking them out and stamping on them, these choices are inferred from this line.

On stage Preparation The Globe space was explored in the first instance by means of ‘the grid exercise’. Performers imagined grid lines about one stride apart, and then took lines and followed them as a means of investigating the physical space offered by the surroundings. This exercise had been carried out in the limited, low-ceilinged, fluroescent-lit environment of the classroom at Queen Mary’s, which offered a useful contrast. The Globe stage is very large, the canopy very high and some parts of the stage open to the sky itself. There are two large pillars about 3/4 of the way down


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stage. The inclination in such a large space seemed to be to perform close together and huddled; a more powerfully theatrical and dynamic use of the stage (from the many perspectives of ‘audience’ in the theatre) was made when the rendition of the scene was incorporated into practice of ‘the grid exercise’. Interestingly, this is a space-exploring exercise markedly different to that employed by in-house Globe experts, like Glynn MacDonald, who favour a ‘figure of eight’ exercise which takes actors between and out round the pillars in curves. One interesting consideration was the question of locating the ‘powerful’ spaces on this stage. Auditory and visual priorities compete here, and the stage conditions challenge received ideas about ‘upstaging’, given the force of proximity to yard members down stage, as well as an idea that turning one’s back to the audience is ‘weak’, since in the space it is inevitable that the performer’s back is turned to some members of the audience at any given point. Practice A small knot in the centre of the stage Some of the performance/staging choices were simplified by being on the actual stage. It seemed obvious for the Royal family to enter through the main doors (whether or not these are ‘authentic’). However, the conditions of the stage, and probably, in part, the inexperience of the students with the stage, seemed naturally to congregate towards a small circular area in the very centre of the stage. It was interesting how unconscious one could be of not using the space while involved, but how obvious it was from a distance. Static Wordy Gloster Choices about how to carry out the blinding were fraught. The most striking place by general consensus was where most sightlines converged was in the very centre of the stage, however, eyes seem like a curiously small anatomical part to exhibit mutilation of, given their powerful symbolic capacity to generate shock and horror, in such a very large and equally lit space. For Cornwall to set his foot on Gloster’s eyes with sufficient force to blind him the chair needed to tip over and then it would be difficult to see Gloster’s face at all, let alone his eyes. We experimented with a staging which had Gloster tied with his back to us, and tipped over to reveal his head and face. A staging difficulty was experienced with the rendition of his fairly lengthy speech, when he was obstinately static in the centre of the stage. We perhaps approached a tentative conclusion that movement on the stage generates attention, in contrast to received lessons form drama school about not moving without a purpose or motivation. Servants – empathy conduits? This idea led to my sense that the servants, if their function is to be exploited as some kind of conduit for audience response or interaction need to be more visible and more dynamic. (I think this function can often be ascribed to multiple and nameless figures in the play, in an almost ‘choric’ manifestation). The servant who fights Cornwall and is killed by Regan seems to enact a possible audience response or desire to the act that they are witnessing and implicated in by witnessing it, as do the words and actions of those servants peculiar to the end of Q1. Proximity is a powerful tool, and strangely undisruptive to the action, reframing it with a different foregrounded body, or refocusing it. This is something I would be interested in exploring further.


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Direct address and laughter at stage violence The possibility of direct address was raised occasionally. The attempt to perform the season as a tight contained scene between Regan and Cornwall in close proximity to one another raised problems with the laborious lengthiness of their wordy responses to one another. It was suggested that some of those lines were not necessarily directed to each other, but were for the benefit of the audience, and then consequently served a different function. Regan’s line ‘one eye will mock another’, when directed to Cornwall seems like a straightforward, if bloody, exhortation to take the other eye out. When directed to the audience, and specifically directed, face to face, to one member of the audience, this would produce a frisson of ghastly laughter.

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