February 19, 2024 • 35 mins
At Inscape Quest Podcast, our purpose is building meaningful conversations about passions, relationships and work. In our recent episode, host Trudi Howley engages in a stimulating conversation with the eminent British actor, Andrew Jarvis, known for his remarkable work as a Shakespearean artist and his many roles in film and television.
Throughout the episode, Jarvis shares his journey as a professional actor, particularly his fascination with the power of voice in the world of theatre. He underlines its foundational importance for an actor in developing characters and portraying emotions effectively.
Delving into his love for Shakespeare, Jarvis recounts how his early disinterest was transformed into admiration after joining the Royal Shakespeare Company. He elucidates how he discovered a blueprint left behind by Shakespeare for the actors to interpret his work, further cementing his devotion towards the Bard’s pieces.
Aspiring actors, Shakespeare enthusiasts, and arts-lovers will appreciate Jarvis’s insights on the intricacies of acting coupled with his own extraordinary career journey. Additionally, he speaks of architecting immersive experiences, the art of creating shared narratives on stage, and the challenging yet rewarding path of making a successful acting career.
The episode concludes with Jarvis’s innovative proposition of introducing Shakespearean productions to unconventional platforms like football fields in an attempt to increase accessibility. He also recites pieces from Richard III, capturing listeners with a taste of the timeless beauty of Shakespeare's poetry.
Subscribe to Inscape Quest Podcast and pass on this engaging episode to your friends. Join us in nurturing meaningful discussions, one fascinating episode at a time.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello podcast listeners. Thank you for tuning in today to the Inscape Quest podcast show.
I am your host, Trudi Howley.
Here I am talking with people about how they engage with their relationships, work, and passions.
Please subscribe and share this show with a friend and thanks to you,
(00:25):
we can grow meaningful conversations together, one episode at a time.
Music.
Andrew Jarvis is one of the most respected Shakespearean actors of his generation.
He successfully established the King's Lynn Shakespeare Festival in Norfolk,
(00:48):
England, where he now lives.
Andrew has diversified from performing the Bard on occasion,
playing such roles as Gandalf and Elrond in Lord of the Rings,
and acting in many British films and television shows.
As a theatre director, actor, generous teacher, he continues to promote the
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work of Shakespeare, his life's passion.
There are so many ways people are learning to share their voices right now.
And across two continents, it is my pleasure as Andrew and I dive into a conversation
about how important is use of the voice to him as a journeyman actor.
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We also explore Andrew's lifelong passion for Shakespeare.
Well, to me as a professional actor, but this is everything that happens on
a stage and film or television in performers is to do with the voice. That is it.
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I've done over, not lately, but over many years, a little of a radio.
Where, of course, in radio, that is the only thing you have.
The only equipment, and you have to do everything by that.
As an actor, in Shakespeare particularly, which is my passion,
it's about the voice and the text.
(02:19):
It is the voice. It is the instrument.
And so many, well, I must be horrible, but so many young actors I hear and see
now haven't got an instrument.
Excellent it is yours for any various that's what
you play the physicality the
way you look all that that's part of it of course
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but it's what comes out of here
in our voice in the choice
of what we say how we said when
we said we revealed ourselves when i
meet a girl i do a lot of teaching drama school when i meet a lot of new students
and perhaps we'll be talking about character and what is character and how do
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we what does that mean and how do we embody it as actors etc i often say to
them after about 10 minutes or quarter an hour it's the first meeting i say right okay.
You have formed an impression of me how have you formed it well okay hey i've
got long life I'm wearing red cowboy boots,
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okay there's all sorts of eccentricities there but put it into one side because
because they are just extras you've got an impression about about me already
where does that come from well I make stupid jokes I swear I lost,
whatever those might be the detail but overall the impression you are forming
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of me is because of what I've said how I've said it and when I've said it,
You couldn't write it down, O.A., but you're getting a picture.
And that is what acting is about. That's how we reveal ourselves.
So if you don't have an instrument as an actor that is capable of expressing
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a range of notes, volume.
Just the clarity of what you are saying, you are dead in the water.
I say, I much spend my time watching young actors on television and thinking,
I don't know what you're talking about I
can probably hear the words but I can't make
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sense of it because they are not expressing it
through their voices I'm interested
to explore this in different directions in particular I'm struck by a review
that was written about you in the Huffington Post a few years ago when you played
(04:49):
Pinter in taking over Sir Patrick Stewart's role,
the review focused on because of Pinter's words rather than the celebrity partnership.
Sir Patrick Stewart was not present. The
reviewer said they had
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a profound shift in understanding the play's
context when the mesmerizing actor
is called out of the shadows and into the
spotlight through the voice you
can elicit these different emotional responses in the audience when you are
not a household name or have celebrity status but you've got decades and decades
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of experience as a very well respected Shakespearean actor.
Well, I mean, what she's talking about is the fact that everybody can't see
him, McKellen and Patrick Stewart, and that's what a show is about.
And it was. That was about two of the great knights and actors of our time.
Suddenly, one of them's taken away, and it becomes about the play.
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Now, it is my job, and this is quite a hard quote, but it is my job to evoke emotion in an audience.
But that is not the same as evoking it in myself.
The great theatrical critic Kenneth Tynan, who worked with Laurence Olivier
at the National Theatre,
once put it into words and said, it is the job of an actor to elicit emotion
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in an audience, and these are important words, but not necessarily in himself.
Now, when I'm often in an audience or with somebody on stage sobbing and crying
and carrying on, being emotional, and I will find myself thinking,
oh, I do wish you'd shut up.
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And I wonder, shall I have a glass of wine or a glass of beer at the end of
the walk with this woman's boring Mr. Death or this man?
But then somebody else will say something which sends a shiver through me.
But with not necessarily any emotional
expression from them if
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you think of i'm startled all the time news
bulletins where you know someone maybe
has been a terrible accident or been killed and they
talk to the relatives sometimes okay the
relative might be crying but a lot of the time they are
not they are talking about what
it is like to be in their situation i was
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watching somebody the other day or a smile on their face talking about the
fact that their child had died which at
first you think whoa but actually the mistake
we as actors make is to think that their
words are the expression of emotion they
are not great great shakespearean called
john barton who died a few years ago who i was john
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talked about shakespearean soliloquy
in particularly saying they are characters trying to
talk about emotion trying to come
to terms with emotion trying to understand what this knot that's in their stomach
is so it's the difference say between saying if i'm watching hamlet and the
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famous sir who says oh that this too too solid solid flesh would melt,
thaw, and dissolve itself into a dew.
He's actually saying, I wish it could disappear. I feel so terrible.
Now, many actors will go, oh, this too, too solid flesh, and they will try to
show me what the feeling is.
But if you just tell me what it is, if you do what John says and describe it,
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you say, oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt.
Form and resolve itself into a new.
Then I see the inside, I see the knots in your stomach. You don't need to try and show me.
It's that problem that every actress has, that's thinking they've got to show
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it. You don't. You're talking about it.
When I did No Man's Land, my job was to try and evoke emotion in the audience.
I don't know how you do that. I haven't got a clue. When I was a young actor,
I remember playing Oberon in the middle of my stream.
And a friend of mine came to see it. And afterwards, he said to me,
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he was very nice about it.
He said, oh, he said, the way you said that line, I can't remember what it was, but I'll tell you.
He said, it made me say, hey, stand up on the back of my neck.
No, when I thought back, I couldn't begin to tell you how I said it.
I spoke the truth of the line, talking about what Oberon was feeling.
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And he went, ah, oof, and that's what you're after.
So when I go out as, you know, as Patrick's deputy, I'm not interested in my
own emotion. If it comes, it comes.
Bill Nighy, the famous filmmaker, said, emotion takes care of itself.
You say the truth of the lie, you talk to the other person.
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If you think in ordinary life, I say this to my students, people might say to
you, hello, Andrew, how are you today?
And I go, actually I'm really fed up.
Or you say hello Andrew how are you and you go yeah I'm good yeah I'm good in
both cases when I say I'm really unhappy I don't try and find my unhappiness I'm really
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I tell you I'm unhappy, but I might do it with a smile on my face.
I tell you I'm feeling good, but I might do it very seriously.
Because I'm not trying as an individual to get my emotion out to you.
I'm describing what it is to you.
And I believe it's like if you do that, the audience responds.
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And they do what Tylan's talking about.
And you sobbing and crying does not make one little bit of difference.
I love the way you've described this to me because it makes sense to me as I
work with people who begin to
get in touch with their body sensations and those knots in their stomach,
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then they can start describing it.
So it's not about using your body necessarily in a movement way,
but understanding what the physical sensations are and connecting with those.
And describing it, as you say, and trying to come to terms with it.
What is it? What is it? Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt. I wish I couldn't die.
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That's all the character's doing. He's not experiencing it.
He's talking about what that knot is in his tummy and trying to get rid of it.
What happens because so many people
in general tell me that they're afraid
to speak up they're afraid to say
their truth so even though they may be experiencing a
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knot in their stomach and they can connect what
it's about they're afraid to say it
to friends or family members or bosses is so how do you as an actor and how
do you as a director of other actors manage fear well there's two things i think
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if you a you've got what the playwright has written.
And he says that it's a soliloquy in Shakespeare.
The character steps forward and talks to the audience.
I always think of it and I tell my students that it's like a timeout.
I can't carry on with my life until I've talked about this.
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It's rather like, again, I use this example.
Sometimes a student will come to me and say, Andrew, can we have a talk at lunchtime?
And I'll say, yeah, of course. So I meet her. I say, right, okay.
What did you support? Well, I've got this real problem.
They would then talk for five, 10 minutes.
And I would not agree, encourage, but wouldn't actually contribute.
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And at the end of it, they'd say, thank you so much. I feel so much better now.
And that's like a soliloquy.
Or it's like if you have a bad day at school or college, you go home and you
say to your parents or your partner,
now this is what happened and you
tell them don't make any difference but you feel better
for having told them so in a play
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you are given the
instruction to share your thoughts as an actor one goes out there and this is
the difference suppose absolutely petrified every performance i give i am petrified
i am torn between wanting to be anywhere else but where i am standing in in the wings of a theatre,
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at the same time.
I was feeling very excited about wanting to go out there and share.
But that's different because it's my job to go out and play what the author has given me.
But as an individual, I experience exactly what you're talking about,
which is, as Andrew, I find it very hard to actually say, this is what I'm going through.
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Because you've got to have immense trust and faith and whatever in the person you're talking to.
And whatever so that's to me that's
quite natural but it's feeling your inner environment
where you can say can i just talk to you for a minute just tell you what my
problem is but do it in a way quite dispassionately i don't know if that's possible
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but you've been involved in theater for for many decades.
Over 50. Over 50.
And one reviewer has called you a Shakespearean war horse.
And I know also that Sir Ian McKellen has called you his hero because I'm guessing
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you know as much, if not more, than him about Shakespeare.
Shakespeare, what is it about Shakespeare that is so alive for you?
Well, I had an interesting journey with Shakespeare because I hated it at school.
We had bad teachers, as we all, some people do, who made it the most boring subject in the world.
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But yet at the same time, I used to, my parents took me to the Royal Shakespeare
Theatre in Stratford when I was very young. I remember seeing...
Laurence Olivier playing Rick Coriolanus when I was 11 years old and it took
my breath away, but I couldn't connect the two things.
So I used to think of Shakespeare as this amazing world, but couldn't relate
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that to boredom in the classroom.
And when I started off as an actor for the first 10 years, I worked around lots of regional theatres.
I did quite a few Shakespeare's, but I used to think, I don't get it with Shakespeare,
This is Robbie Shack. I don't know what he's talking about.
I don't understand it. And I'm pretty crap at doing it.
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And then I went to the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1978.
And I met various people who had a huge influence on me. Patrick Stewart was
one of them. Jeffrey Dench, who's Judy's brother.
Jess had been with the company for years.
John Barn, an actress who died a couple of years ago, girl called Bernard Lloyd,
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who actually showed me how to open up a Shakespearean text as an actor.
And actually, how Shakespeare, if you only know how to look at a speech,
has left you all the clues about how to play it.
And this girl said, blimey, Andrew, it's like he's left you a blueprint,
isn't it, on how to act it.
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And I didn't believe he has. And that's become my fascination because of that,
and the sheer beauty and the joy of being able to say it.
In the mid-90s, I mentioned it already, I played Oberon in Midsummer Night's
Dream, and he has that wonderful speech, I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
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where oxlip and the nodding violet grows quite over canopied with luscious woodbine
with sweet musk roses and with ebony vine.
At that point, Oberlin's only day on the stage.
And they used to start at the back of the stage. We toured it all over Great
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Britain, all the major theatres in Great Britain.
And gradually as I did the speech, I used to move slowly forward to the front of the stage.
And I could barely do it without a smile on my face because at the back of my
mind I was thinking, I am being paid to say this.
I would pay somebody else to allow me to say it.
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Just to relish, you know, just submit myself to this language and to see if
I could in any way come up to it.
The woman I mainly influenced in this actor, I mentioned Bernard Lloyd,
my first job at the RSC, a very passionate Welshman who knew more musical things
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than I'll ever know in my entire body.
We'd come off a scene, I had a lot of scenes with Bernard. It was my first time at the RSC.
See we come off an eagle like thunder in my
paranoia i would assume i'd done something wrong in
the scene as we left the stage and went down the dressing room and
i'd say are you all right bernie number of times
he used to say you never win with
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shakespeare because he knew there's
this immense area of
expression but you could never walk off the stage
and say I got it tonight I got it and that to me is the endless challenge you
keep having a go but you never get there wondering what is your favourite role
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Leah is so unattainable it's like Everest Everest.
I'd played it, well, you saw me rehearsing a bit of it in 2003 in Malibu.
Just now and again, you get to the top of Everest, and then the clouds cover
it again, and you struggle up the foothills trying to get there again.
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There's a wonderful saying about King Lear, by the time you're old enough to
understand it, you're too old to play it.
Richard was a joy because he's so full of energy and life and wit, and I love doing that.
But I think objectively, although I've only ever understood him,
I've never played him, I think Coriolanus is one of my favourite roles.
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I've never played him, I've understood him, that's all. But I think the language there is sublime.
The Tempest, Prospero, I'd love to do that.
The poetry in that is unbelievable. I really love that King Lear,
the story unfolds in the present moment.
It's very much in the here and now and that's so relevant for today and the
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way we kind of consume the excitement and drama of sports and try and be mindful
about being in the present moment.
And is there a particular beat, as you think about that right now,
that comes to mind that you might consider reciting?
In the middle of the storm, blow winds and crack your cheeks.
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I've always seen it done as somebody kind of competing with a storm.
But one of our great actors, Donald Sinden, once said, he wondered if it was
probably right to play it as an indication for the storm to come along further.
I'm not sure how many lines I can do truly before I beat her out.
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Just a couple would be great.
It's a long time since I've said these words, my goodness.
Blow winds and crack your cheeks.
Blow, rage you hurricane of spout.
Till you have something that shimmy, something that clonks. I told you that
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wasn't very close to me anymore.
Shall I do a bit of Richard Three for you? Yeah. I know that thing better.
It's kind of putting you on the spot here, Andy.
Yeah, he caught me out. Now, Richard, I know, because I often eat it with my
kids, so I'm good. Let me do the, let me see if I can do the opening.
Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by the sun of yore.
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And all the clouds have lowered upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean, buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, our bruised arms hung up for
monuments, our stern alarms changed to merry meetings,
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our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Gracious, grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front,
and now instead of mounting barbed steeds to frighten the foes of fearful adversaries,
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he cankers nimbly in the lady's chamber to the lascivious pleading of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous
looking-glass, I, that am rudely stamped,
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and want love's majesty to strut before a wanton ambling nymph,
I, that am curtailed of that proportion,
see to the feature by dissembling nature, nature deformed, unfinished,
sent before my time into this breathing world scarce half made up,
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and that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I hold by them,
why I, in this weak, piping time of peace,
have no delight to pass away in the time, unless unless to spy my shadow in
the sun and descant on thine own deformity.
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Therefore, since I cannot prove a novel to entertain these fair well-spoken days.
I am determined to prove villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days, plots unrelated,
inductions dangerous by drunken prophecies, line-holes, and dreams,
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means to set my brother Clarence and the King in deadly hate the one against the other.
And if King Edward be as true and just as I am subtle,
false, and treacherous, this
may Sir Clarence clumsily be mewed up about a prophecy which says that G.
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Of Edward's heirs, the murderer shall be. Thy thoughts down to my soul. Here Clarence comes.
That's it. Thank you. That was so wonderful.
I'm hoping our listeners will really love to hear that.
Talking of unfinished business in that speech, your unfinished business with
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Shakespeare continues.
And I know last year that you had your first ever Shakespeare Festival that
you established in Kingsland, Norfolk, where you now live.
What are your hopes to continue the festival?
The festival came into being because in, we're very fortunate,
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in Kingsland we have a 15th century guildhall.
And I discovered the tradition that possibly Shakespeare had played there when he was on tour in 1592.
And I pursued this story and there seemed to be no clinching case for the fact
that he was there, but there was strong evidence on both sides.
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And so I thought, right, let's look at this. So I've been very fortunate in
my life that I became a board member of the British Shakespeare Association
and as a result, Zolt, got to know many very great Shakespeare scholars.
So I contacted them, and they agreed that they will come along and actually talk about this issue.
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What's the evidence for and against about Shakespeare being in Kingsley?
At the same time, I wanted to make it a celebrational performance.
And luckily, I got, in this short time, Sir Ian McKellen, who had these lectures
just from my colleagues and the round table discussion about Shakespearean things.
I did an acting workshop about how to open up a Shakespeare text and the end of the show was.
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And this year I'm going to do two days and I'm going to choose the same intellectual content.
Hopefully I'm getting a couple of my colleagues from, again,
the intellectual side, if you like, to come and talk about that.
So I want that content, I want that rigorous kind of intellectual engagement.
I'm going to do a one-man show which is my life as a journeyman actor,
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my life not as as a star but what
is it like to be an ordinary actor jobbing
actor for 50 odd years and i'm
also going to do some acting workshops but we're going to do that over two days
as a kind of follow-up and i've always been very struck by how humble you are
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and how in service to the work of shakespeare in the way you just approach life.
It's really beautiful to have seen your work unfold in so many different creative
and very generously giving ways.
What particular advice would you give to young actors these days who are starting out?
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I'm going to be talking to a young man tomorrow who wants advice about how to
proceed, whether to go to drama school, or what should he get in age or what
should he do? A young man who's passionate.
But the one thing I shall say to him is if you want to be an actor.
You have to need to be an actor as opposed to want to be an actor.
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If you want to be an actor, because most of the time you will spend not acting, you will give it up.
If you need to be an actor, then you will go on. David Mamet,
the famous playwright, wrote a book called True and False about acting.
One of the great things he says in that, over 20 years, 20 years,
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every actor gets their moment.
But you've got to be in it for 20 years to get that moment.
So at the moment, it's driving me a little bit mad when I hear all these actors
going, oh, it's been terrible during COVID because I've had to work as a delivery driver.
Over the 50 years, I've been a delivery driver, I don't know how many times.
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I've worked in factories, I've done anything under the sun just to keep body
and soul together. That's why you need it.
You need to be an actor and you'll still be there.
What advice in terms of how, because I don't really know how theater and film will develop.
Theater, I think, is probably going to be a different beast.
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I was reading today about something in television.
If you want to spend your life pretending to be other people,
you've got a need to want to pretend to be other people.
The other thing I say to my students is it's a marathon, not a sprint.
Do you view acting as an individual pursuit or do you look at it as a team approach
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because there's directors and producers and designers?
The best theatre to me is Commodore, where everybody comes together, actors, directors,
technical people, designers, whatever, and you create something that you wish
you didn't know you were going to create.
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When I direct, the most exciting moments to me are when I come out of a rehearsal session of four hours,
and as I walk out the rehearsal room, I'm like so excited because I think I
had no idea we were going to get there today because everybody was contributing.
What if we tried this? What if we did that? What if we did...
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And of course, at the end of the day, you've got to be up there doing your thing as an actor.
But then also, in my experience, the better the actor, the least selfish they are.
For instance, I did The Tempest with Ray Fiennes about 10 years ago now in the
West End. And I had a big speech on a couple of occasions where Rafe was on
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stage, and he would automatically move down the stage of me.
In other words, so that I was looking at him there, but the audience were there.
Because he knew if he got downstage, the audience could see my face.
If he stayed upstage, I'd be in profile.
And so he'd move down quite deliberately because it was my moment.
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And I would do the same for him. And that's what it's about.
Everybody, actors, crew, everybody, how do we tell the story?
How do we serve this playwright? How do we tell it as clearly and as truthfully as we can?
And we do that as a communal act.
And not as a selfish act. I know that you are thinking of bringing Shakespeare
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to the football field, and that's English football.
How do you envisage that happening?
It goes back to in the 1980s, I worked for a director called Michael Bogdanov,
who was very politically engaged and believed that Shakespeare was for everyone.
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And that he was bored and fed up with the RSC C and the National did it.
We worked on the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V, but we took it out.
Suddenly, because of the way Michael works, clear storytelling, I've worked.
I remember being in Nottingham, the Theatre Royal in Nottingham,
and I went in the pub after the show.
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Normally, people will come up and say, oh, can I just say, I really did enjoy it.
This bloke came up to me and he said, so afterwards, did you go back to Scotland
to do art? I didn't know what he was talking about.
And I realized he was talking about my character, a character called the Douglas
who had come from Scotland to join the war.
And so I told him what I thought probably happened. And he said, he said, I'm a miner.
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He said, me and my mates, we've come into Nottingham, we've got to go to this course at the college.
And they give us these tickets to come to Shakespeare and I said,
I didn't want to come. We should have Fatball on tonight.
I said, what, full start? She said, yeah. Is he on tomorrow?
I said, yeah. Whoa, coming back? She said, I would like that.
I would like that. All right.
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Now, when I told Michael, the director, it was worth five Oscars,
five Olivier's, because that's what it's about.
It's contacting ordinary people. This is not special stuff. But if it's done
well, it will talk to you.
Shakespeare's theatre had working class people in it. Yes, there were all classes there.
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But in the yard, they were working class, ordinary people who listened.
And they talked about going to listen to a play.
So I have contacted my local football club here because I saw a piece that was
saying they were wanting sponsors for the coming season.
And I'm going to have a hoarding.
At the football ground because I want the same people who go to watch Kingswood
(33:27):
in town football club to think they can also come and see the Kingsley and Shakespeare's.
Good luck with that and I know you think about
all sport being full of drama how does an actor bring that little piece of unpredictability
to their performances so you know the audience already already knows the outcome
(33:51):
of the story if they've seen the play before.
Well, it's about, it goes back to that communal effort that directors like Ray. I did.
298 performances of The Woman in Black in the West End in London. Just two people.
I was the old director and the young director. When we were about to finish,
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lots of our friends came to see it and they said, what to Tim,
the solo director, the best thing they could say, They didn't say,
oh, you're wonderful. It was brilliant.
They said, it seemed so fresh. And that was the best thing anybody could have said.
Because what Tim and I did, we never really talked about it,
but being similar actors, we went out every night, but to discover it again.
(34:35):
That's what happened every night. And you go, it may be my 298th time,
but for this audience, it's their first.
Thank you very much. Bye-bye, darling. And thank you.
Thank you for listening to the InScape Quest podcast with Trudy Howley.
If you like this show and want to send questions or submit topics you'd like
(34:59):
to hear about on your podcast, you can find me on Instagram at InScape Quest.
Thank you for listening and for your shares, subscriptions and downloads. Cheerio.
Hello podcast listeners. Thank you for tuning in today to the Inscape Quest podcast show.
I am your host, Trudi Howley.
Here I am talking with people about how they engage with their relationships, work, and passions.
Please subscribe and share this show with a friend and thanks to you,
(00:25):
we can grow meaningful conversations together, one episode at a time.
Music.
Andrew Jarvis is one of the most respected Shakespearean actors of his generation.
He successfully established the King's Lynn Shakespeare Festival in Norfolk,
(00:48):
England, where he now lives.
Andrew has diversified from performing the Bard on occasion,
playing such roles as Gandalf and Elrond in Lord of the Rings,
and acting in many British films and television shows.
As a theatre director, actor, generous teacher, he continues to promote the
(01:11):
work of Shakespeare, his life's passion.
There are so many ways people are learning to share their voices right now.
And across two continents, it is my pleasure as Andrew and I dive into a conversation
about how important is use of the voice to him as a journeyman actor.
(01:35):
We also explore Andrew's lifelong passion for Shakespeare.
Well, to me as a professional actor, but this is everything that happens on
a stage and film or television in performers is to do with the voice. That is it.
(01:58):
I've done over, not lately, but over many years, a little of a radio.
Where, of course, in radio, that is the only thing you have.
The only equipment, and you have to do everything by that.
As an actor, in Shakespeare particularly, which is my passion,
it's about the voice and the text.
(02:19):
It is the voice. It is the instrument.
And so many, well, I must be horrible, but so many young actors I hear and see
now haven't got an instrument.
Excellent it is yours for any various that's what
you play the physicality the
way you look all that that's part of it of course
(02:42):
but it's what comes out of here
in our voice in the choice
of what we say how we said when
we said we revealed ourselves when i
meet a girl i do a lot of teaching drama school when i meet a lot of new students
and perhaps we'll be talking about character and what is character and how do
(03:04):
we what does that mean and how do we embody it as actors etc i often say to
them after about 10 minutes or quarter an hour it's the first meeting i say right okay.
You have formed an impression of me how have you formed it well okay hey i've
got long life I'm wearing red cowboy boots,
(03:25):
okay there's all sorts of eccentricities there but put it into one side because
because they are just extras you've got an impression about about me already
where does that come from well I make stupid jokes I swear I lost,
whatever those might be the detail but overall the impression you are forming
(03:46):
of me is because of what I've said how I've said it and when I've said it,
You couldn't write it down, O.A., but you're getting a picture.
And that is what acting is about. That's how we reveal ourselves.
So if you don't have an instrument as an actor that is capable of expressing
(04:06):
a range of notes, volume.
Just the clarity of what you are saying, you are dead in the water.
I say, I much spend my time watching young actors on television and thinking,
I don't know what you're talking about I
can probably hear the words but I can't make
(04:26):
sense of it because they are not expressing it
through their voices I'm interested
to explore this in different directions in particular I'm struck by a review
that was written about you in the Huffington Post a few years ago when you played
(04:49):
Pinter in taking over Sir Patrick Stewart's role,
the review focused on because of Pinter's words rather than the celebrity partnership.
Sir Patrick Stewart was not present. The
reviewer said they had
(05:09):
a profound shift in understanding the play's
context when the mesmerizing actor
is called out of the shadows and into the
spotlight through the voice you
can elicit these different emotional responses in the audience when you are
not a household name or have celebrity status but you've got decades and decades
(05:35):
of experience as a very well respected Shakespearean actor.
Well, I mean, what she's talking about is the fact that everybody can't see
him, McKellen and Patrick Stewart, and that's what a show is about.
And it was. That was about two of the great knights and actors of our time.
Suddenly, one of them's taken away, and it becomes about the play.
(05:56):
Now, it is my job, and this is quite a hard quote, but it is my job to evoke emotion in an audience.
But that is not the same as evoking it in myself.
The great theatrical critic Kenneth Tynan, who worked with Laurence Olivier
at the National Theatre,
once put it into words and said, it is the job of an actor to elicit emotion
(06:22):
in an audience, and these are important words, but not necessarily in himself.
Now, when I'm often in an audience or with somebody on stage sobbing and crying
and carrying on, being emotional, and I will find myself thinking,
oh, I do wish you'd shut up.
(06:43):
And I wonder, shall I have a glass of wine or a glass of beer at the end of
the walk with this woman's boring Mr. Death or this man?
But then somebody else will say something which sends a shiver through me.
But with not necessarily any emotional
expression from them if
(07:04):
you think of i'm startled all the time news
bulletins where you know someone maybe
has been a terrible accident or been killed and they
talk to the relatives sometimes okay the
relative might be crying but a lot of the time they are
not they are talking about what
it is like to be in their situation i was
(07:26):
watching somebody the other day or a smile on their face talking about the
fact that their child had died which at
first you think whoa but actually the mistake
we as actors make is to think that their
words are the expression of emotion they
are not great great shakespearean called
john barton who died a few years ago who i was john
(07:49):
talked about shakespearean soliloquy
in particularly saying they are characters trying to
talk about emotion trying to come
to terms with emotion trying to understand what this knot that's in their stomach
is so it's the difference say between saying if i'm watching hamlet and the
(08:13):
famous sir who says oh that this too too solid solid flesh would melt,
thaw, and dissolve itself into a dew.
He's actually saying, I wish it could disappear. I feel so terrible.
Now, many actors will go, oh, this too, too solid flesh, and they will try to
show me what the feeling is.
But if you just tell me what it is, if you do what John says and describe it,
(08:35):
you say, oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt.
Form and resolve itself into a new.
Then I see the inside, I see the knots in your stomach. You don't need to try and show me.
It's that problem that every actress has, that's thinking they've got to show
(08:56):
it. You don't. You're talking about it.
When I did No Man's Land, my job was to try and evoke emotion in the audience.
I don't know how you do that. I haven't got a clue. When I was a young actor,
I remember playing Oberon in the middle of my stream.
And a friend of mine came to see it. And afterwards, he said to me,
(09:16):
he was very nice about it.
He said, oh, he said, the way you said that line, I can't remember what it was, but I'll tell you.
He said, it made me say, hey, stand up on the back of my neck.
No, when I thought back, I couldn't begin to tell you how I said it.
I spoke the truth of the line, talking about what Oberon was feeling.
(09:39):
And he went, ah, oof, and that's what you're after.
So when I go out as, you know, as Patrick's deputy, I'm not interested in my
own emotion. If it comes, it comes.
Bill Nighy, the famous filmmaker, said, emotion takes care of itself.
You say the truth of the lie, you talk to the other person.
(10:01):
If you think in ordinary life, I say this to my students, people might say to
you, hello, Andrew, how are you today?
And I go, actually I'm really fed up.
Or you say hello Andrew how are you and you go yeah I'm good yeah I'm good in
both cases when I say I'm really unhappy I don't try and find my unhappiness I'm really
(10:24):
I tell you I'm unhappy, but I might do it with a smile on my face.
I tell you I'm feeling good, but I might do it very seriously.
Because I'm not trying as an individual to get my emotion out to you.
I'm describing what it is to you.
And I believe it's like if you do that, the audience responds.
(10:46):
And they do what Tylan's talking about.
And you sobbing and crying does not make one little bit of difference.
I love the way you've described this to me because it makes sense to me as I
work with people who begin to
get in touch with their body sensations and those knots in their stomach,
(11:09):
then they can start describing it.
So it's not about using your body necessarily in a movement way,
but understanding what the physical sensations are and connecting with those.
And describing it, as you say, and trying to come to terms with it.
What is it? What is it? Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt. I wish I couldn't die.
(11:33):
That's all the character's doing. He's not experiencing it.
He's talking about what that knot is in his tummy and trying to get rid of it.
What happens because so many people
in general tell me that they're afraid
to speak up they're afraid to say
their truth so even though they may be experiencing a
(11:54):
knot in their stomach and they can connect what
it's about they're afraid to say it
to friends or family members or bosses is so how do you as an actor and how
do you as a director of other actors manage fear well there's two things i think
(12:15):
if you a you've got what the playwright has written.
And he says that it's a soliloquy in Shakespeare.
The character steps forward and talks to the audience.
I always think of it and I tell my students that it's like a timeout.
I can't carry on with my life until I've talked about this.
(12:39):
It's rather like, again, I use this example.
Sometimes a student will come to me and say, Andrew, can we have a talk at lunchtime?
And I'll say, yeah, of course. So I meet her. I say, right, okay.
What did you support? Well, I've got this real problem.
They would then talk for five, 10 minutes.
And I would not agree, encourage, but wouldn't actually contribute.
(13:04):
And at the end of it, they'd say, thank you so much. I feel so much better now.
And that's like a soliloquy.
Or it's like if you have a bad day at school or college, you go home and you
say to your parents or your partner,
now this is what happened and you
tell them don't make any difference but you feel better
for having told them so in a play
(13:26):
you are given the
instruction to share your thoughts as an actor one goes out there and this is
the difference suppose absolutely petrified every performance i give i am petrified
i am torn between wanting to be anywhere else but where i am standing in in the wings of a theatre,
(13:46):
at the same time.
I was feeling very excited about wanting to go out there and share.
But that's different because it's my job to go out and play what the author has given me.
But as an individual, I experience exactly what you're talking about,
which is, as Andrew, I find it very hard to actually say, this is what I'm going through.
(14:13):
Because you've got to have immense trust and faith and whatever in the person you're talking to.
And whatever so that's to me that's
quite natural but it's feeling your inner environment
where you can say can i just talk to you for a minute just tell you what my
problem is but do it in a way quite dispassionately i don't know if that's possible
(14:37):
but you've been involved in theater for for many decades.
Over 50. Over 50.
And one reviewer has called you a Shakespearean war horse.
And I know also that Sir Ian McKellen has called you his hero because I'm guessing
(15:02):
you know as much, if not more, than him about Shakespeare.
Shakespeare, what is it about Shakespeare that is so alive for you?
Well, I had an interesting journey with Shakespeare because I hated it at school.
We had bad teachers, as we all, some people do, who made it the most boring subject in the world.
(15:25):
But yet at the same time, I used to, my parents took me to the Royal Shakespeare
Theatre in Stratford when I was very young. I remember seeing...
Laurence Olivier playing Rick Coriolanus when I was 11 years old and it took
my breath away, but I couldn't connect the two things.
So I used to think of Shakespeare as this amazing world, but couldn't relate
(15:45):
that to boredom in the classroom.
And when I started off as an actor for the first 10 years, I worked around lots of regional theatres.
I did quite a few Shakespeare's, but I used to think, I don't get it with Shakespeare,
This is Robbie Shack. I don't know what he's talking about.
I don't understand it. And I'm pretty crap at doing it.
(16:06):
And then I went to the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1978.
And I met various people who had a huge influence on me. Patrick Stewart was
one of them. Jeffrey Dench, who's Judy's brother.
Jess had been with the company for years.
John Barn, an actress who died a couple of years ago, girl called Bernard Lloyd,
(16:26):
who actually showed me how to open up a Shakespearean text as an actor.
And actually, how Shakespeare, if you only know how to look at a speech,
has left you all the clues about how to play it.
And this girl said, blimey, Andrew, it's like he's left you a blueprint,
isn't it, on how to act it.
(16:47):
And I didn't believe he has. And that's become my fascination because of that,
and the sheer beauty and the joy of being able to say it.
In the mid-90s, I mentioned it already, I played Oberon in Midsummer Night's
Dream, and he has that wonderful speech, I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
(17:11):
where oxlip and the nodding violet grows quite over canopied with luscious woodbine
with sweet musk roses and with ebony vine.
At that point, Oberlin's only day on the stage.
And they used to start at the back of the stage. We toured it all over Great
(17:32):
Britain, all the major theatres in Great Britain.
And gradually as I did the speech, I used to move slowly forward to the front of the stage.
And I could barely do it without a smile on my face because at the back of my
mind I was thinking, I am being paid to say this.
I would pay somebody else to allow me to say it.
(17:55):
Just to relish, you know, just submit myself to this language and to see if
I could in any way come up to it.
The woman I mainly influenced in this actor, I mentioned Bernard Lloyd,
my first job at the RSC, a very passionate Welshman who knew more musical things
(18:16):
than I'll ever know in my entire body.
We'd come off a scene, I had a lot of scenes with Bernard. It was my first time at the RSC.
See we come off an eagle like thunder in my
paranoia i would assume i'd done something wrong in
the scene as we left the stage and went down the dressing room and
i'd say are you all right bernie number of times
he used to say you never win with
(18:39):
shakespeare because he knew there's
this immense area of
expression but you could never walk off the stage
and say I got it tonight I got it and that to me is the endless challenge you
keep having a go but you never get there wondering what is your favourite role
(19:02):
Leah is so unattainable it's like Everest Everest.
I'd played it, well, you saw me rehearsing a bit of it in 2003 in Malibu.
Just now and again, you get to the top of Everest, and then the clouds cover
it again, and you struggle up the foothills trying to get there again.
(19:23):
There's a wonderful saying about King Lear, by the time you're old enough to
understand it, you're too old to play it.
Richard was a joy because he's so full of energy and life and wit, and I love doing that.
But I think objectively, although I've only ever understood him,
I've never played him, I think Coriolanus is one of my favourite roles.
(19:47):
I've never played him, I've understood him, that's all. But I think the language there is sublime.
The Tempest, Prospero, I'd love to do that.
The poetry in that is unbelievable. I really love that King Lear,
the story unfolds in the present moment.
It's very much in the here and now and that's so relevant for today and the
(20:13):
way we kind of consume the excitement and drama of sports and try and be mindful
about being in the present moment.
And is there a particular beat, as you think about that right now,
that comes to mind that you might consider reciting?
In the middle of the storm, blow winds and crack your cheeks.
(20:36):
I've always seen it done as somebody kind of competing with a storm.
But one of our great actors, Donald Sinden, once said, he wondered if it was
probably right to play it as an indication for the storm to come along further.
I'm not sure how many lines I can do truly before I beat her out.
(20:58):
Just a couple would be great.
It's a long time since I've said these words, my goodness.
Blow winds and crack your cheeks.
Blow, rage you hurricane of spout.
Till you have something that shimmy, something that clonks. I told you that
(21:22):
wasn't very close to me anymore.
Shall I do a bit of Richard Three for you? Yeah. I know that thing better.
It's kind of putting you on the spot here, Andy.
Yeah, he caught me out. Now, Richard, I know, because I often eat it with my
kids, so I'm good. Let me do the, let me see if I can do the opening.
Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by the sun of yore.
(21:50):
And all the clouds have lowered upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean, buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, our bruised arms hung up for
monuments, our stern alarms changed to merry meetings,
(22:12):
our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Gracious, grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front,
and now instead of mounting barbed steeds to frighten the foes of fearful adversaries,
(22:34):
he cankers nimbly in the lady's chamber to the lascivious pleading of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous
looking-glass, I, that am rudely stamped,
(22:55):
and want love's majesty to strut before a wanton ambling nymph,
I, that am curtailed of that proportion,
see to the feature by dissembling nature, nature deformed, unfinished,
sent before my time into this breathing world scarce half made up,
(23:17):
and that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I hold by them,
why I, in this weak, piping time of peace,
have no delight to pass away in the time, unless unless to spy my shadow in
the sun and descant on thine own deformity.
(23:40):
Therefore, since I cannot prove a novel to entertain these fair well-spoken days.
I am determined to prove villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days, plots unrelated,
inductions dangerous by drunken prophecies, line-holes, and dreams,
(24:03):
means to set my brother Clarence and the King in deadly hate the one against the other.
And if King Edward be as true and just as I am subtle,
false, and treacherous, this
may Sir Clarence clumsily be mewed up about a prophecy which says that G.
(24:26):
Of Edward's heirs, the murderer shall be. Thy thoughts down to my soul. Here Clarence comes.
That's it. Thank you. That was so wonderful.
I'm hoping our listeners will really love to hear that.
Talking of unfinished business in that speech, your unfinished business with
(24:50):
Shakespeare continues.
And I know last year that you had your first ever Shakespeare Festival that
you established in Kingsland, Norfolk, where you now live.
What are your hopes to continue the festival?
The festival came into being because in, we're very fortunate,
(25:11):
in Kingsland we have a 15th century guildhall.
And I discovered the tradition that possibly Shakespeare had played there when he was on tour in 1592.
And I pursued this story and there seemed to be no clinching case for the fact
that he was there, but there was strong evidence on both sides.
(25:32):
And so I thought, right, let's look at this. So I've been very fortunate in
my life that I became a board member of the British Shakespeare Association
and as a result, Zolt, got to know many very great Shakespeare scholars.
So I contacted them, and they agreed that they will come along and actually talk about this issue.
(25:52):
What's the evidence for and against about Shakespeare being in Kingsley?
At the same time, I wanted to make it a celebrational performance.
And luckily, I got, in this short time, Sir Ian McKellen, who had these lectures
just from my colleagues and the round table discussion about Shakespearean things.
I did an acting workshop about how to open up a Shakespeare text and the end of the show was.
(26:17):
And this year I'm going to do two days and I'm going to choose the same intellectual content.
Hopefully I'm getting a couple of my colleagues from, again,
the intellectual side, if you like, to come and talk about that.
So I want that content, I want that rigorous kind of intellectual engagement.
I'm going to do a one-man show which is my life as a journeyman actor,
(26:39):
my life not as as a star but what
is it like to be an ordinary actor jobbing
actor for 50 odd years and i'm
also going to do some acting workshops but we're going to do that over two days
as a kind of follow-up and i've always been very struck by how humble you are
(26:59):
and how in service to the work of shakespeare in the way you just approach life.
It's really beautiful to have seen your work unfold in so many different creative
and very generously giving ways.
What particular advice would you give to young actors these days who are starting out?
(27:26):
I'm going to be talking to a young man tomorrow who wants advice about how to
proceed, whether to go to drama school, or what should he get in age or what
should he do? A young man who's passionate.
But the one thing I shall say to him is if you want to be an actor.
You have to need to be an actor as opposed to want to be an actor.
(27:49):
If you want to be an actor, because most of the time you will spend not acting, you will give it up.
If you need to be an actor, then you will go on. David Mamet,
the famous playwright, wrote a book called True and False about acting.
One of the great things he says in that, over 20 years, 20 years,
(28:12):
every actor gets their moment.
But you've got to be in it for 20 years to get that moment.
So at the moment, it's driving me a little bit mad when I hear all these actors
going, oh, it's been terrible during COVID because I've had to work as a delivery driver.
Over the 50 years, I've been a delivery driver, I don't know how many times.
(28:34):
I've worked in factories, I've done anything under the sun just to keep body
and soul together. That's why you need it.
You need to be an actor and you'll still be there.
What advice in terms of how, because I don't really know how theater and film will develop.
Theater, I think, is probably going to be a different beast.
(28:57):
I was reading today about something in television.
If you want to spend your life pretending to be other people,
you've got a need to want to pretend to be other people.
The other thing I say to my students is it's a marathon, not a sprint.
Do you view acting as an individual pursuit or do you look at it as a team approach
(29:20):
because there's directors and producers and designers?
The best theatre to me is Commodore, where everybody comes together, actors, directors,
technical people, designers, whatever, and you create something that you wish
you didn't know you were going to create.
(29:41):
When I direct, the most exciting moments to me are when I come out of a rehearsal session of four hours,
and as I walk out the rehearsal room, I'm like so excited because I think I
had no idea we were going to get there today because everybody was contributing.
What if we tried this? What if we did that? What if we did...
(30:03):
And of course, at the end of the day, you've got to be up there doing your thing as an actor.
But then also, in my experience, the better the actor, the least selfish they are.
For instance, I did The Tempest with Ray Fiennes about 10 years ago now in the
West End. And I had a big speech on a couple of occasions where Rafe was on
(30:25):
stage, and he would automatically move down the stage of me.
In other words, so that I was looking at him there, but the audience were there.
Because he knew if he got downstage, the audience could see my face.
If he stayed upstage, I'd be in profile.
And so he'd move down quite deliberately because it was my moment.
(30:46):
And I would do the same for him. And that's what it's about.
Everybody, actors, crew, everybody, how do we tell the story?
How do we serve this playwright? How do we tell it as clearly and as truthfully as we can?
And we do that as a communal act.
And not as a selfish act. I know that you are thinking of bringing Shakespeare
(31:10):
to the football field, and that's English football.
How do you envisage that happening?
It goes back to in the 1980s, I worked for a director called Michael Bogdanov,
who was very politically engaged and believed that Shakespeare was for everyone.
(31:31):
And that he was bored and fed up with the RSC C and the National did it.
We worked on the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V, but we took it out.
Suddenly, because of the way Michael works, clear storytelling, I've worked.
I remember being in Nottingham, the Theatre Royal in Nottingham,
and I went in the pub after the show.
(31:53):
Normally, people will come up and say, oh, can I just say, I really did enjoy it.
This bloke came up to me and he said, so afterwards, did you go back to Scotland
to do art? I didn't know what he was talking about.
And I realized he was talking about my character, a character called the Douglas
who had come from Scotland to join the war.
And so I told him what I thought probably happened. And he said, he said, I'm a miner.
(32:19):
He said, me and my mates, we've come into Nottingham, we've got to go to this course at the college.
And they give us these tickets to come to Shakespeare and I said,
I didn't want to come. We should have Fatball on tonight.
I said, what, full start? She said, yeah. Is he on tomorrow?
I said, yeah. Whoa, coming back? She said, I would like that.
I would like that. All right.
(32:41):
Now, when I told Michael, the director, it was worth five Oscars,
five Olivier's, because that's what it's about.
It's contacting ordinary people. This is not special stuff. But if it's done
well, it will talk to you.
Shakespeare's theatre had working class people in it. Yes, there were all classes there.
(33:03):
But in the yard, they were working class, ordinary people who listened.
And they talked about going to listen to a play.
So I have contacted my local football club here because I saw a piece that was
saying they were wanting sponsors for the coming season.
And I'm going to have a hoarding.
At the football ground because I want the same people who go to watch Kingswood
(33:27):
in town football club to think they can also come and see the Kingsley and Shakespeare's.
Good luck with that and I know you think about
all sport being full of drama how does an actor bring that little piece of unpredictability
to their performances so you know the audience already already knows the outcome
(33:51):
of the story if they've seen the play before.
Well, it's about, it goes back to that communal effort that directors like Ray. I did.
298 performances of The Woman in Black in the West End in London. Just two people.
I was the old director and the young director. When we were about to finish,
(34:12):
lots of our friends came to see it and they said, what to Tim,
the solo director, the best thing they could say, They didn't say,
oh, you're wonderful. It was brilliant.
They said, it seemed so fresh. And that was the best thing anybody could have said.
Because what Tim and I did, we never really talked about it,
but being similar actors, we went out every night, but to discover it again.
(34:35):
That's what happened every night. And you go, it may be my 298th time,
but for this audience, it's their first.
Thank you very much. Bye-bye, darling. And thank you.
Thank you for listening to the InScape Quest podcast with Trudy Howley.
If you like this show and want to send questions or submit topics you'd like
(34:59):
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