TaPS MASTER CLASS RESOURCE PACK: Deeper than the literal.
By Tracy Irish
October 2014, Stratford TaPS
Master class resource pack – Deeper than the literal by Tracy Irish – Stratford TaPS October 2014 Deeper than the literal: An exploration of the techniques developed by Cicely
Berry to unlock Shakespeare's text
By Tracy Irish
Overview
After studying and working at Central School of Speech and Drama, Cicely Berry
became Head of Voice at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1970s where she
revolutionised approaches to Shakespeare’s text with her firm belief in the physicality
of the language. She is now Director of Voice at the RSC and remains a vital
member of the company. Over the years, Berry has developed exercises which
enable actors to find a visceral connection to the text and, most importantly, to find
their own connection.
Her practice has been heavily influenced by her work with young people. A
foundational encounter for her was working with a group of high school students on
Othello. The students were not connecting to the text at all and in a moment of
inspiration borne from desperation she asked them to read the text whilst holding on
to each other, pushing and pulling against each other as they did so. She describes
tables and chairs being knocked over in a way that makes our current health and
safety conscious practice wince but she regards it as all worthwhile when one boy
said “Oh, I get it: he’s drowning in his feelings,” voicing the physical connection with
the language the students were making. Berry has also worked regularly with
prisoners, supporting them to find expression they otherwise find difficult through
using Shakespeare’s text. She often quotes from Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish
tragedy: “Where words prevail not, violence prevails.”
Berry’s work in her own words is “about releasing both the actors’ and the
directors’ subconscious response to the sound of the text, and through that response
to find a deeper and ‘other’ layer to its literal, surface meaning.” She has worked with
actors and aspiring actors all over the world from the favelas of Brazil to the hutongs
of China and has inspired so many theatre practitioners that her key exercises have
become common currency in rehearsal rooms the world over.
We are going to try out some of her exercises and discuss how they help us
connect to Shakespeare’s text. Like Cicely Berry, we’re using Shakespeare because
he provides such a rich resource but these exercises work just as well with all good
writing.
Exercises
Warm ups
Rhythm games: Set up simple rhythms with claps and stamps, standing in a circle
and walking around the room - and experiment with how we can share these
rhythms.
How difficult is this? What can we do to do it better? How does it feel when we
succeed? We respond very naturally and instinctively to rhythm – it’s all around us in
the sounds we hear and the way things move but often our intellect gets in the way –
we ‘overthink’ what we’re trying to do or say.
1 Master class resource pack – Deeper than the literal by Tracy Irish – Stratford TaPS October 2014 Word games: 1) pairs create dialogue using just the words ‘you’ and ‘me’ 2) One
person clasps their hands together while the other tries to get them to open their
hands just by saying ‘open your hands’
What do we notice in these exercises about how words are just part of what we say?
Subtext comes not only with how we say the words but how we use our bodies to
express what more we want to say. How do we create rhythms in these dialogues
and how and why do we interrupt those rhythms?
Using Shakespeare
The following exercises use Cicely Berry’s techniques for exploring how
Shakespeare's uses of rhythm and imagery affect us physically when we are working
on our feet with the text. They support us to uncover deeper meanings and to make
instinctive embodied choices.
Juliet’s journey
The story of Romeo & Juliet is familiar all over the world: two teenagers fall in love
but their families are great enemies. The play is well known for its beautiful language
but Cicely Berry prefers the word ‘muscular’ when she talks about Shakespeare’s
language. We’ll explore some of what this means by looking at the beginnings of
three of Juliet’s speeches as they illustrate her journey in loving Romeo.
• Read each speech chorally – this is just to get the words off the page and
start to feel how they sound when we say them.
• A different reader reads each speech while the others close their eyes, listen
and repeat words which catch their interest. There are no right or wrong words
to repeat but by focusing on the words in this way we can begin to find our
own connections to the world of the play.
• Read each speech to the metre and notice which words become interesting
when we pay attention to the rhythm.
• Walk around the space, reading the speeches, change direction on each
punctuation point and notice how each speech feels different when we walk
the text in this way.
Cicely Berry has said the two key exercises for any piece of text are moving on
punctuation and repeating words – the former tells us about the state of mind of the
character and the latter takes us inside the world of the play and the characters who
live in that world.
Further exercises on Juliet’s speeches
• Each actor around the circle reads one word of the speech, finding a simple
gesture to accompany it. The group repeat the speech 3-4 times so that
different actors speak and gesture different words each time. This helps us
focus on the importance of each word and the role it plays in expressing
thought.
• The leader feeds the lines to the company as they move freely around the
space, repeating the lines and making big gestures to fit the language.
• The company sit and quietly read through each speech in their own time,
repeating any words or phrases that strike them and visualising them until
they feel confident about each image. Alternatively pairs are given a line and
2 Master class resource pack – Deeper than the literal by Tracy Irish – Stratford TaPS October 2014 asked to create appropriate gestures and movement to accompany how they
say the lines. They share this with the company.
• For the last speech, one actor becomes Juliet and reads the speech as she
tries to break out of a circle formed by other members of the company. Having
something physical to resist brings out Juliet’s desperation.
• Another actor takes on Juliet and this time reads the speech to other member
of the company as they turn away from her. This activity can draw out how
alone Juliet feels at this moment with no-one who can help her.
These activities explore two other key aspects of Cicely Berry’s work: imaging and
resistance. By using gesture and physical actions to bring the images in the text to
life we make a stronger connection to the words through our bodies than if we just
read them in our minds. Exercises which put something in the way of the actor sets
up resistance as that actor must speak their lines whilst trying to get to their goal.
The resistance promotes physical responses of anger, pain or desire which again
connect the body to the thoughts in the text.
Much ado about nothing – the church scene
Shakespeare’s mastery of rhythm colours everything in his writing from how he
structures a plot to how he structures each line. Much Ado is a comedy but could
easily become a tragedy and Shakespeare plays with our expectations of these
conventions, playing with the different rhythms. We find this used to great effect in
the church scene when Claudio refuses to marry Hero and Beatrice and Benedick
are left alone to declare their own feelings.
Read the edit to gain the context and a sense of the world of this play and the
characters who live in it. Hero, Claudio and Leonarto in this scene could easily be in
a world of tragedy. Apply any of the exercises above to their speeches. How do the
exercises help us to see beneath our initial impressions and the literal meanings to
understand the deeper expression for each character? In particular how do the
rhythms and images in Leonarto’s speech express the layers of feeling of someone
we might be tempted to dismiss as just an angry possessive father?
Beatrice & Benedick
After this moment of high drama in the middle of a comedy comes an extraordinary
scene which sets the very modern seeming relationship of Beatrice and Benedick
against the background of the very traditional seeming relationship of Hero and
Claudio. On the page this scene can look deceptively simple but working physically
with the text can uncover the complexity of the rhythms Beatrice and Benedick find
together.
• Working in pairs, actors take on either Beatrice or Benedick, sit back to back
and read the scene through.
• Now the pairs face each other and read the scene through again. This time
each actor listens to the other’s speech and repeats the last bit of it, changing
the pronouns. Then they say their own line.
Notice how the lines respond to each other - and when they don’t. Here we are
interested in the rhythm of their thoughts, how sometime they flow together,
sometimes they knock against each other. Beatrice and Benedick shift between their
feelings about Hero’s situation and their feelings for each other - and this can cause
moments of humour and tenderness, as well as tension and danger.
3 Master class resource pack – Deeper than the literal by Tracy Irish – Stratford TaPS October 2014 ‘Beatrice’ finds something light to kick. She moves around the room, kicking
her object – she could kick whenever seems appropriate or on the last word of
a line or sentence. ‘Benedick’ follows her and tries to get her attention.
Beatrice should allow him to succeed for as long as he does hold her attention
and go back to kicking when he doesn’t.
• Others in the company form two lines – one facing Beatrice and another
facing Benedick. Benedick tries to get to Beatrice at all times and those in the
line must stop him. Beatrice may want to get to Benedick at some points and
those in her line must stop her, at other times she may want to hide from him
behind her line.
• Beatrice and Benedick share an object. As they say their lines they
experiment with giving and taking the object. The object should move on each
speech but the actors decide instinctively whether to give, take, snatch, offer
etc.
Each of these activities provides what Cicely Berry calls ‘displacement strategies’
either through resistance or performing a task which distracts the actor from being
too much in their own head by focusing them on doing something physically. In this
way we can connect to the words which express thoughts we feel in our whole body
• Each Beatrice and Benedick reduce their script to 15 words only and find
gestures for those words. They share these performances with the company
who discuss what different elements of the scene are brought out in these
different performances.
• Using everything they have discovered about the text, pairs rehearse freely
and reflect on which activities helped them to make their choices.
•
Juliet’s journey
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name.
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' lodging. Such a waggoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway's eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms untalk'd of and unseen.
O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! Fiend angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven! Wolvish-ravening lamb!
Despised substance of divinest show!
4 Master class resource pack – Deeper than the literal by Tracy Irish – Stratford TaPS October 2014 Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st.
A damned saint! An honourable villain!
Much Ado: IV.1 edited
DON PEDRO
Myself, my brother and this grieved count
Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night
Talk with a ruffian at her chamber-window
Who hath indeed, most like a liberal villain,
Confess'd the vile encounters they have had
A thousand times in secret.
CLAUDIO
O Hero, what a Hero hadst thou been,
If half thy outward graces had been placed
About thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart!
But fare thee well, most foul, most fair! farewell,
Thou pure impiety and impious purity!
For thee I'll lock up all the gates of love,
And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang,
To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm,
And never shall it more be gracious.
LEONATO
Hath no man's dagger here a point for me?
HERO swoons
BEATRICE
Why, how now, cousin! Wherefore sink you down?
DON JOHN
Come, let us go. These things, come thus to light,
Smother her spirits up.
Exeunt DON PEDRO, DON JOHN, and CLAUDIO
BENEDICK
How doth the lady?
BEATRICE
Dead, I think. Help, uncle!
Hero! Why, Hero! Uncle! Signior Benedick! Friar!
LEONATO
O Fate, take not away thy heavy hand.
Death is the fairest cover for her shame
That may be wish'd for.
BEATRICE
How now, cousin Hero!
FRIAR FRANCIS
Have comfort, lady.
LEONATO
Dost thou look up?
FRIAR FRANCIS
Yea, wherefore should she not?
5 Master class resource pack – Deeper than the literal by Tracy Irish – Stratford TaPS October 2014 LEONATO
Wherefore! Why, doth not every earthly thing
Cry shame upon her? Could she here deny
The story that is printed in her blood?
Do not live, Hero; do not ope thine eyes.
For, did I think thou wouldst not quickly die,
Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames,
Myself would, on the rearward of reproaches,
Strike at thy life. Grieved I, I had but one?
Chid I for that at frugal nature's frame?
O, one too much by thee! Why had I one?
Why ever wast thou lovely in my eyes?
Why had I not with charitable hand
Took up a beggar's issue at my gates,
Who smirched thus and mired with infamy,
I might have said 'No part of it is mine;
This shame derives itself from unknown loins'?
But mine and mine I loved and mine I praised
And mine that I was proud on, mine so much
That I myself was to myself not mine,
Valuing of her - why, she, O, she is fallen
Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea
Hath drops too few to wash her clean again
And salt too little which may season give
To her foul-tainted flesh!
BEATRICE
O, on my soul, my cousin is belied!
FRIAR FRANCIS
Hear me a little Lady, what man is he you are accused of?
HERO
They know that do accuse me; I know none.
If I know more of any man alive
Than that which maiden modesty doth warrant,
Let all my sins lack mercy! O my father,
Prove you that any man with me conversed
At hours unmeet, or that I yesternight
Maintain'd the change of words with any creature,
Refuse me, hate me, torture me to death!
FRIAR FRANCIS
There is some strange misprision in the princes.
Much Ado: IV.1
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?
Yea, and I will weep a while longer.
I will not desire that.
You have no reason; I do it freely.
6 Master class resource pack – Deeper than the literal by Tracy Irish – Stratford TaPS October 2014 BENEDICK
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
Surely I do believe your fair cousin is wronged.
Ah, how much might the man deserve of me that would right her!
Is there any way to show such friendship?
A very even way, but no such friend.
May a man do it?
It is a man's office, but not yours.
I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?
As strange as the thing I know not. It were as possible for me to
say I loved nothing so well as you. But believe me not, and yet I
lie not, I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing. I am sorry for my
cousin.
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me.
Do not swear, and eat it.
I will swear by it that you love me, and I will make him eat it that
says I love not you.
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
Will you not eat your word?
With no sauce that can be devised to it. I protest I love thee.
Why, then, God forgive me!
What offence, sweet Beatrice?
You have stayed me in a happy hour: I was about to protest I
loved you.
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
And do it with all thy heart.
I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.
Come, bid me do anything for thee.
Kill Claudio.
Ha! Not for the wide world.
You kill me to deny it. Farewell.
Tarry, sweet Beatrice.
I am gone, though I am here: there is no love in you: nay, I pray
you, let me go.
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
Beatrice In faith, I will go.
We'll be friends first.
You dare easier be friends with me than fight with mine enemy.
Is Claudio thine enemy?
Is he not approved in the height a villain, that hath slandered,
scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? O that I were a man!
What, bear her in hand until they come to take hands, and then,
with public accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancour O God, that I were a man, I would eat his heart in the marketplace.
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
Hear me, Beatrice Talk with a man out at a window! A proper saying!
7 Master class resource pack – Deeper than the literal by Tracy Irish – Stratford TaPS October 2014 BENEDICK
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
Nay, but, Beatrice Sweet Hero. She is wronged, she is slandered, she is undone.
Beat Princes and counties! Surely, a princely testimony, a goodly
count, Count Comfet; a sweet gallant, surely! O that I were a
man for his sake! Or that I had any friend would be a man for my
sake! But manhood is melted into courtesies, valour into
compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones
too. He is now as valiant as Hercules that only tells a lie and
swears it. I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a
woman with grieving.
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
BEATRICE
BENEDICK
Tarry, good Beatrice. By this hand, I love thee.
Use it for my love some other way than swearing by it.
Think you in your soul the Count Claudio hath wronged Hero?
Yea, as sure as I have a thought or a soul.
Enough, I am engaged. I will challenge him. I will kiss your hand,
and so I leave you. By this hand, Claudio shall render me a dear
account. As you hear of me, so think of me. Go, comfort your
cousin, I must say she is dead. And so, farewell.
Some useful reading
Cicely Berry From word to play
Cicely Berry Working Shakespeare (booklet plus DVD collection)
Cicely Berry The actor and the text
John Barton Playing Shakespeare
Ben Crystal Shakespeare on toast
Tracy Irish
After completing an English degree and some travelling, Tracy trained as an English
and drama teacher at Homerton College, Cambridge. She taught for seven years in
England before escaping to sunnier climes including Argentina, Colombia, Ethiopia
and Dubai, and along the way gained a distinction in her Master’s degree in
Shakespeare Studies at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford. She has taken her
love of Shakespeare to all the schools she has worked at, both in the classroom and
in extracurricular productions. She began working for the Royal Shakespeare
Company in 2006 with many renowned artists, directors and practitioners, including
Cicely Berry.
Tracy has always been passionate about three things: teaching, Shakespeare
and travel and was fortunate when they all came together in 2010 and she became
the Education Programme Developer for the World Shakespeare Festival, one of the
2012 Olympics projects. This meant she travelled to many countries, working with
teachers, students and theatre practitioners to explore what Shakespeare meant for
them. Her findings culminated in co-organising an international conference with Tate,
National Theatre and British Museum, held at Tate Modern in London in September
2012. The conference brought together teachers, artists and academics from all over
the world to discuss the place of art, and particularly Shakespeare, in the lives of
8 Master class resource pack – Deeper than the literal by Tracy Irish – Stratford TaPS October 2014 young people today. It also involved an international youth ensemble of 19 students
from 7 countries, all of whom Tracy had met in her travels.
Following that she was awarded a PhD scholarship by the University of
Warwick and is now the Warwick Business School Shakespeare Scholar, where she
is engaged in doctoral research with Professor Jonothan Neelands to explore the
value of Shakespeare for education – along with leading workshops with teachers
and students and directing productions with young people. Her particular interest is
in how language works to express meaning and she is using cognitive metaphor
theory to interrogate theatre practices, particularly at the RSC and Butterfly theatre
company, to explore what Shakespeare’s language can offer us in the search for
better communication. She is also a visiting lecturer at The University of
Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute, and has published a series of books, The
Shorter Shakespeare and articles in peer reviewed journals.
9