A Leap to Faith

Mark Rylance in Conversation with László Bérczes

 

The strangest of the Hamlets was put on by the Bárka Theatre under the direction of Tim Carroll (who for several years worked at the Globe Theatre in London). This is a production in which all the roles except Hamlet are switched among the actors. Hamlet was played on every occasion by Zoltán Balázs, who is also known for his work with his own company as a director of avant-garde productions; the rest of the roles are allocated by lottery shortly before the performance among the several actors who have prepared for each role. The actors wear their normal street clothes. The designer devised a shared space for the actors and audience from a nest of platforms that are raked back unevenly on two sides. The members of the audience pick up their seats from a pile and set them down where they want, except for a space demarcated by rag carpets, which must be left free in order to comply with fire regulations. Wherever they sit, they are roped into the action, with the actors moving in front of, behind and amidst them. Where one sits changes act by act, with another lottery determining where the next focus for the action is to be located; anyone "in the way" is obliged to move over. By prior request, the audience members bring along some personal belongings and CDs to lend, the latter being handed over to the "music maestro" who plays bits from them (should he choose to do so) during the performance. These personal belongings are held in the hand or put down on the floor beside the seat, so that the actors (should they choose to do so) can "work" them into a scene as props. The performance thus consists of a string of improvisations.
Theatre history has Hamlet down for being, in some sense, a one-man show, and that is true inasmuch as it is primarily about Hamlet. The person in the title role acts everyone else off the stage. He stands at the centre of the dramatic force field: all the rest hinge on him and gain sense only through their relationship to him. None of that is true for King Lear, which tends to be raised as a counter-example by critics as being equally philosophical, yet balanced in respect of its conflicts. In Hamlet, it is Hamlet above all who plays, who "puts on an antic disposition". His changes, his capering, his ripostes- his ad-libbing- startle most of the other characters by placing them in unexpected situations, caricaturing and sometimes even insulting them. The role is thus admirably suited for the strategy that Tim Carroll has adopted. It is questionable whether something that works well for Hamlet, the character, also works well for Hamlet, the play. That notwithstanding, Carroll does not seek to bring to the production his own (pre-) conceptions (or to put it more crudely: interpretation). He does not wish to decide beforehand whether ("in the present age") Hamlet should be about one thing or another. He is content to let the play speak for itself and account for the interactions between the characters in the presence of the audience, and what is more- since he takes as his starting point the dictum that every audience and every performance is different- in the presence of that day's audience. To put it another way, only that day's Hamlet exists, or as Peter Brook once said: a performance can only be given once.
There is no question that with the Bárka Theatre, we cannot enter the same Hamlet twice over. The role played by chance is obvious- first and foremost in regard to the objects borrowed from the audience. Thus, in one performance Ophelia's letter to the Prince was a length of string carrying a roll of toilet paper or tickertape, whereas another time it was a video message sent by mobile phone. Yorick's skull might be a tennis ball or a cap, the first being thrown up against the canvas awning that forms the ceiling, the latter rammed onto anyone's head. The duel might be fought with ropes, but equally by scoffing chocolate wafer biscuits. Some of the props work, others do not. A folding ruler or Tsquare can be used to measure a person (even symbolically), and it can also be squeezed in a vice. A flower patch consisting of a plastic bag (if that really is there by chance) comes in handy to whirl round when in Act 1, Scene 2 Hamlet says that "foul deeds will rise, / Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes." And when, in a passage in the next scene starting "Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard.," Polonius not only instructs Laertes verbally but also sprays his armpit with a borrowed deodorant, then that is amusing. However, when the playing around with a boot-tree leads to a member of the audience taking off a shoe, it makes no sense in that context, since the object cannot substitute for the person. The proximity of the audience only amounts to something if the actors can establish a genuine relationship with them. An actor in the auditorium has a challenge when the play's flattering lines about actors are spoken on stage. When an audience member who had been nominated as a substitute Polonius was asked "Have you a daughter?" and spontaneously answered "No, I haven't," that set up a momentary tension, as Shakespeare provides no text to match that response. On one occasion, while delivering the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, the actor playing the title role unwound a roll of insulating tape around himself and a member of the audience, then for good measure, also taped Ophelia to himself so vigorously that his partner literally (never mind theatrically) could not free herself, and it was only through a hazardous fall that it was possible to end the scene on cue. That was Hamletian in a way different from an occasion (likewise with this company) when the Hamlet got drunk on a bottle of wine (though perhaps he was only simulating it). The Ophelia characterised this bitterly while the Claudius, assuming love-induced delirium and pointing at the bottle, could declare, "If't be the affliction of his love or no / That thus he suffers for." One could cite endless examples and variations, but the above is enough to draw conclusions. One is that only Hamlet has unlimited scope to improvise. The others, whatever their role, are highly constrained, but experimenting is not without its uses even for them, because it functions like a public rehearsal. The unexpected changes of partners, the unexpected reactions and maintained concentration act like a gust of fresh air on mostly mollycoddled, clichéd, hackneyed theatre practices. Of course, for a professional performance it is necessary to settle on the best solutions during rehearsal but, with those fixed, still preserve the sense of being reborn day after day, especially from the angle of a formal-conceptual entity that meshes with spontaneous details. That was not the aim here, however. The great English actor Mark Rylance watched one of the performances as a member of the audience. Zoltán Balázs, in the title role, had acquired a large pair of scissors from a member of the audience. Opening the scissors, he held one of the blades against the seated Rylance's neck, then slowly, articulating his words very clearly, started off in Hungarian "To. be. or. not. to. be." The English actor then joined in- in English. The Hungarian actor fell silent, rather as if he were following his companion and interpreting what he was saying, until finally they both spoke the text simultaneously. In the end, the scissor blades were closed, the English actor/audience member sat down, and the performance carried on. Having worked a lot with Tim Carroll in the past, Rylance spoke glowingly about the Bárka Theatre's Hamlet, saying that the director had taken certain risks, and in his opinion that was what theatre was essentially all about. What was important was that a performance should be reborn from one moment to the next. He admitted that he never knew what to make of the customary director's injunction to "Interpret Shakespeare!" pointing out that trying to do so is like trying to interpret the Danube, a force of nature. There is no question that with the Bárka Theatre's Hamlet, the audience is deprived of what is generally referred to as the director's interpretation. Interpretation is left to the onlooker: it depends on us, the audience, on what sort of performance we are looking for. With certain qualifications that is true of theatre on other occasions; it is just that in this instance our involvement is more intense. We do not just watch but, to some degree, we write our Hamlet. After all, theatre only works if we are Hamlet.

...

I'll go and see Shakespeare in any form, I'm not a puritan. But in England, I can't imagine wanting to play Shakespeare in any theatre but the Globe. The basic difference there is the relationship between the audience and the actor. The audience is very, very different. Because of the architecture, because of the standing room, because of the price of tickets, if that will last. The difference is being in a circle rather than a square. The active nature of hearing and listening. Speaking with an audience rather than to them, just as happened last night at the Bárka. There was a meeting of the actors and the audience, which was very creative. There was a man with an eye-patch, and at one point Hamlet got a map from him and did some things to him. He did things back and held him. Held Hamlet, stroked his hair. The actor let the member of the audience hold him. It was wonderful. Compared to the kind of "behave well and just involve your mind in the play", this kind of acting is much more creative and the possibilities are much greater.

For an actor there is risk involved in a production like this. Would you take it?

Yes, I would. The sense of the play comes from what Stanislavsky calls the objectives. And for me, sometimes the objectives are lost in a method. As I understand it, every night is different. For me that was the biggest challenge of the performance last night. Tim Carroll is trying to give the audience the pleasure of the birth of life, moment by moment- the birth of acting, the birth of a performance, moment by moment, as we experience it in the rehearsal room. Often, when I go to the theatre, it's not there. It's just a repeat. I agree completely that we must carry on trying to find the spontaneous life in plays. It's much more important than interpretation. I would feel much more at risk going into a mainstream production where it was going to be "you stand there, then you walk there like that, then you raise your arm, then you say." I know the English director Trevor Nunn, who directed a Hamlet recently. If the actor playing Hamlet changed an inflection of a line, Trevor Nunn would say, "Why have you changed that?" and show him how to say it. I would have to leave that kind of production. To me, that kind of production is much more of a risk, much harder to bring to life and to discover things through. I have played Hamlet over four hundred times. I know that where I began was not where I ended. You have to keep changing, but these experiments mustn't become the point. They have to be the means to an end. You use different props, but the props mustn't become the point either. Take yesterday's production:what we saw is still a tragedy. A tragedy will arise if something happens that we wish didn't happen. Someone learns to be a king by making a lot of mistakes. Because he has made so many mistakes while learning to be a king, his kingship will be about dying, and his first act as king is to die for his country. This is the tragedy of Hamlet. We see Hamlet make lots of mistakes, we see him realise the mistakes he's made and then offer himself up to resolve it. And we see the mistakes catch up and be too much for him. I don't think that is "interpretation". Maybe Tim would call that an attitude. An ideal play should yield on some occasions an experience that touches us- not just in the mind, but also in our hearts, in our senses. 

...

Once while you were playing Cleopatra in the Globe, someone from the audience shouted out, "What's wrong with real women?" How did you handle that? 

First of all, I tried to go on. An interruption from the audience can be used to benefit the story. For instance, in Two Gentlemen of Verona, if a character is being asked to forgive another character, and someone shouts from the audience, "Don't do it!" that's very good for the story and means that that person is involved in the story. It heightens the drama, like in the kabuki theatre. But this person was saying, "What's wrong with real women? Why do I have to watch these fucking fairies?" This was not helpful to the drama at all. So my first decision was, I'm just going to go on. Ignore him. But then he also shouted, "I want my money back!" So without thinking, I went forward and said, "You can have your money back. Tell the box office, Queen Cleopatra says you can have your money back." It was very lucky that I said that, because I gave him what he wanted. I asserted that I was Queen Cleopatra. I didn't accept that I wasn't a woman. Then he said, "What is wrong with real women? There are lots of unemployed actors. Why are you playing these parts?" And I said, "I would love to talk with you about this, but my mind is rather entangled at the moment." And then people started to get angry with him, too. And I said, "No, no, my people"- so I made all of them my people. I make it sound like I was being clever, but I was just making it up to survive. What was important in retrospect, something that I learnt at the Globe, was not to think of the audience as the audience. I think of them as other actors. Every moment. Like last night, the gravedigger made us into the mourners, or the gravestones. I would find it difficult to go into a theatre where everyone was saying to me, "We are the audience over here and you are the actors over there!" As if on a film screen. For me, at the theatre everyone is an actor. And I always imagine the audience as other actors in the play. Other characters in my space. That's certainly how I used to play at the Globe.

You could have said, "Mark Rylance says you can get your money back."

When I said "Queen Cleopatra", I didn't come out of character. I felt like I met him halfway. It's like last night, when the actor playing Hamlet was embraced by a member of the audience, and he let him do that, but he stayed in character and moved on when he needed to. I wonder what would have happened if I just said, "What are you talking about, sir?" I could have shamed him. What I did was queenly in a way. I mean, he had a good point, you know. Why is Cleopatra played by a man? 

...

So the Globe had to decide on its identity, to avoid becoming just another tourist centre, a museum- not a serious place? 

I understand why people would think this about the Globe. Most London theatres have tourists in the audience. And when I played at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford in the eighties, the audience would change over after the interval. Half of the tourists had gone to see Anne Hathaway's Cottage during the first half and at the interval they came to see the second half of the play when the other half went off to the Cottage. I think it's a compliment that people want to travel and come to a theatre. I am sure the Bárka would be very happy if people visiting Budapest would come to their theatre. It's a good thing. That's not the problem. The problem is whether you are treating people to something that's fake, not really from Budapest. Something that has been made very cheaply to be sold to people who will think this is the real Budapest. So the Globe has to work very hard not just to make money out of doing something like Midsummer Night's Dream over and over again. I think that's why projects like our Anthony and Cleopatra were important, and why Tim Carroll's experiments were very important. What we did was to build an old piece of architecture similar to how the early music movement has reconstructed the instruments which Mozart, Liszt and Beethoven would have heard. The old theatre was rebuilt, and we learn lessons from it about the way the actors and the audience met each other. I think this is very challenging. We have no government subsidy, and yet there is no other theatre that's offering 700 tickets at 5 pounds each. The RSC has 11 million pounds of subsidy a year, and their tickets are 40 pounds each. That means the Globe is making a serious challenge. I don't think we abused the so-called tourist when we offered something challenging and serious.
One of the things we have learnt is that when the Shakespeare plays were first done, there wasn't a concept for a production. There was a concept for what theatre was. Plays were primarily being done in the amphitheatres, in the great halls of the nobility, at the court. So when people came to the Globe, there was definitely a concept that it would be good to share with people the language, to describe their desires and speak to their hearts with a language that was engaging and humorous, not a kind of teaching. It was actually an enjoyable way of learning about life, a way which didn't appear to be serious. The Globe demands that kind of storytelling, something that has a lot of visceral, sensual qualities. We dance, we have live music, we sing, and there is a lot of humour in the playing. Those are the old things that we have discovered by having to make the place work. The thoughts in the plays look after themselves, but entertainment and fun is just as important. In today's English theatre, storytelling, the ability to engage in dialogue with an audience, the dynamics and use of our voices, the use of our bodies- all the physical and sensual aspects of theatre have diminished. Sound has very much diminished in excellence. I think that is something that the Globe is very serious about. I don't think other theatres in England have the same length of rehearsal periods, or indeed have the kind of ballet-company training that we found we needed. But that has always been an aspect of the Globe, even in Sam Wanamaker's time. Those of us who have been working there have tried to explore the architecture of the Globe.

...

For most of the playwrights of the time- Ben Jonson, Middleton and the others- you can see there's a relationship between their life and their work. But with Shakespeare there is a gap, ten years that are lost. Between his life in the small town of Stratford and his first plays in London, which are very erudite, full of signs of a university education. Very witty plays about the court, about very powerful people.
For me the question to put to this Stratford man is "where did you get the life experience and the book learning that appears in your plays?" Because you can be born with a genius to write, but you can't be born with such book learning and life experience. There have always been questions about his capability to write those plays. For me as an artist, it's intriguing, and I'm not sure that it was a single genius in a pub somewhere overhearing stories, writing things down. 

But according to Al Pacino, there was Shakespeare sitting in a pub, thinking of Mark Rylance in the future.

Well, I'm just not sure. We know he didn't write them all on his own. The Renaissance was much better at enabling a group of people to work together. We know how most films and most television is made, with different writers contributing at different stages, contributing different aspects. Then there are all those enquiries and books written about other people whose lives more closely match, like Sir Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, about five or six candidates in all. 

Including Shakespeare himself?

He is a very strong candidate, since the plays are attributed to him. After his death, his friends said that this is the guy who did it. What upsets me about this is that even on the worldwide Shakespeare site, the one question you can't ask is "Did someone else write the plays?" If I ask the question, I'm treated as if I were a man who is denying the Holocaust. You cannot get a job in Academia if you don't think Shakespeare wrote the plays. If they are so confident about it, why are they so aggressive in rejecting the question? 

Shakespeare is better known than the Bible. Are you doubting.

I'm doubting God, yes. Well, from my experience with the plays, I do have my doubts. But I don't feel it is particularly important. Whoever wrote the plays, everybody seemed to be happy that they should be attributed to Shakespeare. So that's good. It's a good name. It wasn't a name of the actor, his name was Shaksper. The name has been changed by someone to Shakespeare, which aligns the name with Athena, the goddess of wisdom, who shakes her spear at ignorance. And the spear is the mind's ability to penetrate darkness or to slay ignorance. I just find the enquiry has been very helpful to me as an artist, and at the moment I'm just not sure who wrote the plays. I find Sir Francis Bacon very, very interesting and useful to read. He might have been involved as an editor. He was alive till 1626, when the First Folio was published, which I think he helped to put together with Ben Jonson. I decided to make a play about the authorship. There is a man who has all the books in his basement, has a webcam and broadcasts on the web. One day the authors themselves turn up in his past. William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere- they all come to his house. And he talks with them and interviews them. And every night features a different subject, and every night the audience also gets to ask questions. It's a live show, like a chat show. But it proceeds to larger questions, about what is identity and what is the right boundary for a question. 

Translated by

László Bérczes
is a theatre director and was the dramaturge for the Bárka's Hamlet. From 1996, he has been the artistic director of the Bárka Theatre in Budapest, where he has staged plays by Mroz·ek, Pinter and Synge, among others. He has published several books on theatre.