‘The laughs hit me in the heart’: a view from the stage at Shakespeare’s Globe

After months of uncertainty and being told to retrain, I got my chance to act at a beautiful and iconic theatre. Fair bit of pressure not to be rubbish …

It’s difficult to describe the feelings of jubilation, guilt, disbelief, confusion, gratitude and fear that came with the news that Shakespeare’s Globe would reopen and that I would be playing Flute in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, then Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, then both concurrently. I couldn’t stop thanking God or panicking.

I’d had 15 months of uncertainty to prepare myself mentally, and when I finally drew into Blackfriars station on the Thames and saw the iconic thatched wooden “O” of the Globe sitting on the riverbank, living, as it had, in my dreams for over a year, I started hyperventilating the second I alighted. I regained composure long enough to wave some masked hellos to the strangers I would be spending the next six months with, then lost it all again when we made our introductions on stage. I have an occasional stammer that hasn’t really troubled me since my mid-20s. It came blazing back the second I tried to say “Fouracres” and “playing”, then us brand-newbies were introduced to the building.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3l2WTXM