IAGO. … strong circumstances
Which lead directly to the door of truth…
Othello (3.3)
RESEARCH IS AN EXTREMELY USEFUL TOOL FOR ACTORS when they are in the process of creating a performance. It can give them loads of information about the world the characters inhabit, the culture in which the story is set, and the politics of the era. An investigation into the writer’s own life will also help the actors understand the characters in the play and why they behave as they do. And visual research can reveal interesting facts about buildings, transportation and the clothes that the characters would wear. In fact, the deeper the research, the more rewarding the results.
But research can be more than just an information provider; it can also be a stimulus to the actor’s creative muse. When actors are preparing for a performance in a play or film, they often find that ideas come from unexpected places. It could be an item of news on the television; a stranger they see walking down the street; a phone call from an old friend; a song on the radio. Anything. A random incident which doesn’t have any connection to the production may suddenly give the actor an inspirational idea about their character.
And these moments of inspiration can sometimes pop up when an actor is carrying out a piece of research. Even a mundane investigation can sometimes cause a brilliant idea to spring into the actor’s mind. It may have nothing to do with any particular area of research, but because the actor’s imagination is open to new ideas, creative inspiration is in free-flow. A photograph in a book. An article on Wikipedia. A video on YouTube. And kapow! A sudden brainwave that the actor would never have had without it.
It’s important to realise that research is not only useful and informative; it is also an indispensable part of the creative process because it is the yeast in the actor’s creative dough.
The Writer
What was the writer trying to say and what influenced their thinking?
If the actors understand what the writer was trying to say, and why he or she was trying to say it, they are more likely to convey this clearly in performance. Research into a writer’s life, other work and their artistic influences will give a greater understanding of the work being rehearsed.
Biographies
Studying the life of writers and the people they knew can often give a tremendous insight into the characters and the plots of their plays.
Let’s face it: what happens to us in our life has a major impact on our understanding of the world. So it is inevitable that a writer will tap into his or her own experiences in the development of characters and plot. Eugene O’Neill, for instance, dramatised whole periods of his own life in plays such as The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s Journey into Night and A Moon for the Misbegotten. And writers like Harold Pinter and John Osborne often created characters based on the people they knew.
The Writer’s Other Work
The understanding of a particular play can be enhanced by examining the themes, characters, relationships and plots of other scripts by the same writer.
Writers often explore similar themes and plots in their work. For instance, Alan Ayckbourn often satirises middle-class aspirations in his plays. Harold Pinter unravels with the way we attempt to communicate with each other – or fail to communicate. Similar characters sometimes crop up in different circumstances, like the faded Southern beauty who appears in several of Tennessee Williams’s plays and films. The same relationship may be explored in a variety of ways. With increased knowledge of the writer’s other work, it is possible to build a greater understanding of the characters in their plays.
The Writer’s Contemporaries
Cultural trends, social conventions and artistic ambitions are often mirrored in the plays of writers from the same period.
Writers who have stood the test of time usually fall into two categories. They were either the masters of the prevailing theatrical style or they bucked the current trend and created a new kind of theatre. Sometimes they were in both categories. They created a new form of theatre, and immediately became the best exponent of the new style. Look at the plays of Oscar Wilde or Noël Coward. When they had their successes, other writers jumped on the bandwagon and wrote comedies of manners with witty dialogue, but none of the other writers did it as well as Wilde or Coward.
Plays written by the writer’s contemporaries can also reveal how astonishing and original the writer’s work was at the time it was first performed. If you read other Elizabethan plays, you will see how Shakespeare’s play Hamlet would have shocked the Elizabethan audiences. It was, and still is, an enigmatic exploration of a troubled and indecisive mind, but Elizabethan audiences had never seen a play with such an irresolute main character. The prevailing style was to write about people who knew who they were and said what they wanted. So when Hamlet walked on the stage and said he didn’t know exactly how he was feeling and he wasn’t sure what he should do next, the Elizabethan audiences must have been amazed. What sort of hero is that?
If you understand the impact that a play had on its first audiences, you can start to find ways to recreate that impact for a modern audience. Hamlet is often seen as a rather melancholy exploration of madness, but for the Elizabethan audience it was a shocker. Something to wake them up and make them start thinking.
Visual Imagery
What did the world look like to the characters in the play?
Photographs and Films
When researching a story that takes place from the late nineteenth century onwards, photographs and documentary films are a tremendous source of information. This visual imagery can be found quite easily on the internet and in libraries. But some archived photographs can be rather deceptive because they depict extremes of chic that only the fashion-conscious rich could afford. So care should be taken to ensure that the photographs are of real people in a real environment. Similarly, documentary films are better for research than fictional films because they are more likely to present an accurate depiction of the world, rather than an idealised or romanticised version created by an art director.
Paintings and Illustrations
Paintings and illustrations can also be quite deceptive. Of course, if an actor is about to play Henry VIII or Elizabeth I, he or she will be able to get some idea of how they dressed and where they lived by looking at contemporary paintings of them in the National Portrait Gallery. Even if an actor is playing a fictional, high-ranking character from the past, there will probably be paintings of posh interiors and people wearing expensive clothing. The trouble is that poor people didn’t get their portraits painted.
However, some artists from the past did depict people the way they really were. Some Dutch painters like Frans Hals and Adriaen van Ostade, for instance, would often paint ordinary people in ordinary places. And in Britain, William Hogarth with his extraordinary sequence of illustrations in The Rake’s Progress and Industry and Idleness gave us an insight into the way people actually dressed in the early eighteenth century and what they really looked like.
Newspapers
Photographs and illustrations from newspapers can often be a useful resource for visual research. They also contain written information that may give an insight into a particular era. Some libraries have bound copies of old newspapers and magazines, and many of them are being made available on the internet.
Fashion and Clothing
How would a character dress? How would their clothes affect their physicality? Does their clothing have any bearing on their self-image?
In an ideal situation, the actors will work with a costume designer to find the appropriate clothing for their characters. But on other occasions the actors will simply be provided with costumes or be in the position of having to find their own. But whichever of these situations the actors find themselves in, the more knowledge they have about the clothing of the period, the more they will understand how their own character would dress.
Styles
Styles of clothing from a particular period can have a tremendous impact on the people who are wearing them, but it is important for an actor to make sure they understand the extent of their character’s interest in clothing. Look around you. How many people are wearing ultra-fashionable clothes these days? Not many. And they are usually pretty young. The rest of the population wear an assortment of rather ordinary items: jeans, sweaters, suits. Most people spend their lives wearing the same unfashionable clothes they wore when they were in their late teens and early twenties.
It is also worth considering the sort of work that people do. Does an estate agent wear the same sort of clothes as a plumber? Of course not. And two hundred years ago would a clerk have worn the same clothes as a carpenter? No. Class, position and occupation all have an impact on the kind of clothes that people wear.
So looking back in time to a particular period of history, it may be possible to identify the fashionable clothing of the time, but it’s important to remember the following:
• Not many people actually wear ‘high fashion’.
• Older people tend to wear styles that were popular when they were young.
• The way people dress is often closely related to their occupations.
Materials and Undergarments
Silk feels different from cotton. Velvet has quite a different weight from wool. Brocade is heavy and stiff, whereas satin is light and cold to the touch. It is important to know what materials the clothes of a particular period would have been made from because it will affect the way a character moves. If a dress is made of heavy brocade, it will be quite an effort to lug it about. Movement will have to be slow and precise. On the other hand, if a dress is made of silk, it will be light and flowing, and movement will be unrestricted.
Similarly, undergarments will affect the way a person moves. Stiff, tight corsets are extremely restricting, particularly of the upper body. Sometimes seventeenth- and eighteenth-century corsets were so tight that it was impossible to fill the lungs properly. No wonder women were continually passing out. The big hooped skirts that eighteenth-century women sometimes wore must have been really difficult to manoeuvre. They would hardly have been able to sit down. And even then they would have had to perch on the edge of an upright chair and be careful that the whole thing didn’t spring up in the air. Really difficult.
Jewellery, Accessories and Make-up
What sort of jewellery did people wear? What did people carry around with them? How much make-up did they wear? (And was make-up purely for women?) In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, rich women often carried fans around to waft in front of their faces, and men used handkerchiefs quite flamboyantly to express themselves. And why was this? Well, there was no dry-cleaning in those days and expensive clothing couldn’t be washed properly, so after a while it must have smelled pretty bad. The ladies’ fans and the gentlemen’s handkerchiefs were very expressive accessories that could be used in all manner of ways, but when they were doused in perfume and waved in front of your face, they could also help to ward off all manner of evil odours.
It’s also worth finding out what personal objects people would have had with them. Did they carry around fob watches, did they wear wristwatches or would they find out the time by looking at a clock? And how about glasses? If glasses were expensive and not very good, that must have meant that some people would have had a very blurred view of the world and that would have affected the way they looked at other people. It could even affect the way they moved around the room. In the past, people would have written with a quill pen. That means they would have had to sharpen the nib and they would have had to know how to do that. How often did a nib need sharpening? How often was a quill replaced? People would certainly have carried penknives around with them in order to keep their pens in good nick.
Then there were snuff boxes in some periods. Cigarette cases in others. Lighters. Matches. Little notebooks. After Hamlet has seen the ghost of his father, he says, ‘My tables: meet it is I set it down…’, and then he writes in a little book, his ‘tables’ (1.5). But what did he write with? And what would the notebook be like?
The design and construction of personal objects tells us a lot about an era, and as props they can give an actor plenty of scope for physical action and a true sense of the period of the play or film.
Hairstyles and Beards
Tightly coiffed hair held in place with pins and oils feels very different from a shaved head or loose romantic curls. Did men grow beards and/or moustaches, and how thick would they have been? What does it feel like to have a waxed moustache? Were wigs popular and why? Apparently some complicated eighteenth-century wigs for women were built on bamboo frames like a guardsman’s bearskin. How on earth did they keep them in place and what must it have felt like?
What did the buildings look like, both inside and out? How did people get from one place to another?
Buildings
The buildings people live in affect the way they behave. If you are accustomed to large, airy rooms with high ceilings, you may feel more expansive and important, whereas a cramped hovel will lower your spirits and may even give you a permanent stoop. A person who is used to elegance and grandeur will feel uncomfortable in a worker’s cottage and vice versa. A semi-detached suburban home will feel very different from a crowded, rambling farmhouse, and each will have an effect on the people who live in them.
Interior Decor and Furniture
What does the interior of a room look like and what sort of furniture would it have? Are the chairs comfortable? Is the furniture sturdy? In some periods, a room would be oppressively full of ornaments and pictures, while in others it would be generally bright, light and empty. If a character is playing a scene in a cold stone hall with an enormous fireplace blasting out heat, it would be quite a different atmosphere from being in a cosy, snug sitting room.
Domestic Appliances
Domestic appliances have been quite different in different periods of history, so it is important to know what a character would actually be using and how they would use it. For instance, in Noël Coward’s play The Vortex, the character of Nicky keeps putting different records on the gramophone. But it wouldn’t have been as simple in the 1920s as it is now. First of all, he would have selected a brittle, breakable ten-inch shellac disc from the shelf. Then he would have carefully removed its cardboard cover and put the disc on a green-felt turntable. Finally, he would have had to replace the used steel needle with a new one and wind up the clockwork mechanism, before manoeuvring the heavy pick-up arm over the record and placing the needle carefully in the groove. What a palaver! And all that for only three-and-a-half minutes of music.
Personal and Public Transport
How would a character get about and how would that affect their clothing and their physical well-being? If they have travelled by horse before they arrive in a scene, they could be weary, muddy and sore. If they have travelled by taxi, they may be relaxed and smartly dressed. Omnibuses would have been crowded and smelly, and trains would have been interminably slow. If a character has arrived by some sort of transport it will, of course, affect the way they feel as they enter a scene.
Blue-screen and CGI
Blue-screen is when the actors are filmed performing a scene without being on an actual set at all. They are literally filmed in front of a blue screen. The setting is filled in later by digital editors who can replace the blue areas of the picture with any background they like. It’s the same with CGI (computer-generated imagery). The actors could be filmed fighting monsters who aren’t there at all, in a fantastical world that only exists as a computer-generated image. If actors are filming in these conditions, they would have no idea of their surroundings if they hadn’t done the appropriate research, asked the right questions and looked at lots of pictures.
Economics, Politics and Religion
What is the overriding economic and political climate of the time in which a play or film is set? And how much would it have affected the characters?
Caryl Churchill’s play Serious Money deals with corporate finance and greed in the City of London. Clearly the actors in that play need to research that particular world. Racing Demon by David Hare is about the Church of England, and Nick Stafford’s adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s novel War Horse is about the First World War. Obviously these subjects would need to be fully researched. The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project, which deals with a homophobic murder, and The Colour of Justice by Richard Norton-Taylor, which dramatises the inquiry into the killing of Stephen Lawrence, are based on actual incidents and use transcripts and interviews to create dialogue. The actors in both of these plays would benefit enormously in their quest to present a truthful version of events if they conduct some extensive research.
But some plays are set in the context of a particular political environment without it actually being the main theme. Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children is about the effect of war on a group of characters struggling for survival. Amy’s View by David Hare is set against the evolution of Thatcher’s Britain. Even though the political background of these plays is not their primary focus, actors working on either of them would benefit enormously from suitable research.
And although some plays don’t have such strong political themes, it’s safe to say that most characters in most plays live in a specific time and place where events outside the scope of the play could easily affect the characters’ behaviour.
Geography and Climate
The surrounding landscape can have a marked effect on the people who live in the area. It can affect their mood and their outlook on life.
The actors should have a clear vision of the outside world when they are in a play. A busy street outside the door will affect the way a character enters a room quite differently from isolated moorland. The weather may be hot or cold; wet or windy; misty or bright. The climate of an area can affect the way the characters think and behave.
If these things are not outlined in the text of the play, then the actors should get together and make some decisions. These apparently minor details can often bring a play to life.
Society
What rituals, customs and traditions affect a character?
Different societies have markedly different ways of educating their children. They have different cultural rituals concerning birth, marriage and death. Courting rituals vary greatly and there are different attitudes to sex and gender issues. In different societies, people engage in different pastimes and leisure activities when they are not working. Sometimes knowledge of these things is essential in order to get a proper understanding of the way the characters behave in a play. The actors should not assume that their character will have the same attitude to these things that they themselves have.
Art and Science
Who were the major artists at the time, and what were the latest scientific theories and discoveries?
Art is often an expression of the age. Actors can learn a lot about the inner life of their characters by researching works of art created at the time of the play. Contemporary philosophers can also help the actor understand the values and attitudes of the period in which a play is set. Current scientific discoveries could also have an impact on the characters, and it’s worth remembering that a character can only know the things that have been discovered or invented up until the time of the play.
There is no telling what area of research will inspire an actor. Sometimes a new bit of knowledge will unexpectedly open up the floodgates of the imagination and the actor will find themselves in the creative zone. Research is not necessarily just a way of collecting interesting facts. When actors are being deeply creative, a new bit of knowledge can sometimes produce ‘eureka’ moments of discovery.
Research will give the actors a clear understanding of the world of the play, and that in turn will help them reveal the unique and complex inner lives of their characters.