Poetic "Ending"

For one reason or the other I didn't get around to blogging about what happened at my last rehearsal, which was on Friday. I didn't want to double up tonight, so here is an overview.

I got to go in late for this one. In fact, I will not have the option of going in that late for any remaining rehearsals. But it was only a short scene in which to go over. The scene wherein Buckingham gives his final speech before being led off to execution.

I have been working on this speech for a while, and was already off book for it when we ran through the scene. (Though I kept my book just in case.) The director, by her own admission unused to being so satisfied with a scene upon seeing it acted for the first time, only had me run it a few times.

The interpretation that came out for the scene is pretty close to what I have seen in my head. The question remains; if the director was that happy with it that early, is there any room for change or polishing? I would think there is. She is an open minded director.

I think I delivered the speech a bit too fast. It was slower than the preceding scene, and the director did say my pace would make a nice change of pace from all of the loud, hurried chaos that comes before and after my scene. "A break" for the audience in a way. Still, if permitted, I'd like to deliver the speech at an even slower pace as time goes on. To allow for even more deliberation on the part of Buckingham. I want it to be resigned, but not too casual.

In several ways the director is already treating the death of Buckingham differently than she has treated any of the other deaths that take place at Richard's command. I'm not sure I can reveal all of the ways in which this is true without giving away elements of the production design. But I can say, as I have before, that he will not be "dying" on stage, as many of the other doomed in this play will be doing. This death will also be afforded more "dignity" as it were, some of the frills that accompany the other deaths being left out for that of Buckingham. Having not been directly cursed by Queen Margaret in Act I, the sense the director, and to an extend I want to convey is that there is something different about Buckingham, despite his sins.

The poetic nature of his final speech in Act V would seem to support this, when compared to the more rushed and angry speeches of the other characters as they face death.

This concept will also apply to the character after death, it seems. Though not much was discussed in detail yet, the character is to appeal as "a different kind of ghost". Perhaps he has more free will to come and go as he pleases than do the other ghosts? Perhaps his reasons for coming back to torture Richard are just that much different from the others that his presence is different for some reason. (He is given a rhyming couplet at the end of the ghost barrage, indicative of the end of a sequence but also affording me a convenient out for playing his ghostly presence in a different manner than the others.)

But, as Richard says in this play, "I run before my horse to market." We have yet to run the ghost scene. But I mention it here today as an elaboration on the "there's something about Buckingham" motif that is materializing in my performance in this production.

Tonight we run a coronation scene added by the director.