Acting

Watch a video diary from One Man, Two Guvnors to see improvisation within the rehearsal room.

Director Katie Mitchell and her company of actors and multimedia experts seeks to create a dynamic and multi-faceted performance. Using the text of a novel, they build a visual narrative paragraph by paragraph which is created live on stage every night.

Director Howard Davies and actors Charity Wakefield, Mark Bonnar and Zoe Wanamaker talk about method and processes of acting for Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard.

Improvisation is a useful tool in the rehearsal room. Daniel Rigby takes us into the rehearsal room for One Man Two Gunvors.

In one of Katie Mitchell's multimedia productions, one actor may find itself representing the voice of one character, the head of a second and the arm of a third. Meanwhile, a fourth actor might be manipulating lights and a video camera to relay the image to projection screens.

Highly individual 'script' books were created by each actor to enable them to follow their own path through the complex maze of the multimedia production.

Head of Voice at the National Theatre, Jeannette Nelson works on Ophelia's speech ‘O, what a noble mind...' with actor Ellie Turner. The look at vowel sound in the speech as the conduit of emotion.

Chris Saul works with Jeannette Nelson, the National Theatre's Head of Voice, on a speech in Much ADo About Nothing. Chris did not know the speech and had to discover the meaning of the text. By reading through the verse and doing an exercise Chris is able to convey this meaning to the audience.

In a scene from Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, where Saint Joan is accused by the bishops, Sioned Jones moves between three chairs representing herself, France and God. This helps her open up the space and give a sense of breadth and surety to the speech, which is then assisted by reading the speech in unison with Chris Saul.

Voice coach Jeannette Nelson works on Hamlet speech with actor Ferdinand Kingsley.