Shakespeare is one of the biggies in theatre. Every great actor dreams of playing Hamlet or Othello and the challenge lies in finding your own way of doing the role so many have played before you.
As always, the male characters tend to be in the lead, especially in the tragedies, but there are some fun female characters to be found as well, like Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing and Kate from The Taming of the Shrew. On Night of the Arts, I will be doing Shakespeare for the first time, and the characters I’m playing are quite different from each other. The romantic Juliet and the macabre gravedigger from Hamlet don’t exactly have a lot in common – except that he could be digging her grave if he wasn’t already busy digging Ophelia’s.
So, how does this role or production differ from others? Well, this time around we have girls playing male roles: Oberon, king of the fairies, Puck, his loyal minion and the witty gravedigger are played by girls. This is partly because the group consist of more girls than boys but also because this is a chance for girls to do male roles which we have good and plenty of in theatre.
The fun thing is that during Shakespeare’s time all parts would be played by men since women were not allowed on stage. Young boys would play the female roles and then “work their way up” to playing the male ones once they had spent enough time in the company and knew the ropes. So this time around we’re doing it the other way, giving the girls a chance to do something out of the ordinary. I at least don’t mind taking off the dress and getting down and dirty with a shovel.
That said, playing the gravedigger seems easier for me than playing Juliet. The romantic teenager is a bit of a challenge since I have to hold two slightly contradictory characteristics in my head at the same time: sweet and funny. We’re supposed to play the romantic balcony scene for laughs, but at the same time Juliet is supposed to be sweet: not annoying, sappy or boring. It’s difficult because all-out comedy with big gestures and funny faces is easier for me than small, subtle moments of funny. Therefore, I find myself doing the gentle maiden or the sexually frustrated virgin instead of something in-between.
Shakespeare is a very versatile writer; he has a good grasp of both comedy and tragedy, and sometimes they blend into each other. Even Hamlet has some really funny parts and some of the comedies, if not really sad, have some slightly melancholic scenes as well. And hopefully we’ll be able to bring across the funny, sweet, tragic, serious and melancholic that these plays involve.
Lotta Heikkinen was pulled into the decadent depths of Thespians Anonymous in autumn 2009. Since then she has been courted by two men, defeated an evil Snow Queen, sung on stage and confronted the horrible shame of her son being a lunatic murderer. She spends her time eating, reading and wishing Josh Groban would give her a call.
Thespians Anonymous proudly present Shakespeare in the Park at the Night of the Arts, 23 August 2012 at 18:00 and 19:00 in Helsinki, Finland. Experience a collection of the best scenes from some of the most beloved Shakespearean plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream and Taming of the Shrew in their original language. For more information see Thespians Anonymous website or Shakespeare in the Park Facebook event.
Our thanks to the photographer, Håkan Mitts!