Rehearsals for Othello don't start for at least a month. Sam Spruell and Thalissa Teixeira, who are playing Iago and Emilia, are, however, raring to go. For Spruell it is, in some senses, a return to his professional role on stage. 'I came out of drama school and started doing film and telly so when I got to play Othello with Andy Serkis as Iago -- I was playing Rodrigo -- I was very happy.' It's not new to him, 'I can remember bits of the play from then. It was a good production.' He adds, with typical dry playfulness, 'So, hopefully I'll be able to nick stuff off him.' For Teixeria it's a return to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. She played Diaphanta in Dominic Dromgoole's production of The Changeling in 2015.
For Teixiera, the Playhouse is a very different proposition from a normal stage. 'You see absolutely everyone and everyone sees you. There's something about being able to see people's eyes twinkling in the candlelight, about the utter involvement of everybody, that's extraordinary.' This will be Spruell's first time on the Playhouse stage. Fortunately he has been discussing it with other actors, 'Someone told me that it's one of the quietest theatres they've worked in. Lights make a lot of noise, the mechanics make a lot of noise and this person said the Playhouse was just unbelievably quiet.' This fact seems to be a mixed blessing. Spruell thinks 'that's sometimes quite a frightening place to perform because it literally means there is no distraction from you.' It comes, however, with it benefits, 'I think it's got to be liberating as well, where you don't have to work too hard to make people hear you.' Teixeira finds that there are other distributions of labour that differ from contemporary stage. 'The audience have to work quite hard too and I think that's quite fun. There's a lot they have to concentrate on. First they go into that space and they're taking in the most beautiful spectacle as it is, you don't need to put in any set or costume or actors even. They have to absorb all of that and then suddenly they have all these characters coming in from everywhere and I think they have to work quite hard as an audience, which is really useful, because then you're all, actors and audience, performing together in a way.'
That coming together is crucial to Spruell. 'I think,' he says, 'that it makes sense of Shakespeare. When there's a fourth wall it makes less sense to me. When there's a proper interaction and a bit of rowdiness, a bit of conversation going on between the performers and the audience, that makes more sense of Shakespeare to me.' The meeting of the beauty of the playhouse with a different sensibility seems to be at the centre of their thinking, 'I imagine Ellen [McDougall, the director] is interested in the collision between the classical and the modern,' says Spruell.
Collision seems a particularly striking way to describe what might happen on stage. It is a violence that is congruent with where they are heading in their explorations of these 400-year-old characters. 'Iago is an interesting and damaged person I wanted to explore.' But for Spruell the damage extends beyond the individual, 'Reading it now, the play is also about a damaged community which turns in on itself and, re-reading it in the context of a Brexit or a Trump world, I found that much more present than I'd understood before.' At a time when every newspaper is asking about the cohesion of different communities, it lends a potency to the work that Spruell and Teixeira are thinking about. 'The world seems like a less friendly place than it was maybe size months ago,' says Spruell. 'It's probably exactly the same but there's ill-feeling that's been given a voice, a kind of legitimate voice, in the same way in the play. If we get it right it will really speak to a modern audience and we won't be thinking about the world 400 years ago, we'll be thinking about the world now. Even though it's a beautiful wood-panelled candlelit place it has to find relevance.' Teixeira develops this thought, 'That beauty can be reversed. It can feel quite claustrophobic if you make it an uncomfortable place to hear things that are being said. There's definitely a massive shift recently in terms of the way that people can openly speak about subjects that are really quite controversial -- especially about race and borders.' With those two words Teixeira opens up the themes of Othello to the conversation about political feeling today and you can see why they both think this play is so important to put on now. 'People are horribly racist or guarding their plot,' Teixeira continues, 'is exactly how people are talking in this play.' It is close to the heart of this tragedy. For Spruell, 'People are letting rip. They think they're being set free to express themselves but actually they're being set free to be horrible.'
This confusion about where people are from, what the boundaries are, what is OK to say, is evident in casting Teixeria. As she herself says, 'It's really interesting that Ellen [McDougall] has cast a mixed-race Emilia, especially towards the end where Emilia is being opening racist towards Othello. Where does that come from? I've not figured this out yet but does it come from a complete mind-washing, where she's just been brainwashed in how to speak to people who are different and she doesn't see herself in that construct? Or does it come from a point where she's saying, "Stop letting our team down, proving them right, these stereotypes that are being given out" and gettin angry and upset with him? I don't know yet but I do think it's really interesting.'
This openness and readiness to explore is, of course, part of the actor's process. Before rehearsals begin things are open for them but it is, equally, a time of fruitful work. Spruell is approaching Iago slightly differently from other parts, 'I certainly have lots of thoughts around the themes of the play, or of the individual character I'm playing, but I think for this one, because Iago's such a big part, I'll definitely be learning lines before I start.' This is not usual. 'I like to be as loose as possible and I sometimes feel that learning lines beforehand closes my mind. You start making decisions, so with this one I'll maybe learn a chunk, or chunks, and try to stay open for the rest of it.' Again his dry self-deprecation comes into play, 'Actually, maybe I can be just as open and have learned some lines. Maybe I've just been lazy before.' Teixeira's process is a little different, 'I reckon as soon as you get a part, everything that you talk about and everything that you see has a relevance to what you're doing. It fits in perfectly and maybe it didn't before you got the part. So that's the kind of preparation I do. It's just hyper-listening to everything that's going on around me, and reading.'
Coming back to the play has, unsurprisingly, changed the way Spruell thinks about it. 'When I first did Othello I always thought it was about two people and then some kind of add-on women, but actually it does feel like it's a community.' Teixeira immediately picks up on this idea of women in the play, 'In terms of the women, it does feel like they're an add-on until you look at the huge shift between Emilia and Desdemona. Desdemona at the start is, "I'll take no bullshit and I'll just marry who I want whoever he is" and she's a really strong role model for Emilia. Then Emilia sees a slow decline: "Go where you're told to go, stay at home when you're told to stay at home" and she realises that's her and does the complete opposite, branches out. I love that about her.'
These themes, which seem so graspable, attain a further refinement in the language of Shakespeare, especially when it comes to speaking in verse. The idea that this is a not a challenge is quickly dismissed by Spruell, 'It's absolutely ridiculous if you say it's not.' Teixeira agrees, 'It's impossibly hard and you have to do a lot of work at it. I always find it really irritating when people say it's easy. I mean, obviously, it's a completely different way of expressing yourself that you never get to do in the day to day. It feels beautiful to do once you've grasped it.' Spruell then says something that seems to apply to both his and Teixeira's thoughts about this production as a whole and, perhaps, beyond that to the very community we all live in; 'Despite all the experts who tell you how to speak verse it will either sound truthful or it won't. That's my yardstick.'
