Shakespeare's lessons for me today

The Lesson for Today

I'm halfway through the rehearsal season for my second ever Shakespeare play, and loving it.  Great actors, great director, designers, stage manager, and of course, a great script.  There were many challenges in my last Shakespeare show - the biggest one that of playing four or five different minor characters - and I grew so much as an actor because of them.  The fun challenge I'm discovering now is that there's a particular pitfall associated with doing Shakespeare, and I'm falling into it a bit, I think.
This shit's famous.  You get cast in a Shakespeare show and you're the latest in a line of thousands of people who have played the part before you.  Also, in my case, I'm playing a part featured in a particularly famous spin-off, and initially I found it hard to get Tim Roth's Guildenstern out of my head.

So the temptation is that my joy at getting to be Guildenstern #24601 leads me to try and wring every single moment I can out of my time on stage, which leads me to be all over-played and self-conscious.  I have seen it in other Shakespeare productions, too: there's such a sense of privilege at getting to do those famous scenes that you out-Herod Herod a little bit.
I realised this today after reading my favourite book for the umpteenth time in my favourite coffee house (on the advice of Julia Cameron, I am taking myself on weekly Artist's Dates), and this quote stood out to me:

He is like a man who plays Yesterday on the piano with Brahmsian amplitude & lushness and so casually kicks aside the very thing which is the essence of the song

and also:

Lord Leighton (the painter) specialised in scenes of antiquity in which marvellous perplexities of drapery roamed the canvas, tarrying only in their travels to protect the modesty of a recruit from the Tyrone Power school of acting.  His fault was not a lack of skill: it is the faultlessness of his skill which makes the paintings embarrassing to watch, so bare do they strip the mind of their creator. 

It brought to the front of my mind the lesson I have been learning almost without realising it at every rehearsal:  I watch our Hamlet mutter "to be or not to be" and "alas, poor Yorick" so quietly and so casually that the rest of us in the cast can't take our eyes off him.  The best actors don't shout out "DID YOU HEAR? THAT WAS A REALLY FAMOUS LINE!" with their performance.
So off I go to learn how to hold all my research and nuances and technical work on the language with a very open hand, with the hope that not everyone will get everything every single time I'm on stage.  And that's why I'm so lucky to be Guildenstern #24601.

P.S.  If you have a few spare dollars, please consider helping this brilliant company out so I can continue doing good theatre with the Classical Theatre Company.  Or at least watch the video in the link and laugh at how cute our director JJ Johnston is.