Ben's Much Ado Blog

By Ben Spiller

HELLO and welcome to the first blog for the Derby LIVE production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, which will run at the Guildhall Theatre from 5 to 21 February.

My name's Ben Spiller and I'm the assistant director. Each week for the next eight weeks, I'll be keeping you updated on developments throughout rehearsals and the run of performances to offer an insight into the process of creating Derby Live's first home-grown theatre production.

We're only a few days into rehearsals and we've covered a lot of ground already. On Monday, Pete Meakin, the director, outlined the concept of the production, which relocates Shakespeare's play to late August 1965, when British military involvement was continuing in Aden and the women's liberation movement was gathering momentum.

Steven Blakeley (Heartbeat's PC Geoff Younger) and Lizzie Winkler (a regular at the Royal National Theatre and recently seen in Cinderella's Sisters at Derby Guildhall) play Benedick and Beatrice in our production.

Steven and Lizzie were both members of Derby Playhouse Youth Theatre when Pete ran it in the late 1990s.

As such, all three have a lively rapport, mutual respect and strong dynamic that inspires an exciting creativity.

At this stage, we're investigating Shakespeare's text, as adapted by Pete, in meticulous detail by discussing the various possible meanings and selecting the most appropriate meanings for this particular production.

Pete is pointing out literary devices used by Shakespeare and how they affect vocal delivery of the text as Steven and Lizzie read it.

Then the three of them start to play with movement and use of space, while not fixing too many moves yet.

We're all offering our thoughts and opinions on character, motivation and language and there's a real sense of collaboration.

The complex, yet ultimately positive, relationship between Benedick and Beatrice is at the heart of Much Ado; it's for that reason we're focusing exclusively on their moments in the play this week.

We're exploring their shared conversations (duologues) as well as their soliloquies, in which they share their thoughts with individual audience members.

By placing emphasis at this early stage on Benedick and Beatrice, we're laying the emotional foundations of the production.

The rest of the cast will join us next week.