Stewart Pearce is the Master of Voice at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. He works with the actors to aid us all to meet the wonderful opportunity of speaking in an amphitheatre built for sound; an amphitheatre built also for some of the most beautiful sounds conjured by the English language, under the feather of William Shakespeare. When we gather the actors on the first day of rehersal at the Globe, I particularly love the pregnant moment of silence before I start to impart welcomes, introductions, and all the information that enables a group of skilled craftspeople to make something as elusive as a production of a Shakespeare play. I try to woo this expectant moment of stillness before business by reading a poem, and this year I read this:
This we have now
Is not imagination
This is not
Grief or Joy
Not a judging state
Or an elation
Or sadness
These come
And go
This is the presence
That doesn't
It's dawn, Husam
Here in the splendour of coral
Inside the friend, the simple truth
Of what Hallaj said
When grapes turn to wine
They're wanting
This
When the nightsky pours by
It's really a crowd of beggars
And they all want some of this!
This
That we are now
Created the body, cell by cell
Like bees building a honeycomb
The human body and the Universe
Grew from this,
Not this
From the Universe and the human body.
Rumi writes of presence and when I dare to read aloud one of his resonant thoughts I draw on all of my work with Stewart.
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