Actors and crew prepare to shoot a movie scene in a large chamber. Text on screen: 'Shakespeare Unbound. Hamlet 3.1. In conversation with Eryn-Jean Norvill.' James Evans, Bell Shakespeare's Resident Artist in Education, interviews actress Eryn-Jean Norvill in the large chamber.
JAMES EVANS:
EJ, Ophelia is really controlled and often mistreated by the men in this play - Hamlet, her father, Claudius. what effect do you think that has on her as character?
ERYN-JEAN NORVILL:
I often wonder about kind of, like, the fact that Ophelia doesn't seem to have any female role models in the play. We never really meet her mum and she seems to be under the thumb of these men. Laertes, in the beginning of the play, tells her to leave Hamlet alone and then Polonius tells her to, you know, not receive Hamlet. I find Ophelia very hard in the sense that all of the majority of her journey kind of happens off-screen. And then the men in her life seem to trigger these moments of severe pain and also a kind of descent and an abandonment as well.
JAMES EVANS:
What does she really think of Hamlet, in your opinion? Does she love him?
ERYN-JEAN NORVILL:
I think that she truly loves him, but I also think that it would be, er... the first time that she's felt those things.
JOHN BELL, CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, BELL SHAKESPEARE:
It's not a mature relationship. It's very fragile. She's a fragile person anyway and has been so suppressed and contained by her father and brother that she's got not much sense of herself or her own character. And Hamlet feels, at this stage, so cynical about women and about relationships after what his mother's just done that he takes it out on Ophelia. He suspects that she's been set up, that she's spying on him. The fact that she gives back his love tokens is very provocative and very offensive to him. So I think in this scene, all this bile about women - 'Frailty thy name is woman' - it all comes out here. It's really about his mother but he's taking it out on Ophelia.
JAMES EVANS:
Do you think her opinion of him changes throughout this scene, this nunnery scene?
ERYN-JEAN NORVILL:
Yes, it has to. I mean, it has to. In a way, I don't think that she loves him less, I just think that that's the... If she begins with the smallest amount of hope, then in the end, it's not there anymore.
JAMES EVANS:
How do you emotionally, or as an actor, how do you prepare for that?
ERYN-JEAN NORVILL:
Um... I find with Ophelia I think it's really important for me to work a lot in memory. Like, we never get to see them together, Hamlet and Ophelia together, so, er... it's important to have a very clear memory, or memories, of what they were before. I find that really important to kind of, like, get the depth of the despair or where she kind of, like... the idea of abandonment from something that was so... somebody that was so close and important to her, to somebody that she doesn't even recognise. And also it's just about playing as... Like, with the text, you know, those kind of open vows give you a lot of hints to see how kind of in a state of splay she is, kind of how open and shocked and agape her mouth is. And that's quite helpful in the learning of it, to kind of really delve into those, kind of, vows because they're very, like, obviously emotive in comparison to something being short and sharp. And then also just... I just... being able to be as present as I can and be as focused as I can and hopefully surprising myself.