Learning to be a Bard girl

Tandi Wright takes up the challenge to perform her Brutus soliloquy on stage at The Globe. Picture / Sheila Burnett

I'm galloping around the stage of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. Concentration is intense because the standard of galloping is high here, and I cannot afford to let the other horses down.

"Knees up, my angels!" Glynn MacDonald, our movement teacher, bashes her drum, te tum te tum te tum ...

There are 10 of us here from various corners of the world, all lucky enough to have been selected as international artistic residents. "You are royal steeds, not ponies. You must be that horse, vunshkat!"

Glynn has created a language of her own but the meaning is crystal clear. Her naughtiness and enthusiasm are infectious.

I'd been warned about the galloping before arriving and dismissed it as theatrical prancing, but many things changed when I walked on to this extraordinary stage. The galloping is exhausting, muscular, rhythmic ... iambic, in fact.

Shakespeare is everywhere you turn here, not deified, but infused in the woodwork. The Elizabethans were more attuned to their environment than we are (they had to be, it wasn't so easy for them to retreat to the lounge and turn the heater on), and it's reflected in the muscularity of their language.

Galloping is helping me to break out of my usual rhythms, and hopefully respond to the world in a more physical way. So, not only do I delight in having a daily gallop now, but I've already been a lizard and a peacock this morning and I'm feeling much better for it.

It is hard to describe just what is so extraordinary about The Globe stage. There is no lighting, no flashy set or props, no pre-recorded music. Theatre here is simple and raw and when you get it right, it's electrifying. The building is a replica of Shakespeare's original Globe built in 1599, and is made entirely of sweet-smelling wood.

You walk out on to the stage and three rows of balconies gaze down benevolently, wrapping around you in the shape of an O. At your feet is the pit where the poor folks can buy a cheap ticket and stand, exposed to the elements (often the best seats in the house). Pigeons flap lazily about and all is quiet and still.

The sense of what has gone before is overwhelming, and the empty space seems almost crowded - but always welcoming. Didn't Goethe say that all architecture was frozen music? Well, there's some heavenly choral number going down in this theatre.

After Glynn, our voice tutor arrives. Stuart Pearce always carries incense and a little chime to clear the air. He wears beautifully tailored trousers and sleek Italian shoes, can see auras, and listening to his voice is like being licked with honey. He is ever encouraging us to "ride the tiger" - all that scares us - to find "our note", the seat of our voice.

He grew up at Olivier's knee, and loves to recount the tales he heard as a boy. "And the critic said, 'Why do you always overact?' to which Larry replied, 'Why do you always underlive?"'

Next up is text work with Giles Block. Giles is a self-effacing, quintessentially English, enormous brain on legs. His lessons are like having a series of lights switched on rapidly, you come out wondering why you'd put up with sitting in the dark for so long.

It must be torture for him, watching us fumble our way to conclusions he is patiently leading us to discover for ourselves.

Finally, Mark Rylance arrives to work on our soliloquies. We all turn and beam at him, awed, hoping he can cure our incompetence. Mark is our theatrical Jesus. He is the artistic director of the Globe, and surely one of the most extraordinary Shakespearean actors of all time.

His work onstage is astonishing - so lucid, risky and apparently effortless that he sends you rushing home to check if the text really is that colloquial. He also has about him an open-mindedness I have never encountered before.

He seems to consider everything that is put to him - every throwaway remark, every desperate student attempt to say something memorable - and manages to find value in it.

It must be an exhausting way to live. I watch him and vow to change my crabbed, ungenerous ways. One of the first things he says is, "Lower your standards, you'll be amazed how much you can achieve." This becomes my mantra for the course.

The four weeks are a joyous chaos of newness and challenges that I wander through in sweet delirium, drunk with stimulation. It culminates in an open rehearsal on the Globe stage, which 820 punters decide is worth attending. We present a patchwork of our activities over the past month, and Rylance (to my unending delight) decides to work on my Brutus soliloquy in front of the crowd.

I know in theory that the audience become part of the performance at the Globe, but I'm bowled over by the huge energy bouncing back from them - it's like surfing a wave. Every face in that audience is visible, there is no hiding, any artifice will be sniffed out in a minute.

Enormous courage is required of the performer to be utterly honest, brave enough to really need the audience and find what you're looking for in their eyes - you begin to break down the idea of the audience being a separate entity from the actors.

Mark talks a lot about getting out of the way of the play. It's a very freeing idea because suddenly the responsibility of delivering a performance seems reduced. If only I could master the technique, my ego could quietly wander off to a corner of the stage while everyone else gets on with the show.

At the end of the performance Glynn sweeps us into a circle. "Well done, my angels," she says. "We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time."

* Tandi Wright is an actress. Her CV includes roles in Shortland Street, Being Eve, Willy Nilly, Xena, Street Legal, Serial Killers