I just wanted to share something Andrew and I were saying as he helped me lug my books to the car the other night.
There are so many exciting possibilities for any question, and there is a lot of ambiguity, so you can't really say one is "right, obviously".
But your performances will be stronger if you are playing something specific. (Even if we can't tell exactly WHAT you meant, we should know you really MEANT something.)
And the heartbreaking part is that if you have 6 possibilities and choose one, 5 are left behind, like puppies at the shelter, all looking at you with their big puppy-dog eyes, as if to say, "But it COULD be his ambition to be king, right? Take me home, please..."
But, as Andrew said, there's always next time. Which is the great thing about Shakespeare. I keep thinking this is the play I don't know so well but even with this one I've already been in one. Raise your hand if you've been in Midsummer more than 5 times. Yeah. This is what I'm saying, it will come around again.
So it's not the end of the world to make a choice, even tho the other choices will make you feel bad for leaving them. Steel your heart and carry on with the choice that feels the best to you right now.
This is a great point to make. A wise teacher once told me not to forget two things when I play Hamlet: he goes on a "journey" from the beginning of the play, to the end, and don't feel the need to approach the role as though it were the last/only time I will ever play him. (and, indeed, I only see this as the first of 3 or 4 times I plan to play the role before I get too old, and that doesn't even include directing the play eventually...) My personal goal is to discover and explore a number a various choices, line interpretations, general emotions, etc. that make sense within the scene and communicate the character and the story to the audience so that every performance I can let myself go and just react to whatever you give me, whatever the audience gives me, and react to however I feel that night. That's what preparation is for, isn't it, so that we can just let ourselves go? To let our creative, impulsive side rule, like what Babs has spoken about regarding the right brain. So one need not necessarily be locked in to the same exact choice every performance. But that freedom only comes with good preparation. I suppose that's pretty basic acting philosophy, but hopefully it's worth repeating.
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