Blowing Your Nose On Stage.

I dreamt to-night that I did feast with Caesar,

And things unlucky charge my fantasy: I have no will to wander forth of doors, Yet something leads me forth.

Cinna the Poet – Julius Caesar – William Shakespeare

The broad imposing figure of Mark Anthony stands before the mass of faces, at the apex of everyone’s vision, he holds up his arms as passionate invective is pulled from his lips into the ears of the ravenous horde. Caesar is dead and betrayal and lusty ambition are to blame.

O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel
The dint of pity: these are gracious drops.
Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold
Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here,
Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors.

The stage is set out around the ornate white coffin of Caesar as Mark Anthony speaks into a big vintage silver microphone, holding aloft the perished blood splattered robe of Caesar, pointing out each bloodied slash in turn, his voice rumbling out into the dusky cloud-scarred sky. Looming over him is the concrete frame of the church with two large bullet shaped windows either side of him and big iron bells sitting 10 ft above his head waiting to ring out at the death of Caesar. The throng, increasingly rowdy shout and call for retribution, baying, the brethren is cocked:

All - Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay! Let not a traitor live!

Behind Mark Anthony goat-masked figures prowl under the great black doors of the church plotting and fomenting the unrest with pointed thrusts:

All - We'll mutiny.

First Citizen - We'll burn the house of Brutus.

The multitude is ready to blow, the masked men shout and stamp their feet, betrayal, corruption, villainy, between the masks and the shouts stands a sweet elderly gentleman, wearing a black ill-fitting suit and full of doddery shaky fragility, he pulls a hanky from his pocket, scrunches it up in his rubbery old-man hand and casually blows his nose. There is...

Hang on a minute...

What was that?

***

I  was volunteering at the Iris Theatre at the Actors Church in Covent Garden and the following is something that happened that you won’t read in the news, but if the world was indeed in my command, you jolly well would be. Reality was at stake. *

I was an Usher, presiding over a production of Julius Caesar, fully comfortable with my role wearing black and standing in the shadows, when a little old man reached into reality and blew his nose with it.

Already leaning on the side of danger, the show was a promenade theatre piece that took place in the grounds of the church and moved around the garden with the different scenes of the play; the audience were told when to move to a new area and several of the spectators were recruited for small non-speaking parts. 
In terms of the potential flammability of reality, the 'dramatic petrol' had already been spilt but in none of the previous 15 performances had anyone dropped a match, I guess we had somehow got used to the acrid smell and didn’t see it coming.

During Act 3 scene II, after Caesar has been killed and his coffin is in the middle of the scene, there is a piece where Mark Anthony says this:

You will compel me, then, to read the will? Then make a ring about the corpse of Caesar, And let me show you him that made the will. Shall I descend? and will you give me leave?

The crucial bit here was about making a ring around Caesar (the coffin), ordinarily a few people in the front row, crept up self consciously and knelt in a semi circle on the steps around the coffin, all the while looking back at their friends and family giggling. There was no danger they would break through that film of the imaginary world and discard reality like a soiled tissue, they were mere visitors, fully secure in their role.

On this night however, the audience was a little too eager and with an unfortunate hand movement from Mark Anthony, the crowd thought it was time to move on and surged towards the stage, only to realise pretty quickly that the scene was still going.  Their faces moved in two directions at once and they did a strange dance of indecision, as two forces worked on them at once – fight, flight, fight, flight; chicken-like they prowled the stage. 

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. You all do know this mantle: I remember The first time ever Caesar put it on; 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent...   

They were suddenly trapped between worlds; actors mixed and collided with non-actors – people collided with characters, bodies with bodies – there was a moment of pure spontaneity and perplexity, a pause of infinity when no one knew what was going to happen.  Would the audience fight, push forward into the scene, take their mistake to the end, grab the microphone and overthrow Rome three acts before it should have been done – in a moment of pure hyperreality, reality and illusion disappears into each other and the play becomes all and nothing of our immanent perception; and for that transient recess in certainty, it seemed possible.

As they collided the two imaginary domains became no more real or present than the other - nobody knew who they were and confusion was the new emperor, we all waited for someone to take charge, reinstate reality and bring us all back to that sturdy plane of consistency. 

That person was inevitably Mark Anthony, his voice faltered for a second before restoring a sense of solidity as Shakespeare’s realm won out, putting everyone back in their place, and the new possible world of multiplicity and uncertainty died rather quickly. 

The misplaced audience, coming back to themselves, sort of awkwardly stood next to the coffin, with some going straight back to sit down, but our elderly hero had gone too far and had managed to get himself stuck behind the actors, the show went on:

O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel The dint of pity: these are gracious drops. Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here, Here is himself, marr'd, as you see, with traitors.

And as Mark Anthony was lamenting, and gesticulating and wailing at the unsavoury death of Caesar, there stood our man, just off to the right, shuffling with his hands in his pockets; one last vestige of infinity, he had the look of a defeated man, a dribbly eyed silhouette, stood behind his wife, humming, waiting like a obedient puppy, while she talks to her friend in the street.  

He had sweetness about him that contrasted the incendiary mood of the context, but he was still caught in-between and he had a decision to make. To stay or to go, the show or the audience? In a moment of pure genius he sidestepped any decision and made all other reality redundant. 

There was nothing of a pretence, just serenity as he reached into his pocket, pulled out a hanky, blew his nose with it, in that strangely violent, trumpetty, old man way before putting it back in his pocket; and with that action he had created a third way, a new reality unhampered by expectation.  He blew his nose with convention and as Mark Anthony was holding up Caesar's blood splattered toga, our hero was holding up his soiled hanky and saying: ‘Yes, I am an uninvited audience member on-stage; yes, I am trespassing on the steps of the Forum in Rome during a state funeral; yes I am that sly shadow, that inky excess, to be hidden under, words and clothes and things and opinions and Yes! Yes! Yes!, deal with it’.

The juxtaposition was fantastic: death, betrayal, strength – vulnerability, hankey, doddery old man.#

The show went on and he still stood in utter tranquillity, other actors moving around him, he kept looking around, occasionally making a movement to tease a jump back into the audience. On went the show:

What private griefs they have, alas, I know not, That made them do it: they are wise and honourable, And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you. I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts:

By now we were all getting used to him, he was a presence in his own right, no longer a mistake, he had won, he had defeated our collective binary perception, cracked it and smelted it into something new and shiny like it was the most normal thing in the world, his magic hanky had worked. 

And it was only when we were no longer looking that he disappeared from the stage, I scanned the crowd but he was nowhere to be seen, he had gone like some kind of mysterious saggy-faced shaman.  Of course the gap he left very quickly caved in, the scene ended and the play moved on to Philippi and the eventual tragedy ensued, but when the actors took their bow and the audience clapped and applauded I think we all knew who the real star of the show was.

*I refer to ‘reality’ here as a structure of expectation, the collective ego wrapping any given scene or situation in an imaginary certainty.

#I understand that Othello has that handkerchief malarkey going on, but at no point is it brandished and used, quite vigorously on-stage by an ageing man in an ill-fitting suit.