Stratford Trip Essay on The Roman Actor
The Roman Actor, a play containing plays which are crucial to the outer play’s development. A story about passion, romance, death, defiance and above all: power. Set in the time period where the world’s greatest empire was probably the Roman Empire and therefore power already played a major role within the Roman society. The ruler of such a vast Empire would, needless to say, have a hard time to keep his/her feet firmly planted in the ground and Caesar (the ruler) was floating way up high in the sky. Your standard megalomaniac, with a constant obsession that his power should be maintained and even if the possibility would arise that his power and desires would be in any threat he would have that possibility extinguished before it had time to take form.
The role of Caesar would very obviously be a very difficult role to play since you would have to have the audience believe that you had enough in yourself to maintain such a great power. And your poise and stature would have to be so perfect so that you at least looked like a half decent Emperor.
I would have never imagined that anyone could or would have portrayed Caesar in such a manner that it would

I think the audience in this play was more involved than any of the other audiences in other plays, because we were always made part f the play, as a mass of people of as the senate. So we felt involved anyway. And I don’t think there was one person in the playhouse that didn’t enjoy him/her self during the performance.

What was extremely effective was the little black book Domitian carried around with him where he would scribble down the names of his upcoming quarry. This was so efficient because this really portrayed his paranoid character. How he kept that little black book close to his heart and only if the person’s name that he was worried with was scrawled into that book only then would he have peace. It acted like a sort of talisman that ensured his power and status to remain as it was. And it does act in that way because as soon as Domitia steals the book his downfall begins.

The sound effect of the fly buzzing around was extremely well placed, because this would make you reflect on the time when Domitian as a child used to pull the wngs off flies and having this fly haunt him throughout the course of the play was really good. Also at the end when Domitian is laying dead by his tower of Minerva you hear the incessant buzz of flies and this shows how that even the flies that Domitian used to torment as a child got their revenge on him.

would seem comical to the audience and would make the audience laugh, and that is exactly what Anthony Sher did. And it was truly a brilliant performance.