“I can’t believe I’m on that stage again!” Nadia Nadarajah on starring as Cleopatra at Shakespeare’s Globe (BSL)

Antony and Cleopatra is on at the Globe until 15th September. Find out more and book tickets here! Photos and interview by Charlie Swinbourne

I interview Nadia Nadarajah shortly after an afternoon matinee of Antony and Cleopatra at Shakespeare’s Globe, in which she stars in the leading role, as Cleopatra herself. She’s just come off stage to a rapturous reception from an audience who were transfixed both by her performance and those of the deaf and hearing actors on stage with her.

This is a real landmark production for the Globe, bilingual with both English and BSL used alternately on stage, and it’s a huge success. How does it work? The scenes with the Romans are performed by hearing actors in spoken English, while the scenes with the Egyptians are performed by deaf actors in BSL.

This means that deaf and hearing audience members go from watching scenes in their own language to following scenes in the other language with the help of captions which appear on large screens. This approach means the play could have felt disjointed or clunky, but it’s the opposite, it fits together, it flows, it captivated the audience, and shows what’s possible.

Nadia orders a “full fat Coke” to get her energy levels back up – she’ll shortly be going back into make-up ready for a second performance that evening. I ask if it’s tiring, performing twice in one day, and she replies: “the audience give me energy, and I give it back!”

I ask her how it feels, to be playing the lead at the Globe. “I can’t believe I’m on that stage again,” she says. “After each performance I think ‘I did that’?” She doesn’t seem overawed though. Nadia goes on to say that when she’s performing, it’s her own stage. “It’s who I am,” she says, meaning that she becomes the character.

This role might have been written in the stars. Nadia tells me that years ago, she dreamt that Cleopatra came to have a chat with her, even before she knew about the Shakespeare play. Then the Globe’s Artistic Director, Michelle Terry, came to her with the idea of her playing the lead role. The play was originally supposed to happen in 2020, before the pandemic got in the way, but Nadia feels that now is the right time.

This is the sixth play she’s performed at the Globe, and the venue is like her second home. She shows me around the building and seems to know every nook and cranny, telling me about the Globe’s flag and the huge bell hidden above the actors, which is used for some productions.

I ask her what the biggest challenge of this play is. She tells me that it’s ensuring she signs so that the whole audience get an equal chance to see her – a tricky thing to do when the audience surrounds most of the stage, as it does at the Globe. She tells me that she loved working with the director Blanche McIntyre, and about how skilled deaf actor Zoe McWhinney was at helping her translate Shakespeare’s dialogue concisely during the rehearsal period, along with Charly Arrowsmith and Daryl Jackson.

At the performance I saw, it was striking how much enjoyment the hearing audience got from the scenes silently signed in BSL. I witnessed many people moving around to get a better view, and heard them laughing at the humorous visual translation of some of Shakespeare’s lines, especially from Nadia and from deaf actor Nadeem Islam.

Signing skills have developed off-stage as well as on it. Nadia tells me that as the years have passed, many of the Globe staff have learned sign language, some to the highest level possible. Within the cast of Antony and Cleopatra, almost all of the actors can sign, and many of the crew too. She tells me how everyone has treated each other with respect, there’s been no tension backstage. John Hollingworth, the actor playing Antony to Nadia’s Cleopatra, has done so well at absorbing BSL that Nadia jokes that it’s easy to see why Cleopatra fell in love with him. Harmony off-stage has clearly fed into a production which felt like a real privilege to watch on a late summer’s afternoon by the river in London.

Deaf audience members have told Nadia they feel the play “brings life to Shakespeare” and that the deaf actors “own the space.” Some have found it interesting how the production uses a style of signing to match the richness of Shakespeare’s play.  An example is how the sign for ‘death’ used by Cleopatra in the play symbolises how her character is connected to both Egypt and Rome, with the sign reflecting both the Egyptian sense of death – with the body being committed to the earth – and the Roman sense of the spirit soaring to the sky.

Nadia has gained a lot of satisfaction from the young deaf people – many of whom are not signers – who have told her after watching the play that this is the first time they’ve enjoyed theatre, and now they’re going to learn BSL. It’s clear that she feels there’s a power in theatre, just as there is on TV and film, to influence younger deaf people and help them see what’s possible.

She also feels deeply about the importance of representing deaf women of colour: “It’s so rare we are represented, to be the lead character in a theatre production. Hopefully it makes other people like me feel they can do it, too. There are so few deaf Asian female actors, especially, and I want to see [the numbers] grow.”

One of the joys for Nadia is that so many of her friends have come to see the production – at almost every performance she gets a text from someone who is coming, or has been to see the play. Her parents have just flown from Australia, and her brother from Canada, to see her perform, and she clearly can’t wait to see them.

A quirk of being an outdoor theatre where a large portion of the audience stand – as they would have done during Shakespeare’s time – is that there are things that happen which are unique to the Globe. One is that audience members sometimes faint. Nadia jokes that it seems to happen mostly during the spoken English scenes – something she’s teased the hearing actors about. I ask what they do when someone faints, and Nadia tells me the actors have to carry on as if nothing has happened, while trained medics and stewards attend to them. The show must go on.

It’s clear Nadia’s having the time of her life in this production, yet she’s also clearly got an eye on the future. So I ask her what’s next, and she tells me it’s writing for theatre. She’s received funding from the Arts Council to go to America and meet deaf playwrights and find out how it works over there. She’s also writing a short film for BSL Zone. It’s clear that whether it’s on stage or screen, or off-stage, there’s a lot of exciting developments ahead for Nadia.

Antony and Cleopatra is on at the Globe until 15th September. Find out more and book tickets here.

Photos and interview by Charlie Swinbourne. Find out more about Charlie’s photography here.

Photography: all rights reserved and copyright protected. No usage without permission.