Now we're really getting down to brass tacks. One of the hardest scenes in the play tonight: Hermione's trial. Several tricks here.
One is to keep Hermione's calmness from being boring. Despite her coolness, she still needs a particular note of urgency or she just isn't interesting. Chepe had a good exercise to rework one of her speeches. Amy stood on a chair, facing Peter at the other end of the room. We and the other cast members sat on the floor between them, composing "the peanut gallery." Our job was to heckle Hermione at every opportune moment during the "Since what I am about to say..." monologue, particularly if something could be misconstrued or made dirty. Plenty of opportunities -- more than you'd think. A couple of folks really got into it. But it had the desired effect of strengthening the reading of the speech, and making it more interesting.
The other trick in the trial scene is to make Leontes genuinely, thoroughly sorry, so that the audience can sympathize with him and not dismiss him as a complete and total schmuck. For Peter, we had him deliver his "I'll reconcile myself to POlixenes" speech as if he were "in hell, with his testicles dipped in gasoline." His only way out was to be as sorry as was humanly possible, and to grovel and plead until granted forgiveness by the gods. Peter: "Hell. Testicles. Gasoline. Right." It ended up going pretty far in the grovelling direction, but it was helpful in that it teaches how not to overintellectualize what should be a very emotional speech.