Nicole/Kathryn Howard here, just noting a discovery I may have made.
I say "may" just because I'm not sure if I agree with myself yet.
As we move into the meat of the rehearsal process--e.g. playing with staging and scene arcs, developing a working vocabulary for the process--I've noticed that Kathryn Howard has bursts where she talks a lot and then long stretches where she doesn't say anything at all.
What is that?
At first I thought: she's just not paying attention, lost in a day-dreamy state or doing her nails. I really don't like that option. It makes her really inactive, totally not part of the story.
So then I thought maybe she is trying to get the others' attention, she just doesn't know how. Which I like a lot better. It makes sense with a lot of character factors. First, she is younger than the other queens. Second, she knows that she doesn't have as good a claim on the throne as some of them. Third, she's not as well-educated as the other queens and can't keep up with their biting wit.
She tries to join in the competitive comraderie. She cracks what dirty jokes she can and clings to the fact that Henry did probably like her the most (really her only claim to being true queen). Well, Seymour could probably give her a run for her money, but he still really only liked her because of the baby. Also, she secretly thinks she's the prettiest, but she would never really fight for that because she's intimidated by Cousin Anne.
Instead of not paying attention to the conversation, she's totally in it, trying to think of a joke to slip in or something intelligent to say. But the convo is always two steps ahead of her. By the time she thinks of something to say, the group has moved on to a different topic.
Poor, illiterate Kathryn!
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