Let’s go back to Part 5 of Script Analysis:  Other People’s Money.

In it, I found a verb for Bea:  To save the jobs of men who work at the plant and have no other viable means of employment.  This is a powerful choice, and factors into not just the scene with Garfinkle, but into everything Bea does once she becomes aware of the nature of Garfinkle’s interest in the company.

But it’s still just words, just an intellectual choice.  Choosing the verbs is one thing; playing them is another.

So how do you play them?

First, be religiously sticking to Getting What You Want and ignoring the emotional nature of the scene.  Try to save the jobs, and the emotions will take care of themselves.

Second, try to Save the Jobs as if your life depends upon it, because in a play, it always does.

Third, find a way to personalize it.  Earnestly trying to save jobs will get you half the way there, but it won’t dig into your heart, and that is where we want the work to be.

In this case, I created sob stories for three of the men at the plant.  It’s not enough to say “1200 men will lose their jobs if something isn’t done.”  Generalizations don’t touch your heart.  Specifics do.  I also had ideas of what they each looked like, sounded like, how they behaved at the plant.  Who was the jovial guy who was always getting attention, and who was the quiet man who observed everything and would give you the shirt off his back if he thought you needed it.  I imagined the annual company picnic in July and all that Bea did to plan it each year, and the pleasure she took in watching the kids play and the families enjoy each other.

I thought about how it is a small enough community and the plant large enough that Bea is apt to run into the men and their wives outside of business hours at the gas station, the supermarket, church.  How she sends get-well, happy birthday, and sympathy cards when appropriate.  How she marveled at how much little Sammy has grown since she saw him last.  How involved she is in the lives of everyone at the plant.

This is the kind of backstory that helps my performance, but I didn’t start constructing it at the start of rehearsals.  I didn’t work on it until I realized, somewhat deeper into rehearsals than I should have realized, that Bea’s verb didn’t have to do with Jorgy.  Yes, she doesn’t want him to lose his job, either, but she knows he is financially secure.  It’s the machinist and the foreman she is really worried about.

There was a workbench at the very back center of the stage, behind the flats, and it had a blue light on it, to allow actors to safely move from one wing to the other.  As I sat in the wing waiting for the scene that begins on page 66, I’d look over to the workbench and imagine that I could see my three guys – Frank, Joe, and Mitch – working out a problem together, laughing and enjoying each other’s company, unaware that there is a fight underway to take their jobs from them.

That minute of imagining got me in touch with the heart of what Bea is feeling and allowed me to bring an emotional level out on stage that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.  (Because I forgot to do it one night, and it showed in my performance!)  It’s all an act of imagination – I usually favor the Stella Adler/Sanford Meisner “What if” approach to the Lee Strasberg “emotional memory” approach – but imagine well and imagine specifically, and the results can be powerful.