Tag Archives: Actor

What the Heck Is This Play About?

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[This is the first post on the subject of Script Analysis.  It’s a topic I’ll deal with in depth in a month or three, but my current students have need of this right now, so I’m tossing it into the middle of the Creativity series.]

A-Few-Good-MenAs an actor, you have to know this before you can begin to do justice to your role.

Playwrights don’t write plays because the local theater needs a script.  They write because they have something to say that sheds a tiny bit of light – no answers, necessarily, just light – on some aspect of human existence.

You need to figure out why the playwright felt driven to write this particular play.  The answer is going to directly affect the choices you make as an actor.  If you’re going to be a good storyteller – and that’s all an actor really is, a storyteller – then you’d better know what the story you’re telling is about.

The fancy English Lit term for this is “theme.”  I’ve always hated this word.  Never understood it in school, despite asking multiple teachers to explain it.  Whatever words they were using to describe it were too esoteric for me.

I began to get a handle on it during playwriting classes, and finally grasped it fully when I started to direct.  Identifying and articulating the theme and choosing a vision that honors the playwright’s reason for writing the play is the first responsibility of the director.

Why not just wait for the first rehearsal, when the director will share his understanding and vision with you?

First, because it’s lazy.  Understanding the reason for the play in your bones is going to help you produce better work than if you just sign your name to the director’s vision statement.  Yes, you need to understand and subscribe to what he tells you, but you’ll have more luck doing so if you do your own homework.

Second, because not every director is going to share his vision with you, particularly in amateur theater.  Not every amateur director realizes that having a vision and sharing it with his cast is his responsibility.  If he doesn’t, you better find the answer yourself if you hope to turn in a credible performance.

So what’s a “theme?”

It’s what the play is about, not what happens in the play.  What happens in the play is the plot:  Felix Unger gets kicked out by his wife, he moves in with his friend Oscar, they fight and drive each other nuts, but ultimately learn to get along.  (The play in question is Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, in case you aren’t familiar with it.)

Playwrights use the plot as a means of talking about the issues that matter to them.  Underneath the plot, they are really dealing with high concepts.  Start by going after them.  You can do this by asking yourself, “What is Simon concerned with in this play?  What part of life is he examining?”

Answer:  Loneliness and friendship.  Some other examples?

     King Lear:  Greed, ego, and love.
     Romeo and Juliet:  Love and hate.
     Amadeus:  Talent, desire, envy, and grace.
     A Few Good Men:  Loyalty, honor, justice, and humanity.

You might choose different words to describe these plays, but I hope you get the idea.

If you go no further than identifying the high concepts, you’ve got something valuable to work with.  If you’re in The Odd Couple, you need to look at your role in terms of loneliness and friendship.  What are the moments when loneliness is a part of your existence?  When do you have friendship or are striving to get it?

By looking for the connections between the high concepts and the action or dialogue in the play, you can subtly “underline” them for the audience, which is good storytelling.  Pass everything that happens during the play through the filter of “loneliness” and “friendship”, and the playwright’s message should come through loud and clear.

You can’t possibly do this effectively unless you know what the play is about.

The theme is more than just the high concepts.  The playwright has an opinion about those concepts.  How you interpret the opinion is your vision.  Different people, because they have different personalities and backgrounds, may interpret the playwright’s opinion in slightly or materially different ways.  This is why vision is the director’s choice.  We all have to be on the same page, and the director is the one to choose that page.

So how you string the high concepts together matters.  For The Odd Couple, I might say, “Friendship is the only antidote to loneliness.”

For A Few Good Men, I might say, “When loyalty to corporate bodies harms an individual, it is no longer honorable.”  Or I might say, “Everyone deserves justice, irrespective of rank or prestige.”  Or, “We must never forget that the military is made up of human beings.”  In the first instance, I am emphasizing loyalty and honor.  In the second, justice and equality.  In the third, humanity and compassion.  Whichever alternative I choose determines what I want to most emphasize in my portrayal of whatever character I am playing.  Productions using different visions will, of necessity, have different feels and different impacts.

Which is why the first, most important step in Script Analysis is to know why the playwright wrote the play.  Or at least, why you think he did.

What Is Creativity?

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creativityI’m going to shut up for this post.

I know.  Can I even find it possible?

I’m going to let others speak.  And then I’ll pick up the train of thought next time.

“It is a commonplace among artists that masterpieces are made in passing, not by the focused attempt to create one.  That very attempt often skewers the spontaneous internal process, the inspired hunch or ‘fine madness’, that makes great art a happy accident that seems inevitable only in retrospect.”—Julia Cameron, Chicago Tribune, 1986.

“You don’t have to be a believer to recognize a moment of grace.  By grace I mean those precious, rare times when exactly what you were expecting gives way to something utterly different, when patterns of thought and behavior we have grown accustomed to and at times despaired of, suddenly cede to something new and marvelous.  It may be the moment when a warrior unexpectedly lays down his weapon, when the sternest disciplinarian breaks into a smile, when an ideologue admits error, when a criminal seeks forgiveness, or when an addict hits bottom and finally sees a future.  Grace is the proof that hope is not groundless.”– Andrew Stillman, “Untier of Knots”, 12/17/13.

“I don’t just use bad writing excerpts as prompts for workshops.  I also produce a tremendous amount of bad writing myself.   In fact, if some poor graduate student were assigned to do an audit of my entire literary output over the past twenty years, this person—before killing themselves—would find that about 70 percent of what I write is dreck.

“And I know I’m not alone.  If you go visit the archives of your favorite writer, as I did with Kurt Vonnegut several years ago, you will find a treasure trove of unpublished work.  And, if you’re anything like me, you will be heartened by this discovery.  It’s a great relief to realize that all those published writers we idolize aren’t cranking out epic prose every day at the keyboard.  Sometimes, they’re stinking it up, just like we do. …..My basic theory is that most pieces of failed writing—whether stories, poems, or novels—are usually attempts to tell a story that the author simply wasn’t ready to tell yet.

“This is why so much of my bad poetry is clogged with overwrought language, because I’m stonewalling basically, trying to sound profound and beautiful rather than telling the truth. …..My own belief is that writing is too intimate and arduous an activity ever to perfect.  We need to stop viewing our task as the production of transcendent work. Instead, we should emphasize the process as a gradual reduction of our (necessary and inevitable) imperfections.

“I realize how frustrating it can feel to produce weak work.  Believe me.  But I’ve also come to accept that bad writing doesn’t just mark a creative dead end.  It’s a necessary station on the path to good writing.”– Steve Almond, Blog Post on AWP Website, Feb. 2014.

“Fine writing is never one to one, never a matter of devising the exact number of events necessary to fill a story, then penciling dialogue.  Creativity is five to one, perhaps ten or twenty to one.  The craft demands the invention of far more material than you can possibly use, then the astute selection from this quantity of quality events, moments of originality that are true to character and true to world.  When actors compliment each other, for example, they often say, “I like your choices.”  They know that if a colleague has arrived at a beautiful moment, it’s because in rehearsal the actor tried it twenty different ways, then chose the one perfect moment.  The same is true for us.

“Finally, it’s important to realize that whatever inspires the writing need not stay in the writing.  A Premise is not precious.  As long as it contributes to the growth of story, keep it, but should the telling take a left turn, abandon the original inspiration to follow the evolving story.  The problem is not to start writing, but to keep writing and renewing inspiration.  We rarely know where we’re going:  writing is discovery.”– Robert McKee, Story, 1997.

A few thoughts from John Cleese:

“…the most creative professionals always played with a problem for much longer before they tried to resolve it.  Because they were prepared to tolerate that slight discomfort and anxiety that we all experience when we haven’t solved a problem.”

“Now, the people I find it hardest to be creative with are the people who need, all the time, to project an image of themselves as decisive.  And they feel that, to create this image, they need to decide everything very quickly, and with a great show of confidence.  Well, this behaviour, I suggest sincerely, is the most effective way of strangling creativity at birth.”

“And if while you’re pondering, somebody accuses you of indecision, say:  ‘Look, babycakes, I don’t have to decide until Tuesday, and I’m not chickening out of my creative discomfort by taking a snap decision before then, that’s too easy.‘  So, to summarise, the third factor that facilitates creativity is time.  Giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original.”

And I’ll leave the final words to Thomas Edison:

“Negative results are just what I want.  They’re just as valuable to me as positive results.  I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.” 

To read What If I’m Not Creative?, go here.  To read How On Earth Can I Be Creative As an Actor?, go here.  To read John Cleese on Creativity, go here.

 

So How Do You Avoid Line Readings?

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garden-maze-chatsworthBeing aware of when you are using them and when the reading is showing up organically is helpful.  “Organically” is a highfalutin’ word that I hate on one level, but is the only way I presently know to describe the difference with coming at a role externally, through a line reading, versus internally, through the unprejudiced exploration of a character.  It’s a learned ability, but when you achieve it, it’s very helpful.

Questioning yourself is also useful.  At some point down the road, I’ll talk about how I vet my own performances to make sure I’m not unintentionally stuck in a line reading.  (Yes, I’ve been acting for longer than I’d like to admit, and I still need to monitor myself for this potentiality, and always will.)

But both of those alternatives are advanced stuff.  Where do you start?

For one thing, learn to memorize your lines by rote.  That is, just memorize the words themselves, without consideration for how they should be said.  (At some point, I’ll create a video which will demonstrate this process.)

But you can also avoid them by doing what I’m going to suggest is the real function of and way to handle the first half of the rehearsal period:

Trial and error.

Intentionally say the line differently each time you rehearse the scene (or at least some of the times you rehearse the scene, until you run out of alternatives).  Because you aren’t doing exactly the same thing every time, your brain has nothing yet to memorize.  (I’ve got a post coming up on your subconscious, which reiterates how frequency and repetition become reality, whether you like it or not.  Or you can check this post out, for the introduction of the concept.  Which is really very pertinent and worth reviewing.)

[Also, telling you to “intentionally say the line differently” is perhaps a little glib and apt to be misunderstood, but I don’t want to get bogged down in the details right now.  We’ll explore what “trial and error” really means at some point in the future.]

Your brain only memorizes what is repeated.  It understands frequency.  Nothing else gets through its filter from the outside world.

Your subconscious knows things you don’t realize it knows, and that can be helpful to an actor.  But that’s a different matter.  When it comes to new data – that is, new lines to memorize – your brain relies on the frequency of the input.

Of course, there is a more important reason for using trial and error, and I’ll talk about that shortly.  But this is a nice side benefit of the process!

To read Line Readings and Why They Don’t Work, go here.  To read Where Do Line Readings Come From, Anyway?, go here.

Actor’s Etiquette: The Director’s Job

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etiquette word in letterpress typeI think I’ve alluded to this in some posts, but let me now be quite direct about it.

The director’s job is NOT to get you, the actor, to give a better performance.

That doesn’t mean that directors will not help you turn in a better performance.  Hopefully, every director you work with will contribute something that improves the final product, whether it be a rehearsal environment that is conducive to your best work, a well-timed question about your character, or a creative idea that you wouldn’t have thought of yourself.  All I’m saying is that it isn’t their job to do that.  And even if it were, most of them can’t.

Many years ago, when I was young and loaded with lots of natural talent and good instincts but little technical prowess, I did a professional production that had a scene in which I apparently stunk.  So badly that I was essentially “kept after school for extra help.”  The director, who was also a very fine actor, did his best with me.  We spent an hour together, with him trying to explain what he was looking for or what I was supposed to do that was going to fix this dreadful scene.

I had no idea what he was talking about, and I could see him getting more and more frustrated with my inability to give him what he wanted.  I felt terrible about my obvious inadequacy, even if I had no idea in what way I was inadequate, but had no ability to express my confusion or to interpret anything that he said in a meaningful way.

I think he eventually just accepted that I wasn’t going to be able to do it well, as I don’t remember a lot of additional work on the scene after that.

A director like me (a good, articulate actor who is also a teacher by nature) can help you deliver a better performance than you can get to on your own.  As one of my actors said, “You really teach when you direct, don’t you?”  (Although most of what I teach in rehearsals can’t be retained long-term, due to volume.)

But really, I’m the exception to the rule.  If an excellent director and actor like Lee couldn’t do anything about my sad portrayal, despite the oodles of talent that had gotten me the job in the first place, then most directors without his understanding of acting aren’t going to be able to help you, either.

So don’t expect them to work miracles.  You are the only “saint” you can depend upon for this.  That means putting in the time, both in rehearsals and out.

The Difference Between Impersonation and Acting

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There is an ongoing debate among actors as to whether it is better to start with externals and move to internals, or vice versa.

It doesn’t really matter where you start, as long as you approach the internal aspect in an “organic” way.  Whatever triggers that for you is fine, if it works.

Years ago, Paul Muni and Laurence Olivier were among the best actors of their generations, and both began with externals.  “What sort of nose does my character have?”  Truthfully, they fall a bit short as actors by current standards.  Their approach seems like artifice to today’s audience.

Meryl Streep has received criticism throughout her career for paying meticulous attention to hair color, accent, etc., the implication being that it is all about externals for her.  The thing which keeps some people from feeling warm and fuzzy about her is probably more a function of the characters she has played than her approach as an actress.  In addition, Streep’s chameleon nature is under a microscope in film in a way that it wouldn’t be on stage.

You can develop an honest performance by starting with externals.  Joanne Woodward has acknowledged that she starts with what her character looks like, what sort of hat she wears.  Woodward is entirely believable in her roles and won a well-deserved Academy Award for The Three Faces of Eve, so she has used this approach to great success.

Probably more actors start with internals than externals, but there is NOTHING WRONG with feeling that you start with externals, as long as you do it properly and dig a good foundation as well. 

In fact, I think you’ll find that anyone who starts with externals and does it well is also pursuing the internals simultaneously.  He just starts paying attention to externals earlier than some other actors do.

Which brings us to the matter of impersonation, which is not the same thing as acting.

For people who make a living as an impersonator, like Frank Caliendo and Rich Little, capturing the unique identifying characteristics, tics, and vocal peculiarities of well-known personalities and casting them in a humorous light is much more important than creating a completely believable character.   They are comedians, not actors.  Believable isn’t the point for them; recognizably accurate is.

Any time you play a real, historical person on stage, particularly people we’ve seen and heard on video or film, you risk becoming an impersonator rather than an actor.  It is easy to be so concerned about being faithful to their external nature that you forget to do the extra work required to find the inner person who manifests those externals.

It’s not easy – playing real people on stage is very challenging, just as talking directly to the audience is.  Combine those two things in a one-person show, and you’ve got your work cut out for you.  Line readings become a very strong temptation in this situation.  After all, it’s unnatural to speak to people who never talk back, who don’t respond “in character”, because they aren’t characters, they are audience.

One-person shows are a peculiar combination of acting and stand-up work, especially the comic portions of the show.  Only the best actors can pull them off in a way that makes the audience entirely suspend disbelief, because “staying in the moment” during them is so damned hard.  Without that, we simply make a tacit agreement to be entertained as opposed to moved.  We accept the mimic and laugh at the humor inherent in the lines.  In other words, we laugh at the jokes, not at the character and his situation.  It’s more about entertaining than it is acting.

When you choose to play a stereotype, you risk impersonation.  All right, no one “chooses” to play a stereotype, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t something we can end up with without realizing it.  Stereotypes are always based on externals and generalized adjectives.  There is some bit of truth behind them, or they wouldn’t be stereotypes.  However, if you don’t discover what makes this individual’s stereotypical qualities unique, you won’t be an actor; you’ll be an impersonator.

I don’t think I’ve yet explained the difference between “over-actors” and “under-actors” (we all are one or the other; learning to act is about finding the balance between the two).  But I think “over-actors” are more susceptible to mimicking and the line readings that can result, because they are more concerned with “entertaining” the audience than “under-actors” are.

[I am framing this piece with Youtube video links to two of my favorite one-character plays about famous people, with actors who make it look easy:  The Belle of Amherst, with the incomparable Julie Harris, who was nominated for more Tony Awards (ten) and won more (five) than any other performer; and Mark Twain Tonight, which Hal Holbrook has been performing for 47 years.  Both actors won Tonys for their performances in the original Broadway productions (Holbrook has had three Broadway runs of the show.)  The link to Mark Twain Tonight is just a promotional piece, as the full video from the 1967 television production isn’t the best quality, but you can find it on Youtube as well.]

What Questions Should I Ask About My Character?

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For the blog readers, I’m skipping ahead a bit, and there are some upcoming posts that will help fill in whatever gaps may be in this post.  For my current students, however, this is a direct follow-up to something we talked about in class tonight:

woman readingYou asked, Davina, how you learn how to ask the sort of questions that I ask each of you after your presentations.  In addition to what I told you in class, there is also the matter of practicing.  I spent much of my childhood reading every play I could get my hands on, acting them out, and trying to figure out what made the characters tick.  This personal effort goes hand in hand with the exposure I suggested is the only real way to learn script analysis.  Do it enough and over time, you’ll slowly get better at it.

But there is a little more to be said.  You don’t have to ask the same kinds of questions for each character you ever play.  This is one reason why the lists of questions that you’ll typically see in script analysis textbooks isn’t particularly useful.

There is a school of thought that you ought to be able to write a comprehensive autobiography for your character. His favorite color, favorite food, number of siblings and relationships with them, what he studied in college, etc.  I know actors who do this faithfully and who seem to get something out of it.  More power to them!

For me, this is tedious work, but I have two bigger objections to it.  First, I probably don’t know the answers to many of these questions until I am deep into rehearsals, at which point writing it down doesn’t matter.  At least, it doesn’t if I correctly understand the purpose of these autobiographies as being to help me to figure out who my character is so I can play her correctly.

The second reason I object to it is that coming up with some of these answers is a waste of time.  They matter only if the answers impact the character in some way during the course of the play.  In most plays, your favorite color or food won’t make any difference.  Your relationship with your brother may only matter in some plays.  What you studied in college or which college you went to may not matter, but whether or not you went to college might.  Whether or not you graduated might.  Or might not, depending on the play.

question-mark1So I asked Anne a lot more questions about Dora’s background than I ask about many characters, because the answers all have an impact on who she is today, how she raised Alan, and how she is choosing to deal with this situation.  It’s difficult to get an accurate picture of her without it or to understand what underlies her scenes, but by answering them all, you can start to paint a clear and cohesive portrait of this woman.

For Jamile and the Dinner with Friends monologue, I focused on how Tom feels about his wife, Beth.  All of the background issues I asked Anne aren’t going to have a lot of impact on Tom’s monologue.

For all of the characters in Agnes of God, I have talked about their relationships with God, religion, and the Catholic Church.  The question of God is also critical for many of the characters in Equus.

So what questions you ask have in part to do with the nature of the play and what it is about.  When you understand that the three characters in Agnes of God are three different representations of Christianity, you start to understand what you need to do with the play.  When you understand that Dinner with Friends is about marriage and friendship, it narrows down what you need to focus on.

As you’ll see in the coming weeks, the questions that I ask about Months on End, A Lesson Before Dying, and Norma and Wanda will be different still, but will be directly related to what the plays are about and what happens to the characters.

So how do you know to ask for details about all the aspects of Dora’s family life both in childhood and in marriage, but that you don’t need to ask for them in Months on End?

This is the tricky part.  Knowing the answer is part of what acting talent is all about.  Being naturally gifted in this department is one of the reasons I had a realistic chance of making it as a professional actress, just as instinctively understanding that drawing is a function of light vs. dark, rather than distinct shapes made up of both, is part of what makes someone a talented artist.  I’ve spent considerable time puzzling over how to help you learn to do what comes so naturally to me.

Which is why I don’t think it can be taught in a formal way, but can only be internalized through repetition and experience.  We all connect the dots in different ways, and no one else can successfully identify how your brain works in this regard.  You open yourself up to the possibilities by gradually eliminating your preconceptions and learning to trust your instincts.  There are ways to actively do those two things; beyond that, you have to just keep doing the work and trust that time will take care of it.  You’re a human being, and human beings have some pretty good instincts about what it means to be human.  It’s just a matter of learning how to interpret those instincts as an actor.

I’ll have more to say about this, including some hints about what to pay attention to, when we get more deeply into script analysis.  But there is so much else to talk about before we get to that point!

The Actor’s Etiquette Posts, and Why You Should Read Them

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etiquette JapanA few years ago, I toyed with the idea of getting a degree in Accounting.  I already had a B.A., but I was taking some Accounting courses and wondered if a degree in it would be useful.  (The answer turned out to be “No,” but that’s not the point.)

One of the degree requirements was a Business 101 course.  As far as I was concerned, this was a waste of time.  I’d been working in business for nearly thirty years in a variety of capacities and had learned a lot about how business functions.  This was a course that would be useful for twenty-somethings, but not for me.

Oh, I was so wrong.  I learned a surprising amount from it and am very happy I took it.

I’m going to write a series called “Actor’s Etiquette” which will appear every Friday and which covers things that seem to me to be obvious or common sense, and yet I encounter both experienced and new actors who don’t understand the concepts behind them.  Or at least, don’t practice them.

They are things that are so basic that those of us who have been living them for years forget that they aren’t part of everyone’s vocabulary.  We get jolted in rehearsal when we see these behaviors.  The words, “You’ve got to be [expletive] kidding me!” may even pass through our heads, although we are typically wise enough to not say them.

All of them are, on some level, about an actor’s responsibilities to the play or the class, and to your fellow artists or students.

Please don’t assume that you are “beyond” these posts.  I’m going to flag them all as “Actor’s Etiquette” posts specifically because I want to draw your attention to them.  I know you aren’t going to read every single post I write, and that’s fine.  But when I preface the title of a post with “Actor’s Etiquette”, that’s my way of saying, “If you read nothing else, read this one!”

Where Do Line Readings Come From, Anyway?

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Good intentions, mostly.

Parrot (1)We’ve been reading fiction and/or plays for years.  We’re accustomed to hearing the dialogue in our heads.  What is simpler (and truer, we think) than to simply parrot that internal reading to an audience?

And often, it sounds pretty good.  As I say, if you’ve got good instincts, you may well hit on a very good way to say the line.  It might even be the “best” way to say the line.  (Not “right”, just “best.”)

There’s just the pesky problem that using the line reading without first discovering what is causing it generally leads to an underdeveloped character.

Sometimes line readings show up out of a desire to please the director.  We commit to them early so that the play sounds good in rehearsals.   We don’t want the director to panic, to think we don’t know what we’re doing, to not cast us again.

Sometimes they come about because we want to impress the rest of the cast, to show them that we can keep up with them.  Or because we want to help them.  The earlier we give them “good stuff”, the more they’ll like us.  Or the better their performance will be, because they’ve got something “good” to play against.

Sometimes they come about because we “act” the role as we are memorizing lines, instead of just memorizing the words without intonation.  It’s easier to memorize lines this way.  But it’s like song lyrics.  There is a musicality to intonation.  And once it’s in your head, it’s in your head.  Just think about those songs you remember from decades ago!

But sometimes they come from our lesser selves, too.  We’re terribly impressed with ourselves for knowing how to say these lines, and we want to show off.  Or we are panicked that we won’t get the play ready in time, so we try to set things in stone early, so we can really hone them.  (The fine-tuning can’t happen without the proper foundation, but we don’t realize that.)

hayesIncidentally, I’ve been guilty of all of the above at some point in my life.  Another golf analogy:  you never have to worry about playing with a really good golfer, no matter how bad you are yourself, because every good golfer has been through what you have.  And we have long memories.

Ditto with acting.  Despite the fact that I have a lot of natural talent and very good instincts, there isn’t a mistake you can make that I haven’t made myself.  That’s how I learned.

So it’s perfectly okay to make the mistake of using line readings.  As I said in class, Helen Hayes used them early in her career (and to great success, too), until a very honest, no-nonsense director called her on it in her fifth Broadway lead, which drove her to acting classes.

The important question is:  Are you willing to give it up in favor of an unknown that will serve you better?  And are you willing to trust that it will serve you better?

To read Line Readings and Why They Don’t Work, go here.  To read So How Do You Avoid Line Readings, go here.

Line Readings, and Why They Don’t Work

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dressing windowIn a recent class, Anne asked, “What are line readings?”

A line reading is a pre-determined way of saying a line.  It’s when you plan the intonation you use and the sort of energy and emotion behind it.  It’s a conscious, intellectual choice.  It usually comes from a sense of how the line should sound, what feels right.  And if you have good instincts, your choices in this regard can be very good ones.

Line readings are very much a product of the belief that there is a RIGHT way to do this.  “Can we go back a couple of lines, I said that wrong.”

If you believe there is a RIGHT way to say a line, you will seek it out early and commit to saying the line that way for the rest of your life.  As soon as you find a way that sounds RIGHT, you will stop looking for something better, something more interesting and true to the character.  You may have chosen something good, or even something very good, but you will typically not reach great.

The reason you won’t reach great is because even if the line reading you’ve chosen is exactly “right”, line readings are, by definition, superficial.  They are window dressing.

If you start with what you know is “right”, you lay it on the scene superficially, without undergirding it with emotional need and emotional reality.  It will remain superficial:  an excellent choice with no root structure.  Believe me, the most inexperienced audience will know the difference in seconds.

If the choice is the ”right” choice, you will find it by digging into the character, into what he wants and how he tries to get it, into how he feels about everything that is said and done to him and why he feels that way.  You’ll find it by opening yourself up to what is said and done to him and feeling some real emotion before you respond, naturally and in real-time.   This is why I say you can disregard almost everything in the parentheses in a script; if it’s “right”, you’ll find it on your own, and it will have greater impact when you do.

But if you go for what are essentially externals (inflection, volume, facial reactions, etc.), you don’t really have to search for the emotions, because after all, you’ve got the “final product”, right?  Nothing real has to happen onstage to product line readings.  It’s all artificial.

chinese-noodlesSuperficial actors don’t realize what they are giving up by working this way, so don’t be hard on them (or on yourself, if you’re one of “them”).  It’s very common for untrained actors to do this, and I wish I could say that it is a practice confined to the amateur ranks.  I’ve seen professional performances where this happens, most often in comedies.  An audience may laugh in response to a line reading, but you will never move them, and they will forget the production in short order.  It’s like Chinese food and pancakes:  tastes great, but doesn’t stay with you.

Unfortunately, the people most at risk for making this practice a habit are among the most talented.  Because they have an unerring sense of what is the “right” way to say a line, they can coast.  They can give a very glib, smooth performance that seems to hit all the marks without working very hard.  And the more they do it, the easier it becomes.  They sound great at auditions and in the first few weeks of rehearsals, but their character never grows beyond that.  Their development stalls out halfway through the rehearsal process.  An audience will never really believe them, never really suspend their disbelief in the way that we want them to.

There are worse things.  It’s a shame to pay the money for professional theater and encounter acting like this, but in amateur productions (depending on the quality of the latter), it can sometimes measurably improve the product.

It’s a function, really, of why you want to act.  I haven’t used a golf analogy in a while, but here’s one that’s appropriate.

When a golfer shows up on my lesson tee, I need to find out what his goal is – not just for that lesson, but in general.  What kind of golfer he wants to be will determine how and what I teach him.

People have different reasons for playing golf.  Some do it just to have a reason to spend a few hours with close friends outdoors.  Whether they play well or not doesn’t matter to them.  Some people have a maximum score they can tolerate without getting angry at themselves.  For some, it’s breaking 100 consistently.  For others, it’s bogey golf – high 80s, low 90s.

There are also golfers who want to be the club champ, and are willing to work to get to that point.

Someone who dreams of winning his club championship is going to approach the game very differently from someone who just doesn’t want to embarrass himself when he plays in an occasional golf outing.

All of these reasons are perfectly valid.  As long as the golfer is happy with his score, I don’t care if he’s a good golfer or not.  And I won’t try to make him get better than he wants to be.  My job is just to help him meet his goal, whatever it may be.

Same thing with acting.  If you do it because it’s fun, it gets you out of the house, you get to spend time with other people, and you like performing, then by all means, you should do some acting.  How good you are at it doesn’t matter in the least to me.  As long as you are content with the quality of your own acting and directors keep casting you, feel free to use all the line readings you like.

But if you do want to do some great acting – line readings will never get you there.  That’s all.

To read Where Do Line Readings Come From, Anyway?, go here.  To read So How Do You Avoid Line Readings, go here.

A Character’s Interior Struggle

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Equus doraAnne is working on the Dora Strang monologue from Equus, featured in a couple of earlier posts.  I’ll be referring back to it at some point for an expansion of what I’m talking about in this post; today I just want to speak personally to Anne about something we discussed last night.  I am posting it generally because I think others might get a little something out of it, too.

At one point, Anne used the word “unemotional” to describe Dora, and I suggested that in general, it’s not a useful word because it’s boring to watch, but that there is a way to use it that can be effective.  And we went on to talk about the scene in other terms.

You backed off the word, Anne, because you realized it’s an adjective.  I told you that adjectives and emotions are perfectly okay to identify – in fact, they are very good to identify for two reasons.  One is that they typically lead you to Tone, which is an important but sophisticated element we’ll talk about way down the road.  The other is that they are your first clue in script analysis, which is what we’re dealing with at the moment.  We’ve talked about finding your feelings in a scene, relating to your partner, and identifying your beats and playing your verbs.  But as you all discovered last night, your verbs are only part of the equation.  HOW you play them depends on who your character is.  Without having a clear and comprehensive understanding of your character, it is easy to go wrong.

This is one reason why playing adjectives is so dangerous.  You can completely miss out on what is really driving your character if you approach it this way.

So let’s get back to Dora and the word “unemotional”.

“Unemotional”, like all adjectives, is too general to play.  WHY someone is unemotional makes it specific, which in turn makes it interesting.

Am I unemotional because I think it is inappropriate to be emotional in certain contexts, like at work or with people I’ve just met?  Because I was taught as a child that showing emotion results in punishment in my family?  And was that punishment corporal or simply a withholding of love?

Am I unemotional because I’m afraid that people won’t like me if I show them who I really am and what I really feel?  Because I don’t like the “bad” emotions I feel, like anger and envy and so I try to pretend that they aren’t there, or at least make sure that other people don’t see them?  And maybe it’s easier to shut down all of my emotions rather than risk that my anger slip out when I’m not watching myself?

Am I unemotional with Alan because I don’t believe in coddling a child?  The real world is a cold place, better that I should teach him how to function within it!

When I answer these questions, I come up with some basic needs for my character:  a need to be the consummate professional in business and to be perceived as well-mannered by all I meet.  A need to protect myself from punishment from others or to gain their love by being the Good Little Girl.  A need to be liked.  A need to be good, to not be bad, to get into heaven.  A need to give my son the best tools I know for dealing with the world.

These needs drive HOW I do things; that is, they drive HOW I play my verbs.  The mother who doesn’t want to coddle her son is a different woman than the one who doesn’t like her own “bad” emotions.  Although human needs are rarely so simplistic, and so you might find a variety of elements behind Dora’s “unemotional” nature that come into play at different moments.

But the thing all of these alternatives have in common is the need to repress emotions.  Human beings are emotional by nature.  We are all born with them.  Someone who is “unemotional” is working hard to repress them.  And THAT’S what you play as an actor.  You don’t play “unemotional”, because it’s uninteresting to watch.  But someone repressing specific emotions when they rise up in her?  That’s a very active and compelling choice.

When your character is drunk, you don’t play “drunk”.  You play trying desperately to seem sober.

In other words, when you’re on stage, you have to show the audience the Yin and the Yang.  We don’t know what you are repressing unless you let it leak out just the tiniest bit.  In fact, we may not even know you ARE repressing it if you don’t let it leak out.  We may just think you aren’t a particularly good or interesting actor, without understanding why.

Remember, we just met this character, and we have a very limited time with her.  In a case like Dora, who is a supporting character in the play, we may only spend 15 minutes with her.  We don’t have the luxury of learning over time that she represses her emotions, or why.  You need to convey that to us quickly and comprehensively.  And you do that by showing us both the emotions and the repression of them.

This sort of inner struggle – to not love someone you think is wrong for you, to do what you know is right despite your fears, to maintain control of your anger when you have been pushed over the edge by your young child or your boss – is fascinating to watch on stage, and the basis of many moments in dramatic works.

Also, even “unemotional” people have events in their lives that are so traumatic that it creates a windstorm of emotions inside of them that even they cannot repress.  This is such a moment for Dora.  Despite protecting herself for years, she is the proverbial fat that has been flung into the fire.  It is NOT business as usual.  (Plays rarely are.)  Which makes it even more interesting to watch.  What happens to a woman who is losing the battle to hide behind her usual façade?