Word Choice, Memorization, and Script Analysis, Part II

Posted on November 1, 2013 by J.

Let’s examine a few related words to see what I mean: cute, attractive, pretty, and beautiful. And let’s do it with some of the cast of Glee.

“Cute” is the pert girl with the dimples, a ready smile, and a bubbly personality. She’s attractive, sometimes very attractive, but her features are probably not classic, and her beauty is as much a function of her effervescent personality as it is her physical appearance. Think Jayma Mays (Emma Pillsbury).

“Attractive” is a girl who is pleasant to look at, but who probably isn’t going to turn a lot of heads, or not for very long. She’s probably got a feature which isn’t classic, but it doesn’t disturb the whole visage enough to make her unattractive. Think Heather Morris (Brittany S. Pierce).

“Pretty” is the stereotypical blonde cheerleader with the chiseled features. Think Diana Agron (Quinn Fabray).

“Beautiful”? Well, I’m not sure there are any real beauties on Glee. No dogs, just no one who meets this high bar. Let’s just say Giselle Bundchen. Brooke Shields. Cindy Crawford.

You’d never use the words “cute”, “attractive”, or “pretty” to describe these supermodels. If you did, there’d be great confusion and a lot of misunderstandings.

Change a word in the script, and you can cause equal confusion without even realizing it.

I’ve had occasion, in writing these posts, to look for synonyms, and am surprised by how difficult it is, in the language that has more words than any other, to find good substitutes when I want to say something without using the same word I did in the previous sentence. There aren’t many true synonyms which can be used interchangeably without altering the meaning of the sentence materially.

“Oh,” I hear you say, “that matters for a lot of lines, but not for many of the simple, throwaway lines.” Okay. Let’s look at a simple exclamation: “Oh my god!” Here are some logical alternatives: “Oh my goodness!” “Oh my lord!” “Oh my gosh!” “Oh Christ!” “Oh lord!” and “Omigod!”

I’m not trying to get religious on anyone here, but I would suggest to you that seven different people would use each of these expressions in the same situation. That even “Oh my god” and “Oh my lord”, while probably the two most similar phrases, nevertheless reflect a different relationship with their Maker. That “Oh my god” and “Omigod”, while technically the same phrase despite a different pronunciation, nevertheless would come out of two very different mouths.

First, you have to respect these differences. The playwright chose the words he chose for a reason. Trust that, even if you don’t understand the reason initially.

Second, use these differences to help you understand your character better. When we talk more about script analysis, you’ll see why this is useful.

See Part I here. See Memorizing Your Lines Part I here. See Memorizing Your Lines Part II here. See Why the Playwright’s Words Matter Part I here. See Why the Playwright’s Words Matter Part II here.

Word Choice, Memorization, and Script Analysis, Part I

Posted on October 31, 2013 by J.

Word choice matters.

The playwright has limited means of conveying an entire world to the audience, and to you, the actor. He has only words. And he has a limited number of them, at that. He cuts out lots of words en route to the final draft of a play, and so every word that he leaves in counts and often has to carry out several assignments at the same time.

Which words he chooses tell you everything you need to know about the play and the characters. The words are your clues to put the puzzle of the play together. Think of the pieces as Easter eggs. In an Easter egg hunt, some of them eggs are so obvious that they dare you to ignore them. Some are tucked behind a vase, their noses sticking out. And some are so hidden that you need to move something in order to find them.

These last clues in a play may not surface enough for you to see them until halfway through rehearsal, but they’re there, hidden in the text. But if you’ve changed the playwright’s words in the course of memorizing your lines, you’ll never find them.

It’s easy to change lines. Sometimes we paraphrase lines to muddle through them because we have a mental block about them, and it gets us to the rest of the scene. Before you know it, we’ve convinced ourselves that that is, in fact, the way the line is written.

Sometimes we change lines because we, personally, would use a slightly different phrase, and so it seems more natural to us to use our own words. We may not even realize we’ve changed them. If someone brings it to our attention, we’ll probably argue with them and stare at the script in disbelief.

Sometimes we change lines because we can’t understand why the playwright wrote it as he did, and rather than figure out the answer to that question (which might have a profound influence on how we play the character), we change the line so that it fits in with our notion of the character. This is akin to taking a jigsaw puzzle piece and forcing it into a place where it doesn’t belong or, even worse, shaving the side of it so it will fit.

And sometimes (horror of horrors), we just think that we, who are so new to the material, know better than the writer who created these characters and slaved over each word in the script for many months.

But word choice reveals character, and so when you change your character’s lines, you change your character. And usually not for the better.

Next time, I’ll give you some specifics about the kind of damage changing the playwright’s words can do. But in the meantime, do your best to memorize his words, and not yours.

See Part II here. See Memorizing Your Lines Part I here. See Memorizing Your Lines Part II here. See Why the Playwright’s Words Matter Part I here. See Why the Playwright’s Words Matter Part II here.

Memorizing Your Lines, Part II

Posted on October 30, 2013 by J.

Davina made a great observation on Monday when I asked her to make an adjustment in how she was doing the scene. Afterward, she said, “Because I haven’t been practicing it that way, it threw me off, and I had trouble remembering my lines. I guess it’s better to memorize your lines just as words.”

Bingo.

It’s easier to memorize your lines when you have a rhythm, a tempo, a lilt, a melody to put with them. Song lyrics are easy to memorize for this reason. I forget my lines in a play within a month or so of closing, but I have retained hundreds of song lyrics for decades. So if your lines in a play are at all musical, they are easier to memorize.

At some point, we’ll talk about a playwright’s use of “the poetic.” Some playwrights have a talent for using poetic language, or else make intentional use of certain writing “tools” to evoke poetic effects. Paula Vogel and Peter Shaffer come to mind as playwrights who do this.

Kerry Bradley’s design for “Equus”

This literary technique can make lines easier to memorize, because they build “music” into the line. So can attaching a particular line reading to a line. A line reading is a predetermined way of saying a given line. Once you choose it, you have effectively chosen the melody of the line. And when you try to “act” a line while you are working on memorizing lines, you will choose line readings that you will also memorize, whether you realize it or not.

Because you are working on memorizing the line more than you are studying your character, the line reading that sounds “right” to you initially is no longer just a placeholder, a way of saying it so that you can get the words in your head. It is likely that you will say it that way every time you rehearse it, and every time you recite it when you are learning your lines. And if you later learn something about the character that suggests a different way of saying the line is appropriate, you will find it difficult to do so, because your line reading has become ingrained.

I have record albums I have listened to so many times that I not only know in the pause between songs what song is coming next, but I also know the note it begins on. I even know how many seconds come between songs. That’s how much repetition can give you. When your lines are on this sort of automatic pilot, there’s no opportunity for acting to happen.

I’ve known actors who have inadvertently memorized pauses in the middle of their speeches, or directly preceding some of their lines. This happens when they aren’t quite comfortable with the line, and it takes them an extra moment to remember what they are supposed to say. They never make the effort to overcome it, and the pause is in there forever, no matter how much the director urges the cast to speed things up.

So memorize the words without regard to how you say them. Stack them up like railroad cars on the line and just move through them as quickly as possible. When you memorize this way, you leave open all the possibilities for your character. You won’t know which choices are the right ones for your character for weeks, so don’t tie yourself into choices early by choosing how to say the lines yet.

See Part I here. See Word Choice, Memorization and Script Analysis Part I here. See Word Choice, Memorization and Script Analysis Part II here.

Memorizing Your Lines, Part I

Posted on October 29, 2013 by J.

You can’t do any real acting until you memorize your lines.

You can lay a great foundation for real acting while you’re still on book. You can experiment with options while you’re still on book. You can explore your character plenty. You can pay attention to what your fellow actors are doing and try to receive it and see how what they are doing may impact your own choices.

The one thing you can’t do until you’re off book is act.

Why? Because your subconscious is what does the acting, and it can’t function when your left brain is working on remembering lines. When your left brain is that kind of active, you subconscious just can’t be heard.

Here are the five stages of memorizing your lines:

You start to know bits and pieces of the scene. But you’ve still got big gaps of lines you can’t remember.
You kind of know the whole scene, but it’s work to remember it. We can see the wheels turning every time it’s your turn to speak.
The wheels are no longer obvious, but you’ve got certain lines you’ve got a mental block on, and when you hit them, the wheels go into overdrive.
The mental blocks have disappeared. Technically, you’ve got the scene completely memorized. But in truth, one-quarter to one-half of your attention is focused on the lines and whether or not you remember the next one. You remember every single one; it’s just that you are conscious of the fact that you are remembering them. Conscious isn’t good in acting.
You can recite your lines without pausing. They have become second nature, and fall out of your mouth with you having to think about them.

The gap between stages 4 and 5 is probably at least one week. I memorize lines easily and quickly, but I can tell the difference between when I am first officially “off book” and how I can work a week later. (So can the audience.) Assume that you’ll have at least one week of “acclimation”.

This period of “acclimation” and the fact that you can’t do any quality acting until you are off book are my two biggest arguments for beginning to memorize your lines the day you get your script. Before your first rehearsal, before you’ve finished blocking. The earlier you have your lines memorized, the better your performance will be. Guaranteed.

See Part II here. See Word Choice, Memorization, and Script Analysis Part I here. See Word Choice, Memorization and Script Analysis Part II here.

The Four Emotions, Part III

Posted on October 28, 2013 by J.

What does all this talk about conflicting emotions mean for you as an actor, practically speaking? If a scene clearly seems to be about one emotion to you, go looking for a second emotion. If you relate to the Anger in a scene, look for lines that allow you to put Fear or Sadness with it. If you relate to Joy in the scene, look for the Fear or Sadness as well. (It is also entirely possible to find Anger in a scene that is primarily about Joy, and vice versa, although you may find them co-existing less frequently than the other possible pairing.)

“But,” I hear you say, “if that second emotion is there, won’t I ‘feel’ it?”

Probably not.

Our nature is to look for simple answers to questions, and acting is no different. When we find one answer, we just don’t go looking for a second one, particularly a contradictory one, which can co-exist with the first. We find the first and say, “Voilà! That’s it!”

So when you identify the dominant emotion of a scene, the tendency is to stop there. Sometimes it is so strong that the secondary emotion(s) end up hidden, and you have to root them out.

This is another reason for sticking with the emotions in their pure state. If you start dealing with fancier terms, when you go looking for a second emotion, you’ll find that you’re naming variations of the same primary emotion. “I’m frustrated.” “I’m annoyed.” “I’m resentful.” But they’re all versions of Anger.

But when you are working with the Mad/Sad/Glad family, this won’t happen. Okay, Anger is your primary emotion. Is there anything that happens in the scene that you can be happy about? Sad about? Scared about?

Distilled to these terms, it’s a lot easier to find the hidden emotions.

Once you find the hidden broad stroke emotions, give yourself over to what those feelings mean in the context of the scene. Ignore the primary emotion for the moment, stick with the secondary emotion. (If you’ve found more than one, run the scene twice, focusing on one at a time.)

Again, don’t go for fancy, subtle words, like disenchanted, or devastated, or surprised, or anxious. Go for the kids’ emotions: mad/sad/glad/scared. Get in touch with what it feels like to be angry in the scene before you temper it to simply be disenchanted. Allow yourself to be downright scared before you move back to anxious.

Why is this important? Because the fancier the word you apply to what your character feels, the easier it is to distance yourself from that emotion. It becomes a head exercise, which is interesting if you’re in a literature class, but not particularly useful to an actor!

See Part I here. See Part II here.

The Four Emotions, Part II

Posted on October 27, 2013 by J.

When acting, you might feel different elements of the primary emotion at the same time. For instance, if your primary emotion is Joy, you might feel both confident and hopeful, or confident and proud. If you feel the former, it will express itself slightly differently than the latter pairing.

On the other hand, you might feel both Anger and Sadness at the same time, as Biff does in the confrontation scene at the end of Death of a Salesman. He is more closely connected to the Anger in the beginning of the scene and to Sadness at the end, but those two emotions co-exist throughout the entire scene. Your job, as an actor, is to let them both affect you, while making choices about which to let dominate when and how to make the move from Anger to Sadness.

Knowing that there are two different emotions governing opposite ends of the scene helps you to chart the space between them. You can allow for a gradual and natural change, with each successive line of dialogue helping you to move closer to your final emotion. But to really make this effective, you have to clearly understand the difference between the starting and ending primary emotions, and where they can overlap.

A third option is for both to exist throughout the scene, without the clear sort of delineation we find in the Death of a Salesman scene. For instance, you might experience Anger and Joy at the same time. Frustration and Pride, or Jealousy and Love. There are scenes where it is entirely appropriate to toggle between the two throughout the scene, as if you are flicking a light switch on and off.

Most relationships are not straightforward, grounded in one particular emotion. How many times can we fairly answer the query, “Tell me about your relationship” with, “Well, it’s complicated….”

“I love Mom, but she drives me crazy with her nitpicking.” “I love my brother, but I can’t help resenting him when Dad praises him to the skies.” “I love my boyfriend, but he doesn’t always give me what I need, and that makes me anguished, frustrated, or furious, depending on the moment you ask.”

If you’re this last woman, the same man makes you feel joy, love, grief, frustration, fury, heartbreak, worry, and fear – and sometimes, all at the same time! Human beings are perfectly capable of juggling such complexity of emotions. On stage, it’s harder, because you have to layer those things together intentionally, whereas you’ll do it naturally and instinctively in your real life. But if you want to create characters who seem like real people, this is exactly what you must do. When you create a flawed and contradictory character, you will probably create an interesting, watchable, and believable character, one who enriches the play you’ve been given.

See Part I here. See Part III here.

The Four Emotions, Part I

Posted on October 26, 2013 by J.

There are four primary emotions: Anger, Fear, Joy, and Sadness.

Ask a toddler how he feels, and you are apt to get “I’m mad”, “I’m scared”, “I’m happy”, or “I’m sad” as a response. As we get older, we start to delineate gradations of these main emotions, but every feeling still falls into one of these four major groups.

Jealousy is a form of Anger. Worry is a form of Fear. Excitement is a form of Joy. Hurt is a form of Sadness.

When we read a scene for the first time, we typically respond to what we feel is the primary emotional element involved. Now, you and I might disagree about what that element is. What we identify is at least partly going to be a function of who we are as individuals, something separate from whatever the playwright has put into the scene. (I’ll talk more about that another time.)

This is good. Whichever primary emotion you relate to, go with it initially. But don’t try to fine-tune it yet. If you think your character is driven by Jealousy, then get in touch with all the Anger you can muster about the scene. If you think your character is worried out of her mind, don’t go for Worry; go directly to Fear.

Don’t be afraid of the Big Four. Don’t avoid them just because they are such huge emotions. Sometimes we get so fancy about how we define the emotional life of our characters that we shy away from the strength of these primary emotions. Don’t. Go with them. Indulge them. Find out what they have to tell you about the heart of the scene.

Remember, you’re in rehearsals, and you’re in the early stage of rehearsals. You can afford to make mistakes now. You aren’t committing to anything. You’re simply exploring. You’re going to the edge of the boundaries, and perhaps even beyond them, so that you can be sure where the boundaries are.

So when I read the confrontation between Willy Loman and Biff at the end of Death of a Salesman, I might respond primarily to Biff’s Anger. If that is what hits me first and I am playing Biff, it is likely that I will be inclined to focus on that aspect of the scene, to play up the Anger whenever possible.

That’s not the only emotion going on in the scene, however. By the end of it, Biff is in tears, a big clue that Sadness is also a part of the scene. As Biff, I might start the scene with Anger, but ultimately I’ve got to make my way to Sadness by the end of it.

Be careful, though, not to assume that it’s an either/or proposition. That when I’m feeling Anger, I can’t possibly feel Sadness as well. Or vice versa. Different, or even conflicting emotions, can co-exist. I’ll talk more about this in Part II.

See Part II here. See Part III here.

Justifying the Text, Part III

Posted on October 25, 2013 by J.

The examples I’ve given you for justifying the text are the obvious ones. If I start to cry, it’s not that hard to figure out that it’s because you slapped me, or humiliated me, or told me you’re leaving me for another woman.

What about the less dramatic moments in a scene? Do I need to pay too much attention to your response to me then? Or should I just worry about my own responses?

Many actors do just that, while simultaneously acknowledging the importance of their scene partner in their choices. “So-and-so made me mad when she said that, and that’s why I . . .” “But I think my character wouldn’t respond that way. I mean, she said such-and-such to me . . .”

Clearly, we think the choices we make about our own lines are at least partly driven by what we’re getting from others, and yet we forget that they feel the same way. That to really close all the loops in a play, we need to look at our role from the other characters’ viewpoints. To make sure that everything works together flawlessly. If there is a puzzle piece that you can’t fit into the picture, you’ve missed the boat somewhere and need to start over.

A play is a large mystery for the actor to solve. In a well-written play, all of the clues you need to solve the mystery are provided by the playwright. They might be hidden from view, but they are there to be discovered. Playwrights do not provide red herrings, nor do they spring new information on you in the last scene before Jessica Fletcher identifies the murderer, without which you could not have figured out whodunit.

Many of those clues about your character are in the other characters’ lines.

Here’s the golf analogy. An amateur plays a hole from tee to green. How do I land the ball safely in the fairway? How do I get the ball on the green from the fairway? How do I get the ball in the hole once it’s on the green?

A professional golfer plays the hole backwards, from green to tee. Where do I want to land the ball on the green to have the easiest putt? Where do I want to hit the ball from the fairway to give myself the best chance of putting the ball on that spot on the green? What club do I need to hit, and how do I shape my shot, to get the ball to that spot on the fairway?

So yes, you should read each scene from your character’s point of view. But you should also read each scene from the other character’s point of view. How are they responding to your character, and what does that tell you about the kind of person your character is and about what is emotionally going on for your character right now?

See Part I here. See Part II here.

Justifying the Text, Part II

Posted on October 24, 2013 by J.

If I get angry in a scene with you, is whatever you’re doing sufficient to make me start yelling at you? Yes, there’s probably something going on internally in me that is feeding that anger. But it is likely that you were the straw that broke the camel’s back, that either something you said, or the way you said it, or a combination of both, made the dam burst for me.

The first option is taken care of by the playwright. It is your job to add something to it by the way you say the line. Because leaving the responsibility for provoking me entirely in the lap of the playwright isn’t the best choice.

Why?

Let’s say a play is two hours long. If you’ve never tried to write a play, you may not realize how short a period of time this is. It may seem to you that there is a lot that happens in the play, and there probably is. But it is also likely that the play was much longer in its original version, and the playwright had to take a stern red pencil to it. The editing process removes all the extraneous stuff, all the wonderful but unfortunately unnecessary pieces, from the play. A good playwright will leave in only the essential moments, the essential words, that which most strongly moves the story forward.

Given that all that is left in the final script is “essential”, it is important that we, as actors, make sure that the audience gets every bit of it to the fullest extent possible. Remember, the audience is meeting these characters and this situation for the first time. They have no history with the characters, but have to learn the important facts of their lives and temperaments very quickly. They continue to receive new information about the characters throughout the play, and need to integrate it in to what they have already learned. This is a lot of work. The playwright and actors work in conjunction to make it as easy as possible for the audience to navigate this new world.

Remember how only 7% of the meaning of conversation is conveyed by the words? If the actor doesn’t put in the emotional subtext, the audience will never get everything out of the play they are meant to get.

This means focusing their attention to maximize what they receive. It means being very clear about what we deliver to them. A muddy performance doesn’t do anyone – the playwright, the audience, or you – any favors.

Clarity doesn’t mean simplicity. Elegance, yes, but we are aiming for complex, interesting characterizations, not simple ones. Making broad strokes at the obvious may make why I am crying or yelling abundantly clear, but it doesn’t necessarily make it believable.

See Part I here. See Part III here.

Justifying the Text, Part I

Posted on October 23, 2013 by J.

In acting, “Justifying the Text” means making sure that whatever the playwright has written in the dialogue makes sense to the audience.

If you come into my living room and I say, “Please, sit down,” and nothing indicates that you don’t sit down, the odds are very good that you do sit. If you don’t sit, the audience will spend the next two minutes wondering why you don’t, and they’ll miss everything that happens in that two minutes. So to justify the text, you should sit.

If I say, “Sit down,” and then say, “I said, sit down!”, then sitting down when I say it the first time is probably a mistake, because if you did sit then, I’d have no reason to say, “I said, sit down!” So standing after my first line and sitting after the second line is probably called for. And this, too, is called justifying the text.

If I ask you if you’d like coffee, and you say yes, then the odds are that I’m going to get you some, whether the script indicates this or not. Unless you have a line at some point where you say, “And never mind about that cup of coffee you never got me!”

These are the easy, obvious examples of what we mean by justifying the text. But there are lots of more subtle ways in which we need to justify the text, too.

If you and I have a scene together where I start to cry, you need to look at whether or not you say something that triggers my crying. It’s not just about me crying on cue, just because the text says I should. The responsibility for my crying doesn’t rest solely on my shoulders. We are partners in this scene. We are equally responsible for everything that happens in it.

If I cry in a scene, the odds are pretty good that you’ve done something that makes me respond that way, or you are at least a contributing factor. Perhaps you’ve insulted me about my weakest point. If that’s the case, then to justify the text, you need to be sure that you’ve insulted me sufficiently to provoke my crying. Who your character is and what my character is like will have an impact on how you go about doing that, but the connection between your criticism and my crying must be clear to the audience.

Again – if it isn’t, it is distracting to the audience. An audience is an infallible lie detector. They’ll notice if there is no logical emotional connection between what you said and what I do. It bothers them. They wonder about it. They try to figure out which actor screwed up. And they miss another two minutes of the play.

It’s your job to make sure they don’t miss even five seconds.