Tonight is my last class of this session and I'll kind of be glad when it is over. I have enjoyed this class and enjoyed the scenes we have all worked on, though I think it might have been nice if it was a nine week class and we worked on three scenes each instead of an eight week class wherein we worked on two scenes each. I don't know that there was enough script analysis time to merit working on one scene for four weeks - we'd read it one week and talk a bit, and then come in and perform it three times. I'm not sure what to do differently tonight, but I guess that is to be expected because it is moment-to-moment work so I can't know what to do or what is going to happen until I get there. All I can do is prepare my background information and know my lines and know what I want from my partner when I enter the room. Beyond that, it's anyone's guess.
My other class ended on Saturday and I will miss that one a lot. It was sort of the last in the series, and probably my last with that group of people, many of whom I'd been in class with for almost a year now. I have grown to love my classmates deeply and trust them immensely and I will be sad to not be in class with them anymore. It's funny - it occurred to me on Saturday that the scene I was working on was kind of about losing a friend and I've grown to really love the woman I was working with this session and here was our last performance so it was doing a scene about losing a friend knowing that I'm losing my scene partner. I'm not losing her losing her - I know we'll stay in touch - it just seemed appropriate. We did well, too. Granted, it took us three times to get into it, but once we were there, we were really there and it felt great. After the scene, the teacher kind of took me aside and told me not to lose this because there was some really good work done. I think the most important things I need to remember from this class are that I need to speak my point of view, I need to speak my point of view clearly, and to always choose connection. I want to play around a bit with my warm-up technique, though, so it won't take me three tries to really get into it. I do my homework, I cast my characters, I build my private life and I'm up there on stage full of history, but I want to be able to hit the ground running and I need to figure out a way to get myself there. Be it looking at a picture or reading over a list of my important points or whatever. I need to figure out a way to get there at the drop of a hat instead of gradually warming into it.
But yeah. I maybe be on a bit of radio silence as I take the rest of the summer off from classes. But I do want to thank all of my teachers and classmates for working with me, pushing me, challenging me, being there when I had my little breakdowns and my big breakdowns, encouraging me, loving me, and accepting me as we all went on this journey together toward becoming fuller, more complete performers. I love you and hope all we get to work together again someday. Hopefully on a play involving monkeys.
21 June 2010
15 June 2010
The Good and The Bad
I don't know that "bad" necessarily applies, but I didn't feel good after my class last night. In retrospect, I'm not sure why, unless it was a discomfort with the character kind of thing. My partner and I actually did some really good work. The teacher coached us a bit, and then one moment would lead to a new revelation and we'd find ourselves going a whole new direction and that was actually kind of fun. And exactly what the acting/rehearsing process should be. We freed ourselves up a lot and we affected each other and found new things in the script we hadn't found before. I just went home feeling like crap, though. Not sure why. Acting is supposed to be hard work. It's supposed to be exhausting and frustrating when your character is ultimately the loser in the scene. And I'm the loser in this one - I try so hard to control the whole situation, but end up not getting my way in the end. I get put in my place. Maybe that's good for me. I dunno.
On Saturday, my partner and I got an "excellent work" from our teacher. She had comments for us afterward, of course, and good ones, too, but she (and the rest of the class) was really impressed with our scene. That felt good. She made a good point, though - in the beginning of our scene, I'm kind of telling a story and I haven't connected to why I am telling this specific story to this specific person at this specific time. I need to work on that more so we have a connection through the whole scene and not just the second half of it. But that one felt good. I like the character. I like the relationship my scene partner and I have developed. As much as I'll be happy to have my Saturday mornings back, I'll miss this class.
I kind of want to talk to both of my teachers after our classes end to see if they have any parting words of wisdom for me. From the one class, I think I've learned that I need to speak to my point of view and I need to speak to it clearly. From the other one...I'm not sure. I don't know that I'll be taking more classes with these teachers, though, so I kind of want to get my last bit of advice before I don't have easy access to them anymore, you know?
Anyway. I only have one more of each class so I really have to step it up and bring it. I think there is some reality TV show out there about being an actor - I should be on that show. I think I'd do quite well.
On Saturday, my partner and I got an "excellent work" from our teacher. She had comments for us afterward, of course, and good ones, too, but she (and the rest of the class) was really impressed with our scene. That felt good. She made a good point, though - in the beginning of our scene, I'm kind of telling a story and I haven't connected to why I am telling this specific story to this specific person at this specific time. I need to work on that more so we have a connection through the whole scene and not just the second half of it. But that one felt good. I like the character. I like the relationship my scene partner and I have developed. As much as I'll be happy to have my Saturday mornings back, I'll miss this class.
I kind of want to talk to both of my teachers after our classes end to see if they have any parting words of wisdom for me. From the one class, I think I've learned that I need to speak to my point of view and I need to speak to it clearly. From the other one...I'm not sure. I don't know that I'll be taking more classes with these teachers, though, so I kind of want to get my last bit of advice before I don't have easy access to them anymore, you know?
Anyway. I only have one more of each class so I really have to step it up and bring it. I think there is some reality TV show out there about being an actor - I should be on that show. I think I'd do quite well.
08 June 2010
Addendum
Oh! One more thing.
No, the scene is not about you, but there is a lot you can do to prepare for a scene if your partner is not available to rehearse. All of that stuff about filling in the gaps - you can think about that on the train or in the shower or while you are doing dishes. Your scene partner doesn't necessarily need to know what kind of underwear your character wears, but if you want to know what is in your character's underwear drawer, go ahead and know it. There is nothing that says you can only work on things with your scene partner present and script in hand. When teachers talk about being prepared for class, this is what they are talking about.
Okay, now I'm stopping.
No, the scene is not about you, but there is a lot you can do to prepare for a scene if your partner is not available to rehearse. All of that stuff about filling in the gaps - you can think about that on the train or in the shower or while you are doing dishes. Your scene partner doesn't necessarily need to know what kind of underwear your character wears, but if you want to know what is in your character's underwear drawer, go ahead and know it. There is nothing that says you can only work on things with your scene partner present and script in hand. When teachers talk about being prepared for class, this is what they are talking about.
Okay, now I'm stopping.
Give it to Me, Baby...uh huh, uh huh
I was thinking about a couple of things in class last night and part of me thinks they could be the beginnings of the foundation of my own theories on acting and part of me thinks they are really pretentious observations that I feel kind of bad making even though I know they apply to me, too. But I'm going to go ahead and write about them from the "these are helpful hints for actors to keep in mind" perspective. I don't mean to tell you what to do in your craft - you are welcome to tell me to piss off - these are just things I have observed that make scenes more enjoyable to watch and to be in.
Acting is not about you. It's not. Yes, it is you up there and yes, you get to fill in the gaps in the character with whatever you want to, but it's not about you up there. It is about the moment and the scene and the circumstance and the connection you have with your scene partner. Think about real life - when you're talking to a friend or family member and you're an active participant in the conversation, the conversation is fun, yes? When you are listening and responding? As opposed to when your mind is elsewhere and you're not really paying attention to your friend. The second option there is a dull conversation that neither person wants to be in and that will probably end really soon. Scenes work the same way. There is a reason your character is there, speaking these specific words at this specific time to this specific person. If you were supposed to tune out, the author would not have written the scene. So be involved. The scene is not about you. It is bigger than that.
Acting is an exercise in giving. Now that you are invested in the scene and focused and talking to your partner, you are giving him/her something to work with. As the scene partner, you shouldn't just take that as an opportunity to show off. You need to take it in, let it affect you, and spit it right back out so that you give your partner something to work with. If you think of the scene in terms of fueling your partner instead of playing an emotion, you will find that the emotions come, and both you and your partner are fueled by the whole thing. The more you put into a scene, the more you get back out of it. So try it. Try giving your scene partner something. Try giving your scene partner something real. If your character was supposed to be lost in his/her own head, the author would not have included a second character in the scene. Though there is purpose even in a monologue or soliloquy, but I'm not talking about that right now.
Dialogue is a conversation. I know a lot of people think that the hardest part about acting is memorizing lines. I think that is because they are thinking of the lines as just a stream of words. They're not. The lines are a conversation. There are words said by one person that spark the words said by the other person and so on and so forth. One character asks, "You're not mad at me, are you?" and upon hearing the word "mad," the second character replies, "Mad at you? Why should I be mad at you?" It makes sense. It's logical. It's how people talk to one another. So if you stop thinking of it as a stream of words that have to be memorized in a certain order, the right words come out a lot easier than you might expect them to. And building on that, adding it to the idea that acting is an exercise in giving, as you memorize your lines, take note that there are certain words that you say that trigger what your partner is going to say next. Please please please please try to remember to say those trigger words. In the above exchange, if "You're not mad at me, are you?" comes out as, "You okay?" then the response of, "Mad at you? Why should I be mad at you?" no longer makes sense in the realm of the conversation. Without reference to that word "mad," a whole chunk of the scene can be lost. So please try to look at the scene as a conversation, not just a random string of words. You have a lot of stuff in there that you need to be able to give your partner, emotionally and verbally, so be aware of that.
They are called plays for a reason. There was one woman in class who said she was having a hard time with her character because it is a secondary character in the play as a whole and there wasn't a whole lot of information about her in the script. The teacher told her that she was then free to fill in those gaps with whatever she wanted. That made me think a lot about the roles I've been given. I am seldom a lead character. I have been a lead, and I have been part of an ensemble. But even back in college, when I was cast as Francis in Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, I remember the director telling me something along the lines of she would have like to give me a character with more stage time, but I was the only person she trusted to be able to play Francis without turning her into a caricature. She trusted me to take the little bit I was given in the script and turn that into a complete person. And I remember several people telling me I was fascinating to watch on stage because even when I wasn't the focal point of the conversation, I was doing something. I was active. I was alive. I was in the chorus of Romeo and Juliet the opera in college, too, and in the opening party scene, the rest of the chorus was standing in little clusters, hugging the scenery so to speak. I had this hideous pink dress on that turned into a giant bell when I twirled, so as the curtain came up, I twirled, just to add some life to the scene. And then, knowing the scene wasn't about me, I went back to being background when someone else needed the focus. My point being, if you don't have a lot of information about a character, make it up. If questions aren't answered in the text, answer them however you want to answer them. Use your imagination. Play! Make this a real person. Just because you only have two lines doesn't mean you are any less of a person than the guy who has two hundred lines. Last night, for the first time in a long time, I was proud of the fact that I usually play supporting characters because I felt like it meant my directors trust me as a performer to fill out the story or the scene as it needs to be filled out without a lot of fuss. Like they know when I'm in the supporting cast, they don't have to worry about it - they can focus on the stuff in the foreground knowing the background is under control. I don't know if that is what any of my directors have thought, but it is a possibility that occurred to me last night and it kind of made me happy.
Take every opportunity to practice your craft. EVERY OPPORTUNITY. I'm not saying you should "be on" all of the time or raise the stakes at Thanksgiving dinner for the sake of making things dramatic, but when you are at a rehearsal, be at that rehearsal. When you are in class, be in class. When you are meeting with your partner outside of class, use that time to work out some of your issues. I don't understand why some people think it's okay to slack off in class. You're paying money to be there - don't you want to try stuff? Don't you want to learn? Why are you taking classes if you don't want to push yourself and grow? Is it really that much fun to get up there and be blase about everything? I know I have been guilty of this one in the past - I've gone to rehearsals and wished I was somewhere else. I have spent a few class periods not jumping up to work in repetition. But class time is experimental time. This is your opportunity to do things you would never be able to get away with in an actual show. This is your chance to try stuff and be crazy and push things so far that the teacher tells you to reign it in a bit. But you know what? The teacher probably won't tell you to reign it in because by the time you think you've taken it too far, you're probably right where you should be. And here, in class, in this safe space, you have the chance to get comfortable with what that feels like. Don't waste that time worrying about whether or not you look cool. Get up there and work with your partner, give him or her things to work with, make your point of view known, follow your impulses. If you don't do those things with any sort of regularity, you'll fall out of the habit and your abilities will atrophy. Trust me, they will. So use every moment you are given to practice your craft.
Okay, I'll get down off of my high horse now. My teachers probably have a whole slew of comments for me that are in contradiction to everything I just said, but these are the things I was thinking about in class last night. That, and the fact that I really am good at this. When I don't get notes or comments from my teachers, I think it is probably because they're not seeing a lot that needs major fixing, not because they have given up on me as being a hopeless case. I'm not hopeless. I'm good at this.
Acting is not about you. It's not. Yes, it is you up there and yes, you get to fill in the gaps in the character with whatever you want to, but it's not about you up there. It is about the moment and the scene and the circumstance and the connection you have with your scene partner. Think about real life - when you're talking to a friend or family member and you're an active participant in the conversation, the conversation is fun, yes? When you are listening and responding? As opposed to when your mind is elsewhere and you're not really paying attention to your friend. The second option there is a dull conversation that neither person wants to be in and that will probably end really soon. Scenes work the same way. There is a reason your character is there, speaking these specific words at this specific time to this specific person. If you were supposed to tune out, the author would not have written the scene. So be involved. The scene is not about you. It is bigger than that.
Acting is an exercise in giving. Now that you are invested in the scene and focused and talking to your partner, you are giving him/her something to work with. As the scene partner, you shouldn't just take that as an opportunity to show off. You need to take it in, let it affect you, and spit it right back out so that you give your partner something to work with. If you think of the scene in terms of fueling your partner instead of playing an emotion, you will find that the emotions come, and both you and your partner are fueled by the whole thing. The more you put into a scene, the more you get back out of it. So try it. Try giving your scene partner something. Try giving your scene partner something real. If your character was supposed to be lost in his/her own head, the author would not have included a second character in the scene. Though there is purpose even in a monologue or soliloquy, but I'm not talking about that right now.
Dialogue is a conversation. I know a lot of people think that the hardest part about acting is memorizing lines. I think that is because they are thinking of the lines as just a stream of words. They're not. The lines are a conversation. There are words said by one person that spark the words said by the other person and so on and so forth. One character asks, "You're not mad at me, are you?" and upon hearing the word "mad," the second character replies, "Mad at you? Why should I be mad at you?" It makes sense. It's logical. It's how people talk to one another. So if you stop thinking of it as a stream of words that have to be memorized in a certain order, the right words come out a lot easier than you might expect them to. And building on that, adding it to the idea that acting is an exercise in giving, as you memorize your lines, take note that there are certain words that you say that trigger what your partner is going to say next. Please please please please try to remember to say those trigger words. In the above exchange, if "You're not mad at me, are you?" comes out as, "You okay?" then the response of, "Mad at you? Why should I be mad at you?" no longer makes sense in the realm of the conversation. Without reference to that word "mad," a whole chunk of the scene can be lost. So please try to look at the scene as a conversation, not just a random string of words. You have a lot of stuff in there that you need to be able to give your partner, emotionally and verbally, so be aware of that.
They are called plays for a reason. There was one woman in class who said she was having a hard time with her character because it is a secondary character in the play as a whole and there wasn't a whole lot of information about her in the script. The teacher told her that she was then free to fill in those gaps with whatever she wanted. That made me think a lot about the roles I've been given. I am seldom a lead character. I have been a lead, and I have been part of an ensemble. But even back in college, when I was cast as Francis in Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, I remember the director telling me something along the lines of she would have like to give me a character with more stage time, but I was the only person she trusted to be able to play Francis without turning her into a caricature. She trusted me to take the little bit I was given in the script and turn that into a complete person. And I remember several people telling me I was fascinating to watch on stage because even when I wasn't the focal point of the conversation, I was doing something. I was active. I was alive. I was in the chorus of Romeo and Juliet the opera in college, too, and in the opening party scene, the rest of the chorus was standing in little clusters, hugging the scenery so to speak. I had this hideous pink dress on that turned into a giant bell when I twirled, so as the curtain came up, I twirled, just to add some life to the scene. And then, knowing the scene wasn't about me, I went back to being background when someone else needed the focus. My point being, if you don't have a lot of information about a character, make it up. If questions aren't answered in the text, answer them however you want to answer them. Use your imagination. Play! Make this a real person. Just because you only have two lines doesn't mean you are any less of a person than the guy who has two hundred lines. Last night, for the first time in a long time, I was proud of the fact that I usually play supporting characters because I felt like it meant my directors trust me as a performer to fill out the story or the scene as it needs to be filled out without a lot of fuss. Like they know when I'm in the supporting cast, they don't have to worry about it - they can focus on the stuff in the foreground knowing the background is under control. I don't know if that is what any of my directors have thought, but it is a possibility that occurred to me last night and it kind of made me happy.
Take every opportunity to practice your craft. EVERY OPPORTUNITY. I'm not saying you should "be on" all of the time or raise the stakes at Thanksgiving dinner for the sake of making things dramatic, but when you are at a rehearsal, be at that rehearsal. When you are in class, be in class. When you are meeting with your partner outside of class, use that time to work out some of your issues. I don't understand why some people think it's okay to slack off in class. You're paying money to be there - don't you want to try stuff? Don't you want to learn? Why are you taking classes if you don't want to push yourself and grow? Is it really that much fun to get up there and be blase about everything? I know I have been guilty of this one in the past - I've gone to rehearsals and wished I was somewhere else. I have spent a few class periods not jumping up to work in repetition. But class time is experimental time. This is your opportunity to do things you would never be able to get away with in an actual show. This is your chance to try stuff and be crazy and push things so far that the teacher tells you to reign it in a bit. But you know what? The teacher probably won't tell you to reign it in because by the time you think you've taken it too far, you're probably right where you should be. And here, in class, in this safe space, you have the chance to get comfortable with what that feels like. Don't waste that time worrying about whether or not you look cool. Get up there and work with your partner, give him or her things to work with, make your point of view known, follow your impulses. If you don't do those things with any sort of regularity, you'll fall out of the habit and your abilities will atrophy. Trust me, they will. So use every moment you are given to practice your craft.
Okay, I'll get down off of my high horse now. My teachers probably have a whole slew of comments for me that are in contradiction to everything I just said, but these are the things I was thinking about in class last night. That, and the fact that I really am good at this. When I don't get notes or comments from my teachers, I think it is probably because they're not seeing a lot that needs major fixing, not because they have given up on me as being a hopeless case. I'm not hopeless. I'm good at this.
01 June 2010
Self-Doubt and Wonderment
What kind of mint?
I'm suffering (a bit) from bouts of self-doubt, in large part because I'm not getting the same kind of feedback in my classes that the other students are. In my one class, the teacher has been able to identify little ticks and quirks and safety mechanisms that just about everyone else has, but she has said nothing to me. Do I not have these things, or has she just not seen them yet? I can't imagine that I'm an actor without habitual behaviors. Does that even happen? I don't think so. She has called me out for not speaking my point of view in repetition, and I noticed myself being fearful in repetition last class, so that's something I can work on. I used to be fearless, but I was really trepidatious in working with one scene partner in particular. I should have followed my instincts instead of worrying about how they would affect him. My job is to affect him. Anyway. But then when I'm up doing table work with my regular partner, I don't get a lot of notes. Hardly any. I say a thing or two about my character or about the circumstance of the play, but that's about it. Now, I don't know if that is because of where we are sitting in the room in relation to the teacher - maybe it's harder for her to see me - or if it's because the real meaty bits for my character come later in the scene and we haven't gotten there yet, but I don't know what to do when I'm not getting notes. I just don't. I know I haven't explored everything that there is to explore about this scene or this character, but one would think that if I'm not getting many notes, that I'm doing a decent job, yes? Or that I'm doing horribly and she thinks I'm a lost cause. I don't think I'm a lost cause, and I don't think she's the sort of instructor who would give up on me if I was - I've seen how she works with some of the other students in the class who are visibly struggling. She's not the "give a free pass" kind of teacher. So why am I getting a free pass (almost)?
I have been told by directors in the past, when I ask them for feedback after going several rehearsals without any, that "When I can get the rest of the cast to where you are, then I'll give you notes." I know that is meant as a compliment, and it is very flattering, but it also makes me really self-conscious. I want to learn. I want to grow. And I can't do that if I don't get any notes. Anyway.
I do like the scenes I'm currently working on, so maybe I am doing well enough with them that the teacher doesn't see anything glaringly awful about it and is just going to let me play. I guess that's an option. It's funny - for the scene I'm working on for my Saturday class, I have the feeling that the character is one of those women who wears too much jewelry and not enough underwear, if you know what I mean. Flow-y, flowery dresses, long necklaces, kind of looks like a hippie. So I wore a long, floral dress to class with some more jewelry than I normally wear and tried to make my hair look kind of messy, like I didn't really try to style it, and the response from my classmates, scene partner, and the teacher, was that I looked really nice. I hadn't meant to look nice. I meant to look like I didn't care about my appearance. Oh well. Anyway.
I'm just rambling now, so I think I'll stop. I am good at this. Maybe I just need to do something glaringly awful to prove that to myself.
I'm suffering (a bit) from bouts of self-doubt, in large part because I'm not getting the same kind of feedback in my classes that the other students are. In my one class, the teacher has been able to identify little ticks and quirks and safety mechanisms that just about everyone else has, but she has said nothing to me. Do I not have these things, or has she just not seen them yet? I can't imagine that I'm an actor without habitual behaviors. Does that even happen? I don't think so. She has called me out for not speaking my point of view in repetition, and I noticed myself being fearful in repetition last class, so that's something I can work on. I used to be fearless, but I was really trepidatious in working with one scene partner in particular. I should have followed my instincts instead of worrying about how they would affect him. My job is to affect him. Anyway. But then when I'm up doing table work with my regular partner, I don't get a lot of notes. Hardly any. I say a thing or two about my character or about the circumstance of the play, but that's about it. Now, I don't know if that is because of where we are sitting in the room in relation to the teacher - maybe it's harder for her to see me - or if it's because the real meaty bits for my character come later in the scene and we haven't gotten there yet, but I don't know what to do when I'm not getting notes. I just don't. I know I haven't explored everything that there is to explore about this scene or this character, but one would think that if I'm not getting many notes, that I'm doing a decent job, yes? Or that I'm doing horribly and she thinks I'm a lost cause. I don't think I'm a lost cause, and I don't think she's the sort of instructor who would give up on me if I was - I've seen how she works with some of the other students in the class who are visibly struggling. She's not the "give a free pass" kind of teacher. So why am I getting a free pass (almost)?
I have been told by directors in the past, when I ask them for feedback after going several rehearsals without any, that "When I can get the rest of the cast to where you are, then I'll give you notes." I know that is meant as a compliment, and it is very flattering, but it also makes me really self-conscious. I want to learn. I want to grow. And I can't do that if I don't get any notes. Anyway.
I do like the scenes I'm currently working on, so maybe I am doing well enough with them that the teacher doesn't see anything glaringly awful about it and is just going to let me play. I guess that's an option. It's funny - for the scene I'm working on for my Saturday class, I have the feeling that the character is one of those women who wears too much jewelry and not enough underwear, if you know what I mean. Flow-y, flowery dresses, long necklaces, kind of looks like a hippie. So I wore a long, floral dress to class with some more jewelry than I normally wear and tried to make my hair look kind of messy, like I didn't really try to style it, and the response from my classmates, scene partner, and the teacher, was that I looked really nice. I hadn't meant to look nice. I meant to look like I didn't care about my appearance. Oh well. Anyway.
I'm just rambling now, so I think I'll stop. I am good at this. Maybe I just need to do something glaringly awful to prove that to myself.
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