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.