- Published on
How to avoid preconceptions, and bring truth, freshness, and spontaneity to your work.
Austin Pendleton, the wonderful actor, director, author, and teacher at New York’s HB Studio, was directing a reading of a new play. On a break during rehearsal, one of the other actors approached me with a question.
“Do you know what this means?” she asked, pointing to one of her lines. “I’m not sure I understand what I’m talking about here.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, so that Austin would hear me, “but I studied with Austin, and he taught me never to read the other actors’ lines before doing a reading, only to read my own. That way I can be surprised by what the other characters are saying.”
Austin piped up. “I’ve improved upon that technique since you were in my class, Matthew. Now I don’t even read my own lines before a reading. That way I can be surprised by what I’m saying.”
Of course, we were both kidding. But the joke springs from an idea that we share about how the text is to be approached, and a method that will lead to richness, detail, authenticity and spontaneity. This method requires bringing an open mind to the text and the reading, without preconceived ideas of event or character, and an eye not just to what is said, but also to what is not said.
I want to give you a practical tool to use in your first rehearsals of a scene with your scene partner. But first, I’m going to get very academic and technical for a couple of paragraphs. Bear with me. I think it will be worth it in the end.
A Theoretical Problem:
Our moving through life as individuals is a moving through experiences. Our rehearsals or performances of a scene are not only experiences in and of themselves, but also representations of the experiences of the characters, as spelled out by the writer in the text. Each “experience” that we have, and each event that happens in the life of a character, might be termed a “phenomena.” The school of philosophy known as Phenomenology, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “is the study of ‘phenomena’: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience.”
The German literary scholar Wolfgang Iser applied the perspectives of Phenomenology to literature, discussing what transpires in the act of reading. Iser theorized that there is a gap between each idea and its written or spoken expression. These gaps are a result of the inherent limitations of language. Consequently, when we read, we have to fill these gaps, and we reach into our own experience in order to fill them, to flesh out the text and give it its meaning. That process he calls konkretisation. The result of any single reading is that the text has become konkretisiert, or realized. It is apparent that there are as many realizations of a text as there are readers. More than that, even, because when a reader comes back to a text after a period of time, the reader is a new being with a new perspective, changed by his or her experiences in the intervening time. The reader will then bring new experiences to the reading and create a new konkretisation.
“How does this apply to acting?” I hear you cry. “I thought we were going to talk about scene work and rehearsals.” We are. The point I want to make is this: The same thing that Iser is describing happens when we are rehearsing. Just as a reader fills in the gaps, so does the actor. Give five actors the same script and have them do five cold readings, and you will see five very different characters, five different “konkretisation.” This is a problem if you are at the very beginning of your rehearsal process. Once we as actors make those choices, we begin to make a “konkretisation,” and the “konkretisation” then becomes, as the name implies, concrete. It starts to become fixed, at a time when we have not yet fully explored the options offered to us by the text.
This problem of “konkretisation” springs from an excessive eagerness to “act.” Beginning actors, in particular, want to “act” so much that they jump into strong choices before they have fully comprehended the text. We want to get the part. We want to impress the other actors, the director, the creative staff at the first table read. We want to be camera ready. We don’t want to look like fools. So we pick up the text, and we immediately start making choices. These choices, of necessity, reflect our own personalities, our own “default settings.” Yet how do we know which one of those most serves the text? Of course there is no single correct and objective interpretation of a text. But we do ourselves and the text a disservice if our choices are based on our own default settings, without exploration of the different options afforded us by the words, and the gaps.
There is another layer to the problem posed by the phenomenological view. When we read a novel for ourselves, for our own pleasure, and we fill in the gaps, we are merely having our own experience. However, when we rehearse or perform a play, we are involved in a collaborative process, and we must look not only to how we would fill in the gaps, but to how thecharacter would fill in the gaps, based on his or her culture and experiences. (See my article Coffee Grounds, Kaleidoscopes and Character.) Moreover, we must also bow to the demands of the production as conceived by the playwright and perceived by the director. Bringing too much of our own perspective, too quickly, can shut us down to the profound richness that can result from remaining open to these questions and these influences.
So what is the solution to this problem? We have to slow down when we approach a text, so that our own experiences, our own perspectives, don’t overwhelm the experience and perspective offered by text. Of course we are going to use our own perspective and experience to bring depth and truthful emotion to our performance. But when we dive too quickly into performance mode, when we aim from the beginning at a result, then we miss the range of possibilities that exist in the text. These possibilities live in the text not only in the words that are present, and also in the gaps between those words; in what is said, and in what is not said.
A Practical Approach:
It is easy to say that we have to slow down, but how do we actually do it? Technique, after all, should offer us more than simple platitudes about what we should be able to do. The purpose of technique is to give us concrete methods by which to obtain a goal. An instructor in a cooking class doesn’t just tell you to cut the onion into a very fine dice. You are shown how to do it; what kind of knife to use, how to hold it, what part of the onion to cut off first, and then how to make the two sets of perpendicular slices almost all the through the onion before making slices from a third angle that will produce a dice of the desired size.
So here is an approach that you might use with a scene partner, whether it is to prepare for class, or when sitting in one of your trailers before shooting a particularly difficult scene.
Preparation: Sit comfortably at a table, facing each other, with your scripts open before you. Look at each other for a few moments. Wait until you can feel that you are both present, calm, connected. Do not rush it.
Step One: Once a connection is established, look down at your scripts. Whoever has the first line, look at it, but only up to the first punctuation.
Step Two: Look back up and reconnect. Do not say your line. Wait. Look at each other and make sure that you and your partner are there, present, attentive.
Step Three: Speak your line, with intention, but without any spin. Say it with its most basic semantic meaning. You should not apply any emotion, attitude or implied meaning that you might initially presume to ascribe to it, but neither should you make it robotic or monotone. If it is a statement, make a statement. If it is a question, ask a question.
Step Four: After you have said the line, stay connected. Do not look back down at your scripts. Let the words sink into each of you, and only after their echo has faded in your minds should you look down to see what the next line is.
Here is piece of script:
KATE
So, where will you be headed tomorrow? Or are you still going to be evasive?
AARON
I’m not trying to be evasive, I just …
KATE
What?
AARON
I’m not sure what it is I’m looking for. I used to do your job. Lived in Manhattan, had a pulpit at a small congregation just north of the city. Simple. Quiet. Had a framework that had all the answers, or would lead to them, at any rate. Or so I thought.
KATE
And what happened?
AARON
Life. The unplanned. The paradigm didn’t work anymore.
Here is how this method should work in practice, applied to this piece of script: Sitting comfortably, the two actors connect. They wait. Then they look down. Kate looks at her line up to the first punctuation, the question mark. They look back up at each other. They wait. They connect. Kate asks the question “So, where will you be headed tomorrow?” She stops speaking, and the two actors stay connected. They let the question resonate. Then they look back down. Kate sees that it is she that continues speaking. The actors look back up. They connect. They wait. When the connection has been fully reestablished, Kate speaks again: “Or are you still going to be evasive?” Again, after the question is asked, neither actor looks back down. They continue to look at each other, keeping the connection alive between them, allowing the question to rest in the air. After a few moments, they look back down, and Aaron will see that it is his turn to speak. They look back up. They wait. They connect. Then, and only then, Aaron speaks: “I’m not trying to be evasive, I just …” And so it continues.
I have described the exercise in such detail because, although it seems incredibly simple, it is very, very hard to do correctly. In fact, every time I describe it in class, students look at me as if I am crazy. They think it I am being pedantic, and that the exercise will be boring and pointless. They interrupt as I am explaining and say “Yeah, yeah, we got it.” Then they get up to do it, and each time, every one of them fails at the first attempt. They start speaking almost instantaneously when they look up from the script. They put spin on the lines: anger, sweetness, sarcasm, etc. When they finally have the patience and discipline to wait until a connection has been established before they say their line, they then break the connection instantaneously the moment they finish speaking. I have to sit next to them and stop them, coach them through it, making them pause, making them back up and say a line without attitude. Once they have the pattern, I tell them to use the method in their next rehearsal with their scene partners.
A marvelous thing occurs at the next class. Every student comes back with a look of wonder, telling me that they worked the exercise, and that they finally heard the scene for the first time. What they begin to perceive is that the scene, driven by the text, floats above all the stuff going on in the ocean of meaning underneath. Using this method allows the student to learn this, allows the actor to dive with wonder into these depths of meaning. Even when we are no longer beginners, this exercise is incredibly useful. The pause, the slowness of the pace, allow us to hear the words, divorced from any preconceptions. It allows us to explore the gaps in the text, and to find the many possibilities of meaning in them.
© 2011 Matthew Arkin
“Do you know what this means?” she asked, pointing to one of her lines. “I’m not sure I understand what I’m talking about here.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, so that Austin would hear me, “but I studied with Austin, and he taught me never to read the other actors’ lines before doing a reading, only to read my own. That way I can be surprised by what the other characters are saying.”
Austin piped up. “I’ve improved upon that technique since you were in my class, Matthew. Now I don’t even read my own lines before a reading. That way I can be surprised by what I’m saying.”
Of course, we were both kidding. But the joke springs from an idea that we share about how the text is to be approached, and a method that will lead to richness, detail, authenticity and spontaneity. This method requires bringing an open mind to the text and the reading, without preconceived ideas of event or character, and an eye not just to what is said, but also to what is not said.
I want to give you a practical tool to use in your first rehearsals of a scene with your scene partner. But first, I’m going to get very academic and technical for a couple of paragraphs. Bear with me. I think it will be worth it in the end.
A Theoretical Problem:
Our moving through life as individuals is a moving through experiences. Our rehearsals or performances of a scene are not only experiences in and of themselves, but also representations of the experiences of the characters, as spelled out by the writer in the text. Each “experience” that we have, and each event that happens in the life of a character, might be termed a “phenomena.” The school of philosophy known as Phenomenology, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “is the study of ‘phenomena’: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience.”
The German literary scholar Wolfgang Iser applied the perspectives of Phenomenology to literature, discussing what transpires in the act of reading. Iser theorized that there is a gap between each idea and its written or spoken expression. These gaps are a result of the inherent limitations of language. Consequently, when we read, we have to fill these gaps, and we reach into our own experience in order to fill them, to flesh out the text and give it its meaning. That process he calls konkretisation. The result of any single reading is that the text has become konkretisiert, or realized. It is apparent that there are as many realizations of a text as there are readers. More than that, even, because when a reader comes back to a text after a period of time, the reader is a new being with a new perspective, changed by his or her experiences in the intervening time. The reader will then bring new experiences to the reading and create a new konkretisation.
“How does this apply to acting?” I hear you cry. “I thought we were going to talk about scene work and rehearsals.” We are. The point I want to make is this: The same thing that Iser is describing happens when we are rehearsing. Just as a reader fills in the gaps, so does the actor. Give five actors the same script and have them do five cold readings, and you will see five very different characters, five different “konkretisation.” This is a problem if you are at the very beginning of your rehearsal process. Once we as actors make those choices, we begin to make a “konkretisation,” and the “konkretisation” then becomes, as the name implies, concrete. It starts to become fixed, at a time when we have not yet fully explored the options offered to us by the text.
This problem of “konkretisation” springs from an excessive eagerness to “act.” Beginning actors, in particular, want to “act” so much that they jump into strong choices before they have fully comprehended the text. We want to get the part. We want to impress the other actors, the director, the creative staff at the first table read. We want to be camera ready. We don’t want to look like fools. So we pick up the text, and we immediately start making choices. These choices, of necessity, reflect our own personalities, our own “default settings.” Yet how do we know which one of those most serves the text? Of course there is no single correct and objective interpretation of a text. But we do ourselves and the text a disservice if our choices are based on our own default settings, without exploration of the different options afforded us by the words, and the gaps.
There is another layer to the problem posed by the phenomenological view. When we read a novel for ourselves, for our own pleasure, and we fill in the gaps, we are merely having our own experience. However, when we rehearse or perform a play, we are involved in a collaborative process, and we must look not only to how we would fill in the gaps, but to how thecharacter would fill in the gaps, based on his or her culture and experiences. (See my article Coffee Grounds, Kaleidoscopes and Character.) Moreover, we must also bow to the demands of the production as conceived by the playwright and perceived by the director. Bringing too much of our own perspective, too quickly, can shut us down to the profound richness that can result from remaining open to these questions and these influences.
So what is the solution to this problem? We have to slow down when we approach a text, so that our own experiences, our own perspectives, don’t overwhelm the experience and perspective offered by text. Of course we are going to use our own perspective and experience to bring depth and truthful emotion to our performance. But when we dive too quickly into performance mode, when we aim from the beginning at a result, then we miss the range of possibilities that exist in the text. These possibilities live in the text not only in the words that are present, and also in the gaps between those words; in what is said, and in what is not said.
A Practical Approach:
It is easy to say that we have to slow down, but how do we actually do it? Technique, after all, should offer us more than simple platitudes about what we should be able to do. The purpose of technique is to give us concrete methods by which to obtain a goal. An instructor in a cooking class doesn’t just tell you to cut the onion into a very fine dice. You are shown how to do it; what kind of knife to use, how to hold it, what part of the onion to cut off first, and then how to make the two sets of perpendicular slices almost all the through the onion before making slices from a third angle that will produce a dice of the desired size.
So here is an approach that you might use with a scene partner, whether it is to prepare for class, or when sitting in one of your trailers before shooting a particularly difficult scene.
Preparation: Sit comfortably at a table, facing each other, with your scripts open before you. Look at each other for a few moments. Wait until you can feel that you are both present, calm, connected. Do not rush it.
Step One: Once a connection is established, look down at your scripts. Whoever has the first line, look at it, but only up to the first punctuation.
Step Two: Look back up and reconnect. Do not say your line. Wait. Look at each other and make sure that you and your partner are there, present, attentive.
Step Three: Speak your line, with intention, but without any spin. Say it with its most basic semantic meaning. You should not apply any emotion, attitude or implied meaning that you might initially presume to ascribe to it, but neither should you make it robotic or monotone. If it is a statement, make a statement. If it is a question, ask a question.
Step Four: After you have said the line, stay connected. Do not look back down at your scripts. Let the words sink into each of you, and only after their echo has faded in your minds should you look down to see what the next line is.
Here is piece of script:
KATE
So, where will you be headed tomorrow? Or are you still going to be evasive?
AARON
I’m not trying to be evasive, I just …
KATE
What?
AARON
I’m not sure what it is I’m looking for. I used to do your job. Lived in Manhattan, had a pulpit at a small congregation just north of the city. Simple. Quiet. Had a framework that had all the answers, or would lead to them, at any rate. Or so I thought.
KATE
And what happened?
AARON
Life. The unplanned. The paradigm didn’t work anymore.
Here is how this method should work in practice, applied to this piece of script: Sitting comfortably, the two actors connect. They wait. Then they look down. Kate looks at her line up to the first punctuation, the question mark. They look back up at each other. They wait. They connect. Kate asks the question “So, where will you be headed tomorrow?” She stops speaking, and the two actors stay connected. They let the question resonate. Then they look back down. Kate sees that it is she that continues speaking. The actors look back up. They connect. They wait. When the connection has been fully reestablished, Kate speaks again: “Or are you still going to be evasive?” Again, after the question is asked, neither actor looks back down. They continue to look at each other, keeping the connection alive between them, allowing the question to rest in the air. After a few moments, they look back down, and Aaron will see that it is his turn to speak. They look back up. They wait. They connect. Then, and only then, Aaron speaks: “I’m not trying to be evasive, I just …” And so it continues.
I have described the exercise in such detail because, although it seems incredibly simple, it is very, very hard to do correctly. In fact, every time I describe it in class, students look at me as if I am crazy. They think it I am being pedantic, and that the exercise will be boring and pointless. They interrupt as I am explaining and say “Yeah, yeah, we got it.” Then they get up to do it, and each time, every one of them fails at the first attempt. They start speaking almost instantaneously when they look up from the script. They put spin on the lines: anger, sweetness, sarcasm, etc. When they finally have the patience and discipline to wait until a connection has been established before they say their line, they then break the connection instantaneously the moment they finish speaking. I have to sit next to them and stop them, coach them through it, making them pause, making them back up and say a line without attitude. Once they have the pattern, I tell them to use the method in their next rehearsal with their scene partners.
A marvelous thing occurs at the next class. Every student comes back with a look of wonder, telling me that they worked the exercise, and that they finally heard the scene for the first time. What they begin to perceive is that the scene, driven by the text, floats above all the stuff going on in the ocean of meaning underneath. Using this method allows the student to learn this, allows the actor to dive with wonder into these depths of meaning. Even when we are no longer beginners, this exercise is incredibly useful. The pause, the slowness of the pace, allow us to hear the words, divorced from any preconceptions. It allows us to explore the gaps in the text, and to find the many possibilities of meaning in them.
© 2011 Matthew Arkin
- Published on
Say the words, say all the words, say only the words.
One day in a beginning scene study class, two young actors were working on Act II, Scene 7 from Angels In America: Louis and Joe sit on a park bench in front of the Hall of Justice, eating hot dogs. It’s a wonderful scene, one which I often assign, and in the middle of the scene Joe has what might be termed a short monologue, interrupted only by an interjection from Louis. (In actuality I don’t believe there is any such thing as a “monologue,” but that is a subject for another day.) When the scene was over, I asked the actor playing Joe — let’s just call him “Joe” — to read the monologue directly from the script. He did so, and when he was done, I asked him to find the phrase “you know” in the monologue, and tell me how many times it appeared. He looked through the script for a few moments. Then he looked up at me and said, “It’s not in there.”
“Do you care to hazard a guess as to how many times you said it?” I asked.
He hesitated, and it seemed for a moment that he was going to say that he hadn’t said it at all. But by this point in our working together, he knew me, and knew that I was driving at something, so he took a flyer. “Thirteen?” To his credit, he was close.
“Fifteen,” I said. Then I asked him to close the script, look at the cover, and read what it said at the top, above the title.
“The Pulitzer Prize-winning Play,” he said.
“That’s right,” I said, “and the Pulitzer Prize is awarded to a playwright for writing, and we must respect that.” Indeed, it is notewothy that in the submission guidelines for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, it states that “A videotape of the production is strongly urged but is not required.”
The great actor and teacher Herbert Berghof said, “Words are the messengers of our wishes.” The playwright reveals the desires and intentions of the character using both description of action and the lines the character is to speak. When a stage direction prescribes an action, perhaps saying “Louis mimes barfing in Joe’s lap,” as in the scene from Angels in America, we would never think of changing that to suit our own idea of an alternative action. We might be free to perform the “barf” the way we want, realistically, cartoonishly, — in that freedom lies the art of our interpretation — but “barf” we must. We should no more think of eliminating that action than we would an entrance or an exit. So it is with the words that the playwright assigns to us. They are the “messengers” of the character’s wishes, actions that define the character every bit as much as entering, exiting, slapping, barfing, falling, dying. Your work as an actor is to find an interior life that will let you own the actions and the words of the character as set down by the playwright, not to alter those actions or words to suit your own ideas as to what the character should be doing or saying.
Sometimes, it might seem impossible to speak the line as it is written by the playwright. You look at it on the page and don’t believe that it could ever come out of your mouth in a natural way, and so you back off of it, swallow it when you say it, pull the energy out of the scene and the playwright’s design. But by backing off of it, you preordain a negative outcome. Rather, you should invest in it fully, give it everything that you have. Attach the arrow of your intention to the words, and in so doing, you may discover that it does indeed hit its target.
I had a lesson in this phenomenon while rehearsing for Donald Margulies’ Dinner with Friends, another Pulitzer Prize-winning play, in which I was playing the character of Gabe. At one point, confronted with a situation both devastating and confusing, the only line Gabe is given is “Huh.” At first this left me, the actor, feeling incredibly uncomfortable. It didn’t seem to even be a line, but rather just a sound, and I tried many different ways of swallowing it as I said it, glossing over it, sliding it in unobtrusively, avoiding it. None of these half-assed attempts, none of these readings, worked. I could tell that both my performance and the play were suffering as a result, that in that moment, I was amateurish, a pale reflection of a real person. It was only when I tried to say the word with vigor, not swallowing it, that I discovered that it was not an aside, nor an inarticulate way for Gabe to express something. Rather, Margulies was choosing a word that was perfectly articulate. The word “Huh,” spoken clearly, with strength and intent, was the most exact expression of what Gabe is experiencing at that moment. Any other phrase would not do. I also discovered that, although the discomfort I was feeling did not disappear, it was now Gabe’s, and not mine. And that is what we want to be doing as actors: Live the life, experiences, and thoughts of the characters, on stage, in front of the audience, so that we can tell the story set down by the playwright.
Theater is, of course, a collaborative art form, and one of the most exciting things you can do as an actor is to engage with a playwright during the creation of a new work, to be at those first table reads where the text is dissected, your character’s journey tracked and modified, his voice refined. But this is a privilege earned by those that have the chance to work on the play at the various stages of its development, and even throughout the development process, the playwright is king. You, as an actor, may contribute to the refinement of your character’s dialogue, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the playwright. But once he or she has determined what the lines will be, then those are the lines you must speak, and once the play is produced and published, it is set in stone.
In the end, we do our best in the telling of the story framed by the playwright, illuminating the lives of the characters, when we focus on the words we are given. If we divine the wishes that these words signify, and invest ourselves in the meaning of those words selected by the playwright, we will not need to add “You know?” We will be sure enough of ourselves and our actions to know that our intentions will land. We will not need to interject “I mean,” because we will have the confidence that we are already meaning it. As Hamlet said, “ … let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered.” Although Hamlet is speaking here specifically of clowns, it is advice that we should all take to heart. For he goes on to say, and I agree, that taking liberties with the text is “villainous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.” So please, speak the words, speak only the words, and speak all the words. Now, “Go make you ready.”
© 2011 Matthew Arkin
“Do you care to hazard a guess as to how many times you said it?” I asked.
He hesitated, and it seemed for a moment that he was going to say that he hadn’t said it at all. But by this point in our working together, he knew me, and knew that I was driving at something, so he took a flyer. “Thirteen?” To his credit, he was close.
“Fifteen,” I said. Then I asked him to close the script, look at the cover, and read what it said at the top, above the title.
“The Pulitzer Prize-winning Play,” he said.
“That’s right,” I said, “and the Pulitzer Prize is awarded to a playwright for writing, and we must respect that.” Indeed, it is notewothy that in the submission guidelines for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, it states that “A videotape of the production is strongly urged but is not required.”
The great actor and teacher Herbert Berghof said, “Words are the messengers of our wishes.” The playwright reveals the desires and intentions of the character using both description of action and the lines the character is to speak. When a stage direction prescribes an action, perhaps saying “Louis mimes barfing in Joe’s lap,” as in the scene from Angels in America, we would never think of changing that to suit our own idea of an alternative action. We might be free to perform the “barf” the way we want, realistically, cartoonishly, — in that freedom lies the art of our interpretation — but “barf” we must. We should no more think of eliminating that action than we would an entrance or an exit. So it is with the words that the playwright assigns to us. They are the “messengers” of the character’s wishes, actions that define the character every bit as much as entering, exiting, slapping, barfing, falling, dying. Your work as an actor is to find an interior life that will let you own the actions and the words of the character as set down by the playwright, not to alter those actions or words to suit your own ideas as to what the character should be doing or saying.
Sometimes, it might seem impossible to speak the line as it is written by the playwright. You look at it on the page and don’t believe that it could ever come out of your mouth in a natural way, and so you back off of it, swallow it when you say it, pull the energy out of the scene and the playwright’s design. But by backing off of it, you preordain a negative outcome. Rather, you should invest in it fully, give it everything that you have. Attach the arrow of your intention to the words, and in so doing, you may discover that it does indeed hit its target.
I had a lesson in this phenomenon while rehearsing for Donald Margulies’ Dinner with Friends, another Pulitzer Prize-winning play, in which I was playing the character of Gabe. At one point, confronted with a situation both devastating and confusing, the only line Gabe is given is “Huh.” At first this left me, the actor, feeling incredibly uncomfortable. It didn’t seem to even be a line, but rather just a sound, and I tried many different ways of swallowing it as I said it, glossing over it, sliding it in unobtrusively, avoiding it. None of these half-assed attempts, none of these readings, worked. I could tell that both my performance and the play were suffering as a result, that in that moment, I was amateurish, a pale reflection of a real person. It was only when I tried to say the word with vigor, not swallowing it, that I discovered that it was not an aside, nor an inarticulate way for Gabe to express something. Rather, Margulies was choosing a word that was perfectly articulate. The word “Huh,” spoken clearly, with strength and intent, was the most exact expression of what Gabe is experiencing at that moment. Any other phrase would not do. I also discovered that, although the discomfort I was feeling did not disappear, it was now Gabe’s, and not mine. And that is what we want to be doing as actors: Live the life, experiences, and thoughts of the characters, on stage, in front of the audience, so that we can tell the story set down by the playwright.
Theater is, of course, a collaborative art form, and one of the most exciting things you can do as an actor is to engage with a playwright during the creation of a new work, to be at those first table reads where the text is dissected, your character’s journey tracked and modified, his voice refined. But this is a privilege earned by those that have the chance to work on the play at the various stages of its development, and even throughout the development process, the playwright is king. You, as an actor, may contribute to the refinement of your character’s dialogue, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the playwright. But once he or she has determined what the lines will be, then those are the lines you must speak, and once the play is produced and published, it is set in stone.
In the end, we do our best in the telling of the story framed by the playwright, illuminating the lives of the characters, when we focus on the words we are given. If we divine the wishes that these words signify, and invest ourselves in the meaning of those words selected by the playwright, we will not need to add “You know?” We will be sure enough of ourselves and our actions to know that our intentions will land. We will not need to interject “I mean,” because we will have the confidence that we are already meaning it. As Hamlet said, “ … let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered.” Although Hamlet is speaking here specifically of clowns, it is advice that we should all take to heart. For he goes on to say, and I agree, that taking liberties with the text is “villainous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.” So please, speak the words, speak only the words, and speak all the words. Now, “Go make you ready.”
© 2011 Matthew Arkin
- Published on
How the past is used to shape character, both our own, and the ones we play.
Six women are sitting on a bench at a playground. They are watching a three-year-old boy high up on the jungle gym, his balance precarious, his little hands tiring, his grip tenuous. He slips a little, catches himself, and pauses, looking back at his mother. He tries to read her face for an indication as to what he should do. Each of the women on the bench feels a different emotion as they look at the child.
The first woman remembers a time when she fell while rock climbing. She shattered her wrist, leading to surgery and months of painful physical therapy. She feels fear as she watches the child. The second woman feels sad and lonely. Raised by a fearful mother, never allowed to climb a jungle gym, she remembers hours of sitting alone at the playground, watching the other children run and frolic. The third woman sees the look of encouragement the mother gives the boy. She remembers her father coming to her own high school diving meets, and she feels joy. The fourth woman is focused on the boy. She doesn’t see the encouragement. She remembers her mother chatting with her gaggle of friends, never paying any attention to her. She feels anger and pain. The fifth woman remembers a time she let her own son climb too high on the jungle gym. He fell and needed stitches. She feels guilt. The mother of the boy simply feels pride.
Whenever I hear a student or a fellow actor working on a scene say about a character’s action as written or a suggestion from a director, “But I would never respond that way!” I think of this anecdote. Of course you would never respond that way! You haven’t lived the life the character has lived. As an actor, the text and the director will influence or insist upon the behavior and responses you are required to bring to the scene. How you would respond is, at first, completely irrelevant. The way the character would respond, the way the character has to respond, given the exigencies of the text and production, is paramount.
What determines how we respond to a given situation, a given stimulus? I like to think of the images of coffee grounds and kaleidoscopes. Just as water picks up the flavor and aroma of the particular coffee grounds it filters through, so your personality picks up the behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes of your time and culture. The same is true of a character you might play, and so you have to distinguish between the “coffee grounds” that have influenced you and the “coffee grounds” that have influenced your character. In addition, not only are you subject to the influences of your culture, your time and place, but specific incidents, either wonderful or traumatic, have refracted or warped your vision. We each view the world through a kaleidoscope that is filled with, and turned or twisted by, the large events of our life, impacting our view of the world around us. The same is true of any character you play. He or she will have her own coffee grounds and kaleidoscope.
For each of the women in the playground scenario, the situation they find themselves in, the data, or stimulus, they are receiving, is the same: The boy on the jungle gym. But for each woman this data is filtered through the coffee grounds of her own experience. Additionally, each woman views the world through her own kaleidoscope, and the events of her individual past have twisted that kaleidoscope so that, looking at the same event, they each see a different picture and have a different emotional response.
We are taught, if we are taught well, to act truthfully. When we are portraying a character, in order to find that truthful behavior, we naturally look to our own past, our own experiences, for the emotional context of the work we are doing. In looking at a scene many actors first ask the question “How would I respond in this situation?” But if this is the only question you are asking, if this is the departure point for your character work, you may arrived at skewed results. You are a different person than the character you are playing; you have your coffee grounds and kaleidoscope, the character has his or hers.
The question “How would I respond?” can only lead to truthful responses that also serve the text and the desires of the director if other work is done first. As an actor, you must deal with both your own coffee grounds and kaleidoscope, and then those of the character you are playing. If you are embarking on the path of the artist, it is imperative that you deepen your understanding of yourself, of the influences that have shaped you. You must dedicate yourself to a path of self-knowledge, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. The lion’s share of this work must be done on a personal level, with a therapist or counselor, at the gym or the dance studio, in church or with a rabbi or meditation guide. How you go about your own process of self-examination is your business, and there are many, many roads. But you cannot be an effective, truthful, inspiring actor without pursuing that knowledge.
Whatever path you choose in your self examination, the technique and exercises developed by the late Uta Hagen are a wonderful adjunct to your self-exploration, appropriate to your specific work as an actor. They allow you, in a classroom setting, to examine your own states of being in the theatrical or film set environment, in a performance context. As you gain understanding of your own processes and states of being, of your own coffee grounds and kaleidoscopes, you can then address the text, and immerse yourself in the study of the influences that have shaped the character you are to portray. After you have come to a thorough understanding of your own coffee grounds and kaleidoscopes, you are ready to take on the flavors of the character’s coffee grounds, to look at the world through his kaleidoscope. Then you can ask yourself “How would I respond to this situation?” and your answer will lead to truthful behavior on stage or before the camera, because you will have an internal understanding of the influences that have shaped you, both as yourself and as the character.
© 2011 Matthew Arkin
The first woman remembers a time when she fell while rock climbing. She shattered her wrist, leading to surgery and months of painful physical therapy. She feels fear as she watches the child. The second woman feels sad and lonely. Raised by a fearful mother, never allowed to climb a jungle gym, she remembers hours of sitting alone at the playground, watching the other children run and frolic. The third woman sees the look of encouragement the mother gives the boy. She remembers her father coming to her own high school diving meets, and she feels joy. The fourth woman is focused on the boy. She doesn’t see the encouragement. She remembers her mother chatting with her gaggle of friends, never paying any attention to her. She feels anger and pain. The fifth woman remembers a time she let her own son climb too high on the jungle gym. He fell and needed stitches. She feels guilt. The mother of the boy simply feels pride.
Whenever I hear a student or a fellow actor working on a scene say about a character’s action as written or a suggestion from a director, “But I would never respond that way!” I think of this anecdote. Of course you would never respond that way! You haven’t lived the life the character has lived. As an actor, the text and the director will influence or insist upon the behavior and responses you are required to bring to the scene. How you would respond is, at first, completely irrelevant. The way the character would respond, the way the character has to respond, given the exigencies of the text and production, is paramount.
What determines how we respond to a given situation, a given stimulus? I like to think of the images of coffee grounds and kaleidoscopes. Just as water picks up the flavor and aroma of the particular coffee grounds it filters through, so your personality picks up the behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes of your time and culture. The same is true of a character you might play, and so you have to distinguish between the “coffee grounds” that have influenced you and the “coffee grounds” that have influenced your character. In addition, not only are you subject to the influences of your culture, your time and place, but specific incidents, either wonderful or traumatic, have refracted or warped your vision. We each view the world through a kaleidoscope that is filled with, and turned or twisted by, the large events of our life, impacting our view of the world around us. The same is true of any character you play. He or she will have her own coffee grounds and kaleidoscope.
For each of the women in the playground scenario, the situation they find themselves in, the data, or stimulus, they are receiving, is the same: The boy on the jungle gym. But for each woman this data is filtered through the coffee grounds of her own experience. Additionally, each woman views the world through her own kaleidoscope, and the events of her individual past have twisted that kaleidoscope so that, looking at the same event, they each see a different picture and have a different emotional response.
We are taught, if we are taught well, to act truthfully. When we are portraying a character, in order to find that truthful behavior, we naturally look to our own past, our own experiences, for the emotional context of the work we are doing. In looking at a scene many actors first ask the question “How would I respond in this situation?” But if this is the only question you are asking, if this is the departure point for your character work, you may arrived at skewed results. You are a different person than the character you are playing; you have your coffee grounds and kaleidoscope, the character has his or hers.
The question “How would I respond?” can only lead to truthful responses that also serve the text and the desires of the director if other work is done first. As an actor, you must deal with both your own coffee grounds and kaleidoscope, and then those of the character you are playing. If you are embarking on the path of the artist, it is imperative that you deepen your understanding of yourself, of the influences that have shaped you. You must dedicate yourself to a path of self-knowledge, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. The lion’s share of this work must be done on a personal level, with a therapist or counselor, at the gym or the dance studio, in church or with a rabbi or meditation guide. How you go about your own process of self-examination is your business, and there are many, many roads. But you cannot be an effective, truthful, inspiring actor without pursuing that knowledge.
Whatever path you choose in your self examination, the technique and exercises developed by the late Uta Hagen are a wonderful adjunct to your self-exploration, appropriate to your specific work as an actor. They allow you, in a classroom setting, to examine your own states of being in the theatrical or film set environment, in a performance context. As you gain understanding of your own processes and states of being, of your own coffee grounds and kaleidoscopes, you can then address the text, and immerse yourself in the study of the influences that have shaped the character you are to portray. After you have come to a thorough understanding of your own coffee grounds and kaleidoscopes, you are ready to take on the flavors of the character’s coffee grounds, to look at the world through his kaleidoscope. Then you can ask yourself “How would I respond to this situation?” and your answer will lead to truthful behavior on stage or before the camera, because you will have an internal understanding of the influences that have shaped you, both as yourself and as the character.
© 2011 Matthew Arkin