Traversing the distance from page to stage.
The other day I chanced upon a clip of a scene from William Inge’s Picnic that appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show with the original Broadway cast. It got me thinking about how difficult it is for those who have never been part of the process to imagine the incredible distance between the very first reading of an early draft of new play and the full realization of that same play on opening night. That is why I wish that every acting student could sit in on a first reading and then attend the subsequent opening. It would be perhaps the best way to awaken them to the possibilities to which they must open themselves as they explore a text. But this clip might well bean opportunity for the next best thing. Give it a try. Read the scene, and try to imagine how it might be realized. Remember that before this play was ever produced, many of the stage directions in the published script might not have been there. Then watch the clip. The layers that this director and cast have brought to the text are truly astounding.
Actors new to stagecraft are often unprepared for the close reading of text that is required and surprised at the amount of interpretation and imagination they must bring to the rehearsal process. They approach a play as if it were a novel, with the assumption that the page will contain every detail needed to arrive at a fully realized performance. They look to the surface information on the page, the dialogue and often spare stage directions, and assume that this bare minimum is all that is required of them; that all they have to do is say those words, enter, sit, stand, and exit when they are supposed to. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The text of a play is a skeleton. It is up to the actor to grow the muscle and tendon over those bones so they can become animate, then to cover the resulting creature with skin and give breath to the new body so that it comes to life. Certainly the playwright supplies all of the information needed for this task. But not the minute, exacting detail. The script may say, “She sets the table.” But how does she set the table? It may say, “He makes the bed?” But how does he make the bed? The text may be silent on these matters. It is up to the actor to discover the minutiae through the rehearsal process, after mining the script for details of the character’s relationships and circumstances. Did she grow up in a slovenly home, with no care for an elegant table? Or did she grow up in a house where her knuckles were rapped if the table wasn’t set just so? Did he grow up in a house where no one cared what his room looked like, or was he in the navy, where his bed had to be shipshape every day? When we ask the right questions of the script, and allow ourselves to play in rehearsal, all of these questions are answered, and the play will spring into unforgettable being.
The text of a play is a skeleton. It is up to the actor to grow the muscle and tendon over those bones so they can become animate, then to cover the resulting creature with skin and give breath to the new body so that it comes to life. Certainly the playwright supplies all of the information needed for this task. But not the minute, exacting detail. The script may say, “She sets the table.” But how does she set the table? It may say, “He makes the bed?” But how does he make the bed? The text may be silent on these matters. It is up to the actor to discover the minutiae through the rehearsal process, after mining the script for details of the character’s relationships and circumstances. Did she grow up in a slovenly home, with no care for an elegant table? Or did she grow up in a house where her knuckles were rapped if the table wasn’t set just so? Did he grow up in a house where no one cared what his room looked like, or was he in the navy, where his bed had to be shipshape every day? When we ask the right questions of the script, and allow ourselves to play in rehearsal, all of these questions are answered, and the play will spring into unforgettable being.
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