CHAPTER 22

EXERCISES WITH A TEXT

These exercises develop particular skills and will be useful later when you have to deal with common problems that emerge during rehearsals or shooting. They are done in the moment in front of the class or group.

TEXTS

Because you should learn the rehearsal process without ever having to doubt the quality of the writing, it's smart at this stage to use a good one-act theater piece rather than your own writing. It won't be cinematic, but in this phase of your work you aim to discover the potential of text and cast, so this doesn't matter. Use something short so discussion can be narrowly (and therefore deeply) focused. Avoid comedy because playing it begs for a live audience, and you don't want your actors playing to the gallery. Harold Pinter's short works are ideal, and I like The Dumb-Waiter for this work. Pinter is fascinated by the disparity between what characters say and what is being hatched in their minds.

READ-THROUGH

Each cast member should carefully read the whole play and make brief definitions of the characters. Then hold an ensemble read-through. Actors must not learn lines until instructed or they will internalize an unexamined understanding of the piece. Give plenty of time for discussions because they will reveal much about both text and actors.

DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS

Allow the exploration process to take its own course. Particularly if you are directing actors of some training and experience, it is unwise to arbitrarily impose any developmental technique, as they may feel it is unnecessary or beneath them. Watch and listen very carefully, letting your actors get as far as they can with minimal directing. When problems arise, choose an appropriate technique to break the logjam. After one or two successes, your credibility will rise.

“USEFUL WHEN”

Each exercise can serve as a resource to help solve common problems during rehearsal or production. Its “medicine chest” utility is provided under the heading Useful When.

EXERCISE 22–1: WHAT THE ACTORS BRING

Useful When: You (as the director) want to adjust your thematic intentions for the piece around the cast and make use of what each individual brings.

Purpose: To make decisions about the special qualities and characteristics of the actors for use in your thematic interpretation.

Activity: After the read-through:

1. Make notes for yourself that capture the intrinsic quality of each actor. This, for example, concerns an actor called Dale:

   Dale has a slow, quiet, repressed quality that masks a certain pain and bitterness. He is watchful, highly intelligent, intense, and his first reaction is often a protective cynicism, but really it matters very much to him that he be liked. He reminds me of a stray cat, cornered and defiant, but hungry and cold, too.

2. Make a projection of how the actors' qualities can legitimately be used to polarize the performances, and how this will affect your thematic interpretation of the piece. For example:

   Dale has the quality of honorable victimhood, and this stacks the cards interestingly against the father, whom we assume has practiced subtle violence against his son in the distant past, without the mother being aware of it.

EXERCISE 22–2: MARKING BEATS IN A TEXT

Useful When: Actors cannot be relied on to make a complete dramatic analysis of a text.

Purpose: To find the beats, those fulcrum points of emotional change. You may want to review the definition and examples of beat and dramatic unit in Chapter 1. Beats are extremely important to the actors and will need special consideration in the mise en scène (the combination of acting, blocking, camera placement, and editing that produces the dramatic image on film).

Activity: Director and actors should separately study the scene looking for the beats. These moments of irrevocable change may be triggered by dialogue, an action, or outside information coming in, such as a phone call. Emotional change does not happen continuously and smoothly like the hands of a clock. It is more like the movement of a heavy object being pushed across a rough surface. Pressure against its immovability mounts and mounts until suddenly it slides a few feet. Those pushing regroup themselves and start exerting pressure again, until— boom!—again it moves.

In dramatic terms, the beat is the moment of yielding when emotional pressures overcome resistance and compel a moment of changed awareness. This requires each character to have a conception of what conflict they face, like two wrestlers who must make contact to compete. Finding beats, therefore, means finding the important moves in the match and defining the strategy, from each protagonist's point of view, leading to each meaningful strike and counterstrike.

There may be one beat or there may be several in a scene. All the beats may belong to one character, or there may be beats for both, some even simultaneous and mutual. Either character may remain unconscious of the other's change of consciousness, though the audience should be aware of changes in both.

Discussion: In rehearsal, agree where the beats are and what causes them.

EXERCISE 22–3: IMPROVISING AN INTERIOR MONOLOGUE

If you were to study only one of these exercises, this is the most significant. When an actor claims to have created an interior monologue, and the results are still not making sense, asking for it out loud will reveal what part of their understanding needs changing. Generally this actor has failed to make sense of what her partner means or to build on her character's history. Here the director can be of great help. Demanding that an inner monologue be kept up is a sure way to immediately upgrade a so-so performance. It also helps stabilize players of unreliable timing because it supplies a repeatable interior process that will pace each forward step of a character's external behavior. This is work that actors habitually evade or forget, but the mere possibility that you will again ask them to do it aloud and in front of other actors usually keeps them working at it.

Useful When: A text refuses to come alive and you need a powerful method of getting actors to externalize their understanding. Also useful for unlocking intransigent trouble spots in rehearsal. Asking a cast member to speak his inner monologue usually reveals a crucial lack of understanding at that point in the text and helps you figure out how to help. Sometimes the problem lies with the actor's understanding and sometimes with the writing itself.

Purpose: What a character says and does is only the surface of his or her existence. In reality, we have a rich inner life going on all the time, and no fictional character can be interesting or complete without also having one. This exercise compels actors to fill the gaps between their lines and actions with the character's inner thoughts and feelings. Having to invent an inner monologue forces an actor to articulate the character's inner life. Because everything other characters do helps cause that inner life, it also ties the actor into the surrounding Action.

Activity: At a troublesome part of the text, have your actors improvise their characters' interior monologues. Ask them to use a full voice for the “out loud” line and a soft voice for the “thoughts voice” or interior monologue. The cast will at first find this hard or baffling, and the scene will go at a snail's pace. But having to create publicly and on the spot always yields deeper understandings, and a high degree of commitment is unavoidable.

Discussion:

1. Do the inner monologues show that your actors are on the same wavelength?
2. Are you and your cast making the same interpretations?
3. What did you (the director) learn from the actors?
4. What did you learn about your actors?
5. What did your actors learn about you and your approach?

EXERCISE 22–4: CHARACTERIZING THE BEATS

Useful When: You need to clarify and energize a scene or a passage that is muddy and lifeless.

Purpose: To give each dramatic unit and its beats a clear intention and identity, which in turn sharpens each beat and turning point. To focus attention on subtext and on the actor's body language, movement, and voice range.

Activity:

• Ask the actors to devise a brief tag line for each step in the rise of pressure leading toward each beat. Try to phrase these tags so they always express volition. (Examples: “Leave me alone!”; “I need you to notice me”; “You're not going to hoodwink me again.”) Be sure each tag is in the active, not passive voice (“Let me go to sleep.” not “I am being kept awake.”) so it expresses active will even when the character is being victimized. Each tag line should contain an element of “I want.”
• The actors now approximate the actions and movements of the scene from memory, but use only the tags as dialogue. Actors may have to say, “I need you to notice me” half a dozen times, changing the sense of the tag through bodily action and language, until they bargain up to the beat point. Where the text used verbal logic, now pressure is applied or parried by action supporting the tag that uses the voice and body as instruments. This device causes interesting developments in the actors' range of expression, shifting it from verbal and logical to physical and emotional, with a corresponding increase in power.
• Now have the actors play the scene as scripted, keeping the body and vocal expression developed previously—and marvel at the difference.

Discussion: What did you learn:

1. About the actors from the movements they used this time?
2. About how they extended their emotional range?
3. About their communion when the exercise forced it into continuous existence?

EXERCISE 22–5: ACTIONS AT BEAT POINTS

Useful When: A scene seems monotonous, wordy, and cerebral, and actors are playing the scene “in general.” This is because the actors are approaching the scene with correct but generally applied ideas. A scene must be built out of behaviorally authentic blocks, each containing a clearly defined sequence of human strivings. A scene in which one character shows several emotions will only be effective when he or she builds each separately.

Purpose: To focus and physicalize the beats and demarcate the phases of the scene behaviorally. This technique returns the spotlight to the turning points.

Activity: When the beat points are located and tagged, ask the actors to devise several possible actions for their character during each beat, or change of awareness. These can start out multiple and exaggerated so the director can choose which feels best. The chosen action can then be brought down to an agreed level of subtlety. When actors invent from their own emotional range, the action becomes authentic to both actor and character.

Discussion:

1. What is really at stake for each character at each beat?
2. How much interpretational leeway is there at important beats?
3. What is the range of options in terms of behavior that could be appropriate?
4. Of the range presented, did the director choose the most telling? If not, why not?

EXERCISE 22–6: GIVE ME TOO MUCH!

Useful When: One or more of your actors is under an emotional constraint and the scene is stuck in low gear.

Purpose: To release actors temporarily from restrictive judgments they are imposing and give them permission to overact.

Activity: Tell the actors that you feel the scene is bottled up and you want them to reach for the same emotions but exaggerate them. Exaggeration brings clarity and licenses actors to go to emotional limits they fear would look absurd if produced under normal conditions.

Discussion: You can now tell your cast what to change and at what new levels to pitch their energy and emotions. Often exaggeration alone clears a blockade. Ask actors how it felt to go so far beyond their previous levels. When actors switch from dabbling fearfully in the shallows to leaping with abandon off the top diving board, they often find they can now do the elegant dive and let go of a specific fear.

EXERCISE 22–7: LET's BE BRITISH

Useful When: A scene has become over-projected, artificial, and out of hand. Actors may have begun to feel the scene will never work, that it is jinxed. It's time to pull back.

Purpose: To return the actors to playing from character instead of striving for an elusive effect.

Activity: Ask your actors to play the scene in a monotone, with emotion barely evident, but fully experiencing their character's emotion underneath the reticence.

Discussion:

1. Does repressing emotions sometimes heighten them?
2. Did the scene that had turned into sound and fury go back to basics?
3. What did the actors feel?

EXERCISE 22–8: SPOT CHECK

Useful When: A line or an action repeatedly does not ring true. This exercise is like a breathalyzer test, jolting the actors into keeping up the inner lives of their characters for fear you will pull them over. Use sparingly.

Purpose: To stick a probe into an actor's process at a particular moment.

Activity: Simply stop a reading or an off-book rehearsal at the problem point, and ask each actor what his or her characters' thoughts, fears, mental images, etc. were at that moment.

Discussion:

1. Did this flush out a misconception?
2. A forced emotional connection?
3. Did the actors' concentration change afterward?
4. What other effects did this exercise produce?

EXERCISE 22–9: SWITCHING CHARACTERS

Useful When: Two actors seem stalemated and not properly aware of the character each other is playing. This can arise when a defensive actor's overpreparation precludes him or her from adapting to nuances in a partner's playing. This situation arises when actors distrust each other or feel incompatible.

Purpose: To place each actor temporarily in the opposite role so later he or she empathizes with another character's predicament and achieves an interesting Duality.

Activity: Simply ask actors to exchange parts, without regard for sex, age, or anything else. Then have them return to their own parts to see if the reading changes.

Discussion:

1. Actors: Each should say briefly what you discovered about the scene from the other person's role.
2. Actors: Did you have any new revelations about your own part?
3. Director: What did you notice after the actors resumed their own parts?

EXERCISE 22–10: TRANSLATING A SCENE INTO AN IMPROVISATION

Useful When: The cast seems tired and unable to generate emotions the scene calls for. Keep improv scenes up your sleeve for any scene that may give trouble. Actors may initially resist your request, but they usually come to enjoy the refreshment after a scene has become oppressive and immobile. Most will be impressed when you whisk out an alternative approach like this. At the very least, this exercise will release the malaise that builds up from repeated failures with the formal text.

Purpose: To free the actors from the letter of the scene to recreate its spirit. Refreshes a rehearsal session when energies are flagging. The less experienced your cast, the less they can concentrate and develop during long rehearsal sessions.

Activity: Take the main issue in the scene, or the one that is causing a problem, and translate it into two or three analogous scene subjects for improvisation. If, for example, you are having trouble in a scene of conflict between a daughter and her suspicious and restrictive father, you might assign analogous improvs on:

• A scene between an officious nurse and a patient who wants to leave the hospital
• A bus driver and a rider who wants to get off the bus before the next stop
• Two customers in a supermarket checkout line, the younger of whom wants to jump in line because she only has three items

Each of these situations has a built-in conflict hinging on rights and authority, and tackling them rapidly one after another will generate a wider emotional vocabulary that can be imported back into the original scene. A useful variation is to let the actors invent analogous scenes. You can get further mileage if you do the improvs a second round with the roles reversed.

Discussion:

1. Which improv worked best?
2. What came of switching roles?
3. What were the differences when the cast returned to the text?