After all my talk last weeek about the importanceof "becoming" . . . I thought I better refresh your memory about the importance of STRUCTURE!!Once you're comfortable in the skin of the character and the world of the text, that's when you start to build the performance.
Remember the text is a construction with a beginning, middle and end. The writer moves the text forward via interaction between characters, movement of plot and exposition. So you, my friend, have to take your emotional shifts, changes in rhythm, construction of character arc and so forth - from the clues in the text.
On the one hand, I'm asking you to enter the world of the text and the interior of the character - and on the other hand, I'm suggesting that once you've done that, there's work - perhaps conscious application of craft - you engage in to build every moment of the performance.
Then, of course, the task is to merge both parts of the work, the act of becoming and the creation of structure, into a seamless whole. Who said being an actor was easy!? It's also true that both sides of the process can develop during rehearsal. You make discoveries along the way that change the way you perceive both character and individual moments - so that adjustments are made, sometimes right up to the last minute.
Film on the one hand and Theatre on the other, make different demands on how you work. As do writers. Chekhov and Beckett, for example, require a different process - one which I'll go into in a coming post - than, say, an episode of CSI Miami. The latter, of course, is all about the tilt of the head and sunglasses!
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