Wheat and Chaff

Well . . .it's been a year - almost to the day - that I've been seen on these pages. Time to get going, encore une fois.

Yesterday one of my promising young students showed up with news. He's auditioning for Steven Spielberg on Monday! So we worked through the sides and he demonstrated clearly that in the two and a half months since I'd seen him, nasty habits had sneaked back into his repertoire. Begone said I! Not to the kid . . .to the habits.

There's this ruinous tendency among young Canadian film actors (maybe it's worldwide!) that being sized correctly for camera means flattening the performance to the point of a flat monotone. Somnolent. Deadly boring. No way to greet Mr. Spielberg!

Bad acting teachers and schools that employ them haven't found a way to inform movie hopefuls that their performance must be internally vibrant, with shifts at every punctuation mark - and external evidence that every line is produced via inner process. This is not rocket science!

It goes without saying that on a film set you don't tear down the scenery and have to be ever mindful the camera and mike are nearby, picking up everything you do with unrelenting clarity.But the wheat is the vitality of the performance! The chaff is all the nonsense you hear about reducing your work to an invitation to a sleepover.More about this soon.

Riding Streetcar(s) can be Tricky . . .

Two young women in my class are doing the 1st Blanche/Stella scene in "Streetcar." No big deal, right? Wrong. On the surface, Stella seems to be placid and quiet while Blanche natters on, nervous and uncomfortable. But both women have to locate the tense underscore that Williams provides in order for the scene to succeed. On first reading this essential fact eluded these two talented actors.

Remember that in any scene, the actors have to be aware of their objective and their obstacles. Blanche's are clearer than Stella's. But it's absolutely essential that Stella find her keys so that the tension and conflict between the sisters works.

And you have to look past the dialogue to find them. That's the problem. Many young or inexperienced actors flounder when they try to find answers exclusively in the dialogue while ignoring the subtext.

Williams gives us hints IN the dialogue, which demand that we look closely at subtext. Stella is defensive about: her living conditions, her marriage to Stanley (she hasn't even told him that Blanche is coming to visit - fearful of how he's going to respond), and her pregnancy - which she doesn't know how to share with Blanche. Further, she has to deal with Blanche's nervous state and the obvious fact that there's something wrong. If the actor digs through this rich subtext, all she needs to know reveals itself.

The problem for the actor lies in knowing where to look. Once you remind yourself that the solution to an acting issue often lies BENEATH the surface of the text, a light appears at the end of the tunnel. These 2 young women are now confidently on their way!

Where does it come from?

In working with young clients over the past week, I noticed a strange phenomenon. Their attempt to produce deep emotion came from the chest - and in one case - from the shoulders. Really. It's definitely a symptom of the actor being in "the head", but presenting the problem in terms of physical location had a powerful effect.

I pointed out to my younguns that when we are in the throes of deeply felt emotion, be it anger, fear, love - what have you, the felt component is centered low down, in the gut. If you reflect on this, dear actor, you'll realize that we're affected by what we feel in our core, not our shoulders or chest.

I asked one student to put his hand on his lower belly and to produce felt emotion from where his hand was located. The result was immediate and astonishing. Stuff began to volcano up and out in a way that literally knocked him back - tripped over the dog and landed on the couch. He's not cured. Not yet. But it's a start. I'm reminded of Stanislavski's work with producing theatrical truth from the outside in. You can get to the moment by physical means. The inside connects to the outside, which has to happen anyway, of course, but there are lots of ways to get there. Whatever works!

In any event, friends, if you feel trapped by thought, try bringing the emotional beat down to your core and see if it rumbles up in a way that defies your head and pays homage to your living soul!

After - Beating . . .Shakespeare

Not a subject for battered persons, I should hasten to say! No, no, dear friends. I was with one of my talented clients the other day - a new actor - and we were working over Portia (The Merchant of Venice) - figuratively speaking. The beating thing again. Forgive me. And even though this lovely young woman was doing lovely things, there was something awry. Amiss. Eureka! The after beat.

For those of you who might have missed this in an earlier post, the after beat (my own term, I think - being a brilliant coiner of terms)is what you play after the last word leaves your mouth and which either helps you to demand a response from the other character, yourself or which connects you to the next word that's about to come out of your mouth. Making sure you play the after beat, guarantees you won't drop out of the scene. Guarantees it!

When doing Shakespeare, Iambic Pentameter in particular, the problem for the actor is amplified because there are no pauses for transition available. Real pauses would break the rhythm of the line. So the after beat is played as a "breath beat", usually at punctuation marks. Thus the integrity of the line is maintained.

My young friend knows all this, but was still beaten off (I'm really sorry - can't resist. Pun-ish me!)by after beat issues. I learned something important. What she hadn't done in her study of the monologue was to actually write the after beat down, in colloquial terms, and learn it as she learned the text.

I then insisted that after doing this, she rehearse the monologue at half speed, making sure the lines and the after beats were joined together into a consistent whole and only then, bring it up to speed. I love it when I learn something new. And I love my students for giving me the opportunity!

Take that, Sucker!

Every time I see an actor, especially before an opening, going furiously over lines, making sure he/she won't forget them at a critical moment, I think: "Sucker!" Perhaps something kinder, but the caution's the same.

The play's been rehearsed for 4 weeks, the lines at the last rehearsal were perfect - so why is the actor worried about forgetting? Probably because the lines were memorized, not learned properly. Psychologically, if you're worried about lines and go over them just prior to opening, you are creating a perfect scenario. You WILL forget. And you've set it up!

On the other hand (there are five fingers, yuk)if the lines have been learned, not memorized, then the implication is they've been assimilated through association with an inner emotional beat and become part of muscle memory. Actors who go about learning lines this way spend much less time studying the script and find themselves absorbing dialogue AS THEY REHEARSE.

About 15 years ago, I found myself having to take on Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet, 4 days before opening. It was a 15 show run and the good Friar had to go on with "The Bible" in hand. What I found was that as I adapted to the environment and interacted with other actors, the text began to stick and I actually had very little "book" work to do. After the 5th performance, the Bible became a prop and I didn't have to refer to it again.

Try it. Not Friar Laurence, heaven forbid! But try dealing with your lines this way. It's far more organic and really helps keep you out of your head.

On Camera actors have a somewhat harder row to hoe. Get the sides 24 hours before the audition and show up ready to go. Memorization may be the only salvation in that case - or as in having to learn three scenes for tomorrow's shoot after putting in a 12 hour day on set. I suspect, however, that the best film actors will tell you lines are learned, not memorized. Take that, sucker!

More, More Shakespeare. . .Always be prepared for surprises!

With Shakespeare, you can't count on anything! It's true, for the most part, noble or high born characters speak in verse and low born folk in prose - BUT NOT ALWAYS. It's far safer to look at all of this in another way. Serious, passionate, elegant matters can be expressed in verse and lighter, witty matters can be expressed in prose.

Sometimes Wiley Will uses verse and prose in the same scene - with upper class and lower class characters uttering both. A great example of same is in Romeo and Julietwhere Romeo, in his encounter with The Nurse, (II,4)teases her, and not nicely, either, in prose, and she replies in kind. But when they turn to the serious business of Romeo's meeting with Juliet, Romeo speaks in verse and Nursie follows right along. So they're both speaking verse, low born and high born. When the matter's resolved, though, and the bantering resumes, they both revert to prose. Pretty tricky stuff, dear actor, and you have to deal with it seamlessly and without effort. Seeing and understanding the pattern is the key to success here.

I haven't touched on Rhymed Couplets yet, so here's a light, and I hope, deft touch. The young lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream are fools - or, more properly, foolish. Shakespeare emphasizes their shallowness by having them speak (not entirely, mind you) in rhymed couplets. They come off as silly things and again, actor friends, If you understand the purpose behind the writer's choice of style, it's a big help in discovering what to do with and how to play the text.

The other use Shakespeare devised for the rhymed couplet was to use them to end things. Scenes, acts and the like. As in Hamlet (II,2)

". . .- the play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.

That ends Act II, Scene two of Hamlet - and, similarly, ends today's sermon.

More Shakespeare . . .

How to speak him. Well part of what you need to know, anyway.

Shakespeare wrote in three modalities.

Iambic Pentameter

Rhymed Couplets

Prose

Which mode he chose depended on many things, chief among them, the status of the character, the nature of the drama (or comedy) and the issue at hand.

In this post, I'm going to concern myself, primarily, with how the great man used Iambic Pentameter. To begin, Iambic Pentameter is usually spoken by noble or high-born characters. Prose, as a general rule, is reserved for lower born characters. A regular Iambic line has five "feet", or stressed syllables. There are irregular lines, but that's a subject for another day.

In a regular line - such as "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" (Hamlet, II,2)the stresses fall on O, Rogue, Peasant, Slave and I. The actor should find the pulse of the 5 beats in the line and be guided by them as he speaks it.

Amazingly, more often than not, the actor finds that the emotional content of the line is amplified by how he speaks/stresses the words. This isn't some airy-fairy fiction. It's fact. If you try it, you'll believe. It's not mysterious, but it's absolutely beyond the realm of imagining that Shakespeare was able, time and time again, to produce dramatic fiction, constrained by the rules of Iambic Pentameter, and create dialogue that surpasses anything ever written. That's genius, alright.

Anyway. In order to keep the meter, the actor can't take pauses, moments for reflection etc. as he might in a modern text. Shakespearean text depends on momentum in order to achieve its effect. The actor, therefore, must make his transitions either on the line itself or while other characters are speaking. But, in any event, he must make all the appropriate emotional shifts. The most important thing in this regard is to use the punctuation marks as keys for when emotion shifts - and you have to do it in rhythm. It's often appropriate to take a "breath" beat when you hit a period.

A fine example of a very good actor doing a breathtaking job with text can be found in Kenneth Branagh's delivery of the St. Crispin's day speech from Henry V. With a minor exception here and there, that, dear friends is how you do it! More about build and release in Shakespeare - "Surfing the Text" in a later post.