[col-sect][column]Third class last night. Katie and I practiced the scene out in the hallway before performing. Her and I haven’t actually had that much time with each other to rehearse, so we have to exploit our Monday nights. Last week, we ran through the scene a few times immediately after performing to iron a few things out. A scene is like a life form. The first few steps are like a bird stumbling out of the nest on first flight. You have to go through this awkward stage to get the feel for it. Repetition is the key and the marginal improvements are pretty significant with each run-through. But it gets smooth pretty quick. You do have to reach some critical frequency to get beyond the rough patch. So back to last night. Being new to acting and only having worked on the scene with Katie I don’t know seven times or something, I feel like there’s a lot to still explore in this role: different ways to try the lines, different actions, getting a timing that works – there really are infinite options. So in the hall rehearsing because we were much tighter with the lines, we were looser and more comfortable and so we pushed it a bit and had a little fun and ran through it with high energy. A bit silly, but we actually pushed parts of this serious scene into the funny.

This turned out to be a useful thing to do because as you try stuff, you discover stuff. Like I said, a scene is this living creature whose shape, feel and personality evolves as you go. Really interesting. We backed off the energy a bit when we performed it later later in the evening, but retained a couple of the things we tried. It paid off I think – the performance was much tighter than last week, and also probably more entertaining. Still so much further to go though. [/column][column]For example I decided that my character unbuttons his cuffs and rolls up his sleeves as he begins to lose his temper and gets combative. Of course, after the scene, and the instructor’s feedback we sit back down and I notice that my sleeves are still buttoned. Damn. Totally forgot. Too much is going through your head. Easy to lose track of things. 

Instructor’s feedback. Ooh, some good stuff. She’ll identify certain words or phrases and then offer up alternative ways to deliver them. It’s really amazing the variety of delivery that she has at her disposal. Intonation, facial expression. Oh man. Got some good suggestions though. Things I never would have thought of myself. Example: one of my lines is “How can you love a monument, an ideal, a thing?” I say this to my perfectionist wife who’s annoying the hell out of me. I deliver it like I’m just thinking of it. Like I’m trying to articulate what I’m feeling. Like I’m making a point. But she suggested adding a tone of disgust to “monument” with a turned up nose. It’s a different place. A completely different take. I’ll try it. She’s also asking me to push the ending in a different way as well. In the scene I do high intensity, I do contained anger and also a bit of exasperated depression. So she’s asking me to do the ending kind of level actually. As if my character has already resolved to break it off with the wife and so he’s at peace by the end of the scene. Once again, something I wouldn’t have thought of myself. And I’ll try it.

I think my strength in this scene is the ability to shift into anger quickly. Anger actually comes pretty naturally, actually. So I’m a little lucky with this role, in that it’s not TOO much of a stretch from my natural attitudes. A bit of a departure but I can get there. Not sure how I’d do with other roles. We’ll find out next month. My weakness is “blocking” (positioning on the stage). I’m thinking that in theory you could probably work this out – if you actually put a bit of thought into it. Which I haven’t done. I haven’t actually worked it out and decided, “Ok, we’ll start here – we’ll go sit on the sofa, I’ll blow up, lose my temper, stand up and march to stage right bla bla bla.” Probably a good thing to do though.[/column][/col-sect]

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