Shrdlu, Rehearsal, The Adding Machine

Rehearsal in the loft, Brooklyn, #4

Rehearsal Technique: General/Specific Insights/Principles

Fascinating – I’m now doing very specific-based rehearsals, choreographing, fine tuning, taking into account the micro-structure of the text, e.g., specific word order, punctuation. I think that after a deep cognitive understanding of the character, the objectives, the scene, this may be a natural phase in the rehearsal process, and even more fascinating, the text seems becomes even more critical or useful at this stage – at this stage, while the lines are memorized, it’s more important than ever to work closely with the physical text, esp. if I’m having trouble with “dead spots,” points of the text I simply don’t get, or if certain choices are clumsy or awkward.

Truth (verses “dead spots”):

Flow, immersion, belief: great performances come out of a belief in each moment. Mamet says you can’t force a belief – utterly true, but you can control (at least to some extent) factors that make this “full immersion” more likely, i.e., minimizing/eliminating “dead spots” (e.g., moving merely because the blocking requires it (see yesterday’s entry) or talking because I have a line now): “dead spots:” doing something w/out motivation. The more of these I can eliminate/minimize, the more “fully immersed” I become, or at least the door is open. In theatre, Truth = Belief (somehow), and these “dead spots” keep Belief (however it happens) from happening.