July 2005 Archives

Dear Joy,

           The show closed last Saturday. It was a good experience and I found it very challenging -- though I'm not sure why yet: Comedy, I've heard, is always harder than drama, but I always thought it would come easier to me (and comedy does, actually, seem to come easier), but nevertheless, I found it surprisingly challenging.

          For awhile, I was 'blaming' the script, and while no young playwright is "Shakespeare," in the end, that was just an excuse for how hard I found it . . .

          And so realizing this, I just bore down as best I could, refusing to blame anything for what I though was going wrong and concentrated fully on just doing my absolute best and then . . . just letting it all go (and learning as much as possible on the way) . . . I think the value of the lessons I learned (whatever they were) will manifest themselves at some point in the future -- they'll be there for me when I need them. Take care.

        - Love,
                 C

The second performance went very well -- Stacey and I are navigating our way around on the coach much better.

It's fascinating how different it is with a new partner. L had to leave the show a week before opening, and Stacey was brave enough to step into the role: There's one moment where I leap over the coach that early on naturally came out of rehearsal, and it was 100% a response to what L did at that moment, and that moment was repeatable, so I just kept leaping, and it was always funny

Stacey's take on the moment was her own -- for several rehearsals, and even during the opening, I keep leaping over the coach at the same line, but it never quite worked because the paring stimulus was gone, i.e., L set it up, and I delivered the physical "punch" line -- classic comic delivery. Stacey was actually giving me something else, and for too long, I tried to make a past moment work. I could have asked Stacey to deliver her line the way L had, but that didn't feel right at all (and even if it did, the rule is always: never direct another actor).

I could have asked the director to ask Stacey . . . but that felt like cheating to me, i.e., asking Stacey to change her performance for my convenience -- it would have been the easy way out of my own performance problem (and my personal rule is: never export your own problems into someone else's life/work).

So finally tonight, I did what I should have done at the beginning -- I just really paid attention to Stacey up to and through that moment, keeping an eye open for a possible setup-punch line combination (because it is in the writing), but not pushing it, and lo and behold, something unplanned happened: the quality and timing of my leap changed, and it got the biggest laugh of the run.

Lesson:

Never try to hang onto the past, neither in life nor on stage. If you do, you'll feel frustrated and stuck, like nothing's working out and you're not moving ahead at all -- and you're not. Much more rewarding to look for what opportunities do exist rather than searching for what you want/hope to find: Instead, seeing what was right in front of me, available to me right then and there -- that's all I needed.

Post-script:

For some reason, both the very talented & attractive female co-stars (who's great performances really helped save my own), Darynn Zimmer & Stacey Newsome-Santiago, wanted to add kissing to the "climax" of their scenes with me, and the director (showing great wisdom) agreed to the changes, and I thought they worked very well.

Last night, going back to Brooklyn on the A line, two middle aged Asian women sitting next to me were twisting their heads to look at me and then back to each other, laughing and pointing. I looked at them quizzically, and they asked, with hands half covering their mouths, what had I been doing that night. Now really looking confused, they burst out laughing and one pointed to my collar and my face: lipstick (two different shades), perfume, & makeup were all over the place. I was taken aback and I stammered that I was in a play that night, and other people nearby in the car started in with: oh yeah ... sure you were . . .

Well, it went well. What a relief! And, I have to admit, I didn't give the play itself enough credit -- the audience laughed, and much more than I anticipated. And I was much funnier than I anticipated -- I was fully prepared to, well . . . suck.

After, the director was effusive with her complements and told us all that we had done very well, which was very gratifying to hear.

Another director gave me a big compliment on something I've always (secretly) prided myself on - my comic timing -- which she said was great! That was very nice to hear because it reaffirmed what I've always felt was a relative strength, and it's one of the important things I wanted to bring to the role, to the production.

Whenever I feel better, because I've thought/felt that I've done a good job, I always spontaneously turn to these two questions:

What is good theatre, what is good acting?

Partial answer: Good acting is theatricality infused with truth, or truth shaped by theatricality. Real life is always true, but it's not always interesting to watch.

95% of my theatricality feels like an affectation or a glimmer of the truth, but not full blown truth. I think I've got a better handle on theatricality than I do on truth. I have a hard time, usually, remembering what happened during a performance, but I do remember clearly the cracks, the blanks, the indicating of a moment that's just not there. And that's good, I hope, i.e., if I can see when and where the performance cracks, then I have a chance to do something about it -- it's telling me something about how I work as an actor, and what I need to learn.

My bad acting is really a teacher, if I can just listen closely enough, i.e., . . .

Question:

we do the "logical" indication, but how do we know what indication to use (e.g., the gesture of the back of the hand to the forehead to indicate distress)?

Two answers/issues:

1. If I find myself indicating a moment, it just might mean that I haven't gone down deep enough, and maybe there is a tiny truth inside me, just enough to tell me not only how to indicate but also how to find a deeper truth. When this happens in rehearsal, just try breathing into what's going on -- don't rush to the indication.
2. It could also be that I don't trust the truth to read, and so I indicate. Again, give myself a chance to succeed in these moments rather than rushing to an indication.

What's working and what's not:

1) Scene one, J and M: OK

2) Scene two, L and M: OK

3 Scene three, the transition from this scene two to this scene, when M thinks he's caught, is rough, i.e., it's just "not there" and I'm not sure why. Also, the climax of the scene -- the director and I aren't quite on the same page, but her choices and take have led me to something "climatic" that I think will work. M is literally telling L that they have to make a serious change in their relationship. I'm not sure if M really believes this and is just saying this to win L back or if he's sincere. If he was insincere, that would normally be a setup to a "punch line" later in the play, but there's no reason in the text to believe that he isn't sincere. It's clear it's a triumph for M to win L back at this point, and that's a setup for the final scene (#4) and all it's confusions. What motivates M is that everything is at stake in losing/winning L back (though he never says or alludes to this). This is a tough moment for me because I'm still slipping around on what's going on, but the "shape" of what I want is definitely there:

when M says "you think that's what this means to me?" This is insight. A light goes off about what's really at stake here, what he really wants, and he needs to convince/urge L that they need to change course, right now. It's implied that if they don't, they'll lose everything, and I've got to have a very clear idea of what that "everything" is to make this moment believable.

And you know . . . it's just occurred to me that this is exactly what's missing in the transition from scene two to scene three. Ted Zurkowski (a great acting teacher [and a great guy] at Lee Strasberg) once gave me some great theatrical advice:

end with the beginning: if you're confused at the end, look back at the beginning -- the answer is usually there.

What's missing in the transition, when M thinks he's caught, is where he ends up, winning L back. Silly -- I don't know why I didn't see this before. Ok -- now I've got something to try, but now in performance rather than rehearsal.

Another interesting problem: really listening and responding seems to be significantly impacting how I'm pursuing my objectives. It seems lately in rehearsal that the "how" has been changing sometimes, and then I get a line reading from the director, the rational for the line reading isn't clear (I'm just trusting the director) but then I get confused about what I'm suppose to be doing up there. I'm trying to do things the way the director wants them done, but I'm starting to feel like I should be going with the moment more, letting that over-ride a specific line reading. Damn ... I need more experience, I think, to know what's best to do.

NOTES FOR NEXT TIME (the next production):

I realize now that what I should have been doing in rehearsal, right off the bat, is prioritizing really, Really, REALLY looking and listening and taking in the other actor and reacting that. At the same time, I should be slowly learning how to integrating "objectives" and actions into an ongoing connection with the other actor. I never really feel like "acting" -- I really just want to re-act, but using the objectives of the character as a constraint, i.e., being clear what I want (not easy), connecting with that (ever harder), AND staying connected with the other actor (which really makes things so much easier, at least it seems that way).

Before I started tonight, I told myself: Get your mind off of how bad you think you are and get it on what you need to do

- and that's exactly what I did.

I don't know if I was any better, but I definitely felt better.

Other Solutions that helped fight my fear

• no doubts
• no negative thoughts
• no attention whatsoever to how I feel about the play or how I'm doing
• focus, Focus, FOCUS, FOCUS!

Also, one difficult part of the last scene got much easier tonight -- the director gave me a specific physical action that worked wonders. Interesting: I don't know if she could have explained to me in words what was needed, but that one physical gesture worked magic . . .

. . . which brings to mind a technique that's intuitively intrigued me: Michael Chekhov’s Psychological gesture. At some point, I want to work more with this. I think much of the problems I sometimes have with directors lies in translating what they want into something "internal," and I got a glimpse of this last fall during my first audition for film work (e.g., see Audition: Fornetti Productions, Student Film Project, Brooklyn College). In any event, I think I'm getting some insight into how I need to work/what I need to work on, and with time and experience, this should become less and less of a problem.

And finally, I think what helped last night a great deal was, as the director suggested, forgetting all the character's objectives and actions, and then . . . just reacting my way through with scenes, trusting that an internal guidance mechanism would be there for me, a mechanism forged by rehearsals where I explicitly/consciously followed specific objectives.

I'm still struggling with how best to rehearse and the relationship between rehearsal and performance, but -- I feel I'm learning and beginning to get a handle on it. This is exactly what I hoped would happen when I set out to get as much 'real world' theatrical experience as possible. I'm not sure if I would have been as challenged in a class.

(However, I am taking a class this summer that's proving helpful, but I won't get around to writing out my notes here for a while yet).

Another discouraging session with the director. Rehearsals are usually good, but the general discussions we have after are very discouraging. Tonight it was:

"You're making small choices."
"You're emotionally not there -- you're holding back."
"What's you're insecurity as an actor?"

The first two are reasonable (and on target), if you work those out in the context of rehearsal, in the context of specific trouble spots. It is clear however that she's frustrated and it suggests that she doesn't know what to do about what she sees as not going right -- but this was the worst way to approach the problem. General comments like this after rehearsal suggest nothing is going right, and I know it's not that bad.

The third question was ... weird. It was personal, and it made some pretty unflattering assumptions, assumptions I just don't share. She's not mean-spirited; I know she's trying to help, but this one I had to nip in the bud as quickly as possible.

I'm betting most actors, esp. new guys like me, hearing this kind of general feedback would be hearing that they "can't act." That's exactly what I'm hearing. While it's possible that I "can't act" in the same way that I "can't walk" if I use the muscles in my legs incorrectly, I don't believe that I "can't act" in principle. Nevertheless, this was quite discouraging. She's a good director, but she's young and inexperienced and she needs to learn how to give more constructive feedback.

I firmly believe three things:

1. I'm not that bad in the part.
2. I'm inexperienced and I can get better
3. While the director ms-handled communicating the problems I'm having, I do believe that she's identified real problems, but it's going to be up to me to identify and work through then, which is what I would have to do in any case, so this discouraging eposode with director really means nothing.
4. So . . work, Work, WORK!

ahhh . . . how, exactly?

Well, the first step is usually to try an identify the problem: It seems I'm having trouble trying to integrate 3 things:

1. The direction
2. My intuition/instinctual response that sometimes isn't in line with the direction
3. Listening and responding, which really affects #2, and leaves specific direction far behind.

Well, rarely am a ever insecure in rehearsal, and I not really an insecure "actor" (I'm as good as I am, and I'm fine with that -- though my burning ambition is to become a very good actor, & I always make sure to push myself, at the same time, I'm usually "happy /fine" with where ever I am at the moment. It's not an easy trick to do this, but it does help keep my head screwed on straight and helps keep me motivated).

However, I'm just not on the same page as the director as to what's going on in parts of the play and I also feel I'm flailing around at points, and the director seems to be losing patience -- she's a good director, but she seems to be getting frustrated: I'm trying out stronger choices and 200% commitment, but my biggest fear in rehearsal is getting yelled at in front of the other cast members after I attempt my best & then failing and worrying about what everyone else must be thinking -- fighting discouragement is my biggest battle now.

Solution

Just do it! Ignore other people's (possible) negative evaluations (what people might be thinking about me is all in my head -- I can't mind read, so they're just fears: ignore them!).

At home each night: ~2 hour self rehearsal. Run through sitting down and then 2-3 times on my feet.

and interestingly . . .

. . . I spontaneously discovered an interesting technique for working through trouble spots:

1. Really read the other's line, "listen" to it
2. Repeat out loud what I want
3. Say my line without "thinking" (i.e., w/out thinking about "how" to say it or what I should sound or look like.

I think it'll be well worth my time to turn this way of working into a habit.

Principle Number One: Listening and Reacting.

I'm finding the play difficult. It's a comedy -- a farce -- and "M" is pretty much a blank slate character wise. In the main it's clear what he wants (e.g., reassure and seduce J, deceive L (i.e., keep L from discovering the affair), and win L back after he thinks she's discovered what he's been doing behind her back).

The Problem:

The difficulty has been that there's really no direct action on M's part to get out of his situation, i.e., he seems to have no a clear "plan" (that's subsequently thwarted by a series of mishap and obstacles that he needs to deal with) in order to get out of his situation. Really, he's doing a lot of REACTING -- about 70% of the time he's like a guy on a high wire, in the wind, not really moving forward but spending a great deal of time and energy trying not to fall.

Interesting, he actively pursues only two major goals: in the beginning, it's to get J on the couch (i.e., seduce her), and in the end, it's to win L's love and forgiveness. In the middle -- he's reacting to events. He does want to get J out of the closet, but he never actively pursues a clear course of action to do this. It's really crisis management time for M.

It's in this middle part that I've been having difficulties, and the director (who's very good with a sharp eye) says things are not clear, and she's been encouraging me to find things that M is trying to achieve, actively pursue, but I don't think he really pursues anything the way Linda is does (e.g., trying to tell M about the affair she's been been having).

What does M want? He wants to "hide" the fact of the affair; he wants to keep from being discovered. It's crisis management -- that, ideally it seems to me, is where the fun is, where M is fun to watch.

Possible Solution:

The way to play him in the middle part of the play, I think, is to react to L and external events, managing the crisis, with the goal of 1) keeping L from discovering that J is in the closet & 2) somehow getting L out of the house, or distracted long enough to get J out of the house. This middle part may be a weakness in the play, I'm not sure, but this has been the most challenging part of the play, and it's where I've been struggling the most with the director's take on the play.

So, to sum up: in the end, intuitively, instinctively, I've decided -- right or wrong, I don't know -- to drop the idea of having specific clear actions each line, each "beat" in the middle of the play as the basic acting textbooks teach. And it does seem to work much better: I just watch, listen and take in the actress playing L, and I REACT to that while still keeping in mind my two objectives above, even though I have no plan nor am I actively pursuing them. I think if I can do this, the middle section becomes more alive and takes on it's own structure, pretty much defined by what's going on between myself and the actress playing L.

Interesting. I'd like somehow, before the run ends, to tell whether or not this was the way to go. On my own, I'll just have to see/feel how it plays.

Another challenge. What to do when I'm not on the same page as the director? Ideally, you want to have as open a discussion as you can, but when I've tried to talk to the director, we just haven't been able to see eye to eye -- but maybe that's the mistake: Instead, I'm going to do in these rehearsals with I did last summer in the Adding Machine: there the director and I also had a very different take on the character, and when I tried to talk to Ron about it, he gave me some very good advice, i.e., don't tell me, he said, show me. And I did. And that's how we worked it out. Because I'm not experienced, I think my tendency is to "persuade" the director through discussion, but it's not that kind of work.

New habit to acquire: "Relax Under Pressure"

First rehearsal for a short play/one act, part of Short Play Summer Festival.

I was surprisingly nervous, up until today -- M is one of the leads, which I've never had, and while the play is "short," there's 1) a lot of text to memorize and 2) there's a lot to get under my belt, and not much time. The play will require fairly choreographed strong physical comedy, timing, and underneath it all, I've got to get clear about where M is, what he's going through, and what he wants moment by moment.

My goal is to be off book by the end of this week, and that'll give me about 2 weeks of rehearsal w/out the encumbrance of the carrying around a script.

My goal in this journal will be to chart exactly how I plan/hope to pull all this off . . .

Rehearsal Technique: General/Specific Insights/Principles

Nervous at the start of rehearsal today, which the director picked up on, but I did pretty well staying focused, i.e., I just let my concerns and 'nerves' go into the background:

Basically I just ignored how I felt about how I was doing and focused on doing what I was there to do (i.e., take direction -- which equals listening -- and then 200% commitment to trying everything), and . . . interestingly, when I did that, even though I had this low-level internal dialog playing in the background when I felt I was having difficulties (e.g., 'I'm not going to "get it," the director, the other cast members are going to get "frustrated" with me, etc..), I simply just let it play while staying focused -- I didn't comment on it, I didn't (over) apologize, I definitely, absolutely did not allow myself to get defensive: I just focused and concentrated while letting my fears and worries live off to the side, in the background -- aware of them -- but out of my way.

Solution:

Relax under pressure
          - p. 27, Confidence, Rosabeth Moss Kanter.

1. I want relax under pressure <-- remind myself of that before starting anything challenging.

2. Act like I'm confident, and confidence will be given to me <-- do that, and it'll happen.

P. S.

Like most people who are interested in acting, I spend a fair amount of my time watching good actors "at work." It seems that what I do, in rehearsal, in actual performace, is sometimes "act" like what I've seen professional actors do, e.g., I'm at some point, and then quite effortlessly I remember what so-and-so did in a similar situation . . . and I'm always somewhat disappointed in how it turns out, and I now realized that for that moment, I really disconnect from what's going on -- surprise, surprise.

What I'm seeing in professional, accomplished actors, in film, on stage, is something quite spontaneous, something highly structured and dramatically "logical," that's coming out of what's going on inside of them at that moment. In other words, they're not at all doing what I'm doing, i.e., trying to imitate or replicate something -- their attention is elsewhere, where it needs to be.

I think it can be very helpful to analyze what an actor did in some moment or situation (performances on DVD can be stepped though moment by moment, and the micro-structure of what a good actor is doing over a range of 5-6 critical seconds is absolutely fascinating), but . . . it's a mistake (at least for me) to automatically/mechanically replicate it.

I'm going to try to catch myself doing this, and simply NOT do it. A clear sign to myself that I'm about to do this is that I'm usually actively, consciously thinking about doing it a few moment before hand. When I feel/catch myself doing that, I want to 1) stop, and 2) connect with my partner or anything that's going on in the scene at that moment, connect and give myself a chance to find something real.