The Secret Of Theatrical Space

More notes on monologues in general and Richard II in particular:

• When first approaching a monologue, or when reviewing it periodically, you want to pay attention to the characters thoughts -- for the simple reason is that verbal and written language exists to express "thoughts."
• The goal in doing a monologue is NOT to get "ahead" of the text (see The Actor Speaks, exercise 51, p.176): my attention needs to be on only where I am, that one thought.
• How do I stay only where I am? Focus on the other and on what I'm saying -- train myself to do that.
• Acting is attention and concentration-based, not memory based (i.e., trying to do a pre-planned performance).

Fundamental acting errors:

• Focusing on my feelings, on how I feel. If my attention and focus are there, then there's nothing to hang the words on: there's no real "meaning," the thoughts of the character are not clear, and it doesn't affect the other person (at least not as strongly as it could). It's watered-down acting.
• Second, if I rehearse this way, there's nothing to take into an audition or performance.
• Practice focusing on the other and on what I'm saying, and I'll have everything I need when I'm on the stage, in front a camera, or in the audition room.

Removing additional obstacles to focusing on the other and on what I'm saying:

Practice breathing and keeping my palette high. This will greatly help in focusing on the other and on what I'm saying, and that will automatically lead to the "sense of reality," the belief in the imaginary circumstances.

A rough night tonight on the coast of Wales near Barkloughly castle:

Had a tough time with Richard II. I somehow let myself fall into doing it as a speech (see my extended entry for more about this). So, here's some exercises to practice while rehearsing that should help me more deeply connect:

1. lie on my back, feet up on a chair (to help the breath drop) and keep my palette high
2. use full breath, as if I was going to count to 35 on one breath, and use that much breath for each word and then each phase.
3. then build up the monologue, or troublesome sections of it, one word at a time ("Breathing The Text" from The Actor Speaks, p. 170), but with just a much breath.

Goal: full breath and communicate/"do" the sense of the of the thought.

An e-mail to Deborah about thoughts, actions, and acting:

Hey Deborah,

I'm going to drag you into deeper territory about what is a 'thought' if for no other reason than I have nothing better to do at the moment.

When I first started to work on monologues a few years ago, it was clear to me that sentences exists to express thoughts -- and it's a fundamental assumption in the psychology of language, but -- no one yet really knows what a "thought" is, especially how it gets translated into language. A "thought" is assumed to be some internal representation created by the brain that binds together "knowledge" and beliefs about things in and states of the external world, e.g., "No matter where." That utterance "means" a lot. There's meaning behind that.

I decided to ask google what a thought was, and what is it's relationship to language, and I found some interesting stuff about the "language of thought," i.e., what's the nature of the structure of 'thoughts' such that language is the best way to express those thoughts, and I found this article:

A few of important points from this article:

Apparently, there's two levels of representation behind language -- there's the "surface" structure which is really the grammer of the sentence, how it's put together. More important is the "deep" structure which is the "meaning" behind the sentence. Many different sentences can be built to express the same meaning, "No matter where" = "It doesn't matter where" = "Who cares where" = "What difference does it make." All these express RII's first thought.

What's interesting is that in life, while the meaning comes before the thought, we construct the actual sentence "on the fly," i.e., "Sentences uttered by humans are usually not preformed in entirety before being uttered. A human starts a sentence and thinks how to continue and finish it as he continues talking." I'm not sure how "science" knows that we do this, but apparently this "thinking" happens pretty fast, and we're barely conscious of it, if at all.

"Thinking" about something in the world does not require that it have a "name." Children understand a lot about the world before they have the language to express it.

"Thoughts are not like long sentences, although a long sentence may be required to express a thought to another person because of a need to translate internal pointers into descriptions."

"A language of thought must operate on a shorter time scale than speech does. A batter needs to do at least some thinking about a pitched ball, and a fielder often needs to do quite a bit of thinking about where to throw the ball."

So, a monologue is at least a series of connected thoughts, created faster than speech, but the specific utterance in the monologues are NOT thoughts. Many utterances could express the same thought.

However, acting requires that we have both the exact utterance and the "meaning" behind the utterance.

It seems that where I sometimes get into trouble during a monologue is that I start becoming aware of the next sentence rather than the next thought, so then it gets said "without meaning." I lose contact with the meaning, with the thought. I'm not sure why this sometime happens.

So then I thought -- hummm, maybe somethings missing. Maybe RII is speaking more than just to express his thoughts -- he's trying to do something with language. And you're thinking "Duh!!!! Of course he is!" So I asked google about this, and it pulled up something quite interesting, a theory of language called "speech acts:"

For example,

• In saying, "Watch out, the ground is slippery", Peter performs the speech act of warning Mary to be careful.
• In saying, "I will try my best to be at home for dinner", Peter performs the speech act of promising to be at home in time.
• In saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please?", Peter requests the audience to be quiet.
• In saying, "Can you race with me to that building over there?", Peter challenges Mary.

And so acting is: 1) the exact utterance, 2) the meaning and 3) what we're trying to do with the language, i.e., "what's my action?"

I do buy this idea of actions -- we use language to somehow change or influence something in the world: language is somewhat bound to the external world through actions.

So -- tell me what you think about all this. Would it be helpful, at least initially, to ground a monologue in both explicit meaning AND explicit action? I know with you (and other professional actors), meaning and action is coming up on breath all at once, almost effortlessly, but often it's not for me, i.e., while I understand RII, understand his thoughts, I'm not doing anything with his words (i.e., I make a speech, a clear speech, but a speech nevertheless). Or I focus on actions and I try to "do something" with each utterance, but then sometimes it's not clear. I feel I'm consistenly coming up short on the actions. I'm not integrated, I'm not coordinated -- I'm not affecting the world or the other person.

Breathing is critically necessary for great acting -- but is it enough?

And Deborah's response:

You’ve got too much time on your hands!

You’re thinking about acting. You’re not acting. The baby takes a breath………..realizes something and says “I pooped!” or you’re a skier on top of a mountain and you take off down the hill. You’re scared, you’re happy, you almost fall, you’re knee hurts, you hate it, you go faster, you love it, all that is in the text. What YOU do is stand at the top of the mountain and decide whether you’re going to like it or not before you go. That’s what happens when you choose actions.

Thoughts come up on breath. You choose the words (1 or 100) to express what you’re feeling one word at a time just like this letter.

"Would it be helpful, at least initially, to ground a monologue in both explicit meaning AND explicit action?"

Explicit meaning = are the words. They mean what they mean. Just mean them as you say them. And “Choose” them as if you don’t know what word you’re going to choose to explain “exactly” how you feel. And NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Stop thinking about action, it’s killing you. The action is in the word itself. Breathe and speak.

When you feel like you’re not doing anything that when you doing it! But it doesn’t feel like anything to you yet because you’re not using enough air to feel it.

Breathing is critically necessary for great acting -- but is it enough? Without it there no acting …………period. You have to understand exactly what you’re saying and start to SKI! You experience each feeling along the way AS you say it not before. Like LIFE.

Did Paul send you the YOU TUBE clip of Ian McKellen? That’s acting!

Sir Ian McKellan explains the secret of acting.