Training: Learning How to Read & Connect to a Play

I ran across a great article in Backstage that reaffirms the training approach we're taking at Deborah Carlson's Word Of Mouth Studios.

Betsy Aidem (She recently received an Obie Award for sustained excellence of performance) has this to say about how she learned to approach plays -- and how it helped her to move forward:
Not surprisingly, Aidem cites an acting teacher, not a buzz-creating role, as her career turning point: Zina Jasper. She studied with Stella Adler and Harold Clurman and knows how to understand what a playwright is trying to say, Aidem says. She has a lightning-rod ability to connect what's on the page to the heart. Up until I started working with Zina, my experience of a play was totally subjective.

I thinks there's two goals, at least for me: 1) understanding what the playwright is REALLY trying to say and 2) connecting that to my heart. On this second point, it's the distinction of "knowing" what's going on a scene and actually "living/doing" that. Often it seems I "get it" (or at least think I do), but the "doing" it doesn't automatically follow. It's like what Morpheus tell Neo in the first Matrix movie: "There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."

This is exactly the strength of Deborah's approach: how to read, and how to connect. If I'm not working towards those two goals, I might get lost in that subjective place Aidem talks about.