How to Rise the Stakes
A couple of weeks ago, I had a cold reading audition. It went well (though ultimately I didn't get cast).
I thought I would try to get more out of my audition experience by taking the opportunity to do an audition "post-mortem" at Word of Mouth @ A/C Studios. I wrote Deborah the follow email:
Hey Deborah,
Tomorrow, could we take 10-15 to do a post-mortem of an audition I just did. The sides where from a play (attached), just pages 43-44, and I was Donny. Basically, Donny is a pedophile (another one! :), and the short scene is about Donny trying to convince his wife Ellen to stay home (the real reason being he's afraid of what he might do with his daughter if let alone with her).
I read the scene once, and then the director said he wanted me to read it again but "raise the stakes." He explained the context of the scene to me, i.e., the real reason why Donny is trying to convince Ellen to stay home, but I already understood this. So, my instincts told me that the director wanted to see a "guilty" Donny, or basically, play/show the "subtext" somehow. I could have been wrong, but that's how I interpreted his direction.
My next instinct was NOT to do that, i.e., I choose NOT to "indicate" or "show" the subtext, but then I found myself not sure what to do other than what I had just done, but just breathe deeper, slow down, etc. Anyway, my question is -- what should I have done with that direction? Were my instincts correct? I wanted to do a bit of post-mortem, 10-15min or so, and get your advice. Thanks Deborah.
- Cheers,
Christopher
Deborah wrote back:
We’ll talk about what the director meant. You were right to not be obvious or indicate the subtext but I’ll explain what he was talking about . . .
We’ll talk about what the director meant. You were right to not be obvious or indicate the subtext but I’ll explain what he was talking about . . .
Audition sides and notes I took from the class
Often beginning actors, like myself, hear the advice that you need to "raise the stakes," but often it's not clear how to do that exactly, and many actors wind up pushing themselves emotionally, i.e., putting themselves into what they feel is the appropriate emotional state, and then they push that state. The result of this can be a "one-note" audition because the entire piece is "colored" with one emotional state, and the actor spends a a good part of their effort/attention trying to maintain/deepen that state. This prevents the actor from putting 100% of their attention/focus and energies doing what the character is doing in the scene -- that's acting, not trying to maintain, somehow, a specific emotional state. A classic amateur's mistake -- and I should know: I've done it enough!
A second mistake, which I did avoid, is what I call playing the subtext, which amounts to trying to show the audience what's really going on inside a character even though the character is trying NOT to show (to the other character(s)) what's really going inside. In Donny's case, this makes sense. If he starts acting weird, guilty, worried, upset -- if this was real life -- Ellen's attention would immediately be drawn to what the hell is really going on with Donny, and that's the last thing he wants. That's not what Donny is doing in the scene.
The subtext IS critical, however, but not for it's own sake. The subtext (if correctly identified/understand) makes clear the NEED of the character, what they want. Basically, the actors job is to really have that need. It's hard to explain, but you just have to need what the character needs -- how one does this is a larger question. Making either of these two above mistakes, however, almost guarantees you'll never nail the scene, and the acting is going to look and sound strange.
"Raise the stakes" means to find the NEED, the critically important NEED of the character, and the more specific, the better. In preparing for an audition, a performance, this -- in my opinion -- is one of the most important parts of the job of acting.
Below are the sides. My notes are in italic.
The subtext: Donny is a pedophile, and this scene is about Donny trying to convince his wife Ellen to stay home because he's afraid of what he might do with his daughter if he's left alone with her.
Two points: 1) Donny NEEDS to convince Ellen to stay home. So -- it's critical to maintain eye contact with the actress playing Ellen. Don't have to bore a hole through her, but if I'm really going to try to convince her to stay home, I need to observe and evaluate her reactions, right? I/Donny needs to see if what I'm saying/doing is working -- am I getting what I want?
2) How do I really do this? Well, for one, I need to have full attention on Ellen, how she's reacting. My focus, my attention will automatically go to the task at hand if I'm breathing correctly. If I'm holding my breathe while Ellen is talking, what this means (for me) that that rather than really watching her, playing close attention to her, keeping a handle on my NEED, I'm instead doing something counter-productive, e.g., planning my next response, i.e. how I'm going to say the next line, worrying about whether I'm being convincing enough (this is my big distraction). So, not breathing is what's breaking my attention.
DONNY I'm asking you to take a couple of weeks off, that's all.
Many actors, myself included, put anger into this line, telling Ellen to take a couple of weeks off, but this makes no sense. Donny is NOT getting into a fight with Ellen. I suppose this is debatable, but I think an experience actor would not do this. The actor could "do" lots of things, but starting/escalating a fight is probably not one of them, but it's damn easy (at least for me) to do this. A worse mistake would be to somehow indicate or show the real reason why Donny is asking Ellen to stay home.
ELLEN
Did you see what she ate for dinner? A salad! She's eleven years old
DONNY
That's what I'm saying. She needs you here, not me. You can take the stupid interior decorating class again in the fall.
ELLEN
Speaking of which, you know what she said to me? She said, I'm "a little birdie who flits from tree to tree and can't commit to anything, not even her family." Where'd she get that?
DONNY
I don't know.
Here I made a weird and arbitrary choice: I "decided" that Donny did know where she got that, and I indicated guilt. Why was this a mistake? Because -- based on just the sides -- it's an assumption on my part. Maybe earlier in the play it is established that he knows, but even if he does, acting guilty would just make Ellen more angry. Is that really what Donny wants? Does Donny want to make Ellen even more angry? That doesn't make sense.
ELLEN
Bullshit!
You fill her head, you make her part of this tug of war between us, and now she thinks I'm a failure. She thinks I want her to eat so I can sabotage her dance career — so she'll "be a failure just like me." She said that.
DONNY It's just her way of saying that she needs you. At home!
ELLEN
No, that's what you want. But I'll show her I am a success, that I can do this. You're teaching her that a woman's place is in the home — that's a f***ed up thing to teach your daughter.
DONNY
I can't be here with her all the time.
ELLEN
You're not. It's a couple of hours in the evening, that's it! That's all!
DONNY I don't know how to raise a girl. She needs you.
ELLEN
That's lame, Donny, even for you. She listens to you. She's daddy's little girl, you made sure of that. So use it. Be her father, not her friend.
DONNY And tell her what?
ELLEN
Tell her it's okay to make mistakes, to give 80 percent once in a while. Tell her being a dancer isn't everything. Tell her to eat something!
At this point the scene ends and the stage directions say Donny is "defeated," which means he failed to convince Ellen to stay home.
At this point, an actor could decide that -- "ah, that's my action: convince her." But this is a mistake similar to choosing an "emotion" for the scene. Choosing to maintain a specific emotion or action is weird when you think about it.
While Donny is experiencing emotions throughout the scene, you can't pick them before hand, and while he is doing something specific, again, you can't pick that before hand. In the moment, he might be "pleading," or "begging," or whatever makes sense given how Ellen is responding.
While this leaves open the question of what should you do and how should you do it, picking an emotion and/or action before hand effectively cuts Ellen out of the picture -- Technically you don't need the other actress to even be there because you've decided your acting job is to either maintain one or more emotions and/or pursue one or more actions.
You can't do that AND react at the same time. That's the mistake.
So -- the bottom line lesson for me from all this? 1) Keep learning how to breathe while the other is talking and 2) DON'T make these mistakes. Do these two things and I'll teach myself how to become a better and better actor.
