Recently in Cat & The Moon Category

(The Cat & The Moon closes tonight).

The deep process and craft that you employ in the rehearsals and in the nightly repetition of a theatre job provide a way into acting that camera work never can have (Jim True Frost, Interview, ActorsLife.com).

. . . the deep process and craft, the value of a nightly theater job -- there's nothing like it for growing and learning.

I've been blessed with a fairly long run of the Cat and Moon -- about 6 weeks, and I can't remember working harder on a play after it's opened.

Breathing

Deborah Carlson's Word Of Mouth Studios hammers home, almost each week, the directive to speak no faster than you can breathe. Patsy Rodenburg calls this letting the breath drop.

I find this difficult to do partly because I'm not used to doing it, partly because I'm worried I'll drag a scene down pace wise, and partly because characters are often in an excited or heightened state, i.e., they're thinking and speaking rapidly.

However, if I go faster than I can breathe & think, I speak before my body and mind are naturally ready to speak -- what Ms. Rodenburg calls this getting ahead of the text.

Shakespeare, through Claudius, gives us a great description of bad acting:

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
~ Claudius, Hamlet, 3.3

Connecting Thought To Breath

Pasty Rodenburg makes essentially two points about a character's thoughts in her book: The Actor Speaks:

[1)] I think many members of an audience sit and listen without understanding a speech or even a whole play because the actor or actors have not understood the thought, the length of the thought, or one though's connection to another . . . [and 2)] . . . the [actor's] breath is linked to the length and quality of the [character's] thought and feeling . . .

(A full discussion of the relationship between thought and breath and voice is too broad to unpackaged here -- if you want to know more, start with one of these two resources: The Actor Speaks and/or A Voice of Your Own or try to find a good teacher than understands Rodenburg's approach. If you live in New York City, one of the best teachers that understands Rodenburg's approach is Deborah Carlson. She's also a terr!f!c coach with students currently on Broadway and in Broadway touring companies).

It's easier to hear what she's taking about rather than describe it, but I'll do my best: