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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.