The Secret Of Theatrical Space

Great, I've scared myself to death -- again. This role I've accepted -- it's the largest thing I've ever gotten: not the lead, but a central main character, a co-lead, I guess: the same character across a couple of different large scenes from two plays. I'm oscillating between oh my god, oh my god, thank you thank you thank you, oh my god, oh my god, thank you thank you thank you . . .

. . . Where do I begin? How do I do this?

Break it down -- there's time. The Adding Machine was fairly large, though this is larger (gulp!), but I've done scenes before, and this role is really just 5-6 scenes, and it doesn't go up until the end of May.

• First, I've got a photocopy of the script, but it's small and tiny -- I need a more spacious copy, if I can find one.
• Second, there's a professional production (a film) of the play. It's too early to watch, but once I've really found my way, I think/hope it'll be enormously instructive to watch a professional actor doing my role, but I need to locate this film -- probably the New York City Library of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.
• Third, read the play (or plays) -- one is The Lark by Jean Anouilh, which explains all the physical activity of the character.
• Forth, I need to come up with a good solid rehearsal schedule: I would love to keep up with my monologue and cold reading work, but the role will gradually start to crowd out available time -- that's too bad because I was working hard to build a habit of working on these things, and I'm making progress ... well, if I'm extremely good in managing my time (another habit I'm working hard to acquire -- working hard because I haven't yet acquired that habit!), I should be able to get 30min-40min/day, 4-5 days/week for cold reading, just to keep momentum in that area -- momentum is everything! One monologue is coming together now -- the thing to do is get that nailed down as quickly as possible and then audition at 13th Street Theatre. OK -- there are my goals between now until the end of May. I need to set a definate schedule with deadlines, and then -- stick to it, and I'll both be OK and I'll achieve what I want to achieve.

There's so much work I want to do -- I find myself immersed it all, and I want to spend all my time doing it: I went to great movement and voice monologue workshop last night . . . voice and movement, the two magic engines of it all: the immediate and BIG benefit was it just made me much more present in my body, and then -- I suspect -- all the inner work from a scene or monologue, any images, all that will affect me that much more readily, that much more surprisingly and deeply, i.e., I hadn't really done that much work on this one monologue . . . yet, I was amazed at how simply being fully present and just letting myself be affected by whatever was going at the moment, without even trying to think about the character, the given circumstances, etc., made the work surprisingly more alive and nuanced. Nice!

Scene: Jeanne d'Arc in Chinon (1429), Castle of Chinon, Loire Valley, France. 15 years earlier, on the morning of October 25th, the French suffered a catastrophic defeat on the rain soaked fields of Agincourt: 2200 French cavalry, 33,000 infantry of Charles VI confronted an invading English army of 5000 lead by King Henry V. The English lost 13 horsemen, 100 infantry. French loses totaled close to 30,000: 12,000 killed, many more wounded. Henry V was recognized by the French in the Treaty of Troyes (1420) as regent and heir to the French throne. This was cemented by his marriage to Catherine of Valois, the daughter of King Charles VI.

Nine years later, with defeat piled on defeat, the French house is bankrupt, the northern half of France is owned by, and is squeezed under, tight English Control. What reminds in the south is in the hands of roving bands of marauders. I, Charles VII, The Dauphin, am cloistered away in the Castle of Chinon: broke, no authority -- here or anywhere -- and the rumor in France is that I will pitch the crown and take what little I have left and will run away to Scotland.

The first sound advice I've heard in months.

The siege of Orleans has begun. As Orleans goes -- so goes France, and the last of France, huddled behind shaking crumbling walls, waits for the end . . . it is the end. In truth -- it's past the end: I believe France is already gone. My dreams of France, my dreams for myself . . . like a cruel joke!

All this -- God did this, to France, to me. Believe?! Believe in what?!! I am nothing, because I AM nothing. Who's to save France? Let God do it! God who has taken so much from France, from me, let Him left the bow, shoulder the harness, drag the wagons of the dead and dying through the mud!

I cannot save what God hates.

And what men are left? Men like La Tremouille, the Archbishop -- they don't give a shit about France, and if they could figure out a way to get rid of me, they'd seize everything and sell out to England . . . maybe they're doing exactly that right now . . . maybe they should do exactly that right now. . . maybe they're right & smart to sell out . . . maybe I really am a fool. They don't give a shit, they don't care, and I despise them: Bastards, traitors, and I cannot stand up to them. They are France now, what's left of it: 'Thank you God, for making them so strong, and powerful, giving them every advantage, and leaving me with none!' They hold the "real" power now. I am my father's son -- nothing more. I cannot save France -- instead, I now dream of saving myself, far away, in another place, alive, safe . . . in a place where I do not recognize myself . . .

If they knew . . . how I felt, they would move against me, and what could I do to stop them? I need them --funny -- to keep me alive -- I can't have them decide to turn against me, so I let them talk about me and treat me the way they want. My one strength: to be a clown, in the face of all. At France, at me, I'll laugh with God . . .

Stop caring. I don't care anymore.

Beat #1. Trigger: France is going to hell in a hand basket, albeit a nice hand basket; I'm an idiot, a fool, I look ridiculous, I act ridiculous-- I am ridiculous-- I'm not going to be seen "dancing" while Rome burns . . .

Relationships: The Little Queen. Harmless, "nice," and doesn't "get it." If she did, I might have a friend, one friend, in the last place on earth . . .
Angus . . . smart, hot, I want her, I can't really stand her, because I think she does "get it," but like a cat -- she has other agendas. Yolande does care about France, about me, I think, and she thinks Angus will do me good -- it's completely hopeless, but if she wants to throw Angus in my bed . . . why not? It may be the end, but . . . one can't let oneself get too depressed . . . but she bugs me. I act like a fool, but she sometimes, sort of, acts like a AM a fool.

I'm not a fool.

NOTE: Charles is "on stage" here -- "acting like a fool for all the world to see," so I'm going to set things here, and practice how I'll say them. Normally I wouldn't do this, but Charles needs to be funny, sarcastic, with undertones of dispair, contempt. Using humor to handle it all . . .

I was hoping I could do here, in this journal, what I did with the short scene for the Weise-Barron show case, but no way I can keep up in this journal, as much as I'd love to . . . later, if I keep careful notes, I'll detail the work I'm doing, which is starting to get intense -- all I can do is sketch some early things out here: I've got to remember to update my written journal after each rehearsal so that I can later transfer things here.

Some Running Notes:

• I pause a lot. I pause because sometimes I don't know why I'm saying something, and I'm waiting for motivation . . . inspiration . . . a miracle. Ron has me running through the text, and at first I thought 'how's that going to help!?,' but now I see . . . he's trying to get me to stop thinking, and this almost subconsciously seems to free up resources to focus on doing, and that is making things clear much more quickly than "thinking" about them . . . Ron's an old pro, and he knows what he's doing . . .
• To perform is such a great learning opportunity, but the role is so large, I feel I have to work more quickly than usual, and the main challenge has been not to get bogged down. I feel I'm on the verge of working in a new way -- more physical/intuitive, and next week I'll start a workshop that will meet twice a week for a month based on Patsy Rodenburg's work. What little I've done seems to have helped allot . . . I'm still scared and anxious, but I'm getting into the rhythm of working for all this -- my life is about to be consumed by it all for the next two months . . . if I forget my fears, albeit only momentarily, then I feel like the luckiest man alive . . .

"Seraphic Dialogue" (1955) by Martha Graham, an interpretative vision, and one of the greatest moving Masterpieces of the 20th Century . . .

                      . . . Joan's transformation by the Angles.

Worse rehearsal is a long time -- the worst: was not prepared for the scene, had not worked/thought it through. Other problems:

• forgot to write down blocking for the last rehearsal so today I was suddenly lost,
• didn't mentally-physically rehearse and pick out one or two things to address
• overtired: not enough rest/sleep

Generally felt terrible, aware of how little I was getting or giving, and was not able to rally or focus, and rally to what, focus on what? Jill somewhat pointedly noted my fumbling during rehearsal . . .I was not prepared -- I'd better figure out what that means, how exactly to do that.

Next time:

1. Prepare: read/review the scene, blocking notes, any notes from self rehearsal. Critical to self rehearse, and then prepare to rehearse -- be ready to do that (don't just show up and then try to get orientated).
2. Pick specific things I want to work on.
3. Rehearse well -- give it my all (#1, #2, #4, & #5 here will be the foundation of this)
4. After rehearsal, sit down, review, as I'm doing now
5. Write down the next steps, the next things I want/need to do in rehearsing a scene

"saving it" or slowly working towards some final performance level that will coincide with opening night and the run.

Reality: I'm holding back -- not moving forward.

How it's done: if each rehearsal gets stronger, richer, more full, more clear and my ability to find more and more new, interesting and exciting insights, then that's how to grow into a performance! Work hard each time!

Thoughts, triggers, & background homework in scene 2 seem to be forming the basis of some great improv, i.e., after a character speaks, I improv my thoughts and feelings, not as me, but as Charles, then I go back into the actual text.

Often this "activation" carries me effortlessly through the next few lines of dialog until something changes in the text (i.e,. a beat change). All this based on my imaginative forages into the world of the play.

Also, this leads to an idea: how to respond, be alive, when the other character is talking to me. When the other character has long "speech," have him/her say one line or thought to me, as best they can, mean what they say, and then I'll breathe and just improv an immediately intuitive response to that one line/thought, and the other actor breathes that in, really listens, and then responds with the next line or thought. This is really to help me take in and start to respond to what the character is saying to me.

Ok, I tried something . . . strange, and it really seemed to work (quoting from an online article here):

In the early 1980s, a man named Scott had heard of a process called affirmations from a friend. The process he learnt was simple.

Visualize what you want and write it down fifteen times in a row, once a day, until you obtain it.

Scott was told that the process did not require any faith or positive thinking for it to work. Even more interesting was the suggestion that the technique would influence the environment directly and not just make you more focused on your goals. In other words, it would spawn amazing coincidences to move you towards your goals. The coincidences could be things that were seemingly unconnected to you and beyond your control.

Scott was very left-brained and logical in his thinking. He had his doubts about the process but figured that there was no harm in trying.

Within a few weeks, coincidences started to happen to me, wrote Scott. Amazing coincidences, strings of them. I won't mention the specific goal I was working on, as it was a private matter, but within a few months the goal was accomplished exactly as I had written it.

Armed with this confidence in the power of affirmations Scott decided to apply it to a more challenging goal - getting into the highly competitive Berkeley MBA program.The problem was that he had already taken the entrance exam, the G.M.A.T, and only hit the seventy-seventh percentile score. He knew he needed to be above the ninetieth percentile to at least have a chance of being accepted.

Scott picked the outlandish target of ninety-four as his goal and again applied the affirmation technique.

Despite not being able to go much higher than the seventy-seventh percentile in the practice exams Scott was surprised to learn that he did indeed hit the ninety-fourth percentile for the G.M.A.T - just as he had written in his affirmations. He graduated with his Berkeley MBA in 1986.

A few years later he tried pursuing a more serious goal, that of being a syndicated cartoonist. He knew the odds of his cartoon submission being accepted by a major newspaper were roughly 1 in 10,000.

He beat those odds and his cartoon was accepted. He was soon earning a decent living with his cartoon strip but he wanted to achieve something bigger.He decided he wanted the most successful comic strip on the planet. Scott felt that the best measure of "most successful" would be number of books sold.

In June 1996 his book The Dilbert Principle hit the number-one spot on the hardcover nonfiction list of the New York Times.

Reporters often ask me if I am surprised at the success of the Dilbert comic strip. I definitely would be so, if not for my bizarre experience with affirmations. As it was, I expected it., he writes in his book The Dilbert Future.

How To Believe

      So, what the hell, I tried it. I wrote down something I really wanted in rehearsal, something I felt was missing, i.e., a sense of the reality of the world of the play, and something Morgan Freedman had said: Acting is just pretending except that you really really pretend . . .

Though I had been doing this exercise nightly, before sleep, I had really forgotten all about it, until tonight, and then something happened: during rehearsal, some reason, tonight, I really listened as if I was hearing everything being said to me for the first time (while no one was off book, I was quite familiar with the scene) & I believed, i.e., I just accepted the other person, what they were saying, how they really looked right there, right now, under those harsh room lights, among the broken chairs -- I denied none of it: I just accepted we were having a war council (i.e., Charles & Joan before Orleans), I just accepted everything: people just showed up for rehearsal, and I just let myself see everything, the other as they were, the room as it was, and I just accepted that this is Tremouille, Dunois, this is how they sound, how they look, how they act, this is where we are, right now, and then . . . I believed every word they said and I believed everything they did . . .

                  . . . I just accepted them as they were, and then everything was "real."