Preparing the role
In my early 30s I began to create a notebook for each of my characters. I would clip pictures of hairdos, or clothes they might wear, colors that they liked, places they might’ve lived. I did a lot of research. For “Cyrano”, I had acres and acres of research to read. These notebooks would give me a visualization of who my character might be. And then of course I would take notes about what I called ‘The Givens’. The Givens, these are all the facts that are in the play about your character. It might be age, it might be a hair color, it might be disposition, it might be where you lived, your accent, likes or dislikes. Then I collected all of these Givens into this notebook. All the facts I could find. From that I began to write a bit of a biography. To imagine who this person would be. After all, you’re now a co-writer of the character. Then after the play was over-with, I would take a micro cassette recorder and begin at the beginning of the play and talk it all out. All the things that my character was thinking about, all the choices that I made during rehearsal that were explored, even the meaning of lines and subtext. These were for memories, but also as instructions, in case I ever played it again, or if anyone actually wanted to use them as notes. (I have a couple hundred of these cassette tapes, including diary ones from this time. They had never been listened to since they were put in the box, until I almost finished my Lifestory book. I realized they would help me in writing these theater stories. It was grueling to go back and listen to that time in my life. The issues with poverty and awful roommates, and no work. God, the stress of it all.) All this research, all this writing, creating a biography, all this was done to help me understand one thing, what my character wanted. What my character really felt she needed. What “choices” she was making. Once I understood that, and I got it in my bones, then these words the playwright had given me could be used as tools to achieve that goal, with the other actors on stage. I knew how hard to push for something, how hard to demand something, how much of a struggle trying to achieve something might be for the character. I was now able to make “choices”, which I will talk about next. Once I understood that, I could now act the role. I now had a stake to fight for. And in the theater you always want to “raise those stakes”. After all, that is what drama is- ‘raised stakes’.
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“Choices”
This is a huge word in my acting and in my teaching and in my life.
As an actor I was always trying to figure out more interesting choices to make, to reveal my character and entertain the audience at the same time. Here is an example. At my audition for the play “The Cocktail Hour” for the Actors Theatre of Louisville, my character enters and she’s a bit of a neurotic at the time. She’s had a really bad day. So what can you “do” when you’re coming in, sitting in a chair, and reading opposite a casting director or somebody they’ve hired to read with you. You have to do something to show them you can make interesting choices as an actor. It helps if you can also entertain them. There’s an old story about Barbra Streisand, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it tells of an audition that she went to and she was chewing gum through the whole thing. Then at some point she takes the gum out of her mouth and sticks it underneath the chair, and exits. When she left the audition room they checked the chair and there was no gum there. Choices. I decided to go into the audition with my shirt on backwards. As if my character had gotten ready in a hurry and wasn’t paying attention, because she’s so scrambled that day. Then as I’m beginning to have this yelling speech with my brother, —and how often can a director sit there and listen to the yelling match scene over and over— in the fight, I see that my shirt is on backwards and so I have to take it off and put it on correctly but trying not to let my brother, or the casting people, see too much of what’s underneath it. In the middle of the scene I was getting tangled up and nearly had to take my shirt all the way off to put it on correctly again. It was a great surprise to the director and the casting person. They laughed all through it, and needless to say I got the job. Instead of it being a yelling scene with my brother, which they had seen all day, it became a comedy moment. That audition itself taught me what my next lesson in acting was going to be about. Finding Interesting choices that realize character and entertain at the same time. This play was my opportunity to try to make those kinds of choices, learn how to do more comic work, not just a “bit” for a bit’s sake, but one that reveals character, the story, and all while entertaining the audience. There was one moment in the play when my character is announcing dinner, she says something about the lamb chops being ready. I would try something different almost every time. I might sound like an English Butler, I might come onstage with the oven mitts and use them like puppets. The directors favorite was when I said “laaammmbb chops” like I was a bleating sheep.
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I want to talk about Technique for a moment.
I have a masters in acting and I thought I understood the word technique, but truthfully, I was always confused by it. Acting is a mystery. Often we don’t want to articulate what it is we do because it takes some of that mystery away. Then it begins to feel like a recipe you’re doing over and over. When I was younger it was always a discovery. It was a revelation. I never knew quite how a character was going to turn out, how far I could push myself, what I might discover in a scene with my fellow actor. But the older I got, the mystery, the revelations became less and less. It was precisely because I was older, I knew more about life, I understood more about myself and the world. Less Mystery. I think there was always a kind of technique at work, controlling my performances, even if I didn’t understand exactly what it was. I really understood technique better when I became a pottery teacher. My other love. I knew when I made my own pottery that there were certain things I’d like to do to it, that I found beautiful, or interesting. As I started teaching pottery, in my students work, some of whom would stay with me year after year, one could see their techniques beginning to grow the longer they worked on their craft. I would say to my students —If we all made the perfect bowl, (which is often what we’re trying to do), how would I know yours from mine? What distinguishes an artists work? It was the choices we made, how they took that ball of clay and turned it into something they found beautiful, or interesting for themselves that showed their personality. Some potters like pieces that are so thin and lightweight, you think if you touch them they’re going to break. Some potters like to scratch up a surface and make it very rough almost like it was a rock made by nature. Some potters like to throw a lot of attachments on their pieces. Little balls, or little horns, or weird handles and spouts. I like to do a combination of carving and attachments. After a while, when I would unload the kiln, I could tell whose piece it was just from the way it was thrown, or the finger marks that they left on it, the decorations they put on it. I could tell from their techniques. Technique is a bag of tools that you use to express your personality onto the pot. In a similar way, technique as an actor are these —sometimes unspoken, maybe unknown— bag of tools that you have and use to create your characters. They are choices that you make to reveal that person. Sometimes it’s an external expression. Which is how I always understood the word technique when I was in college. An external form you were putting onto the character. A way of using your voice, of using a walk, of using make-up on your face. Technique is also revealed internally. It has something to do with the way you see the world, the way you attack the world, or maybe hide from it. Is there a real you? We have all developed a kind of ‘technique’ when we build who we think we actually are (or want to be seen as). We have made choices about who this person is we call “ourselves”. Some of these structures that we put on ourselves theater teachers might call them “tics”. Mannerisms. They try to strip you of these personality traits. It used to be called stripping you down to the neutral you. But when you’re being cast, it is these very mannerisms, these tics, the casting people are actually looking for. Is it a useful tool to know how to be a neutral you? Maybe. Why not? (Though it can be damaging as well.) But the casting people, and audiences, they actually want to understand the real you. Well… real as far as the person you have “created yourself” to be. All identity is fluid, really, isn’t it? When I watch Meryl Streep now, I see a lot of personal tics. There’s nothing wrong with that. What always interested me the most about technique, was the deeply personal, political perspective an actor carries inside them. What riles them up? What do they value that is worth fighting for? How do they meld that into their character and express it through the character as it has been written. Think Al Pacino. That’s what gets me excited, seeing that truth come out of them. Seeing them attack the world, seeing them struggle through, trying to get this thing achieved, whatever it is. This interior drive is a kind of technique as well. It cannot be taught, I don’t think. It’s a deep personalization that comes from inside the actor because they have an interest in the world, in justice, in fairness, in helping their fellow man. When you’re in school you’re taught techniques like- how to handle a 15th century handkerchief, or wear an eighteenth costume, or walk in a hoop skirt, or bend the knee when you are taking a deep bow. Externally applied techniques. Just know, it’s so much more than that.
There are some technical techniques that do need to be learned. Like how to project your voice. Sometimes you only really learn that when you have to. You can get the sensation of it in a voice class. But when you’re in 1000 or 2000 seat theater and you know your voice needs to hit that back wall, your body finds that place that it needs to get the breath to project that far. Other things like how to keep pushing forward to the end of thought. Keeping up the pace. How to keep up the pace so then you can really buy the silence when you need it. You learn to keep facing out so an audience can really see you. You can turn your back to the audience, but then you’re not sharing anything with them. In the same way that on camera when you cry you don’t want to cover your face with your hands, which is what we would do in normal life. You want to be able to cry and let the audience see what you are experiencing through your face. You can’t just “turn out” to the audience, and not make it seem natural. There’s a technique to it. I remember once watching an “All My Sons” production. Jose Ferrer had taken some of our Broadway cast once we closed and put together a company to play the show in Connecticut. The actress playing Sue was told to walk down stage to deliver her next speech. And she walked downstage for no other reason than because she’s been directed to. She made no choice about why and how she got there. The night I saw the performance when she walked down stage she walked right onto one of the plastic plants on the stage, and continued to stand on part of it. She had no idea why she was there, she had not chosen for herself any reason to go there. She was just following direction. You need a reason when the director tells you to do something. If you cannot make sense of it, then you need to discuss it with the director. A bad director will say just do it because I need it for the stage picture. A good actor can usually figure out a reason. Maybe you ask them to put some thing on the ground there that you can then go pick up. There’s always a way to make sense of it. It’s unfortunate we have so many directors thinking in those terms- stage pictures. Academic. Blocking. It’s better, though it takes more time, when you just let the actors play the scene as they understand it. Their characters need something from the other characters. Let them discover it. Women actresses will need to learn the technique of walking around stages with long trains and how to not trip on them. How to move these costumes gracefully and slowly around their legs and feet. There’s also a technique to develop, of being able to change your character, grow your character overtime, that does not throw your fellow actors off. Especially older ones that sometimes don’t have the same agile brain as in their youth. They need to hold onto something more fixed to get through a show. The best shows have this easy moving breath in them. They can change, they can grow. The only way they can do that is if it’s built in during the rehearsal period so everyone can experience it. Rehearsals discover truth of moments, and when actors are free enough to change a little bit, then you can take that breath with you out into the theater. Some directors, they want the same performance night after night after night after night. No changes. To me this is the kind of death.
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The Table Read
On your first day of rehearsal on a new job, after you’ve spent hours trying to figure out exactly the right outfit to wear that shows who you are as a person as well as influences a little bit the part you were getting ready to read, you head to the rehearsal hall and there is the long table for every actor and staff who are going to be important to the production. On the table are scripts for everyone, and pencils, pitchers of water. You could smell fresh coffee made somewhere nearby. This is called the “table read”. And in some ways it’s the most important day. It’s the day when you find out if the people cast are as you imagined them when you read the play. It’s the day you find out if the love interest you are to play opposite to has any connection with you. It’s the day when you learn more about this new director you’ll be working with. It’s the day when you get to see the designs for the set, and to see what the costumes are going to look like. And of course these are costumes that were made without any input from you, tsk tsk. Unless you do it with a costumer you have worked with before and they know you have strong feelings about your characters. Usually you have no say in what you’re wearing. That includes wigs. Then you sit down at the table, and there’s a nervousness almost like opening night. Except you don’t have to worry about memorizing those lines. There’s that anticipation of something beginning, and your questioning whether you will be any good. An actor is a combination of self doubt, (imposter syndrome) and an ego that knows that they’re the best person for the role. It’s a balancing act. When you begin to read, you begin the important activity – listening. Learning to listen. Learning who these characters really will be now that you have an actual actor in front of you. Learning how your lines are going to change as you listen to how someone responds back to you. Trying to impress, but also at the same time not trying to act. Trying to be in the moment, listening, discovering, being surprised. Surprising back. Someone will often say before the reading begins to take the pressure off yourself don’t try to perform. And these are good words. You want to use this time to find your role now in this new group of people.
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Don’t learn lines beforehand
In the theater- you should be familiar with the text. You should understand the plot and theme. You should know how your character fits into all of that. You should work on what your character wants. But you should try your best not to really learn these lines verbatim until you get in the rehearsal hall and can hear the other actors speaking them. When I auditioned for the part of Adele Natter, I was asked if I could play a bubbly blonde woman. I suppose they got the idea from Nattering? To Chatter. I’m not usually associated with the dumb blonde type. If anything I usually tend to be the serious (hopefully intelligent) blonde type. But I did my best in the auditions and apparently they liked it because they cast me. We had a longer than average rehearsal time. I wasn’t worried about lines so I didn’t memorize anything ahead. That’s a good thing. Because, during that first week of table reads and starting to get it up on its feet, I realized that the man who was playing my husband, a wonderful actor, a very funny man with a deeply serious side, would not want a wife that was a bubble head. She had to be a true trophy wife. He would want the Alma Mahler of his day. He would want the “intelligent, well spoken, well trained, polite and able to handle any conversation” woman, the one that every other artist he knew wanted. Somehow, he snagged her. So the way I engaged with the language had to change. This notion of a bubbly dumb blonde sayings insipid stuff was not really in the text, anyway. I felt they had mis-interpreted her, and meeting the actor playing my husband made me realize this even more. To his credit the director, though he wanted me to continue to try to be the bubble blonde, didn’t force me to do it. Of course the character was delightful, and witty, talkative, the woman in the room that you wanted to take home. Non-threatening. But none of that meant she wasn’t intelligent, or that she was playing up to these men with a childish façade. When I would listen to my husband talk to me, the words I said back to him had to be a response to what he was actually saying to me. If I had learned those words beforehand, without hearing this actors voice, I would’ve been making up what I thought this man (my husband) should’ve been and responding to that notion. Instead of responding truthfully to the man who was actually cast. I don’t think people understand acting enough to know the difference. There is a difference between actually learning the text before first rehearsal, and knowing it’s so well that you almost know it. When you’re only given four weeks to get a show on its feet it’s very hard to get rid the cadence of the lines you learned early, before you’ve met or heard anyone else. There are some actors that have photographic memories. They look at a text and they just remember the words. Maybe they’re able to do it, I don’t know. I don’t have a photographic memory. When I was younger and when I was in school, I don’t remember ever really learning lines. I remember studying the text, I remember lots of rehearsal, and then the words just, kind of, were there- once you had gotten enough rehearsal time. I learned that the way I memorize lines has more to do with what I’m attempting to achieve, (in other words what my character wants), and where I am in time and space. For example, if I want someone to leave the room and I have a line that says something to that effect, the way I say it will be dependent on how I choose to get that person to leave. I might rush toward him and push him out the door. I might pick up a heavy vase to throw at him, or I might quietly pick up a phone as if to suggest I’m going to call the police. Once the choice is decided, and the blocking is established, then the repetition of saying that line with that intention, in that time/space is then instilled into my brain and body. If I try to sit down at home and learn lines, it’s almost impossible. When I get to a rehearsal and it is demanded of me, I get nervous early on in the process. I’m concerned that I am not saying the right line or the director is going to be upset. Nerves that get established early on, sometimes stay there throughout the run. Some people in rehearsals are off book quickly, other people hold that book until the final day. Everybody learns differently. Directors should know and understand this.
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Memorization
There were a couple techniques I developed to help with lines.I learned when in university to take monologues and break them into smaller actionable sections. Each section would have something different that I wanted in it. It would have a certain set of actions based on that need. Instead of standing and delivering it all in one piece, I made sure to move around with it. To use it to go after whatever my character is wanting from moment to moment. In this way I didn’t have to learn it as a long single piece. It was a series of broken up pieces each having their own destination. For example the first part of a monologue I might be trying to be nice to the guy in order to get him to just listen to me. To help me. My action would be based on trying to get closer to him, maybe getting him a drink. Then the next section I might perceive this guy is not going to help me so I might be forcibly trying to get him to do something. I might take that drink, not give it to him, but throw it away. I think you get the idea. Each section had a purpose. The other technique I developed was around this time of doing “Arcadia”. It had something to do with the fear I was experiencing in that show. I called this creating “back doors”. I would take the script and essentially look at the beats. A beat is when you begin to go after something you want and it ends when you get that thing. Then you’re on to the next beat. But know this: you can not act “beats” in a show, but they can be used as a tool to understand a role. So, in these sections/beats I knew that if I “went up” during any part of it, I just had to get myself to the ending of that section, so my fellow actor and I could get on to the next beat. I had to know what was important in that section, what information had to be delivered, and then how to get to its final lines, so I could move onto the next section. That’s what I called the back door. If you “go up” lose your place, your lines you know what that back door is. Get to the back door, then you can go on into the next thing that has to happen. Years later when I was teaching I discovered that some people actually learn speeches, monologues, etc, by creating rooms. It’s a very similar thing. Your first part maybe you envision yourself in an entryway, then you get to the next part which is going into the living room. You imagine yourself moving around that room, then you go into the kitchen. And you imagine yourself in that room, until finally you come to the back door, and then you’re out, or finished with your speech. It’s just a way of dividing it into the sections that become more tangible, more clear to you so you can get through the long piece.
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Another story about keeping a show breathing
I did a production of Ibsen’s “The Master Builder”. Rolfe Fjelde was with us on this one, the most well known Ibsen translator at that time. The director was a nice lady, and at one time had been an actress. But I realized she’d forgotten a lot about what an actor does, or maybe she didn’t ever really know. Her directing was the opposite of what a good director should do. She wanted us to learn our lines and our blocking, and any changes after that, she called “improvisation”. She did not want that. I have talked a lot about how just learning your lines and blocking is the antithesis of what good actors really should do. I’m not saying that it’s not necessary, I’m saying that it’s a framework from which you build on. There was no room for growth in her way of directing, no chance to experience and change, for truth to develop. I had already been through this in past shows and knew that it was best for me to just keep trying to learn and grow anyway. But the other two main lead actors wouldn’t allow themselves to do that. They literally did only what she said to do. Consequently they weren’t really trying to affect anyone. They weren’t using the language to achieve a goal, they wouldn’t adjust their blocking if they were trying to make someone really hear them. The performances became very stiff and very staid early on. There was nothing breathing, there was nothing vitally living there.
The non-professionals in the show would only do what the director said, too, and this was a problem. For instance, one night my character takes a walk, and I found a flower had come loose, and was laying on the walking path on stage. I picked it up to get off the stage floor, and I then walked to meet with one of the older non-pro men in the play for our scene. While talking with him, I handed him the flower. It was a sweet gesture, and a practical one as he was exiting the stage soon. But because we had never rehearsed it, he did not know what to do with it. As he was leaving the scene, he just dropped it, leaving it lying there on the stage floor, again. There was no attempt to try to make anything out of that moment with me, or to take it off stage with him. Like robots, just doing what they were told.
The one relief I had during this time was Rolf. He was charming, and very helpful. I found that I was often wanting to change certain words in the language, to better reveal what my character was feeling, what she was going through. I finally talked to Rolf about it, and he told me to go ahead and change whatever I needed to if it helped me to understand and play the character. It was exactly what I wanted to hear, and exactly what I felt most translators should do for actors tackling their work. An actor really needs to understand the language, to make it their own. And if the language is not helping, if it’s to “literary” for instance, it stops you dead in your tracks. One word might change from the script several times – from “anxious”, to “worried”, to “fearful”, then finally landing on “scared” in the end. Each of these were searching for, then deepening, my understanding of my characters feelings in that moment, as I knew her best.
The show felt more like a community theater production I had been in when I was much younger. Friends that came to see it early on said it wasn’t terribly good, but that I was giving one of the better performances. They advised me not to invite others. Said it felt overacted – and that was because director did not let us find the truth between these characters. Reviews were so-so. The New York Times said it was a -“linguistically exacting intellectual exercise”- (I think that was the exact quote). Makes sense… if there is nothing moving, growing, surprising, breathing between the actors, that is what you might get.
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Laughs
Later in life, there was a play I was in, a comedy, but I hadn’t done a lot of comedy lately. Even though it wasn’t my cup of tea, this play certainly was liked by the audiences. I decided to make it a time to learn more about comedy and boy did I learn things doing it. The main thing I will share, I was learning every night how to get bigger and longer laughs. There was one night when I began to notice that if I just let my character wait to understand what was happening while the audience was beginning to understand it and starting to laugh.… then if I began to let the character realize it after they did, the audience would see me beginning to understand, they’d laugh even harder, a second laugh. Then… depending on my reaction, I could get a third laugh in the next following moment. Three laughs, rolling laughter, where earlier in the run we would just get one laugh. This was a joyful wave to ride.
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Keep learning new things each night
Much later in life when memory was not as strong and I found fear creeping into some performances, I found a book called “Stop Acting” by Harold Gustin. In it he challenges the actor to really try to stay alive in the moment, to try new things to keep open to the newness. I really wanted to do that. I wanted to explore and hold on to a role and keep her real and engaging. So I attempted to do some of what he talks about in the book. Not only are you dealing with the fear you have, but now you’re trying to keep yourself open to something brand new that could throw you even more. I took it as a sign of courage that I even attempted it. When it worked, it was lovely, because it allowed me to be in that happy place an actor finds themselves when they’re truly living in a moment. Afterwards I would pat myself on the back for being brave enough to to keep open. This was, after all, my lifelong description of the kind of actor I wanted to be. I never liked those actors that set everything perfectly and then do the exact same thing night after night after night. It feels so stale. I wanted to breathe.
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What do I want?
And what is the obstacle…in other words -what am I reacting to?
Play the question in your mind.
What choices does you character make to get what they want?
What choices do you the actor make to get it, and to make it interesting?
Keep it alive. We never know what we will say next. We do not plan it out. So every sentence must be discovered in the moment, every night.
Breath.
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