Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Character and Text

I've noticed something that I think would be useful to our company to hear.

Before Saturday's run, we had been talking about TEXT TEXT TEXT, and pushing the TEXT to communicate, and using the TEXT to move you, and that our characters are IN THE TEXT. Because of that, I think we placed our focus on the TEXT and not on "acting," that we were liberated and allowed to play more without even knowing it, or even trying, because we didn't know we were playing. When someone says "play more" in a scene or a show, it's hard to really know how to do that, because we you put so much focus on "playing" you stop knowing how to have fun, and then it just feels like work. BUT! It's like misdirection in magic, I think, in that the more you focus on the words, which are really the only thing that communicate character and the like, the more your body and mind is freed up to help express those emotions and character, because they naturally fall into place to support the text.
Instead of going "Malvolio walks like this and then he moves his hand like that" WHILE I'm on stage, if you focus on what the hell Malvolio is saying and who he's saying it to, the movement and mannerisms and everything else will rise to the occasion to support that communication. It's a beautiful thing. I think the voice work in Joe's class really highlights these thoughts.
In last night's final dress rehearsal, I think because of the new audience members being there, we weren't focused on text, we were so focused on acting, so the text maybe wasn't as strong, and though we thought if we focused on our "acting" and how our characters do things that it would be better, I found out, at least for myself, that it communicated far less.

Like Hamlet says, it's all about "words, words...words"

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