4

An Overview of
the Toolkit and Exercises

This final chapter takes a look at everything we’ve got in The Toolkit and offers some hands-on strategies for putting them to use. Owing to the nature of some of the individual tools, as well as the holistic nature of the toolkit as a whole, there isn’t necessarily an exercise for every tool. The invitation is for you to invent your own.

Level 1: Actor Training

TRAY I

THREE ‘ATTITUDES’ TOWARDS THE ART OF ACTING

•Psycho-physicality

•Discipline

•Stage ethics

TRAY 2

FOUR BASIC TOOLS FOR PREPARING THE ‘BLANK CANVAS’

•Relaxation

•Breathing

•Concentration and attention

Relaxation Exercises

There’s a whole host of RELAXATION exercises which you could use, from the tensing and relaxing of all your muscles to the picturing of a ball of honey gliding through your limbs. I propose developing some of the ideas in Stanislavsky’s ‘system’, which Soviet censorship prevented him from expounding himself.

Along with his reading of Hindu philosophies, Stanislavsky’s experiences with the acting tutor, Leopold Sulerzhitsky, a colourful character who worked in his studio laboratories for some years, opened him to various Yogic practices. As a result, he began to use the term prana, referring to the energy centre located below the solar plexus. The following RELAXATION exercise expands the idea of prana, by drawing upon the Seven Chakra energy centres located along the spine. It does require a certain amount of IMAGINATION and connection with the notion of inner energy centres, which some actors may feel is too ‘mystical’ and intangible. If that’s the case, then simply return to the physical tensing and releasing of specific muscle groups, and that should activate quite simply and effectively your awareness of where you’re most relaxed or tight. That said, I use the following exercise a lot in workshops, and even the most sceptical of practitioners usually find they can benefit significantly from it.

•Find a comfortable place on the floor. Close your eyes and take a moment to still your thoughts.

•Picture yourself lying on a warm beach, where the sand is soft enough to take the imprint of your body, yet firm enough to give you a sense of support.

•Allow your head to sink into the sand and feel the warmth radiate through your body – across your shoulders, down your back, along your arms with your elbows relaxed and your hands lying loosely on the sand. Feel the warmth support your butt (which is one of your biggest, strongest muscles, so allow yourself to relax it), down your legs so that your calves lie easily on the sand, your heels make a delicate imprint, and your toes are relaxed.

•Lie there for a few moments just paying attention to your breathing. You don’t have to alter your breathing pattern in any way, just be aware of the breath entering your body and leaving your body in a natural, easy wave motion.

•Take your attention to the base of your spine – to your coccyx – and picture a vibrant red globe of energy gently rotating there. This is your Root or Base Chakra: it’s your connection with the earth, it’s how you manifest yourself on this planet, it’s your sense of identity or personality. This is a vital centre for the actor as it’s through our corporeal presence on the earth that we can begin to physicalise characters and manifest in a concrete way the inner life within us. Through our physical bodies, we can communicate our emotional landscape and our imaginative realm to the audience. Spend some moments injecting that red globe with colour and vitality. Feel your increasing sense of ‘self’ as you do so.

•Bring your attention up to your lower abdomen, and picture a bright globe of orange energy rotating there. This is your Creative centre, your sexual centre, the root of your desire to create on this planet. Obviously this is a vital centre for actors, as by virtue of our profession we’re inherently creative beings. When you find yourself struggling with a character or you’re blocked in your creativity, it may help to infuse this globe of vibrant orange with a sense of vital energy and just see what happens in your IMAGINATION and EMOTIONS. Spend some moments now just paying attention to this centre and feeling your desire to create percolating through your body.

•Now take your attention up your body to your solar plexus. The solar plexus is a knot of nerve endings between the stomach and the spine, and it houses (metaphorically) the Emotion centre. This centre is coloured a magnificent yellow, so picture that swirling globe of yellow energy massaging your solar plexus. As we know, the Emotion centre is a complex centre, as it holds the whole gamut of feelings which comprise our personality. Our jealousy, hate, anger, joy, excitement, frustration, vulnerability, passion, mischief. We know this is the root of our emotions because we feel it. When we fall in love, we feel it in our stomach area (we even lose our appetites). When we’re angry, we feel that knot in the pit of our stomach. When we’re excited or nervous, we talk about ‘butterflies in the stomach’. Of course, it’s a vital centre for actors because we need to have at our finger-tips the palette of emotions which colour and texture our performances. Spend some moments now infusing the Emotion centre with a vibrant yellow colour. Enjoy the kind of inner massage, which can ease out any muscular tensions you might have and consequently alleviate any emotional tensions.

•Coming up the body, take your attention to the centre of your chest. This is your Heart centre; it’s not located in the left of your chest where your anatomical heart is, but right in the middle of your rib cage. This centre is coloured a vibrant emerald green, so picture the swirling globe of emerald green energy residing in your chest and emanating out of your body. This centre is vital for us as actors: we have to be able to love – without coyness or whimsy – every aspect of our work. We have to love the character we’re playing, even if it’s the Butler and not the Lead. We have to love our fellow actors: if we can be open to their creative processes, then our own creative journey will be far richer and more textured. We have to love the director’s vision of the play and his approach to rehearsal: if we find ourselves shutting down on the basic premise of a production or the way in which we’re being directed, then we simply curtail our own creative discoveries. We have to love the camera or the audience, to radiate out to them the nuances of the script. Allied to love, of course, is trust, and if we can trust in the creative environment – including our own creative journey, the director’s approach and that of our fellow actors – we can further unblock the realms of our fantasy and PSYCHO-PHYSICALITY. Spend some moments now infusing the Heart centre with vibrant green light and feel that light radiating out of your body, engendering your sense of creative pleasure.

•Take your attention up to your throat: this is your Communication centre, and once again it’s vital for an actor. Blockages in our creative process often manifest themselves as blockages in our vocal cords: the words don’t sound right, we find it hard to learn the lines, sometimes we even develop laryngitis. If you find you develop any of these vocally orientated problems, take your attention to the Communication centre and imaginatively allow it to open. It’s coloured a vibrant sky-blue, so picture for a moment that sky-blue swirling energy centre gently massaging your vocal cords and opening up for you a direct channel between the writer’s script and your own inner mechanism. If you can open this centre, you’ll begin to understand exactly how the text should be spoken and how those words resonate in your IMAGINATION. Spend a few moments now injecting your Communication centre with a sky-blue energy, and feel that expansion in your throat.

•Now move up the body to your forehead. In the centre of your forehead is your Third Eye, your centre for clairvoyance. If, as actors, we can open this centre so that we put ourselves in a powerful, instinctive place in the classroom, rehearsal space, stage or film studio, we can develop a sense of alertness in which we’re almost ahead of the moment. We can sense when our fellow-actor is going to do or say something unusual, we can feel the woman on the fifth row about to have a coughing fit, we’re tuned into the tracking movement of the camera or the sudden decision of the director to try something new. We’re like cats: serene and still, but able to pounce at any moment. This centre is incredibly powerful: it’s one step away from our SUBCONSCIOUS, underlining Stanislavsky’s repeated claim that his ‘system’ provided a conscious means of preparing the ground for subconscious creativity. The centre is coloured a vibrant violet colour; so spend some moments now investing that centre with violet energy and feel the frown lines begin to fade away as your imagination and mind become relaxed and expanded.

•Finally, take your attention to the top of your head, to your Crown chakra, and allow yourself to feel as if the top of your head is opening up, letting a stream of light come pouring in. There’s a good deal of discussion in Stanislavsky’s writings about the SUBCONSCIOUS (see above) and, in many ways, by opening the Crown chakra, we’re putting ourselves in a strong position to access it. This centre is infused with ultraviolet light and it’s our connection with the universe: if the Base chakra is our connection with the earth, the Crown chakra is our connection with the cosmos.

•Imagine that the stream of light is cascading down through your opened Crown chakra and passing through your body. As it descends, it ignites the violet light of the Third Eye in the middle of the forehead, passing the sky-blue Communication centre in the throat, through the emerald green centre of the Heart and lighting it up as it passes down to the Emotion centre in the solar plexus, which resonates with yellow energy, then down to the Creative centre in the lower abdomen igniting the orange globe, and finally down to the coccyx, where the red globe in the Base chakra grounds us and connects all our energy centres right the way up the spine.

•Take a moment to feel that utter sense of who you are – your personality, your creative energy, your emotions, your capacity for love, your ability to communicate, your spontaneous response to sound and action, and your higher consciousness which keeps everything integrated and open.

•When you’re ready, gradually bring yourself back to the warm beach and the imprint of your body in the sand. Finally bring yourself back to your breathing, noting how the quality of your breath may have altered as a result of opening up the energy centres along your spine.

•Slowly, to end, roll onto your right side and slowly come up to sitting or standing.

One of the reasons I use the Chakra sequence as a RELAXATION exercise is that it’s very energising. It’s important not to think of RELAXATION as something you do before you go to sleep. Somehow, by imagining the cascading energy through the various centres along your spine, you should conclude the exercise feeling both physically relaxed and imaginatively switched on. You should be raring to go, and not ready for bed.

Breathing Exercises

The following BREATHING exercises are adopted from Yogic practices and are aimed at opening up (1) the upper breathing cavities and (2) the lower breathing cavities, and then (3) combining the two areas of the body into a unified breathing pattern. They were taught to me by Vladimir Ananyev, my Scenic Movement teacher in Moscow.

Exercise 1
Upper body breathing

•Stand with your arms relaxed by your sides and your feet together in sixth position (i.e. in parallel), and with your knees soft (i.e. not rigidly straight, but not consciously bent: it’s a sensation as much as a physical positioning). Sense your contact with the floor through the soles of your feet and gently release any extraneous breath from your lungs.

•As you inhale, your arms cross the front of your groin in opposition to each other as they begin to describe a large arc in front of your body;

•both arms continue their respective arcs, passing right across your body and above your head, where their oppositional paths separate and your left arm descends to the left as your right arm descends to the right;

•as your outstretched arms come level with your shoulders (parallel to the floor), tuck your thumbs into the sides of your body just below your armpits with your palms facing the floor, so your hands are at right angles to your body, your fingers pointing forwards.

•As you exhale, push the palms of your hands downwards towards the floor, with the heels of your hands sliding down the sides of your torso as if you were brushing the air out of your body.

•The finishing position is the same as that with which you began.

•Repeat this sequence twice more.

Exercise 2
Lower body breathing

•Stand with your legs a little more than shoulder distance apart, your feet in parallel pointing forwards, your knees slightly bent, and your hands lightly placed over your belly.

•As you inhale, the palms of your hands stroke outwards across the belly from the centre towards your sides, as you simultaneously thrust your chest forwards and your bottom backwards like a strutting cockerel.

•In the pause between your inhalation and your exhalation, you cross your arms in front of your body so that your elbows meet just in front of your belly and your forearms curl round your belly.

•As you exhale, you draw your elbows away from your belly towards the sides of your body, clenching your fists as if you’re drawing weights across you; you simultaneously curl your pelvis underneath your body, and your neck and torso curve gently forwards.

•In the pause between your exhalation and the next inhalation, bring your body back to the neutral starting position, with the spine straight and the hands lightly placed on the belly.

•Repeat this sequence twice more.

Basically, the inhalation curves your spine outwards from the belly, so your tailbone is thrust backwards and your chest is thrust out. The exhalation reverses that curve, so your tailbone is tucked under and your head is curled towards the chest. The impulse to move on both inhalation and exhalation is from your belly, so your lower breathing cavities get a really good work-out.

Exercise 3
Combined upper and lower breathing

•Stand with your legs fairly wide apart, your feet in a comfortable second position and your knees bent in a deep plié. Your arms are held in front of your body like a Native American ‘How!’ sign, with your left arm horizontally across the torso and your left palm facing the floor, and your right forearm at 90° to it, right elbow balancing on left finger tips and right palm facing forward.

•As you inhale, your right forearm rotates from your elbow and starts to describe an arc towards the elbow of your bent left arm, and in so doing the right palm inevitably turns 90° from its forward-pointing position toward the bent left elbow;

•the right forearm continues the circle, passing in between your bent left arm and your upper body, at which point your bent left arm begins to straighten upwards in an arc rotating from your shoulder away from your body;

•as your right arm arc passes across your torso down towards your legs, your right upper arm and shoulder join in the movement so that the entire right arm passes across the 6 o’clock position in front of the pelvis;

•at the same time as your right arm reaches the 6 o’clock position, the arc of your left arm reaches the 12 o’clock position, so that your left arm is pointing skywards as your right arm is pointing earthwards;

•both arms continue carving their respective arcs in counterpoint – your right arm to the right, your left arm to the left, so that your left arm reaches the 9 o’clock position just as your right arm reaches the 3 o’clock position;

•both arms continue on their journeys for another 90° so that the right arm reaches 12 o’clock as the left arm reaches 6 o’clock. By the end of the inhalation, you’re still standing in a deep plié with your right arm vertically above your head and your left arm streaming to the ground. (The fact this movement all takes place within one inhalation indicates the speed and indeed the energy with which you’re executing the arms’ circles.)

•As you exhale, you concertina your two arms together (the right arm vertically downwards and the left arm vertically upwards) to bring the heels of the two hands to meet just in front of your solar plexus. At the same time, you contract the front of your torso very slightly to coincide with the meeting of your hands as if you’re pressing the breath out of your body.

•In the pause between the first exhalation and the second inhalation, you resume the opening ‘How!’ position, but this time in reverse with the right arm horizontally in front of your body and your left forearm at right angles to it with your left palm facing forwards.

•You repeat the entire sequence with your left arm initiating the action, and then once again with your right arm initiating it, as it did the first time round.

If you follow each of these three exercises through, and execute each one three times, you should feel a sense of real energy coursing through your body as stimulated by your breath. As with the RELAXATION exercise, you’re preparing yourself for some exciting creative work, rather than lulling yourself into a meditative, sleepy state.

Concentration and Attention Exercises

I offer two exercises here: one features CONCENTRATION AND ATTENTION and the second is an adaptation of what Stanislavsky called CIRCLES OF ATTENTION. Both help towards warming up your IMAGINATION.

Exercise 1
Concentration and Attention

•Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down, close your eyes, and gently let your train of thought settle.

•Turn your ATTENTION to a role you would love to play, but haven’t yet done so.

•Appealing to whatever knowledge you have of the play (however great or little that knowledge is), note what it is that lures you towards the character.

•Find a phrase or statement that sums up that ‘lure’ or trigger (e.g. the character’s humour).

•Word that phrase in such a way that it can become an OBJECTIVE: i.e. formulate it into a phrase which begins, ‘I want to . . .’ (e.g. ‘I want to delight everybody’).

•As you CONCENTRATE YOUR ATTENTION on the OBJECTIVE and whichever details you know of the character so far, allow your IMAGINATION to visit various scenes in the play, meet with various characters in the drama, and maybe interact with various props or OBJECTS in your imaginary setting. (It really doesn’t matter how well or how little you know the play: you’re warming up your IMAGINATION, not sitting a Theatre Studies exam.)

•As you imagine various scenarios from the play, test the way in which you adjust your OBJECTIVE according to the details that your CONCENTRATED ATTENTION conjures up for you.

•Change the character.

•Change the play. Focus your ATTENTION on different materials with which to play imaginatively.

Exercise 2
Circles of Attention

In Chapter 5 of An Actor Prepares, Stanislavsky illustrates the vagaries of an actor’s ATTENTION by setting up a mini light-show. During this light-show, a beam of light darts all over the theatre. Sometimes it lingers as a very bright spotlight over an imaginary Severe Dramatic Critic in the auditorium. Sometimes it hovers as a very dim flicker over the onstage partner. From this light-show comes what he calls the CIRCLES OF ATTENTION. These are illustrated by a Small Circle of Attention (focusing on the actor’s head and hands, creating a sense of ‘solitude in public’), a Medium Circle (which is harder to focus on, as it’s much less clearly defined and usually incorporates just one or two other actors), a Large Circle of Attetion (filling the whole stage), and the Very Largest Circle (which lights up the entire auditorium).

The following exercise is an adaptation of this Circles of Attention light-show:

•Lie on the floor or sit in a comfortable position, and close your eyes.

•Focus your ATTENTION on the smallest possible circle – i.e. yourself and your BREATHING. There’s no need to change your breathing pattern, just note the incoming and outgoing breath, along with the rhythms and sounds that your body makes as it breathes. Allow your ATTENTION to sit in your body: if you cough or sneeze or your tummy rumbles or your bones creak, attend to those sounds. Let them be part of your focus of ATTENTION.

•Gradually expand your ATTENTION to incorporate the room you’re in. If there are other people doing the exercise, listen to their sounds. Note the gurgling of the radiators or the buzz of the aircon. Simply allow your ATTENTION to take in the whole of the room. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the sounds in the room. Begin to let your IMAGINATION join in the exercise so it’s not just a meditational task. If the pipes are bubbling, imagine what’s going on inside the radiator. If someone coughs, let your ATTENTION go to them and imagine, for example, what clothes they’re wearing or where you think they’re lying in the room.

•Expand the CIRCLE OF ATTENTION to include the rest of the building. Hear doors slamming, lifts whirring, telephone conversations in offices, footsteps in the corridors. Again allow your IMAGINATION to work: Whose footsteps are they? Which floor is the lift going to? What’s being said by the unheard voice on the other end of the telephone in the room next door? What document is being printed off the computer in the office?

•Now make the circle even larger and hear the sounds in the immediate neighbourhood. Cars. Pedestrian traffic lights. Cash tills. Dogs barking. Sirens wailing. Even if you can’t hear all the noises, imagine the details of the cashier in the post office, the barman in the pub, the paramedics in the ambulance.

•Expand the CIRCLE OF ATTENTION even further until the sounds of the whole town are in your awareness. By now, of course, your IMAGINATION is doing most of the work, rather than your ear. Be aware of how each sound in the distance creates a narrative in your head. Give your IMAGINATION free rein.

•Little by little, reduce the circles. Come back to the immediate environment, the building, the room, until you’re simply residing with yourself and your own BREATHING. As you return to your own, intimate circle of ATTENTION, be aware of how your PERSPECTIVE on yourself has subtly shifted by virtue of the imaginative and aural journey that you’ve just undertaken.

TRAY 3

FOUR ‘CONDITIONS’ OF ACTING PRACTICE

•Inspiration

•Spirituality

•Inner creative state

•Creative atmosphere

Level 2: Rehearsal Processes

1: Mining the Text

TRAY 4

FOUR GENERAL TOOLS FOR BEGINNING TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

•The first reading

•The text

•Mental reconnaissance

•Given circumstances

Exercise combining the first reading
+ the text + mental reconnaissance
+ given circumstances

•At random, pick any script off the shelf, ideally one with which you are totally unfamiliar.

•At random, pick any character from the dramatis personae, large or small, male or female.

•Prepare yourself for your FIRST READING – whatever that might entail for you – putting yourself in the strongest INNER CREATIVE STATE to receive all the intuitive impressions from the script. [Personally, I like to have a big pot of tea or a glass of red wine, a pen or pencil for making spontaneous scribblings in the margin or a notebook; I like to be sure I won’t be disturbed, so I’ll switch off my mobile phone or find a time when I’m least likely to be interrupted.]

•Read the script.

•As you read, note how the script’s atmosphere affects you, note how evident its rhythm is, note your initial response to the character you’ve selected – even if they end up not saying very much or you don’t particularly like them or it’s highly unlikely that you’d ever be cast in the part anyway.

•Having read the script once, scribble down some immediate responses, using the seven ‘planes’ of the text to guide you. You might ask yourself questions such as:

1.   What’s the script’s overall structure? (4 acts? 96 scenes? One extended act?) How does that structure dictate its TEMPORHYTHM?

2.   What are the main EVENTS of the script?

3.   How do the main EVENTS determine what the script is really about? i.e. is it about fathers and daughters? Betrayal? Unrequited love? Social reform? Manic depression? The state of the Latvian government? Avian bird flu?

4.   What is the dominant dramatic form or genre? Is it Comedy? Tragedy? Epic? Tragi-comedy? Ghost story? Love story? Heist? Science fiction? Thriller?

5.   What social milieu do the characters operate within?

6.   What is their nationality?

7.   What era are we in?

8.   What style of writing does the author predominantly use? Poetry? Prose? Realism? A mixture? Metaphor? Myth? Allegory? Are there lots of overlapping speeches? Unfinished sentences? What does the PUNCTUATION look like on the page? What does that tell us about the style of writing?

9.   How does the language of the character you’ve chosen distinguish them from the other characters in terms of their TEMPO-RHYTHM, vocabulary, and syntax?

10.  What kind of theatrical devices are used? What kind of atmosphere do those devices create?

11.  What scenic choices are inherent in the writer’s directions? Are there any coups de théâtre? If so, what are they and how do they affect the overall atmosphere of the piece?

12.  What’s your gut reaction to the character you’ve chosen in terms of their inner drives or OBJECTIVES? Their inner ACTIONS? Their underlying feelings?

13.  What kinds of physical activities are specified by the writer? What physical attributes has the writer given your character? What sort of physical activities do you imagine them undertaking?

•Now consider the rock-solid GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES of the script which haven’t already emerged from your consideration of the seven ‘planes’. Your character’s age, gender, EMPLOI, family network, hobbies, domestic situation, social environment, etc. Make as many lists as you want that haven’t already been covered by the various ‘planes’: story, epoch, facts, time and place of action, conditions of life, costume, props – personal or general – etc.

•Gradually move your work from the cerebral trawling of facts to the imaginative shaping of those facts. In your IMAGINATION, begin to conjure up a past and a future for your chosen character: what might be his or her ambitions or dreams for the future? How have those ambitions or dreams been shaped by his or her past?

•Read the play again, and note how the accumulation of the various GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES, as well as your own intuitive reaction, is altered or amplified through your second encounter with the script.

TRAY 5

FIVE TOOLS FOR BREAKING DOWN THE STRUCTURE OF A SCENE

•Bits

•Objectives and counter-objectives

•Subtext

•Punctuation

•The Six Fundamental Questions

Subtext Exercises

Here are three extracts from plays in which the writers use SUBTEXT to entirely different ends. Look at them carefully and fathom the resonance between what’s said and what’s done, what the audience knows and what the other onstage characters don’t. Read each extract out loud and sense the inner energy of everything that remains unspoken:

Extract 1

Act IV, Scene iii, The Country Wife by William Wycherley

This is the famous china scene, which makes delicious subtextual use of double entendre. Lady Fidget and Horner emerge from an ante-room, where we assume they’ve been having adulterous sex. Clutching a piece of china, they then conduct the following conversation in front of Lady Fidget’s cuckolded husband and her exasperated competitor-in-love, Mrs Squeamish:

LADY fiDGET: And I have been toiling and moiling for the prettiest piece of china, my dear.

HORNER: Nay, she has been too hard for me, do what I could.

MRS SQUEAMISH: O lord, I’ll have some china too. Good Mr Horner, don’t you think to give other people china, and me none. Come in with me too.

HORNER: Upon my honour, I have none left now.

MRS SQUEAMISH: Nay, nay, I have known you deny your china before now, but you shan’t put me off so. Come.

HORNER: This lady had the last there.

LADY fiDGET: Yes indeed, madam, to my certain knowledge he has no more left.

MRS SQUEAMISH: Oh, but it may be he may have some you could not find.

LADY fiDGET: What, d’ye think if he had had any left, I would not have had it too? For we women of quality never think we have china enough.

HORNER: Do not take it ill, I cannot make china for you all, but I will have a roll-waggon for you too, another time.

MRS SQUEAMISH: Thank you, dear toad.224

For the audience, the pleasure in this scene stems from the knowledge they have of the SUBTEXT, and from working out the ‘code’ the characters are using. For the actors, the pleasure arises from the complicity between themselves and the audience. SUBTEXT creates tensions – which can be performatively highly sexy for us as actors, even if the characters we’re playing are at odds with each other.

Extract 2

The Lover by Harold Pinter

Here Pinter exploits to the full the sense of play inherent in lively SUBTEXT as you sound out each other and uncover what each other wants. We see in this extract that as much information is transmitted between the lines as through the lines. Husband Richard and wife Sarah are indulging in a fantasy role-play scenario in the middle of the afternoon in their suburban living room, in which Richard takes on the character of ‘Max’:

MAX: Excuse me.

SARAH glances at him and away.

Excuse me, have you got a light?

She does not respond.

Do you happen to have a light?

SARAH: Do you mind leaving me alone?

MAX: Why?

Pause.

I’m merely asking if you can give me a light.

She moves from him and looks up and down the room. He follows to her shoulder. She turns back.

SARAH: Excuse me.

She moves past him. Close, his body follows. She stops.

I don’t like being followed.

MAX: Just give me a light and I won’t bother you. That’s all I want.

SARAH (through her teeth): Please go away. I’m waiting for someone.

MAX: Who?

SARAH: My husband.

MAX: Why are you so shy? Eh? Where’s your lighter?

He touches her body. An indrawn breath from her.

Here?

Pause.

Where is it?

He touches her body. A gasp from her.

Here?

She wrenches herself away. He traps her in the corner.

SARAH (hissing): What do you think you’re doing?

MAX: I’m dying for a puff.

SARAH: I’m waiting for my husband!

MAX: Let me get a light from yours.

They struggle silently.

She breaks away to wall.

Silence.

He approaches.

Are you all right, miss? I’ve just got rid of that . . . gentleman. Did he hurt you in any way?

SARAH: Oh, how wonderful of you. No, no, I’m all right. Thank you.

MAX: Very lucky I happened to be passing. You wouldn’t believe that could happen in such a beautiful park.

SARAH: No, you wouldn’t.

MAX: Still, you’ve come to no harm.

SARAH: I can never thank you enough. I’m terribly grateful, I really am.

MAX: Why don’t you sit down a second and calm yourself.

SARAH: Oh, I’m quite calm – but . . . yes, thank you. You’re so kind. Where shall we sit?

MAX: Well, we can’t sit out. It’s raining. What about that park-keeper’s hut?

SARAH: Do you think we should? I mean, what about the park-keeper?

MAX: I am the park-keeper.225

The whole play of The Lover is based on games, the rules for which keep changing, and this provokes a fantastic amount of SUBTEXT, as, through the characters, you have to work out the changing rules of each game and what exactly the other character really wants from you and the situation.

Extract 3

Act I, Scene iii, Othello

The content of Iago’s speech is rather different. He reveals to us everything that’s going on in his head and his heart. However, the knock-on effect is that, in his subsequent scenes with Othello, we as an audience are patently aware of Iago’s SUBTEXT, although Othello remains entirely oblivious to it. See how the words offer up all the elements of what will later be Iago’s complex SUBTEXT:

IAGO: Thus do I ever make my fool my purse;

For I mine own gain’d knowledge should profane,
If I would time expend with such a snipe,
But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor;
And it is thought abroad, that twixt my sheets
He has done my office: I know not if’t be true;
But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
Will do as if for surety. He holds me well;
The better shall my purpose work on him.
Cassio’s a proper man: let me see now:
To get his place and to plume up my will
In double knavery – How, how? – Let’s see.
After some time, to abuse Othello’s ears
That he is too familiar with his wife.
He hath a person and a smooth dispose
To be suspected, fram’d to make women false.
The Moor is of a free and open nature,
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,
And will as tenderly be led by the nose
As asses are.
I have’t. It is engender’d. Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.

Punctuation Exercises

Taking the following two extracts, compare the way the writers use PUNCTUATION, and note the way in which it informs the SUBTEXT of the piece and fuels the characters’ emotional pitch:

Extract 1

Scene 3, Shopping and Fucking by Mark Ravenhill

MARK: Are you dealing?

ROBBIE: Fuck. You made me – How long have you –?

MARK: Just now. Are you dealing?

ROBBIE: That doesn’t . . .

Pause.

So. They let you out.

MARK: Sort of.

Pause.

ROBBIE: Thought you said months. Did you miss me?

MARK: I missed you both.

ROBBIE: I missed you. So, I s’pose . . . I sort of hoped you’d miss me.

MARK: Yeah. Right.

ROBBIE moves to MARK. They kiss.

ROBBIE moves to kiss MARK again.

MARK: No.

ROBBIE: No?

MARK: Sorry.

ROBBIE: No. That’s OK.

MARK: No, sorry. I mean it. Because actually I’d decided I wasn’t going to do that. I didn’t really want that to happen, you know? Commit myself so quickly to . . . intimacy.

ROBBIE: OK.

MARK: Just something I’m trying to work through.

ROBBIE: . . . Work through? 226

Extract 2

Act 1, American Buffalo by David Mamet

TEACH: [. . .] Everyone, they’re sitting at the table and then Grace is going to walk around . . . fetch an ashtray . . . go for coffee . . . this . . . and everybody’s all they aren’t going to hide their cards, and they’re going to make a show how they don’t hunch over, and like that. I don’t give a shit. I say the broad’s her fucking partner, and she walks in back of me I’m going to hide my hand.

DON: Yeah.

TEACH: And I say anybody doesn’t’s out of their mind.

Pause.

We’re talking about money for Chrissake, huh? We’re talking about cards. Friendship is friendship, and a wonderful thing, and I’m all for it. I have never said different, and you know me on this point.

Okay.

But let’s just keep it separate huh, let’s just keep the two apart, and maybe we can deal with each other like some human beings.

Pause.

This is all I’m saying, Don. I know you got a soft spot in your heart for Ruthie . . .

DON: . . . yeah?

TEACH: I know you like the broad and Grace and, Bob, I know he likes ’em too.

DON: (He likes ’em.)

TEACH: And I like ’em too. (I know, I know.) I’m not averse to this. I’m not averse to sitting down. (I know we will sit down.) These things happen. I’m not saying that they don’t . . . and yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I lost a bundle at the game and blah blah blah.

Pause.

But all I ever ask (and I would say this to her face) is only she remembers who is who and not go around with her or Gracie either with this attitude. ‘The Past is Past, and this is Now, so Fuck You.’

You see?227

Just note that even from the lay-out on the page – let alone the PUNCTUATION – the TEMPO-RHYTHM, SUBTEXT and thought processes can be discerned. Mamet even writes at the start of some of his plays:

Some portions of the dialogue appear in parentheses, which serve to mark a slight change of outlook on the part of the speaker – perhaps a momentary change to a more introspective regard.228

Exercises for the Six
Fundamental Questions

Exercise 1

•Pick any scene from any play that you know reasonably well and compile four lists – ‘Who?’, ‘Where?’, ‘When?’ and ‘Why?’

•Now allow your IMAGINATION free rein to conjure up a future for your character and from there, think up some long-term goals behind the character’s ACTIONS which could answer the question ‘For what reason?’

•Line by line, find ACTIONS for the text. These ACTIONS are in effect your ‘hows’. Stafford-Clark tends to use a very particular and quite small range of verbs, which can be seen as the primary colours or basic raw materials. His list has been expanded by Marina Caldarone and Maggie Lloyd-Williams in their book Actions: The Actor’s Thesaurus,²²⁹ which can serve as a useful guide and stimulant to your IMAGINATION. Though be warned: Stafford-Clark upholds that the more metaphorical your ACTIONS become, the less easy they are to play accurately and truthfully. E.g. ‘I kick you’, ‘I press you’, ‘I stroke you’ might work initially, but after a while they’ll be less razor-sharp than ‘I provoke you’, ‘I threaten you’, ‘I charm you’, etc.

Exercise 2

•Taking the piece from Anna Karenina, make lists of ‘Who?’, ‘Where?’, ‘When?’, ‘Why?’, and ‘For what reason?’

•Add some line-by-line ACTIONS to offer a series of ‘Hows?’. Then colour those ‘Hows?’ with appropriate adverbs. Here are some suggestions:

ANNA (probes lightly): You met him?

VRONSKY (reprimands lightly): Yes. At the door.

ANNA (chastises petulantly): It serves you right for being late.

VRONSKY (reproaches seriously): Your note said he would be at the Council; I would never have come otherwise.

ANNA (challenges aggressively): Where have you been, Alexei?

VRONSKY (diverts apologetically): I’m sorry, my darling. It’s been a busy week.

ANNA (tests tauntingly): Really? Busy? (Straightens goadingly.) Betsy came to see me this morning. I heard all about your Athenian evening. (Dismisses lightly.) How disgusting.

VRONSKY (deflects disinterestedly): It was disgusting but I had to go. The Colonel asked me to entertain a foreign dignitary.

ANNA (tests knowingly): Oh – you mean that little French girl you used to see. I believe she was there.

VRONSKY (corrects directly): Anna, you don’t understand . . .

ANNA (attacks vulnerably): No, I don’t. What do I know – a woman who can’t even share your life? (Challenges provocatively.) I only know what you tell me and how do I know whether you tell me the truth?

VRONSKY (arrests openly): Anna, don’t you trust me?

ANNA: (reassures impulsively): Yes, yes. (Enlightens passionately.) You just don’t understand what it’s like for me. How can I go out like this and with the way people are talking? (Reassures haltingly.) I don’t think I’m jealous, I’m not jealous – I trust you when you’re here but when you’re away leading your own life . . . (redirects vehemently) oh, I believe you, I do believe you. (Reassures insistently.) Alexei, I’ve stopped now. The demon has gone.

VRONSKY (castigates sombrely): I don’t enjoy that kind of life any more. I thought you understood that.

ANNA (reassures determinedly): I do, I do. I’m sorry. (Embraces questioningly.)

She kisses him.230

I offer these ACTIONS and adverbs – these ‘Hows?’ – just as suggestions to illustrate the way in which your chosen adverb can sometimes be at odds with your verb; the disjuncture between the two will add all sorts of nuances to how you might play these moments. You might also find you play the same ACTION several times, such as ‘reassures’ in the example above, but the adverb will give a slightly different emphasis each time, as the character strives to impress their point of view upon the other characters through a series of shifting tactics.

Exercise 3

•Working with a partner, read the text again, but without predetermining the ACTIONS or adverbs. After each line, the actor listening describes what they heard or felt. For example, the actor playing Vronsky might say after Anna’s first line, ‘It felt as if you were mocking me dangerously’, etc. In this way, you can detect whether or not what you think you played as ‘How?’ impacted on your listener in the way you intended.

Level 2: Rehearsal Processes

2: Embodying the Role

TRAY 6

THE TOOL WHICH UNDERPINS OUR CREATIVE WORK ON A ROLE

•Truth

TRAY 7

THREE BASIC TOOLS FOR BUILDING A SENSE OF TRUTH

•Imagination

•Observation

•The Magic ‘If’

Exercise combining truth +
imagination + observation

•Take five random OBJECTS and place them on a table.

•Now go out into the street and for about ten to fifteen minutes, observe someone in the outside world. You may sit in a café or go into a shop and find someone to observe; perhaps the person you observe is homeless and lying in a doorway or selling the Big Issue; perhaps they’re on a train or a bus; perhaps you simply follow them down the street. During the allotted time, try to be sure they don’t know you’re observing them, so that they don’t consciously alter their behaviour – or have you arrested!

•Note their body language, their carriage, their posture, their clothing. Are they alone or in company? Do they look as if they’re waiting for someone? Are they talking? Are they listening?

•What can you glean about their inner TEMPO-RHYTHM? Does there seem to be a synchrony or a fracture between their inner TEMPO-RHYTHM and their outer TEMPO-RHYTHM? How can you tell? What physical details reveal their TEMPO-RHYTHM – tapping feet, twirling hair round fingers, etc?

•At the end of the allotted time, return to your own space, whether it’s your home, a rehearsal room or studio, and simply sit on a chair. Gradually let the body of the person you observed begin to percolate your own physicality: allow the process to be subtle and precise, rather than slapping the new physicality on your own body like someone else’s overcoat.

•Note whether your body shrinks to fit theirs, or expands to fill theirs. Be sure that you’re embodying them, not imitating them. The idea is that you’re merging your own body with that of the person observed in order to understand the psychological implications of the transformation as much as the physical alterations.

•How does this new body alter your inner sensations psycho-physically? How does their posture affect you? How does their TEMPO-RHYTHM – both inner and outer sit with you? Do you find it comfortable inhabiting their body? Is it strange? Do they seem comfortable inhabiting their particular physicality?

•Imagine the person is sitting alone in their room. Why are they alone? What do they do? Are they happy just sitting? Conjure up some imaginative GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES to JUSTIFY why they might be sitting there alone in their room.

•Now imagine they’re sitting on a crowded underground train. How do they respond to these new GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES?

•Now imagine they’re sitting in a hospital waiting room. Are they ill or injured? Or are they waiting for someone? Who? How do they respond to their environment?

•Look at the five random OBJECTS that you assembled at the beginning of the exercise, and consider what significance each of these OBJECTS has in the person’s life. Allow your IMAGINATION to conjure up stories surrounding each OBJECT; you may find the stories interlink all the OBJECTS or they remain entirely separate.

•Choose one of the OBJECTS and decide why this is the most important OBJECT for the person whom you observed.

•Throughout the exercise, let the new person’s body dictate to you the images, movements, OBSERVATIONS and OBJECTIVES, rather than feeling that you have to impose them upon the person.

•As your imaginative journey comes to a conclusion, picture a stopcock in your right heel. Slowly open it and allow the character’s body to flow out of you, gradually leaving you alone in your own body once again. This is an important step because, I repeat, this exercise is not about impersonation, but embodiment. We’re not talking about physical accuracy in your portrayal of the person, but psycho-physical reverberation: how you felt when that person’s body inhabited yours, what kind of images and sensations were conjured up. The more subtly you move from self to character, and then back from character to self, the more precisely you’ll feel the psycho-physical nuances of the physical embodiment, as well as the muscular specifics.

The Magic ‘If’ Exercise

•This exercise starts by considering the same person whose body and TEMPO-RHYTHM you just inhabited, but this time the creative process is a little different.

•Ask yourself the following questions:

1.What would I do if I was shopping / sitting in the café / waiting at the bus stop (or whatever activity your person was initially engaged in)?

2.What would I do if I had this person’s outer TEMPO-RHYTHM?

3.What would I do if I had this person’s inner TEMPO-RHYTHM?

4.What would I do if I was wearing this person’s clothes / shoes?

•Remember all the activities your person undertook during the fifteen minutes when you watched them, and ask yourself: ‘How would I justify that sequence of movements?’ ‘What would my inner JUSTIFICATION be?’

•Implicit within your answers to the questions ‘What would I do if . . . ?’ are various psycho-physical sensations which accompany the ACTIONS. Note what feelings and sensations arise for you. It’s important to ask yourself ‘What would I do if . . . ?’ rather than ‘How would I feel if . . . ?’, as it’s often not until we’ve done something that we can sense what the true feelings arising from that ACTION are.

You’ll note in this exercise that the sensations are subtly different from the first exercise involving OBSERVATION. With a truly psycho-physical process, you can work just as readily from the inside out or the outside in. The first exercise in which your OBSERVATION of the person’s body leads to a physical embodiment, you’re working very gently from the outside in. N.B. You are not impersonating, you are embodying: the subtle difference is that if you try too hard to impersonate the person, you’re in danger of becoming deaf to the various psycho-physical nuances which accompany the physical tasks. If, on the other hand, you embody the character, you’re inviting the person’s body to inhabit yours, so you remain in touch with all the psychological, emotional, and sensate changes, as well as the physical shifts in balance, energy, posture and TEMPO-RHYTHM, etc.

With THE MAGIC ‘IF’ exercise, you’re working from the inside out. By asking yourself ‘What would I do if . . . ?’, you begin much more directly from yourself, noting how your own responses colour your attitude to the person whom you’re embodying. Either sequence is equally valid – inside out or outside in – but it’s important to alert yourself to the different nuances of each exercise so you can feel the subtle shifts in your own approach to embodying a role.

TRAY 8

FOUR TOOLS FOR BUILDING PSYCHO-PHYSICAL CO-ORDINATION WITH A CHARACTER

•Action

•Tempo-rhythm

•Emotion memory

•Emotions

Tempo-Rhythm Exercises

This exercise is one of Stanislavsky’s own from Building a Character231 (and I quote it myself in Konstantin Stanislavsky):²³²

•Place a number of OBJECTS on a tray and set a metronome beating.

•To the set beat of the metronome, carry the tray and start to distribute the OBJECTS to others in the room.

•As the beat of the metronome dictates to you the TEMPO-RHYTHM at which you distribute the OBJECTS, allow your IMAGINATION to come up with some GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES which JUSTIFY your ACTIONS. In Building a Character, the imaginary student, Kostya, pretends that he’s the president of a sports club, distributing prizes.

•Increase the TEMPO-RHYTHM of the metronome, and see how the increased speed affects the ACTIONS. Repeat this a few times, each time noting how your IMAGINATION responds to the increased TEMPO-RHYTHM. In Building a Character, Kostya imagines he’s a butler handing out champagne. When the TEMPO-RHYTHM is increased again, he imagines he’s a waiter on a train trying to serve everyone before the next station. When it’s increased for a final time, Kostya feels like he’s the clumsy, clownish Epikhodov in The Cherry Orchard.

•Find another simple physical activity. Set the metronome at varying speeds. From acting out the ACTIONS at the different TEMPO-RHYTHMS, note what images and sensations come to you.

Emotion Memory and Emotion Exercises

It’s very important that you feel you can contact your EMOTIONS without any unnecessary coercion. To this end, I offer the following exercise, which I’ve used many times, both with professional actors and acting students, and it always produces some great results. It’s a very simple exercise, though it does take some preparation on the workshop leader’s part. Because it’s so simple, actors often find themselves tapping into all sorts of memories and EMOTIONS that they haven’t contacted for a long time. It’s very liberating.

The exercise involves the simple stimulation of each of the five senses to see what kind of EMOTION MEMORIES they provoke.

We begin with touch.

•Sit in a circle, blindfolded. [I usually ask individuals to bring their own blindfolds, forewarned that they might be wearing them for some time, so the fabric should be comfortable.]

•A series of OBJECTS is placed on the floor, one in front of each participant. On the word of the instructor, pick up your OBJECT, feeling its texture and shape. Don’t worry too much about identifying the OBJECT, just note what sensations you experience and what thoughts, memories, images, come flooding into your head. The workshop leader then asks two or three people to respond to their OBJECT without identifying it. This is important, so that when the OBJECTS are passed around the circle, you each have a ‘virgin’ experience. At regular intervals, the workshop leader instructs you to pass your OBJECT on to the next person in the circle. Each time, two or three people are asked to share their responses, images, memories. [OBJECTS I’ve used include a teddy bear, a velvet glove, a pumice stone, a rubber duck, a pebble, a feather boa, a scouring pad, a plastic toy, but you can use anything: the varying weights, textures and pliability offer a range of stimuli.]

Following touch, we have smell.

•With participants still wearing blindfolds, a series of plastic cups with various smelly things in them are passed around the group one by one, as with the OBJECTS. Again, you don’t have to identify the smell, just respond to the sensations, images and memories it provokes. Do you like the smell? Does it remind you of some time or place or person? What images does the smell evoke? As with touch, two or three people are invited to share their thoughts or memories, before the cups are passed around the circle. A few minutes are spent with each one, before being passed on again to the next person, and so on. [I tend to prepare these the night before so that the smells have some hours in the cups, covered so they can marinate: I usually soak pieces of cotton wool in the substances to make them easily transportable. Smells might include bubble bath, wet earth or mown grass, stale beer and fag ends, coffee, and some sort of cleaning solution. Soya sauce is a good one: this has been described in the past as a range of things from prawn curry to smelly feet!]

Smell is followed by taste.

•With the participants still wearing blindfolds, a series of edibles are placed on cocktail sticks. Simultaneously, you all put the same edible into your mouths to ensure that everyone has the same experience as the same time. Again, two or three people are invited with each edible to share any thoughts, images or memories which come flooding into their heads. [I always check beforehand there are no food allergies, and I usually walk round the group putting the cocktail sticks between each person’s extended forefinger and thumb, so the process of getting everyone to eat the same edible at the same time is easy. Food stuffs might include a grape, a silverskin pickled onion, a cheesy ball, a marshmallow, a chunk of bagel – items that can be easily skewered onto a cocktail stick. Of course, a certain amount of trust is needed in this part of the exercise, since it’s bold asking people to put things into their mouth without seeing what the food stuffs are. Because of the slight ‘danger’ element, taste produces some great memories, as the participants are already in a heightened state.]

Taste is followed by sound.

•This can take a variety of forms. Perhaps four or five pieces of music or soundscapes are played to the group, which you can respond to physically if you wish. (Your blindfolds are still on at this point, so just be careful if you do move or dance, as there are X number of other blindfolded people in the room.) Or you can simply lie on the floor and let each sound or music piece influence you imaginatively and emotionally.

Finally, the blindfolds can come off and sight is considered.

•A series of pictures are placed in the centre of the circle and the group are invited to respond. [Sometimes I provide the pictures, sometimes I ask each of the group to bring in a picture, at which point they briefly explain why that image attracted them, as the pictures are passed around the circle. Images might include those from newspapers or magazines, family photographs, abstract paintings, visual illusions (like those by Escher or Kitaoka) in which the eye is invited to see first one image and then another, etc. The idea is to provide a variety of visual stimuli, just to draw the group’s attention to the amount of information which is taken in by the eye and assimilated at every moment of our waking lives.]

TRAY 9

FOUR TOOLS FOR TEXTURING A CHARACTER

•Inner psychological drives

•Heroic tension

•Emploi

•Objects

Inner Psychological Drives Exercises

Exercise 1

•Imagine that whichever room you’re in – studio, bedroom, rehearsal room, church hall – is in fact a modern art gallery, so any OBJECT around you might be a work of art.

•Take your attention to your head, your ‘thought-centre’. Wander round the art gallery letting your head lead your travels. Note what inner sensations occur when your ‘thought-centre’ dominates. What’s your attitude to the OBJECTS? How does the rest of your body respond when your ‘thought-centre’ leads? What’s your TEMPO-RHYTHM – inner and outer?

•Take your attention to your chest, your ‘emotion-centre’, and do the same. What do you notice now? How does your response to the OBJECTS change? What about the rest of your body? Your TEMPO-RHYTHM?

•Take your attention to your pelvic area, your ‘action-centre’, and do the same. Again notice the changes in your attitude, body, and TEMPO-RHYTHM.

Exercise 2

•Imagine you’re sitting in a hospital waiting room. Someone very close to you has just been knocked off a motorbike and you’re waiting to hear if they’re going to survive or not. Take your attention to your head, your ‘thought-centre’, and just note how you respond to the GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES. Don’t force anything, just note what thoughts, memories, fantasies go through your head, and where your CONCENTRATION AND ATTENTION are focused.

•Now shift your ATTENTION to your chest, your ‘emotion-centre’. You don’t have to do anything other than open your chest, and note the changes in your response to the GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES. What sensations arise? How does the rest of your body respond?

•Now shift your ATTENTION to your pelvic area, your ‘action-centre’. Note how you respond to the GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES now. Does your body stay sitting in the chair? Where are your CONCENTRATION AND ATTENTION focused now?

•Now change the GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES and run through each of the INNER PSYCHOLOGICAL DRIVES again, but this time it was you who knocked the person off their motorbike, and you’re waiting to hear whether they’ve survived or not. Again, note the shifts in your ATTENTION, and how the different centres respond to the change of the GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES.

•Now change the GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES again: this time you’re waiting to hear whether your girlfriend, wife, or sister has just given birth to a baby boy or a baby girl. As you shift through your centres, again note how the change in the GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES affects your body on an inner and outer level. Just note the state of development of your inner-outer psycho-physical co-ordination.

Heroic Tension Exercises

Exercise 1

•Take any character from any play (e.g. Masha in Three Sisters) and think of any three adjectives which sum up your intuitive response to that character. The adjectives for Masha, for example, could be ‘passionate’ (as revealed in her love affair with Vershinin), ‘brooding’ (as revealed in Act 1 when she sits reading her book and whistling distractedly) and ‘challenging’ (as revealed in Act 3 when she incites her sisters to address the issue of Andrey and his mortgaging of their house).

•Now think of the opposites of those adjectives, which in the case of ‘passionate’, ‘brooding’ and ‘challenging’ might be ‘self-contained’, ‘light-hearted’ and ‘accepting’.

•Think of moments from anywhere in the script where the character displays the opposite adjectives of those which initially sprung to mind. It can be a tiny moment: it’s all up for grabs in your interpretation. So Masha, for example, could be considered to be ‘self-contained’ at the beginning of Act 3 when Natasha chastises Anfisa the old servant, and Masha simply walks out clasping her pillow. In Act 3, we also see her being ‘light-hearted’ when she hums her little love-tune in response to Vershinin. At the end of the play, she is remarkably ‘accepting’, both of her husband and the situation in which the sisters find themselves after the departure of the soldiers.

•Try the same with any other characters from any other plays.

Exercise 2

•Again, take a monologue by a character from a play you know well and decide whether that character is a ‘thinking’, ‘feeling’ or ‘doing’ type character; i.e. what’s their predominant INNER PSYCHOLOGICAL DRIVE? So for example, Chebutykin in Act 3 of Three Sisters delivers an alcohol-induced confession of his ‘killing’ of a patient. The dominant INNER PSYCHOLOGICAL DRIVE here would arguably be the ‘emotion-centre’.

•Now find a physicality for the character, letting the dominant centre (head, chest, pelvis) initially lead the emerging ‘embodiment’. So the chest would be the leading centre with an embodiment of Chebutykin at this moment.

•Now, speak the monologue with the dominant INNER PSYCHOLOGICAL DRIVE guiding you, noting how the opening of the relevant physical centre affects the emphasis of the text.

•Then work through the other two INNER PSYCHOLOGICAL DRIVES, noting how the shift in focus from (for example) thought to feeling to action alters the character’s physicality and psychology. What happens if the emphasis of Chebutykin’s monologue becomes the rationalisation of his life (‘thought-centre’)? What happens if the emphasis of Chebutykin’s monologue becomes his attempt to control his body which is uncoordinated by his drunken state (‘action-centre’)? This would certainly spur his smashing of the clock a few pages later, as we see his physical body is more dominant than his logical brain.

•Now go back to the dominant INNER PSYCHOLOGICAL DRIVE that you selected and, as you go through the monologue again, shift your physical centre so that in effect you’re hiding the character’s dominant centre or transmuting it into another part of your body. So with Chebutykin, for example, note what happens to your delivery of the monologue if you shift your attention to your head (‘thought-centre’) while keeping a sense of emotional openness. What happens when you shift your attention to your pelvis area (‘action-centre’) while keeping a sense of emotional openness? What do you notice when you start to explore the tensions between the character’s natural disposition and how he or she might hide or change or disguise that? How does it affect (a) your delivery of the speech, and (b) your embodiment of the character?

Object Exercise

This exercise is borrowed from my Russian Scenic Movement teacher, Vladimir Ananyev. Every time I’ve used it either as workshop leader or actor, I’ve been fascinated by the range of experiences it provokes. It’s best not to think about the exercise too much beforehand: as with many psycho-physical exercises, your body and imagination will make huge discoveries in the course of trying it out, so avoid letting your head come up with too many questions.

•Place an OBJECT on the floor in front of you. You can use any OBJECT you like: a notebook, a water bottle, a pencil.

•Imagine the OBJECT is extremely valuable to you (though you may not know at this stage why it is so important).

•For the duration of the exercise (which can last anything from twenty to forty minutes), you can come as close to your OBJECT or as far from your OBJECT as you like, but you mustn’t touch it! However, important your OBJECT may be to you, your OBJECTIVE must be ‘to prevent yourself from touching it’.

•‘This OBJECTIVE instantly establishes an inner contradiction: if you have to stop yourself from doing something, it suggests that part of you wants to do it and part of you certainly doesn’t. There’s a dynamic set up between attraction and repulsion, between desire and denial.’233

•At the beginning of the exercise, you’ll probably have no idea what you’re going to do. Trust yourself: a host of images and JUSTIFICATIONS for why you can’t touch the OBJECT will spring into your IMAGINATION.

•Indeed, you may find very quickly that your IMAGINATION transforms the OBJECT. So a notebook might become a tome holding the secrets of the universe. A bottle of water might become a vial of poison. A pencil might become a stiletto dagger. If the OBJECT does transform, only let it change once. So the pencil can’t become a dagger, then a hypodermic needle, then the quill used by Shakespeare to write King Lear. Stick with the first image otherwise the exercise will become too fractured.

•If you play your OBJECTIVE whole-heartedly, you might find you love the OBJECT, then hate the OBJECT. You might want to hit it, stamp on it, embrace it, protect it. Just open your INNER PSYCHOLOGICAL DRIVES – your ‘thought-centre’, your ‘emotion-centre’, your ‘action centre’. Go with your impulses, and see what happens.

•You may even find that certain characters come to mind. Do you feel like Hamlet? Willy Loman? Stanley Kowalski? Jimmy Porter? Juliet? The Duchess of Malfi? Salome? Nora? You don’t necessarily have to ‘play’ the character, just allow essences of character to filter into your psyche if they want to, and note how your relationship to the prop then alters. And here, if you find different characters do come to mind, go with them – as long as the OBJECT remains the same.

•After about twenty minutes, allow yourself to pick up the OBJECT. Notice how readily you want to. How easy is it to touch it? Which sensations are aroused in you when you have permission to pick it up? Explore the feelings without forcing them. How does your relationship with the OBJECT alter before and after the moment when you can actually pick it up?

Part of the reason you shouldn’t think about the exercise too much before hand is that you might start to premeditate scenarios. Try not to. Just go with the ‘HERE, TODAY, NOW’. You’ll usually find that the simplicity of the exercise ‘stimulates a myriad of contradictory reactions and interconnections between the actor and the object, while all the time there’s an unbroken line between inner (psychological) and outer (physical) action.’234

TRAY 10

THE MEAT OF THE TOOLKIT AND THE ‘SYSTEM’

•The subconscious

Level 2: Rehearsal Processes

3: Approaches to Rehearsal

TRAY 11

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF DIRECTING AND STAGING

•The role of the director

•Mise-en-scène

TRAY 12

REHEARSAL PROCESS I: THE METHOD OF PHYSICAL ACTIONS

•The Method of Physical Actions

TRAY 13

REHEARSAL PROCESS 2: ACTIVE ANALYSIS AND ITS COMPONENTS

•Active Analysis

•Étude rehearsals

•Events

•Grasp

•Connection

•‘Here, today, now’

•Justification

•Adaptation

•Super-objectives

•Through-line of action

•Verbal action

•Pauses

•The second level

•Inner monologue

•Envisaging

•Moment of orientation

Active Analysis Exercise incorporating
grasp + connection + ‘here, today, now’
+ justification + adaptation

[This exercise moves from a SILENT ÉTUDE to an improvisation of a scene.]

My own experience of actor-training in Russia was heavily influenced by my acting tutor, Katya Kamotskaya,235 who combined her own understanding of Stanislavsky with training received at Grotowski’s Teatr Laboratorium. She has developed a simple SILENT ÉTUDE which I in turn have evolved. I now use it to begin most of my actor-training workshops. It also forms the kernel of my rehearsing a production using ACTIVE ANALYSIS, as it’s a simple and effective way of helping actors to get each other in each other’s GRASP.

•Working with a partner, stand opposite each other about three metres apart.

•Establish eye-contact and imagine there’s a coiled spring linking you both from solar plexus to solar plexus.

•Keeping on a straight line, you gradually make your way towards each other and see if you can find some sort of contact between each you. The contact might be an embrace, a handshake, a slap, a kiss, a stroke of the cheek, or – depending on the silent ‘dialogue’ between you and the nuances of your inciting ACTIONS and COUNTER-ACTIONS – you might find it doesn’t happen at all.

N.B. It’s not a game of chess in the sense that one actor takes one step, then the next actor has to move the next, and so on. Quite the opposite: you might find that one actor remains stock still, or even moves backwards as the fellow actor approaches. You don’t have to predetermine anything: just get each other in each other’s GRASP and absorb all the nuances of the person’s face, energy, body language.

•Really sense the power of that invisible spring joining your solar plexuses. Feel the space expand, feel the space contract.

•To begin with, it’s useful to remain on a straight line, keeping your body language as simple as possible. Try not to cross your arms or shove your hands in your pockets. Avoid adding any ‘nudge-nudge-wink-winks’ or superimposed characterisations. Although it’s incredibly difficult to maintain this degree of utter simplicity, it really is the only way to ensure the purest ACTIVE ANALYSIS of the dialogue. The moment you start to muddy the waters with running your fingers through your hair or rubbing your nose or casting sideways glances, etc., you’ll catapult yourself away from any true and exciting discoveries about the character. Any everyday, contemporary gestures – which ultimately only reveal how uncomfortable you are simply inhabiting your own body – form a kind of barrier between you and the character, let alone between you and your fellow-actor. They can project you back into your own habits and clichés, making it almost impossible to have a real, psychologically reverberant process of discovery about the scene.

•After some time, the director stops the SILENT ÉTUDE, and you discuss what kind of inner dialogue went on between you and your partner in the course of the exercise.

It’s important to be sure that the improvisation doesn’t stop at the point of contact: some of the most interesting discoveries occur once you’ve made contact and you’re then trying to understand what kind of relationship exists between you beyond that moment.

Often, actors opt for the embrace as the point of contact: a kind of ‘Phew, we got through that, didn’t we?’ Dare to really listen to what’s going on between you and your partner. One of you might offer a point of contact which the other then rejects. Try not to censor yourself. That said, the embrace can sometimes be a relieving way of eliminating the gap, having been so open and connected to each other for such an intense time.

In effect there are three rules to this exercise:

•Block nothing: so if you have an impulse to do something, follow it.

•Force nothing: so don’t feel you have to be entertaining or clever or inventive; just follow the moment and you’ll ‘hear’ the appropriate impulse.

•Hurt no one, yourself included: so if your impulse is to punch your partner’s lights out or crack your head against a brick wall – that might be an impulse worth blocking!

Initially, you work completely as yourselves. But this SILENT ÉTUDE can be the starting point of any ACTIVE ANALYSIS of a given scene; just keep the body language as simple as it was when you were just being yourself. The basic GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES of the scene serve as a backdrop to the silent dialogue, but neither of you need indicate overtly which part of the scene is being enacted. Trust yourselves: you’ll see it in each other’s eyes if you’re really listening to each other.

To make sure that your merger with the character is gentle, imagine that you’re a flask of clear water, into which a couple of drops of character have been pipetted, just to give the flask a hint of colour, a hint of character. After each ÉTUDE discuss what you discovered, then return to the text and re-read it. Compare the discoveries you made in the SILENT ÉTUDE with what’s in the text.

After one or two SILENT ÉTUDES on a scene, you can start to introduce words. The idea of improvising a script in your own words can be daunting at first and you don’t have to go beyond one or two words or phrases initially. If words come into your head, just let them drop into your mouth. No doubt your early improvisations will seem clumsy and unliterary. The point of focus isn’t the words you speak, it’s the ACTIONS that you execute: there’s no inseparability between tasks and ACTIONS.

This is pure ACTIVE ANALYSIS. If you can trust yourselves to be as simple as possible, the kind of discoveries that you might make about the characters – emotionally, psychologically, physically, imaginatively – can be extraordinary.

Pause Exercise

This is one area of ACTIVE ANALYSIS where an exercise comes in handy. It’s a wonderfully simple combination of TEXT and experience, devised by one of my second-year students, Tracey Wills, on ‘The Psycho-Physical Actor’ module at Exeter University, 2006.

•In partners, take the following extract from Act 3 of The Seagull and play the dialogue three times.

•First of all, with no PAUSES.

•Secondly, marking the ‘logical pauses’.

•Thirdly, marking the ‘logical’ and ‘psychological pauses’.

•Note the change in pace, TEMPO-RHYTHM, intensity, SUBTEXT – not to mention the ADAPTATIONS to your body language, facial expressions, proximity to each other – and all manner of psycho-physical adjustments which occur once you include the ‘psychological pauses’.

NINA (holding out her clenched fist to TRIGORIN): Odd or even?

TRIGORIN: Even.

NINA (sighs): Wrong. I’ve only one pea in my hand. I’m trying to decide whether I should go on the stage or not. If only someone would advise me.

TRIGORIN: Nobody can advise you about that.

A pause.

NINA: So, you’re leaving . . . we probably won’t see each other again. I’d like you to take this little medallion as a keepsake. I had your initials engraved on it, and the title of your book ‘Days and Nights’ on the other side.

TRIGORIN: How charming! (Kisses the medallion.) What a delightful present!

NINA: You’ll think of me sometimes?

TRIGORIN: I shall indeed. I’ll think of you just as you were that sunny day – you remember? – about a week ago, you were wearing a white dress, and we had a long talk . . . there was a white bird, a seagull, lying on the bench.

NINA (thoughtfully): Yes, the seagull . . .

A pause.

We’d better not say any more, someone’s coming. Let me have two minutes with you, please, before you leave.

Exits left.236

Here’s a suggested version: [L] = logical pause; [P] = psychological pause.

NINA (holding out her clenched fist to TRIGORIN): Odd or even? [P]

TRIGORIN: Even.

NINA (sighs): [P] Wrong. I’ve only one pea in my hand. [P] I’m trying to decide whether I should go on the stage or not. If only someone would advise me.

TRIGORIN: Nobody can advise you about that. [L] + [P]

A pause.

NINA: So, you’re leaving . . . [P] we probably won’t see each other again. I’d like you to take this little medallion as a keepsake. [P] I had your initials engraved on it, and the title of your book ‘Days and Nights’ on the other side.

TRIGORIN: How charming! [P] (Kisses the medallion) What a delightful present! [P] + [L]

NINA: You’ll think of me sometimes?

TRIGORIN: I shall indeed. I’ll think of you just as you were that sunny day – you remember? – about a week ago, you were wearing a white dress, [P] and we had a long talk . . . [P] there was a white bird, a seagull, lying on the bench.

NINA (thoughtfully): [P] Yes, the seagull . . .

A pause. [P] + [L]

We’d better not say any more, someone’s coming. [P] + [L] Let me have two minutes with you, please, before you leave.

Exits left.

Without any PAUSES, you’ll probably find the extract is all rather rushed, superficial and even nonsensical. The LOGICAL PAUSES essentially mark a BIT of action: when you play only the ‘logical pauses’, the flow certainly feels more natural than with no PAUSES, but it can seem rather neat and tidy. Once you add the layer of the ‘psychological pauses’, you’ll suddenly sense the addition of MOMENTS OF DECISION. A change of thought might just be a ‘logical pause’, but a moment of considered decision (‘How will this person react if I decide to say this?’) will definitely be a ‘psychological pause’. It can feel much messier, which is good – and certainly more natural.

It’s interesting to note what Stanislavsky himself did with the PAUSES in this scene in his production plan for The Seagull. Let’s take the moment where Trigorin reminds Nina of the dead seagull: the following is a combination of Stanislavsky’s specifics and my responses:

After a moment’s awkwardness, Nina jumps to her feet to leave the room, but Trigorin catches her hand to stop her. She stands with her back to him in silence, as Trigorin raises her caught hand to kiss it. Gently she withdraws her hand from his lips and moves to the stove, where . . . she traces something with her finger. This is a moment of decision for her. That tracing finger marks a resolution, [because she then] turns quickly to Trigorin to finish her speech and immediately exit.

The details piled into that one ‘pause’ indicate a whole sequence of conflicts between the two characters as well as within each of the two characters. Their emotions battle with their thoughts, their desires battle with their sense of duty. The vividness of Stanislavsky’s imagination has jam-packed that one moment with a complexity of realistic human responses, full of varying ‘tempo-rhythms’ and life-changing decisions.237

Moment of Orientation Exercise

Take the first act of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

•Think through all the GIVEN CIRCUMSTANCES: that the young girls have been out dancing in the woods; that they’ve been spotted naked; that the youngest, Betty – the Reverend Parris’s daughter – has fallen into a dead faint; and that now the village is alive with talk of witchcraft. The scene takes place in the room in which Betty is lying unconscious.

•As each character comes in – starting with the Negro slave, Tituba, who was caught dancing naked, right through to Reverend Hale arriving ‘loaded down with half a dozen heavy books’ – contemplate the elements of their very first MOMENT OF ORIENTATION.

•Do they know that Betty is in the room?

•Do they know where Betty is lying?

•Do they know that she’s unconscious?

•Do they know who else is in the room?

•What’s their relationship with others in the room?

•Who is suspicious of whom?

•Who is afraid of whom?

•Who is surprised to see whom?

•Who is relieved to see whom?

•How familiar is the room to them? [Obviously Abigail and Reverend Parris have been in the room many times, but for Reverend Hale it’s the first time. Where’s the bed? Where’s the window? Where’s the table?]

•How does John Proctor orientate himself to Abigail’s presence, bearing in mind they’ve had an affair? [Note Miller’s stage directions around Proctor’s entrance, each of which gives clues into the nature of the MOMENT OF ORIENTATION:

Enter JOHN PROCTOR. On seeing him, MARY WARREN leaps in fright [. . .] MERCY LEWIS both afraid of him and strangely titillated [. . .] Since PROCTOR’S entrance, ABIGAIL has stood as though on tiptoe, absorbing his presence, wide-eyed.]238

Level 3: Performance Practices

TRAY 14

PERFORMANCE COMPONENTS

•The audience

TRAY 15

FIVE TOOLS FOR DEVELOPING PERFORMANCE AWARENESS

•Dual consciousness

•Perspective

•Creative individuality

•Inner creative mood

•Scenic speech

Scenic Speech Exercise

Take the following speech from the Bereaved Mother (played wonderfully by Flaminia Cinque in the original production by Out of Joint and the National Theatre, 2003) of The Permanent Way, and mark which phrases could be ‘thrown away’ à la Mamet:

I was a supervisor at Marks and Spencers. My son Peter was 29, he worked at Freshfields, the solicitors, you know. He was a hotshot lawyer, about to be made a partner. In the firm they couldn’t believe how clever he was, coming from Essex. When I heard him on the phone, I used to think, he doesn’t sound like my son, he sounds like a proper lawyer. Later, when I was running the Disaster Action Group, I would find myself saying things like, ‘I put it to you.’ It was like he was at my side. Peter was on my shoulder. We loved our son to bits. Very proud of him. Normal parents. On the night we were waiting to hear, we were standing in the dark, September – so the nights were getting dark already – making cups of tea and not drinking them – and we just stood in the kitchen. And I kept saying ‘Well if he’s gone, it’s written’, and I felt as if this was coming from somewhere – and my husband said to me and it was in the dark – and he’s just made another cup of tea which he’d thrown away and he said, ‘Maureen’ – (turning to husband) You don’t mind me saying this do you? He said, ‘Maureen’, and he was crying, and he said ‘If Pete has gone you’ve got to forgive me’. And I said ‘What do you mean?’ And he said ‘I’m not staying here, I’m going to go’. He was going to kill himself. [. . .]

We went to the mortuary. Pete was on a trolley. His nose had come off and they’d just put it back on. And they’d combed his hair into a fringe, he’d never had a fringe in his life, and he had this fringe. I didn’t actually feel that I’d actually left my son there – because it wasn’t him. His spirit had gone.

Below, I’ve marked the speech with where I’d put stresses (marked in bold) and where I’d throw away phrases (marked in [brackets]); it’s just a suggestion but it’s based on what Cinque did both intuitively and in response to Stafford-Clark’s direction:

I was a supervisor at Marks and Spencers. My son Peter was 29, he worked at Freshfields, the solicitors, [you know]. He was a hotshot lawyer, about to be made a partner. In the firm they couldn’t believe how clever he was, [coming from Essex.] When I heard him on the phone, I used to think, he doesn’t sound like my son, he sounds like a proper lawyer. Later, [when I was running the Disaster Action Group, I would find myself saying things like], ‘I put it to you.’ It was like he was at my side. Peter was on my shoulder. We loved our son to bits. Very proud of him. Normal parents. On the night we were waiting to hear, we were standing in the dark, [September – so the nights were getting dark already – making cups of tea and not drinking them] – and we just stood in the kitchen. And I kept saying ‘Well if he’s gone, it’s written’, and I felt as if this was coming from somewhere – and my husband said to me [and it was in the dark – and he’s just made another cup of tea which he’d thrown away and he said], ‘Maureen’ – (turning to husband) You don’t mind me saying this do you? He said, ‘Maureen’, and he was crying, and he said ‘If Pete has gone you’ve got to forgive me’. And I said ‘What do you mean?’ And he said ‘I’m not staying here, I’m going to go’. He was going to kill himself. [. . .]

We went to the mortuary. Pete was on a trolley. [His nose had come off and they’d just put it back on.] And they’d combed his hair into a fringe, he’d never had a fringe in his life, and he had this fringe. I didn’t actually feel that I’d actually left my son there – because it wasn’t him. His spirit had gone.239

You don’t have to bash out all the highlighted areas: it’s really just an indication of the phrases that might need some colour, as opposed to the [bracketed] phrases which could be thrown away. Note that one of the most important details in the speech – ‘His nose had come off and they’d just put it back on’ – could be said quite lightly, and be doubly effective and affecting for the lightness of touch. (Which is exactly what Flaminia Cinque did, to great and moving effect.) What we had to remember when we were working on The Permanent Way was that these were oft-recounted stories: the survivors and bereaved had shared their experiences many times – they were accomplished story tellers. What upset us as first-time listeners had been processed by them on many complex levels: that’s why it was important that the audience should be the emoters and not the actors.