CHAPTER 17

Session Seven

In this session: • Circling phrases • Phrasing exercise • Impulse to speak • Supporting the end of the phrase • Combining breathing and phrasing exercises • Questions on character • Combining more skills • Subtext • Playing what the role requires • Subtext exercise • Imposing attitudes • Next assignment

Coach: We haven’t spent enough time on phrasing, so let’s begin there today. Take out your monologues. (Two have forgotten theirs and must borrow from others. I groan.) So far, I don’t think any of you have circled your phrases. So take a few minutes and circle all the phrases in your monologue. We want to be able to separate them. If you have a line you can’t figure out, put it on the board and we’ll do it together. (They work on circling the phrases.)

Amber: What about this line: “I am ashamed that women are so simple.” Do I need two phrases?

Coach: You could do it as one, or you could break the line after “ashamed.”

Bride: “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shall be / what thou art promised.” I see three phrases, or should it be four?

Coach: I think three would be enough.

Jerrod: “Had they rained all kinds of sores and shames on my bare head.” I see either two or three.

Coach: Certainly break after “shames.” The other would be a choice for you as the actor.

Emily: “Make me a willow cabin at your gate.” I’d want to say that line as one phrase, but it could be two.

Coach: It could be two because first you’re saying what you would do, then you’re telling her where you would do it. So there are two phrases, but I agree with you. There could be no pause after “cabin,” if that was your choice. On the other hand, there could be a caesura there. Your choice.

Now, using your first ten lines, let’s work on our feet. Partner up and set up the chairs. (They do.) This phrasing exercise is not unlike the breathing exercise. From behind one chair, say your first phrase, then cross to the other chair and, when behind it, say your next phrase, and so on. Right now you don’t need to concern yourself with the breathing, just concentrate on separating the phrases. Later we’ll do both skills together. (I demonstrate, using one of their lines.) Your objective is to deal with the idea you’re saying; then, as you’re crossing, deal with the idea you’re about to say. We could put the chairs a long way apart—then you would have lots of time to consider what you’re about to say. And don’t amble; go ahead and walk briskly from chair to chair. The partner holds the script and makes certain the speaker doesn’t skip a phrase—or skip a cross. (The actors work on this exercise.)

Let’s pause a moment. As you’re moving to the next chair, make certain that you deal with what you’re going to say. You’ll notice a frustration comes into it. You want to speak sooner, the long delay between phrases forces you to wait to speak, and you can’t speak because you haven’t reached the other chair yet. That frustration is good. It makes you realize how much you want to get to the next idea. Later, when you eliminate the cross, you’ll be able to use that. If you really want to experience the frustration, move your chairs about twenty feet apart, or just set other targets across the room and walk to those. (They continue working on the phrasing.)

Pause for a moment. I notice that sometimes you put a period at the end of a phrase, probably because you realize you can’t say the next phrase right away. But only use a period if it’s called for. Use the commas and support the idea in the phrase—let us know that there is more coming. That’s one of the hardest parts of this exercise. If you have phrases that are all part of a larger idea, you have to keep the idea supported during the long pause between speaking phrases. Don’t let the idea end if you don’t intend to end it. For example, let’s look at these lines from the Twelfth Night monologue:

If I did love you in my master’s flame,

With such a suff’ring, such a deadly life,

In such denial I would find no sense.

Notice the structure. We have an “If”—followed by this and this happens, then the conclusion to the “If,” “I would find no sense.” All of the phrases between “If” and “I” are part of the same idea—which is, “Your actions make no sense.” So you don’t want periods after any of the phrases.

If I did love you	(A caesura, maybe, but keep the idea going)
in my master’s flame,	(The main idea, keep it going)
With such a suff’ring,	(An idea within the main idea, keep it going)
Such a deadly life,	(Another idea within the main idea, keep it going)
In such denial	(Another idea within the main idea, keep it going)
I would find no sense.	(Ties back to the first phrase and completes the idea.)

Coach: Is everyone clear on that? (General agreement. They continue the exercise until each has worked with his or her monologue three or four times.)

Good. Let’s pause on that exercise now, and move on. Look at your monologue and decide how you can add the breathing skill to the phrasing. Move the chairs a little closer—some got spread out—so the breathing will work. We only want two steps to move from chair to chair. You breathe on the punctuation marks, which are usually also phrases, but you also move on phrases that aren’t breathing points—like caesura divisions of ideas—and you don’t breathe on those. So study your speeches and figure out what you have to do.

Remember to move on every phrase, whether or not it’s a breathing point, and obviously move on all breathing points, as they will all be phrases. Partners, keep a sharp eye on the material and be certain the actor does both skills. No breathing simply because you’re moving—breathe only at the appropriate places. (The actors work on this exercise for about thirty minutes.)

Alex: I can’t find a motivation for moving on all of these phrases. (Laughter.)

Coach: That’s because this is an exercise and has nothing to do with character. Remember, that comes later. All we’re doing here is forcing ourselves as actors to discover all the ideas in the language and to breathe in such a way as to not disguise those ideas. Your character may elect to handle some of this differently—but in that case it’s done by choice, not by accident.

Kristin: How much of this do we keep for performance?

Coach: I’m not sure I understand. How much of what?

Kristin: Of all these exercises and skills.

Coach: If you’re an athlete, how much of your training techniques do you use in the game or event?

Kristin: Probably none of it. It just happens.

Jerrod: I played football. We had to run through all kinds of tires and ropes and things to make us learn to get our knees up, to keep our legs pumping. But those things weren’t on the field during the game. We just learned the skill and then did it. Until we got tired. (Laughter.)

Coach: I think that’s a good example. The techniques you’re learning here will happen automatically. You won’t be thinking about chairs six feet apart when you’re playing a Macbeth scene. But you will be reading the lines so that the audience hears the various ideas put there by the writer. Your character will decide how she will handle the lines based on the needs of the scene, but however she handles them, the ideas will still be clear. Does that make sense? (All agree that it does.)

Alex: Will we ever get to character?

Coach: Only a little at the end of the workshop, when we’re actually performing the monologues. Then we’ll make a few choices. Mostly, character is for the next workshop and for other acting classes. There isn’t any difference between developing a Shakespearean character and developing an O’Neill character—there’s only the difference of the language. The Shakespearean character, regardless of the time and energy you put into it, will not be successful if you can’t handle the language. (There is some acknowledgment before they all return to the exercise.)

You seem to be getting it, so let’s each do a few lines. (Taking turns, we all watch each person do a few lines of breathing and phrasing simultaneously.) Good, especially when some of you had three or four phrases without a breathing point and were able to support the idea while moving. I notice one tendency. When concentrating on phrasing, often you don’t breathe deeply—you take smaller, gasping breaths. You don’t want to do that unless you choose to do it. But when you do breathe deeply, your voices are strong. And you also don’t want to forget to support the ends of the lines, which many forget to do.

Now, we have to put these skills together with scansion and end-of-line support, and all of a sudden you’re working with four skills for acting Shakespeare. Let’s break.

Coach: (After the break.) Let’s look at chapter 6 and try to decide why we don’t apply a bunch of subtextual thoughts to the lines you’re working on. A major concern here is this: In much modern acting of realism, and especially on film, large pauses are taken between thoughts to give the characters time to reflect and determine. On film, the camera can be close so that we can watch the actor’s thinking process before he speaks. Onstage, we can’t see that. So that’s one reason why film-acting pauses don’t work well onstage. But there’s more. Actors often want to “enhance” the lines with pauses or sound effects, like “ahs” and “ummmms”—all of which take time and add beats to the line. Look on page 46. I’m talking about acting on the words—but in most film acting, so much is done between the words. That technique might work on film, but it kills verse.

The modern idea of subtext, as you know, grew out of realistic plays, where action was based on character motivation, and the character might not speak what he really means. But his meaning is under the words, or behind the words—it isn’t just the words. And certainly, learning to play a realistic subtext became the great acting development of the twentieth century.

In Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Nora offers a match to Dr. Rank, who wants to light his cigar, but we know he is in love with her. His response, “Thanks for the light,” is not about the match, is it? Do you know the play? What is the line about?

Alicia: Thanks for what you’ve given me by being you.

Coach: Yes, it could be that. Quite a distance from a match. But Rank is speaking the subtext, and we hear the subtext, and we know what he means. He could, in fact, take a long pause while lighting the cigar, puff on it, look at her, then decide what to say so as not to say “too much.” After all, she is married to his friend, so he must say carefully what he intends to say. Subtext is very useful here.

Shakespeare would not have done that. In this situation, he probably would have written Rank a speech about what she had given him by being her. He would have said what he intended to say, and likely would have said it with a verse passage that would require a certain rhythm to speak it and make it convincing.

I doubt that you’d want to do a modern play without using subtext. I can’t think of any reason why you’d want to do that, or even how you could do it. On the other hand, there is probably no reason why you need subtext to do a Shakespearean play. Certainly you can use subtext if you wish, but the point is that you don’t use it the way you’d use it in modern text.

Let’s take Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be—that is the question.” The actor can use subtext to weigh the odds: To act and get revenge, or not to act—what shall I do? But if you take long pauses after each “be,” as Rank might do before “Thanks for the light,” the ideas become indulgent, bogged down, and passive. You’ve lost the language in favor of mood, and the mood is already in the language. By what he says we know what he’s thinking. You don’t have to “guide” us with long, reflective moments of thought; in fact, that approach will turn us off and put us to sleep. Hamlet reasons his way through the problem in the lines that follow.

Learning what the language is doing is the main reason why you must not jump to “How will I play this character?” when you take a classical role. If you say, “The hell with all that analysis—I’ll use my natural talent and everything will come out fine,” it won’t. You cannot impose a character choice on the language in the beginning, making the language work a certain way because “that’s how my character would say it.” If you do this, the audience is listening to the “edge” you have imposed on the language, and not the language itself. Your “edge” has taken away the beauty of the language in favor of your quirks, actor tendencies, moods, attitudes, etc. It will end up shallow, and all of your work won’t give you anywhere near the product you could have had. The audience will stop listening. I’ve seen so much bad acting of Shakespeare by actors who can do realism just fine. But they decide to play the role a certain way, which is the opposite of—what?

Maggie: Playing what the role requires.

Coach: A big difference, right? You can play a personality, especially on film. Rarely will it work onstage. Back to another realistic term. What is your objective?

Emily: Your goal—what you want to make happen.

Coach: And what is “playing your action?”

Emily: The things you do to get to your objective.

Coach: Right. Now let’s look at page 46, the six lines from The Merchant of Venice, and work a subtext exercise.

The speech sets out to assure Antonio of Bassanio’s love for him. Four actors are given imposed subtexts. They take some time to study their assignments. I then ask them to play their subtext to extremes, with lots of enhancements and pauses. (They do.) In each case, we find ourselves listening to an “attitude” rather than the words—hate Shylock, prove love for wife, persuade others of love for Antonio, apologize. Everyone plays a feeling rather than the basic action of the speech.

Coach: Remember, we don’t want to play feelings, we want to play actions. Shakespeare’s actions are pretty clear. You should be able to define the actions in your monologue clearly, and know your objective. What could be Bassanio’s intention with this speech?

Emily: Maybe to retain Antonio’s friendship?

Coach: Yes, we could play that. And what would Bassanio want from Antonio after saying these things to him? Remember, actions are measured in the other person. It’s what the listener does that confirms for you if you have successfully played your action and reached some intention.

Maggie: He could hug him.

Coach: Good. Because that’s a physical action from Antonio that follows the effort from Bassanio. It shows us that he reached Antonio and Antonio responded. What if Antonio had turned his back?

Bride: Then Bassanio was not successful with his intention.

Coach: Good. Actions and intentions are played in Shakespeare just like in realism, and their success is measured in the other person, just like in realism. Now, for a few laughs, everyone take the first four lines of his or her monologue and read them with an outrageous and imposed subtext. (They do, and we laugh a lot.)

I’m afraid sometimes directors can force such ridiculous interpretations of Shakespeare on an actor. Have you seen the film The Goodbye Girl? (Nobody has.) Watch it sometime, because in it the director forces a very effeminate interpretation on the character of Richard III, and the actor has to play it that way—to great humiliation. It’s a nice example of imposing attitude on Shakespeare. All you can hear is the overly effeminate subtext applied to everything.

When you catch your partner slipping into an attitude, catch it and talk about it. For next time, we want to hear the speeches with the skills applied, and we want to be careful that attitude doesn’t slip in. Later, when you develop a character, you can determine how you feel about the situations you are addressing in the monologue. You can ask, “What kind of character would say these words and want these things to happen?” And you’ve identified your character. See you next time.