Work on what happens before the scene begins.
Ask yourself, and the actor, what do the lines suggest the character is doing? What is she trying to accomplish? Occupy your actors. They will not lose sincerity or become overly self-conscious when they feel useful and engaged.
... the actors are probably behaving as if they had all the time in the world. But they haven’t; at any moment some other character could enter and destroy the chase, some outside event could thwart the chaser.
You as director must make sure that they are aware of this. (“She’ll be here any minute!” “The train is leaving the station!”) The knowledge that they have only a limited amount of time imparts an urgency that would hurl the scene forward at breakneck speed were it not for the other factors —the need to disguise a motive, the fear of being misunderstood —that slow the action down and create tension.
Get them to listen to a Toscanini recording of, say, Brahms’ First Symphony. Marvel at the tension he creates, moving the music as fast as it can possibly go. Because of the resistance to its forward motion, the tempo ends up relatively slow, but it doesn’t feel slow because the sense of wanting to move ahead is so strong and the oppositions —the inner voices, the grinding harmonies that threaten to drown the main melody—are so interesting.
Similarly, every scene in every play wants to move as fast as humanly possible. Again, this may involve passages of extreme slowness, but you’ll never bore an audience as you will with something that slips along efficiently and easily against a mere token resistance.
... an element of pleasure is likely missing. In our lives we say and do things because they give us satisfaction. Eating, drinking, watching TV, crying, refusing to speak, breaking a favorite ornament —all are paths to pleasure, to make us feel better. It’s the same on stage. Unless characters are seen to be satisfying some need by what they do and say, the performance will be correct but bloodless. Let’s consider a great piece of acting on film: Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell. It is striking how greedy she appears, how she chews on her lines as if they were pieces of well-cooked steak. Even in the boniest, harshest piece of Strindberg, the characters are all striving toward satisfaction, pleasure, and it’s your job as director to make sure that the actors convey this. Take as your watchword the character in Chekhov’s Ivanov who does not say, “How bored I am,” but “I’m so bored, I could beat my head against a wall!” An extreme remedy for an extreme condition.
When actors enter with full voice or on a high note, they can’t go anywhere as the scene progresses except to take it down. Scenes tend to be better when they build, so do voices. Unless the script clearly calls for something different, start low and then build.
You know you’re in trouble when it sounds like the last line of another play but you’re only in the middle of act one. This habit will quickly wear an audience down. Since downward inflections are often triggered by commas and periods in the script, they are a reliable indicator that an actor is “seeing the page” rather than engaging in what’s actually happening on stage. If you can’t break the habit, tell the actor to imagine an ellipsis (“...”) in place of the printed punctuation.
... not playing correctly —too angry, too timid, etc. Don’t analyze the part for him. Don’t do it for him. Don’t criticize. There’s a perfectly effective and impartial way to do it. You can simply say, “He’s not angry here. He’s very secure in himself, very sure, very self-satisfied, very definite.” In other words, the character is not the way he seems to be coming across now, but this other way. Positive direction, clarity, and simplicity have their uses.
... draws a complete blank and freezes up. Do you whip him? Scream? Torture him? No. You don’t feel as badly as he does. Offer encouragement: “It was good that it happened at a preview, not an opening.” “Everyone comes close to such a moment at some time.” “We’re all just a hair’s breadth away from it happening to us, fate just caught you.” “We’re all human.” Consider using an offstage prompter if it becomes a chronic problem.
It’s always unpleasant, but nine times out of ten it arises from mild hysteria that will cool down if you don’t try to confront it head-on. The tenth time you have a problem. Just hang on to one simple fact: You don’t have to be humiliated unless you want to be. The cast will be on your side. If need be, break the rehearsal for ten minutes and see what happens.
Expressing anger publicly may feel justified at times but it often just makes you look like a fool. The only time that getting visibly and audibly angry will help you is when you make the choice to display anger as a conscious tactic to motivate an individual who has not responded to logic, reason, kindness, charm, diplomacy, or bribery. (Recall 26 . You perform most of the day.)
Mistakes like a hat falling off or a missed entrance are sometimes extremely valuable. They are not simply mistakes, but bits of reality entering into the pretend situation of rehearsal or performance. In the same vein, when someone (an assistant stage manager, for instance) fills in for an actor during rehearsals, the other actors’ line recall or blocking may be disturbed slightly. This is a small price to pay for the jolt of freshness and insight it can provide. Pay close attention.
Whenever a happy accident occurs, have the actors do it again with no intervening commentary. Creating a great moment is one thing, but much of its value to the play depends on honest repeatability.
Don’t celebrate a great moment too much. You’ll annoy the actors and may never get the moment back. (Recall 89 . Actors must never aim for the laugh.)
If you have skilled actors at work, there will be some variations moment to moment and performance to performance that make it real and therefore subject to change. Expect and accept that. Do not attempt to simultaneously mandate the revelation of real life on stage and the repeatability of dictated, on-the-nose moments. They are often mutually exclusive. Audiences come to the theatre because live performance —at its best —can make us feel more connected and alive, as if we are part of the important and real events occurring on stage right now. As in sports, it should feel as if anything could happen at any moment. Such real and true moments can be a bit messy, unpredictable, wonderful, spontaneous, dangerous... and very difficult to repeat. Rather than exerting your control over it all, dedicate yourself to keeping the life between actors alive. Do your part to combat that great, common misconception that acting is, at its heart, lying, controlled fakery, or deception. Don’t micromanage. Decide what you will allow to live and flourish without all your potentially damaging or inhibiting intervention. (Recall 27 . It is not about you, and 61 . Sincerely praise actors early and often.)
Give them a break. With any scene change longer than half a minute, bring the house lights up to half. It is better to have the audience rustling through the program than to have them wondering if something’s wrong backstage. Of course, something might very well be wrong backstage—all the more reason to bring up the lights and let them read to distraction.
Calm your actors and give them perspective with this advice: “Ultimately, you are in a better position than anyone else to understand the value of your own experience, so decide in advance what your opinion of this work is. Then you can judge what is valuable and what is not in the forthcoming review.”
That takes care of the intellect. The ego is another issue.
Rosemary Clooney’s advice to her nephew, George Clooney: “You’re never as good as they say you are when they say you’re good, but you’re never as bad as they say you are when they say you’re bad.”
Director Marshall Mason tells his casts not to read reviews. He is not as concerned, he says, about the effect of the negative critiques as he is the effusive ones; “She collapsed across the veranda like a lost piece of history” is pretty difficult to recreate night after night.
About critics, playwright David Ives cleverly remarked, “Ultimately one has to pity these poor souls who know every secret of writing, directing, designing, producing, and acting but are stuck in those miserable day jobs writing reviews. Will somebody help them, please?”