SEP
20

How to Talk to an Actor About a Role (Privately)

By Jon Jory 

Jon Jory is the author of six plays with Pioneer Drama Service.  He also has written two textbooks of tips for actors and directors, respectively. 

In any major role — even Hamlet — there are probably six key moments that should pop.  What are they?  Where are they?  Figure that out, then make them, in some way, different than all the other moments.

The impossibly great Laurence Olivier shared that advice with me in the early 1970s when I went backstage to congratulate him on his performance as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.  I was just beginning my career as an artistic director and in the three minutes or so that I got to see him I asked for advice on directing.  “Six moments,” he said.  “There are only six truly important moments in any role.”  And off he went, empowering me to share this advice with you, so that you can share it with your actors.

So, there you are, meeting with a single actor in your office, or in your living room, or maybe in the middle of the jungle.  You’re not there to punish, right?  Why are you there?  You are there to talk about the sweep of the role and to provide a roadmap for a key scene or a key relationship or maybe even a couple of key moments.  And the golden key, at least for me, lies in one magical word:  “specifics.”

Specifics, specifics, specifics.  Think always of what an actor is doing too much of and then break that down.

Let me tell you the deadliest note ever given:  “Faster.”  You and I know “faster and louder” is a joke we tell, not a direction.  The world’s worst performances are unremittingly “faster and louder.”  In my opinion, directors who insist on long sequences of faster and louder must serve jail time for it.  Telling an actor “faster” results in continued terrible acting — only faster.

And part of the problem is that the direction is not specific enough.  When I give notes on pacing (I’ve given these notes the unfortunate name “unit notes” — see, I told you it was a terrible name!)  I never address more than three lines, and certainly not an entire scene.

But even if you want a whole scene to move more quickly, you also need to let the actor know where to pause, because pace needs to be broken up with silences.  You also need to explain that not all pauses are the same:  a short pause is, say, “one thousand one;” a long pause might be closer to three short pauses.  Good pace is composed of variety, like a good drummer for a rock ‘n’ roll band.  Anything in a performance that happens too many times needs fixing and/or spacing.

So, in this one-on-one meeting, beware “faster and louder” notes, as we know words and sentences are produced by thought, and thought has an irregular heartbeat.  Suggest “units” that could go faster, like three sentences tied together, followed by a “one-beat,” thoughtful pause.  You could do worse as a director than to aim for both fast and slow, loud and soft, full sentences and sentence fragments.

Most meetings with actors shouldn’t be more than 15 minutes, as most actors stop absorbing after that.  And the meeting should be more than just you proffering specifics.  In this meeting, there needs to also be some praise.  After all, there must be something this young human — talented or not — is doing right.  I always go into these meetings with some specific praise I intend to give as well as improvements desired.  Try for specific praise and then relate it to your critique:  “I really like this moment, but after that moment, it gets a little confusing.”  Another reason for being specific is that you don’t want to take on the whole role with the actor.  A clear example here and a key example there should be enough to get them on the right track.

Even if an actor is driving you crazy in myriad ways, you still must work on specifics with that actor.  Because telling an actor clearly how to fix something specific will be used by the actor to fix a bunch of somethings.  If you have a six-week rehearsal and you give an actor two specific notes a day, they could fix, oh, seventy-two things in the performance by the time you open!  Seventy-two specific things!  They might even make a good performance!  But using Olivier’s number, even fixing just six things in one scene may ultimately solve the actor’s greater problem.

Back to our meeting.  Leave them with some positive summation.  They must not leave the room mortally wounded.  If, for instance, you are really having problems hearing your actor, take them into the performance space alone and work with them to understand what the basic level needs to be and what cannot be heard.

I have lost actors forever by becoming fixated on a single mistake they were making.  So be thoughtful.  Don’t have this meeting when you are in a state of murderous frustration.  I don’t care how awful they are, they don’t deserve that.  Besides, you cast them, right?  It’s as much your fault as theirs.

Instead, work toward opposites.  What is this terrible thing they are doing?  Probably, it has an opposite, right?  Work on peppering the scene with its opposite.  Remember the magic word is “variety” and that is achieved on a moment-to-moment basis.