NOV
9

Acting Is Thinking

By Jon Jory 

Jon Jory is the author of five plays with Pioneer Drama Service. 

Much of acting boils down to a series of lines recited by an actor inside the confines of a situation.  You might think a director’s job is to work with the actor on line recitation, but a high percentage of the director’s work in rehearsal is to help the actors understand the situation.  The director must have the ability — which can be learned — to clearly define the situation in which the character resides.

“Yes, she’s ‘angry,’ and exactly why is that again?”  Anger is based on the current situation, which gives that anger infinite shadings.  Generalized anger is plain old bad acting.  Don’t start.  Sounds like a thing, right?  But it’s not a thing a lot of directors do well.  When you don’t like the acting an actor is doing in a certain speech or a certain scene, talk about situation first and acting second.  Then, inside a certain part of the situation, ask how a certain key sentence the actor is bumbling relates to the situation.

An actor (or better yet, a person) is always thinking how to get their preferred outcome accomplished by what they say.  I have often found that a director can improve all actors’ performances in an entire scene by asking “What is going on here?”  about a single key sentence.  I’ve learned that if I ask the actor, “What’s your most important line in this scene?”  their answer often highlights what they are doing wrong in the scene.  Of course, this puts you on the griddle because you need to have a good instinct in answering the question, as well.  If the actor doesn’t have a good answer and you don’t have a good answer, you’re both in trouble.

This is but a small battle in the larger work of making the work specific and not general.  (Click here to read more about my directorial journey from generalities to specifics.)  To this end, let’s talk scheduling for a minute.  I try to rehearse each scene three times prior to tech.  Let’s say three actors have a scene lasting eight to ten minutes.  The first time with the scene, I block it and hopefully run it after spending a few minutes discussing what it’s about.  When we rehearse the scene a second time, actors should have their lines learned so I can work key specifics throughout.  This rehearsal lasts somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half.  I close the second session by running the scene.  In the third session, I work on six to eight different line sequences in the scenes that seem key, then finish by running the whole scene one last time.

This is not ideal.  I always feel I need another session or two, but time is cruel.  Watch what you’re spending time on.  More run-throughs isn’t the answer.  Doing run-throughs of inadequate work doesn’t improve it.  In order to improve the acting, you’ve got to key in on specifics and help the actors understand the situations and how their lines impact the situation.  Ironically, if you’re really time-crunched, the way to get enough specific work on the play is to cut down on the number of run-throughs prior to tech.  But let’s hope you can get in three.  If you’re working with skilled actors, you shouldn’t need more than that.

Improving the acting brings us back to thinking.  Watch people think and talk.  See how some sentences are broken up with slight pauses?  Thinking always makes that happen.  When I see actors never taking these slight interior pauses, I know they aren’t thinking, they’re reciting, which is an inferior form of acting.  (Click here to read an exercise I use to teach actors to add variety to their pacing of lines.)

Look, you know and I know that lack of time and lack of talent prevent us from actualizing the performance we see in our dreams.  Still, I believe it to be honorable and necessary to go down fighting...  and I’ve gone down a bunch.  So keep in mind two key things:  First, know what the important moments are and give them extra rehearsal time.  Second, fight to make your actors think while they act.  Just getting the play up isn’t a victory, it’s an abdication.  The play inhabited by the most specifics wins.  Onward and upward!