REFLECTIONS

Andrea Carbone is an actor who has really applied herself to taking on The Rehearsal Room performance process. She sometimes emails The Rehearsal Room with questions, new thoughts or descriptions of how her acting is progressing. She recently emailed details about the experience of acting in her first short film. Her email included how she coped with the crying scenes.

The First Gig.

Andrea has always brought a special contribution to Rehearsal Room workshops. I remember one night we were working on an impulse based repetition exercise. The point of the exercise was to always find the impulse that would generate the next response. Suddenly, in the middle of this exercise Andrea froze. She didn't have an impulse to respond with, and so she didn't. She just waited for it to happen. She waited and waited and waited. Eventually I intervened to find out what the problem was.

Trusting The Impulse
We discovered that Andrea was searching for 'good for me' or 'bad for me' impulses. This had been working extremely well up until this point but suddenly it wasn't doing the job and she had frozen. If there was no impulse then she wasn't going to fake one. She was waiting for it to work before she responded.

Our discussion revealed that Andrea wasn't taking into account that some impulses mightn't be simply 'good' or 'bad'. Working out the real nature of circumstances sometimes might be hard and being 'uncertain' was an impulse, too. The expanded assessment of moments of uncertainty is a really useful impulse to follow. These impulses are of course connected to 'moments of surprise'. Andrea agreed. And thereafter there were no freezes.

The simple articulation of this view not only enabled Andrea to confidently move on but it also clarified an element of process for the rest of the group.

Getting the Gig.
Recently Andrea decided her skills were at a level where she wanted to test them out. So, she auditioned for the lead in a student film and because she was right for the part and also because of her very capable skill level she got the gig.

A New Voice
At the end of the term, while Andrea was rehearsing for her short film role, TV Director Richard Jasek came to work with Andrea's group. Richard's view of acting process is virtually identical to The Rehearsal Room but as is the way in the real world he at times has a slightly different vocabulary. Richard was talking about his interest in seeing 'the character's process' on the screen. Andrea was particularly interested in Richard's description of the end product he was seeking.

Later we exchanged the following emails. I wrote to Andrea…

Andrea,

I think what Richard Jasek is calling 'process' is the thinking, assessing process that comes out of increasing the number of surprises and thereby raising the stakes. A higher level of 'need' can also help here as it often makes you more active and so generates more surprises, too.

So, I think that what Richard Jasek is referring to is mostly about surprises. Keep in mind that a lot of these can be generated through back-story. For example, if your back-story creates thinking such as "You've never said that before" or "You always say that" or "That's what you say but not what you do" or "I have been told the opposite" etc. then that is in fact producing a whole lot of surprises for you to assess. Give it a try.

You were wonderfully open and focused and likeable on the screen last night. Pretty too. Top stuff.

Richard Sarell

Andrea replied …

Thank you Richard.

Yeah that all makes sense! In Rehearsal Room terms the assessment phase of the surprise is the 'cognitive thinking' you see the actor doing, and that he was talking about. I'm going to try to expand/assess the surprises through your suggestion of back-story to help generate the emotional complexity this weekend for my short film shoot. It was a great night. Thanks again Richard, see you next term.

I am looking forward to working on this short film project. I hope it turns out to be a good experience, with student films you never know!

Regards, Andrea

And the following email was in response to my enquiry as to how her shoot had gone.

Hi Richard!

Thanks for asking. It went smoothly and I'm very happy that I did it.

The direction was nowhere near 'great' due to her being a film student and focused on the technical side. But I defined my story and tried different needs, and these were the two Rehearsal Room process things I could always fall back on. There was one point where she wanted to see me physically doing the thinking & I said to her 'that's overacting'. So I thought 'how am I going to be bigger without acting it out for the sake of it'? I figured that she wanted bolder choices, so I tried to push my need higher and acted on first impulses. [Richard's note:- That sounds like a really good choice but Andrea could have also raised her Centre of Gravity, too. That always makes things stronger and bigger.] I'm not sure if it worked because I was still conscious of the 'show me the thinking' kind of thing and I mimicked the physical gestures she had 'pictured', but she liked it and that's what she wanted! [Richard's note:- Giving the director what they want is what the job is all about. Doing that and maintaining believability and truth is the actor's craft.]

I think I did quite well considering she was not completely competent with 'director-actor' talk because she doesn't know how actors act or the importance of communicating objectives for the scene/story.

I also made an effort to incorporate the 'thinking'/the assessment of the surprises, and found it really does push the story along and gives fuel to the complexity of a character. It's really about listening and reacting with what you know or want/need in the scene.

I had 3 major crying scenes. In one scene, where I have a miscarriage, the director wanted me to cry. She was happy with what was being shown even though I had not been able to cry, and she was about to call cut, when the tears came down in torrents. So, she let me go on and on. I needed to go through the initial shock of the 'stomach pains before the reality kicked in that something was very wrong. And the fact that I was crying for help from 'my boyfriend' and that he wasn't there made me feel alone and scared.

In another crying scene it took me 5-10 minutes to get into an emotional state fit for crying and I needed to do that alone and away from everyone. So I found out that I cant cry without personal emotional preparation 'emotional recall' in a Stanislavski way, and then knowledge of a strong story definition and of course my need.

There's so much to acting isn't there!!!

I would like to show you the finished product when I eventually get a copy.

Ciao for now

Andrea

Thanks Andrea for all the thoughts. It has been an interesting journey. A remarkably well-balanced mix of logical planning and trusted impulses.

I look forward to seeing the finished product.

September 2004

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