How do you like to start your scene...
Making choices comes in many forms--super objective, scene objective, beats and actions, previous circumstances, moment before, place, relationship, and on and on. Choice making is like a musician making their own marks on the score of a piece of music. Then they play. The piece of music, the sheet music is like our script and scenes. As we start to find our own point of view, our own choices, we might hold them in our head, we might write them down, and then we play and put them in our body.
When we rehearse a scene or get up in class and do the scene (which is really a rehearsal), the choices, the life that we create can emerge before the text is spoken. How? By engaging in any of the livable choices you have made- place, relationship, moment before, etc. For example, setting up place is an opportunity to take that time and start stepping into the given circumstances and the relationship and what you are in pursuit of.
Instead of just setting up place mechanically, each item placed in your "set" is an opportunity to connect with the world you are creating. You can talk to yourself, you can endow the objects you are placing with a strong meaning for you, you can create the place in which your relationship with the other character is drenched with what you deeply want (objective/ intention/ need). If you have made personal connection to your character's need, then the setup is an opportunity to create. To be able to do this takes practice.
Imagine setting up the place that you had the best sex in your life. Or the place that you had the biggest fight with the person you loved the most. Or the place you were when you and your parent got into a conflict that you changed the dynamic of things forever.
What was there in that place? If you had to set it up again, the feeling would inevitable start to hover or enter you. That is what we can do as we set up a scene. It can be drenched with what we need or want and what the relationship is really about, the obstacles and the love. Place is potentially powerful in itself.
Some teachers have the actors say "ready" when they are ready, and this works for me as a teacher. If it gets you to the point where the inner life of your character is alive and ready for pursuit, then that's great.
Uta Hagen said:
The preponderance of auditions we have as actors that necessitate we slate, take a beat and then start our scenes is a professional hazard because it can create bad habits. I believe the only way we can avoid the bad habit of starting on a dime is consciously; to be vigilant that we use our class time to explore, try, fail, succeed at creating for ourselves life before the text. We will need that ability once we book a job. And no one will be there to facilitate this for us on set. How we start our scene in class is a great place to keep our skills sharpened.
The benefits of creating life and then allowing the lines to come from that life are many. We can use this on camera at auditions in a secret way and on set in a way that provides life and behavior for the director to use during editing. If we create the behavior and live in it for even a few beats, that can help tell the story visually. Even when the scene requires that we start the line on action, which we know is common, we can create the life while they set up the shot, or during touch ups, or as we stand on our mark and breathe. The line can come out of life create before "action." It's our responsibility and our creative joy to find what works best for us as we use our art to address the obstacles that are inevitable on set and on stage.
This is process work. This isn't pass or fail. This is about discovery, not about you're good or you're bad. This is about taking the seed of what you loved about acting in the first place and practicing in class so you can bring it to your career. Because from my experience as an actor and a teacher, actors who attend solely to the technical requirement of auditioning and acting on set with becoming an extension of the camera equipment, by pleasing DP's and being "good" in accommodating technical needs- forgetting the art inside us, forgetting the imagination, forgetting our craft and our duty to create the world of the writer- find themselves in a bind they want to really bring it for a scene, and forget how. I don't mind if you start a scene in class and I don't even hear a line for a minute or two. I know we have to juggle as actors what we do with moments we face in our profession. The moment before and the moment of starting is a ball worth adding to what you have to juggle because it will serve you. And not knowing how is the simply the place of learning, and of reminding ourselves what we already knew.
The bottom line is we try stuff. If we get stuck, we can drop it all and follow our gut. If we get frustrated, follow that to breakthrough. We can develop a relationship with new tools and with ourselves at the same time. By developing confidence that we can try many things and that our response to each of them is an important part of how we grow, how we each find and develop our own technique.
When we rehearse a scene or get up in class and do the scene (which is really a rehearsal), the choices, the life that we create can emerge before the text is spoken. How? By engaging in any of the livable choices you have made- place, relationship, moment before, etc. For example, setting up place is an opportunity to take that time and start stepping into the given circumstances and the relationship and what you are in pursuit of.
Instead of just setting up place mechanically, each item placed in your "set" is an opportunity to connect with the world you are creating. You can talk to yourself, you can endow the objects you are placing with a strong meaning for you, you can create the place in which your relationship with the other character is drenched with what you deeply want (objective/ intention/ need). If you have made personal connection to your character's need, then the setup is an opportunity to create. To be able to do this takes practice.
Imagine setting up the place that you had the best sex in your life. Or the place that you had the biggest fight with the person you loved the most. Or the place you were when you and your parent got into a conflict that you changed the dynamic of things forever.
What was there in that place? If you had to set it up again, the feeling would inevitable start to hover or enter you. That is what we can do as we set up a scene. It can be drenched with what we need or want and what the relationship is really about, the obstacles and the love. Place is potentially powerful in itself.
Some teachers have the actors say "ready" when they are ready, and this works for me as a teacher. If it gets you to the point where the inner life of your character is alive and ready for pursuit, then that's great.
Uta Hagen said:
"My three essential steps of preparation are:
What did I just do?
What am I doing right now?
What's the first thing I want (when I enter)?"
What I get from this is that we want to know what just happened and how we feel about it. Maybe we don't know but we can ask ourselves. Maybe it's a process in flux. But we don't want to start by just grabbing a line when we have very little else in our world onstage or on camera. We are here in the place of the character for a reason. We have a definite purpose.
The preponderance of auditions we have as actors that necessitate we slate, take a beat and then start our scenes is a professional hazard because it can create bad habits. I believe the only way we can avoid the bad habit of starting on a dime is consciously; to be vigilant that we use our class time to explore, try, fail, succeed at creating for ourselves life before the text. We will need that ability once we book a job. And no one will be there to facilitate this for us on set. How we start our scene in class is a great place to keep our skills sharpened.
The benefits of creating life and then allowing the lines to come from that life are many. We can use this on camera at auditions in a secret way and on set in a way that provides life and behavior for the director to use during editing. If we create the behavior and live in it for even a few beats, that can help tell the story visually. Even when the scene requires that we start the line on action, which we know is common, we can create the life while they set up the shot, or during touch ups, or as we stand on our mark and breathe. The line can come out of life create before "action." It's our responsibility and our creative joy to find what works best for us as we use our art to address the obstacles that are inevitable on set and on stage.
This is process work. This isn't pass or fail. This is about discovery, not about you're good or you're bad. This is about taking the seed of what you loved about acting in the first place and practicing in class so you can bring it to your career. Because from my experience as an actor and a teacher, actors who attend solely to the technical requirement of auditioning and acting on set with becoming an extension of the camera equipment, by pleasing DP's and being "good" in accommodating technical needs- forgetting the art inside us, forgetting the imagination, forgetting our craft and our duty to create the world of the writer- find themselves in a bind they want to really bring it for a scene, and forget how. I don't mind if you start a scene in class and I don't even hear a line for a minute or two. I know we have to juggle as actors what we do with moments we face in our profession. The moment before and the moment of starting is a ball worth adding to what you have to juggle because it will serve you. And not knowing how is the simply the place of learning, and of reminding ourselves what we already knew.
"Find the first moment."
-casting director Risa Bramon Garcia
advice for the audition
The bottom line is we try stuff. If we get stuck, we can drop it all and follow our gut. If we get frustrated, follow that to breakthrough. We can develop a relationship with new tools and with ourselves at the same time. By developing confidence that we can try many things and that our response to each of them is an important part of how we grow, how we each find and develop our own technique.
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