Karena Franceska

How to…Make it Real

// November 24th, 2008 // How To..., acting

So, you got the script… someone deemed to think you were good enough, or close enough or like someone else enough or.. hate to say it, available and at the right price enough to cast you! So what next? Its the first day of rehearsals and you are looking forward to meeting everyone. Hand shakes done, air kisses launched, ‘do you know’s ‘ answered and future pending projects discussed, time to start the job properly, but there is just this underlying tension… and I have known tremendously gifted, seasoned and well known performers who will admit to this, the insecure thoughts that pop into the mind… you know the ones…

‘What if I don’t get it, the director may not like what I do, the cast may hate me, I may come across as unsubtle, I may be the biggest casting mistake since Mother Theresa when she played Ozzy Osbourne in the film ‘What f**kin hamster?’.

The thing to remind ourselves is this.  All this comes from our personal psychological tensions, not the characters we play.  So these wobbly moments of the ego really hold no place in the rehearsal room.  If we have thought about our character prior to rehearsal, and I don’t mean learned the lines, done some research which I would presume most of us would have done ( she says trying not to teach granny to suck eggs!) I mean really closed our eyes and imagined their lives through their eyes. Even if through the rehearsal period, we discover that our characters main objectives have changed, these characters will feel more three dimensional and real to us and so the process of the rehearsal becomes a voyage of artistic discovery rather than a period of bedding down and getting on with everyone.  Thus our initial apprehension released, allows us to be uncensored and uninhibited with one and other.  Openness and vulnerability tend to lead to bonding and therefore the initial fear of just bedding down with a new cast becomes inconsequential.

I have a gifted young actor as a student, dynamic and fresh, committed and totally focused, he brings an all encompassing energy to any part he plays.  We were working a couple of weeks ago on a particularly challenging piece for such a vibrant young man.  The piece required that he be enraged, betrayed, seeking justice and yet at all times t be composed and in control.  The young man tried a variety of different devises and techniques yet seemed only to become more contrived and less subtle at each attempt to master the character.  Herein lay the problem; his need to master the character felt like some one , to do use that dreadful cliche, trying to pull on the character’s coat, only he was splitting it at the seams!  We stopped immediately and I told him not to look at the script at all for the week.  His only task was to day dream whenever the time and fancy took him.  he was to imagine the character as a boy, who were the influential people in his life, what did he play, what did he dream of and continue this daydream up to the point where we see the character now.  Those of us well versed in Stanislavskian technique will immediately recognize this train of thought.  The results were amazing the following week.  The following week my young actor friend delivered an intense and burning monologue full of light and shade.  The character was well sustained throughout and his inner struggle to maintain his composure was felt and seen in his shaking hands and voice.  But these were not contrived actions externally placed by a young actor seeking to show his understanding in order to please his director or audience. Behind his actions his eyes were alive with pictures that projected his inner most thoughts and desires. He was mesmerizing to watch because he was for that moment, real. Of course many practitioners also show us that this is impossible, the actor always knows that they are firstly the actor… but what if, just for a second, we could suspend that thought, or control how often we return to it.  What if… it’s a little like falling in love, you see what you want to see, if just for a while.

So in a nutshell, whether your bag is Brechtian, Stanislavskian, Grotowskian, Meisner, Adler or Tibetan primal chanting, it is the authenticity of the character that saves ourselves from ourselves in the rehearsal room.  It is the commitment to finding the truth in the characters, the piece, the interpretation that bonds us together as a cast.  So go and enjoy it, breathe, go on… close your eyes and who knows what you can imagine.

KF x