Wow wow wow. Today's class was the best I've had yet in my time here at Fullerton. It was inspiring. It was the first time I got to put my scene on the floor and be worked by Svetlana, and I learnt soooooo much.
My partner and I came in early and set up the space for ourselves (we rehearse with full costume, full set, full and appropriate props - it's a requirement) and had a quick run of the scene to get ourselves into it. We then spent the remaining time getting ourselves into a place where we were ready to work. I was more nervous than I get before most of the shows I do. Then Svetlana was nearly ten minutes late which only prolonged and intensified the anxiety. Finally she arrived and, seeing that it was me working on the floor today, her face moved ever so slightly into a kind of inscrutable half-smile. Then it was gone and it was time to work.
First things first: give Svetlana your character analysis sheet and buckle in to discuss your objective. We started with mine. She read it out loud, pondered it for a moment, then said "No. Is in the right direction, is almost there, but not right. We come back to you." She did seem pleasantly surprised that the Kiwi boy had got it not so badly wrong. She then turned to my partner to discuss her objective. This one, it turns out, was way off, and she really let my partner know it.
Then we came back to my objective. Svetlana started asking me questions about my character, about relationship, about situation. Put on the spot like that you manage to fool yourself into thinking the answers required are more complex than they really are, and you just end up tripping yourself up. The answers she's looking for really are just all in the text - and that's why you need to know the play backwards. I was doing reasonably well until, asked how my character feels about his mother, I began "Well, probably..." and she cut me off: "No. Not 'probably'. We do not guess. You must know. Answer is in the text - it will tell you. So, how does he feel about his mother?" Slowly, little by little, as she asked these questions, the answers start to seem more and more obvious. And as the answers to these questions about basic situation and relationship pile up, the objective becomes clearer and it seems so stupid that you could've thought it was anything else. It seems so clear when she questions you, but my problem is I often can't find the right questions to ask. I reflected this thought back to Svetlana towards the end of class, and she agreed, but added that this is where your character lists come in. If you go through the play and meticulously write down everything you say about yourself, about others, everything anyone says about you, and all the absolute facts that are given in the text, then you won't need to ask the questions. Through writing this all out the answers are in your body. This is how you read the play. And finally, after two years of drama school, I now know how to make character lists useful.
Anyway, we did eventually get into actually working on the scene. The first time I walk through the door at the start of the scene, ready to start all my great acting, I stand inside the door for about two seconds ready to say my first line, when Svetlana says "No". I didn't bring in the right energy, the history of the relationship, my objective, the tension between us. This all needs to be present with me the very first moment I walk in the door. She then prompts me with some more questions about our relationship, and then we're ready to have another go. This time I'm in for a little bit longer before she stops us because my partner "didn't see" my character come into the room. Start over. They're little things, but so fundamental. And as soon as we start getting them right, which happens the next time we try (we even get about six or seven lines into the scene), it's so obvious why they must be right before you can continue. It's such nuance and subtlety, but without it the scene doesn't mean anything.
So we continue to work like this, stopping often and going back, for about half an hour. And I really start to find what Svetlana means when she talks about inner life. It's the most liberating feeling as an actor to realise in the middle of the scene that you don't know what your next line is, but to not care or worry about it, and then to discover what it is only in the moment when it needs to be said. And to realise that you're just reacting to and living in what is actually going on right now, not just your plan or vision of what the scene is. Oh, that's acting. Duh. Svetlana would stop me and correct me on some technical things ("Is ok, I haven't taught you this. I don't know if you learn in New Zealand but you need to..."), but she even said I was doing "very nice work". Admittedly she was being a bit gentler with me - still working me just as hard I think, but not in such an aggressive manner as she would use with her regular students - but I still feel I did some really good work today. I started to get it. And, while it was really demanding being up there and working so hard, I was a little bit disappointed when she said "Ok, you know what you need to do? Rehearse. Next."
So in the next hour of class we got through three more groups. It was their second time up working their scenes now and they had all improved a lot. And as always there was just as much to be learnt from watching the other groups work as from being up there yourself. It's so hard to describe, but there were moments in people's work today when the scenes just really came alive, and in those moments the power of the writing is incredible. It's Shakespearean in its complexity and humanity, but the flavour of the language is at times so simple and never overtly poetic that there's a real immediacy to it. It's the kind of theatre that we don't do well in New Zealand. It's such a shame that Chekhov isn't really tackled so much back home, presumably because it's so difficult and complex to bring to life in the way it's meant to be performed, but when it works - which I've seen glimpses of - it's so incredibly powerful. Overall I was really impressed with the quality of the acting from my class today. Obviously it takes work to pull this kind of text off, but there was real dedication and honesty in their work, and the kind of skill and rigour with their approach to text that I don't think we value highly enough at Toi. The way they apply the concept of objective and action - among numerous other concepts and tools that Svetlana teaches - is much more practical and clear than most of us at Toi are able to do. I think it comes down to the different emphasis of the teaching approaches at both schools, which ultimately I suppose are dictated by the needs and characteristics of the industry the schools are feeding actors into. Again, neither a good nor bad thing either way, just a difference. But I am very very very glad I'm getting this chance to work with Svetlana in this way at this time.
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