I don’t believe in talking in rehearsal about how I approach acting. For me, that is completely personal. I don’t want anyone to know how I work, how I think. It’s my secret—or, at least, it was. But I’m open to suggestion about everything as long as I’m free to do what I want. And since I never ask for permission, I always do what I want.
But I do let everyone else feel that I need their help to do my best work. And I do! If the other actors and the director believe that, they’ll be of help. When something goes well, I give credit to them, even if they seemed to be a hindrance. After all, it may have been something they did that helped, even if I didn’t realize it. Theater is a joint effort.
Here’s an example of how you can use even another actor’s apparent hindrance.
I was playing the character Biedermann in Max Frisch’s play The Firebugs off-off Broadway in New York. He’s a kind of everyman, as the name implies in German. But he is also a bully, if he thinks he can get away with it. The young actress playing Anna, a maidservant, was having trouble keeping up with me. She was trying to make too much of her lines, and the production was a mess.
So, I kept stepping on her lines. It was cruel but she was driving me crazy and I just couldn’t wait for her. I really became a bully until she came to me one day, crying. She pleaded with me to let her get her lines out. I told her, of course I would, but what she had been doing was great for her and for me. It allowed me to be fierce on stage with her without Acting. And she was totally vulnerable to me and emotional in a way that was perfect for her character.
In rehearsal, give up your ego. Save it for your own personal awareness of who you are and how much faith you must have in your own talent and character to do well in this work. It will allow you to persevere when all looks bleak. But on stage in rehearsal, never take anything—that is, what is happening in the acting—personally. Make the assumption that everyone is trying to do his best. No one is trying to hurt you. It can be a very tense time. If you don’t take things personally, you’ll be better for it. For me, everything that happens on stage is acting. My feelings are real. What I see is what I see, and what I say with the line is what I mean. But when we are no longer acting the scene in rehearsal, I drop everything. Or, at least, I try.
Working with Direction
Great direction frees an actor to discover the character; it does not impose an interpretation of the character on him. Directors don’t have to say much. They give us the room to explore, to fall on our faces, and then they help us up. And when we need a suggestion they offer it in a few words.
When Glenn Close starred opposite Jeremy Irons in The Real Thing on Broadway, Mike Nichols offered two memorable comments. “He told Jeremy that if we ever felt we were getting lost, to ‘drown in each other’s eyes,’” Glenn recalls. “And he said, ‘Bring your day onto the stage.’”
Glenn was playing Annie—“a very hard part,” a woman whom the audience perceives as extremely selfish. Instead of words, she has passion, “an inherent sexuality and freedom” that is terrifying to Henry, Jeremy Irons’s character. Glenn knew she needed “to find the feeling in there, so it was free and fun. Otherwise it would be sort of deadly.” Nichols’s first direction allowed her to be totally sexual and passionate without having to do much—without having to Act. Just drowning in Jeremy Irons’s eyes and having him return it was enough.
The second direction—“Bring your day onto the stage”—grounded Glenn, allowing her to be totally simple, as in her everyday life. “I’d stand in the wings with my grocery bag and say, Okay, I’ve just gotten out of my car. I’ve locked it. I’m walking up the sidewalk, and I’ve come in the door. I’ve come from a place that’s very immediate and specific. And then it was, let’s see what’s going to happen!”
Everything is fair game in rehearsal. But it is not just for fun. It is necessary. Because we don’t know where the character is going to emerge. We only know that it is going to emerge from us, from the alchemy of the script, our instinct, and sometimes, if we are lucky, with the help of the director.
Good directors like actors to surprise them. Come to a good director with the moxie to do whatever comes to you, and he’ll help you to perfect your character. But sometimes we aren’t so lucky with directors. Theater directors can be impatient. They may move too quickly to stage the play, blocking the actors’ movements at the beginning of the rehearsal period and thereby forcing choices on them before any exploration of text and character has taken place. Or they may ask actors to memorize their lines and get “off book” too early, and then insist that they pick up their cues and their delivery speed, going for performance results long before that is possible. This kind of directing doesn’t lead to ensemble acting. It leads to controlled, impersonal, technical acting. It gives all the actors the same rushed tempo and rhythm and takes away their chance to find the individuality of each character. Worst of all, in my opinion, it takes away the joy of exploring in rehearsal, which is my favorite part of acting. When Glenn Close talks of the joy of a “great direction” from Mike Nichols, she is responding to what is best about theater—the freedom to explore good writing openly with cast members and the director.
Each actor has to find a personal strategy for dealing with bad directing. In general, I advise actors not to get aggressive or angry. All that leads to is conflict. If you put a director against the wall, he’ll bite you! But if you give him room, then anything is possible.
I believe in giving up our ego, not our work. So I don’t argue in rehearsals. I listen. I move where I’m sent, and I always agree. But agreeing to a direction today doesn’t mean I am going to do it tomorrow. I let the direction waft over me. If it makes sense or strikes a chord in me, I let it. But I don’t try to remember it. If it’s good, it will take hold automatically. If it’s no good, it won’t affect me. Either way, tomorrow I do whatever I do. If it’s different from what the director wanted and he or the stage manager points it out, I apologize for forgetting. I take it on myself. I start to do what the director wants, and if it’s uncomfortable or feels wrong, I admit it’s my problem, whether it is or not. But I want the director to realize I’m having a problem. I’m not trying to be a problem.
This usually works because it’s the truth. There’s no ego involved, and therefore no argument. There is discussion, which is good. And the discussion itself has slowed down the process, which is what we need in rehearsal—the time to explore.
Sometimes, however, this approach is rejected by the director. “I don’t know what to do,” he’ll say. “I’m trying to help you, but you won’t take any of my direction.”
In this situation, every actor must decide for himself what is at stake and how far he must go to achieve his ends. One actor, determined to avoid a protracted tug-of-war with a director, delivered an ultimatum: “You better fire me. If you find discussion and exploration threatening, we shouldn’t work together.” In this case, the director backed off, leaving the actor “to go freely down the road of exploration and have it be rich, because it came organically for me.” In the end, he got to a place that was not unsatisfying to the director. But, he emphasizes, “If I hadn’t been able to start my work that way in rehearsal, my performance would have been like a voice straining.”
It is very important that the actor decide for himself how to work with a director who seems to be cutting off his ability to explore in rehearsal. The actor, and no one else, must take responsibility for his decision, because working this way can sometimes have a tough outcome. On the other hand, allowing his instinct to be stifled will lead to a failure that may be worse for the actor than being fired—a haunting disappointment that he was unable to do his best work. When you are in this situation—between a rock and a hard place—don’t blame yourself or anyone else. If you decide to continue, keep your focus on the play, and on the joy of exploration.
The only way to work through all this is to trust yourself. If you just go where you think the director wants you to go, you wi
ll have to fake it, and that will only weaken you as an actor. Continue to explore and you will eventually have the best crack at solving any problems that you and the director are facing. Don’t blame yourself and don’t lose heart; problems are the reason for rehearsals. Most of all, don’t succumb to fear.
Exploring and Repeating
So if rehearsal is a constant process of exploration, how and when is it possible for an actor to authentically repeat choices he has discovered? If the choice came out of an exploration that was potent for the actor—if it has genuine meaning and power for him—repeating is usually no problem, because he wants to go there again. He feels free every time he makes that choice.
For example, at the opening of the second act of Second Avenue Rag, the tailors were supposed to be on an excursion on the Hudson River to celebrate the Fourth of July. The first time we rehearsed on our feet, I entered, came to the front mark on the floor, and looked out at what I thought would be New York Bay. I saw the director, the stage manager, and some actors sitting next to the rehearsal room wall. I looked at them and past them, smiling. It’s nice, I thought, out on the water, with a cool breeze, the smell of the river. I let my gaze flow to the right. I stopped, squinted through my glasses. Everyone was quiet, watching me. I concentrated on what I was seeing in my imagination. My right arm started to move over my head as my left hand came to my chest. My right hand was clasped around a torch and my left held a book, and I started to grin at the joy of discovering the Statue of Liberty right there in the rehearsal room. Everyone laughed. The other two tailors entered, and they too looked to the statue.
I hadn’t thought of doing that before the rehearsal. I thought I’d look out at the sunny sky and take a big breath of fresh air, feeling chipper and young away from the sweat shop. But as I looked around the room, I rejected that choice as too routine, and my imagination pictured the statue, in a bit of mist at first. I thought maybe it was my bad eyesight, or a trick. Then it became so clear to me that I just had to physicalize the image. It was silly but it’s what I felt at the moment, and it worked perfectly for the character and the play.
Each time that scene came in rehearsal, I went on stage and let it happen—and most of the time it did. But one day I thought there must be something better, so I didn’t do the statue. I don’t know what I did, but it was as dead as a doornail. I asked the director, Gerald Freedman, what he thought.
He was a very experienced and helpful director. He said, “Harold, sometimes you hit it just right early in rehearsal and you have to admit you’ve got it. Leave it alone.” And so I did, and it was always a special moment. But I had needed to go beyond that choice in order to return to it freely.
In rehearsal, we may discover a choice that works well. The actor is happy. The director is happy. But this still may not be the best choice. The only way for the actor to know is to keep on exploring. If in the process nothing works as well as the earlier choice, then the actor knows it is right. Even better, he feels it is right. Then repeating the choice is no problem.
IN PERFORMANCE
Although being on stage in front of an audience seems like a frightening place to be, as in auditioning, the worst thing the actor can do is try to protect himself or look for safety. It’s not that he won’t be afraid. He will be. But when he attacks his fear, he also attacks his intellect, which leaves him with only his instinct to rely on. If an actor is meant to be an actor, he will work best when he is out there on the edge.
Enter with Maximum Freedom
It’s important not to make too many specific choices for the character in advance. If we do, we will leave ourselves no room to really respond on stage. In performance, too many predetermined choices don’t make us feel secure; instead, we worry about executing all those choices. Deciding just a few points gives us beacons. The rest will be open to improvisation and exploration.
At the first preview of Kevin Kline’s first Hamlet at the New York Shakespeare Festival, he found his performance deadened by the number of advance decisions he’d made. Whatever the reasons for those choices—perhaps the director’s need to control the production, or perhaps the fear every actor experiences when approaching this massive, daunting role—every moment now felt heavy to him. It wasn’t Kevin’s Hamlet yet.
Night after night in front of the audience, Kevin stripped away the choices he’d made in favor of explorations that were alive in the moment. After a few weeks, he was left with only those points that were truly necessary and important to the illumination of the character: his first entrance, dark and relentlessly unforgiving of his mother; certain moments toying with a fierce playfulness with Claudius, Polonius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; his lewd, vulgar, raging scene with Ophelia; and his speech to the Players, during which he put on clown-face.
As for the rest, he allowed the script to take him wherever it went each night. These explorations were informed by the work Kevin had done in rehearsal, on his own, and now in performance. The difference was extraordinary. It was not a meandering, unclear performance but exactly the opposite. It was clear at every moment, with a momentum that built inevitably to its conclusion. It was filled with a mercurial life and surprise. This Hamlet was thoughtful, witty, cruel, outrageous, raging, and loving—unpredictable, yet totally comprehensible. This was Kevin’s Hamlet.
Repeating and Exploring—Reprise
In performance as in rehearsal, the actor is free to repeat a choice—and if he has thoroughly explored the character in rehearsal, he will most often find himself repeating some of the potent choices he has discovered. But he always has to give himself the option of not repeating a choice—of going somewhere else at that moment. If he doesn’t, his acting will be dull, no matter how good the choice is. He will know what is coming, and he will unconsciously telegraph this to the audience. He will get ahead of himself on stage, because he will be thinking about what’s coming, not where he is at that moment. His instinct will shut down. He may think he is safe, but his acting will have lost its edge.
You need a sense of freedom to be creative and alive on stage, up to and including performance. You need to feel that you can do anything you want, at any moment, or your acting will lack spark, and the character will be flat. If you feel obligated to do what you’re going to do, there will be no surprise for you, and therefore no surprise for the audience. You have to carry the freedom of rehearsal into performance.
If you truly believe in a choice you have discovered earlier in rehearsal, or in a previous performance, and it matters to you greatly, you must trust yourself completely and forget about the specific choice until it comes up. You must absorb yourself in each moment prior to the choice, so fully that you can’t think of the choice ahead. You must be open to each moment, including the possibility that you will make a choice other than the one you made in rehearsal. I may think, maybe I won’t do the Statue of Liberty tonight. Then, when I come out on stage, perhaps I see a seagull and lose myself in it. And when it flies off, I may look around sadly and see …
The greater the distance between where you are and the choice that is coming, the more surprising it will be for both you and the audience when it does come—as long as you stick to the text! When the moment does come, you are free to make the choice in the same way you did last night or, for that matter, the last forty nights, as long as you make the decision at that very moment. Then whatever choice you make will be fresh.
When Choices Stop Working
Often in performance everything goes well for us. We are feeling free because we are trusting ourselves and exploring the text, freely repeating choices that continue to have meaning for us. But when what we are doing isn’t working in performance, we must be bold in exploring other choices, as bold as at the outset of rehearsal.
A number of years ago, I was acting in a play by Romulus Linney called Tennessee. Frances Sternhagen, an important and wonderful actress, played the leading role, and I played Griswold Plankman, the suitor who not only tricks her in
to marriage but makes her believe that she is traveling with him over the mountains and through the forests all the way to Tennessee, never to see her family again. In the end, after they have lived together for many years and Griswold has died, she is wandering the hills, lost, when she comes upon her parents’ house. She realizes that all the time she and Griswold had been living only a few miles from her parents’ home. But without Griswold’s trick, she would never have had a full life. Her intransigence and difficult personality would have left her an old maid. It was a countrified Taming of the Shrew.
During rehearsal, Frannie and I had a great time playing off each other. The writing was very good, and we just let the dialogue take us. Griswold Plankman was a jokester. He spoke in puns and made me feel like fooling around a lot. So I kept trying different choices in rehearsal, never settling on anything. Frannie was generous in her acting and open to everything. I had great respect for her talent, experience, and intelligence, and she was a joy to act with. What could be better?
When we went into technical and dress rehearsals and began previews, however, a curious thing happened to me. I found myself too aware of the staging, of where I thought I was expected to be for Frannie at any given moment. Before going on stage, I found myself running my lines over and over—something I never did. I was tense while waiting for my entrance, and the entrance started to feel unnatural. On stage I felt uncomfortable. I became conscious of picking up my cues and getting laughs. I felt locked in. My acting became flat. It was as if I had no space around my lines. Worst of all, I felt dull!
There was no joy for me in the performance. This had never happened to me before on stage or in film. I couldn’t figure out what was going on.
At one performance, Kevin Kline and about twenty of my students were in the audience. I had always liked that sort of challenge. But the same thing happened. Afterward, Kevin and I talked. He didn’t seem bothered. He recognized the problem of feeling flat. It was reassuring, he said, that it could happen to his teacher. But I was ready to shoot myself.
How to Stop Acting Page 12