Sunday 31 May 2015

Tomorrow, I start a new series of acting classes at the New Venture Theatre, for all the Mondays in June. Before, the classes have mainly been centred around improvisation and confidence in performance, but this time around, we're going to have a look at script work. There's a line that I now quote in my classes - and annoyingly, I can't actually remember who I'm stealing it from - that goes something like, the script is just the blueprint, not the final product. This is something I think a lot of us could afford to bear in mind a lot more keenly.

 

Obviously, we should have a lot of respect for the writer's words - hell, I write myself, I know how much time, effort, and low level depression I put into an average script - but I notice that a few actors and directors feel really handcuffed by a script. Sometimes, admittedly, that's the playwrights fault, when the script is too exacting in its directions, saying that an actor should exit stage left when there's no real reason for the actor to leave in that direction. I remember a good chunk of rehearsal time being sunk because two characters were meant to be having a private conversation, but another character was in earshot. That third character had no more lines, no more narrative relevance, and was clearly not meant to be on stage anymore. But the director refused to have him leave the stage, simply because there was no stage direction dictating that. They were allowing the story to get trampled over by a stray LX cue.

 

But I like the idea of a script being your starting point for a production, rather than the end game. For many that's obvious - nobody pays £70 for a West End show simply to pick up a copy of the text and read it in silence - but like many obvious things, simply re-stating it in slightly different language makes us reassess and realise it anew. Plus, if the script is any good, it can certainly put up with a little punishment. Shakespeare is particularly good at this, and it's one of the reasons why his plays still get performed 400 years later. You can rip them apart, dress them in Gulf War fatigues, and make them continually relevant to the audience watching.

 

Obviously, not everyone agrees. I remember talking with a director as they prepared to take on Romeo And Juliet. He was keen to do an entirely original, refreshing production, unlike any that had been done before. I mentioned that I'd enjoyed the 90s film version (the one with Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio), at which he sniffed, and muttered: 'That's not Shakespeare.' I knew then that this was a conversation that wasn't going to last much longer, and in any case, I didn't quite understand it, coming from a man who habitually did all his Shakespeare productions in non-Elizabethan dress. If you're going to make such an absolute criticism, at least commit to it absolutely.

 

Anyway. Five acting classes at the NVT in June, all to do with fear of script, and using it as a blueprint. I've got one more Iron Clad Improv class (tonight) at the Cricketers in The Lanes, and then we're back to the DukeBox Theatre from next Sunday.

 

Writing has been going well this week, but I'm mournfully aware that I've just had a week off. Check in this time next week, and you'll see if I've kept up my word count.

 

Acting Class details here and improve drop-in details here.

Another Short Note About Acting Class

Had another Acting Class at the NVT tonight, which went well, and got a lot of good responses. However, all I could focus on was the faces of those that appeared not to be getting a kick out of it.

It's the same as when I'm doing stand up, or the GhostWalk. It doesn't matter if everyone's having a good time, my attention is drawn, briar patch like, to the individual who seems not to be having quite as good a time as everyone else. It's a stupid logic, of course: it's not possible for everyone to be enjoying it all at the same level as everyone else. But the perfectionist performer (or tutor) in me refuses to accept this logic. From conversations with other performers, and reading memoirs and the like, I know it's an universal problem: that one person who has cracked less smiles than everyone else becomes both your target and your albatross.

In a way, what made it complicated tonight was a lack of complication: in tonight's workshop we were looking at moments of 'nothing's'. It's all too easy for many actors to fill up their time on stage with lots of 'business', for instance huffing and puffing and constantly looking at their watch to signal to the audience that they're waiting for someone or something that's late, in a way that they simply wouldn't do in real life. Of course, we feel the need to communicate something to a watching audience, but we don't often have the courage to do 'nothing': but the problem challenges those who aren't even on stage - even as audience members, it seems we need instant gratification, to have our stories told to us, almost spoonfed, without making too much effort ourselves. This shouldn't be the case: audiences are not passive, they become part of the piece. They themselves have to engage, whatever is on stage, we bring our own experience and baggage to it, and write our own stories on the scene, until dialogue and action tells us otherwise.

Of course, I'm talking about all of this reacting to just a couple of members of the class who seemed not to be having as good a time as I thought they should have had. It's the same sort of pep talk any performer has to give themselves when a gig hasn't gone as perfectly as s/he feels that it should've.

But here's something that I honestly think is worth considering: the possibly that those couple of people might be entirely correct. You're an extraordinarily complacent performer or workshop leader if you think that your way is the best way. If someone disagrees, their opinion is worthy of merit, even if they are indeed only one.

Of course, you can tie yourself up on knots trying to please all of the people all of the time: it's a fools errand. Ignoring the fact that I've just managed to crowbar three cliches into two sentences, it's my job to do the best again, while always acknowledging that the job could be done even better.

At the end of my workshops, I end with a line which I picked up when I first starred learning improv, at drop-in classes with The Maydays. The idea is that if, during the class, you witnessed something that you liked or enjoyed, then you go up to the person involved, and you tell them so. That's not the important bit, though. The important bit is for whoever you're delivering your compliment to. It's vitally important that when someone takes the time to tell you how much they liked what you did, that you accept what they're saying at face value: you don't attempt to qualify or quantify what you did, or refer to the twenty other things you did tht weren't quite as good, or admit that the great thing your flatterer is referring to was actually a mistake ... You simply breath in, accept the compliment, and say nothing other than, 'thank you'.

Well, you'd be proud. As the class ended, and I fretted about those people I hadn't really been able to communicate my ideas to, as I morosely wondered if this weeks workshop had worked as well as last weeks, I had a few of the people come up to me, thanking me for the workshop, saying that they'd enjoyed it, and that they'd be back next week. It wasn't easy, but I did it: I breathed in. I accepted the compliment, and I said thank you.

Thank you.

A Short Message About Acting Class

Reasonably successful Acting Class at the NVT tonight. I say reasonably because it's always difficult to tell. The classes are purely 'drop in', meaning that they always cater for all levels of practitioner and performer - the most confident actor, and the most nervous beginner. Add to that mix the fact that some people will want to play the same improv games again and again, while others will want to progress further and further, and you have a great deal of variables to contend with, looking around at a room of faces, unable to decipher they are pale from fear, lethargy, or the British summer.

So, all that said, it was a pretty good workshop, with lots of good responses and ideas from the fairly large group of NVT members we had tonight. I tried not to rely too heavily on improv this time around, partially because I'll be doing a series of NVT improv workshops in January (and hopefully some elsewhere in Hove later this year), but also because I want to see if there's anything else I'm capable of. I'm not sure what's going on there: I don't consider myself particularly confident in many aspects of my life, but when it comes to theatre - whether it's as an actor, writer or director (most often as director) I'm not very skilled at being complacent. I'm fully aware that that sounds like a 'humblebrag' - it's not meant to. Partially because I'm not always sure how successful I am pushing past my comfort zone, but also because it almost always makes me sick: with the last three three things I've directed, I've woken up in the middle of the night, wanting to run away from it all, wondering why on
Earth I ever suggested it in the first place. I include the third of the productions in this list, despite it won't even happen until May next year.

Actually, that's not entirely true. The three productions I'm talking about were 'my' productions - 'Four Play', 'Medea', and the as yet untitled play in next years Brighton Festival Fringe - but I didn't include 'Three Kinds Of Me', which I haven't (yet) ran away from, , possibly because I was invited to direct it (as opposed to asking to do so), although, thinking about it, that should probably put even more pressure on me. Perhaps I won't think about it quite so much.

Comfort Zone

Preparing for the first in a new series of Acting Classes that kick off tonight at the NVT (New Venture Theatre), and they're something of a new direction for me. Usually, my emphasis in these classes has been improvisation, partially because that's where I've had a great amount of experience in the past few years, but also because I've discovered that a reasonable amount of people have a fear of what they consider 'proper' acting - all that business with scripts, and learning lines, and suchlike.

Of course, just as many people have a fear of improv - this idea that you could be mad enough to walk onto a space - in front of people who are watching (and, in your mind at least, judging) you with absolutely no idea of what you're going to say next. For some of us, that's very liberating - at at the core of what we consider acting to be,whether there's a learned script involved or not - the simple idea of not going in with too many pre-conceived ideas, and remembering the joy of actually listening to the other people on stage. Done well, it doesn't matter if you have no idea what to do next: if you simply listen, then all you need to do is to react honestly to what the other person or people are doing on stage - it works as a wonderful cheat, since you'll never really have to think too hard about what to do next.

Doing workshops, ironically, is how I first became involved with the NVT. Ironic because I was somewhat scared of joining for a couple of years. Like, I suspect, far too many people, my acting degree resulted in one, single emphatic thing: the fact that I did no form of acting whatsoever for about seven years. I was living in Worthing at the time, and if there was a thriving theatrical scene in that town, I wasn't aware of it. There was in Brighton, though, and I began to take an interest - firstly via the excellent drop-in improv workshops held weekly by the Maydays (that's how that interest started), but then, eventually, a returning hankering to start acting again. I also knew that I wanted to revive a thing that I'd written at college (an early, half-hour version of Four Play), but I also knew that I couldn't simply rock up to a local theatre company and ask to direct my own script.

There were two theatre groups that took my interest - the Brighton Little Theatre, and the NVT. I circled them both, for quite some time - the fact that I hadn't acted for a while had knocked my confidence somewhat. The NVT held its regular Monday night classes as a way of easing in the less confident, but somehow even that felt too scary. It's always different when you're on the outside, looking in. I'd convinced myself that I wasn't good enough (whereas for the past four years, I've been working very hard at convincing everyone else that I'm not good enough).

Around this time, however, I was holding theatre workshops myself, for young actors. It was this that prompted a friend of mine to ask if I'd ever considered holding workshops for adults. I tend to say yes to offers like this when asked (whereas I don't tend to be very good at creating those offers for myself), and that was essentially how, despite the fact that I didn't feel brave enough to attend a theatre workshop at the NVT, I found myself actually running them for a while. Odd how things work out.

And so, that's who tonight's workshop - and the ones that follow over the next five weeks - are for. People like me, who don't feel that confident with their drama skills, who often feel that they've got nothing new to bring to the table. This is a fear that's shared by experienced and obviously talented performers as well as those who've never delivered a line of script in their lives - in fact, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the more you learn about acting - it can appear that you know less and less.

So, that's the aim of these workshops, then: stick with me, and by the end, you won't know a damn thing.