Crafty

"You need to straighten your posture and suck in your gut....
If you want to build cities, you've got to build roads."

--Cake, "Comanche," Motorcade of Generosity

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I'm writing this on Tuesday, a day after one of the best Mondays I've had in a long time. And it didn't begin with a cup of coffee or helping an old woman cross the street.

It began with work, oddly enough. Condensed three days of phone messages and emails into a solid two hours of answering questions and updating spreadsheets. Auditions for the upcoming season are full, so most of my replies are now in the "sorry but we do have a waiting list" variety. I've had to make a Word document just for that message. I copy and I paste and I replace names and dates.

Anyway, it felt good to do some office work after a weekend of auditions. The talent agency, by the way, has signed me on; I make the second interview tomorrow. I have about fifteen pages of paperwork to finish before my afternoon meeting--and I'll scour Facebook for pictures that could pass as glamor shots for their website. Along with membership comes a steep (but one-time) web fee, which I gather is essential as their clientele often hire from what they see online.

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Next came class. We have focused on monologues and improv, yet I realized we had done precious little stagework. That is, while we had played actor games and tweaked audition material, I had devoted no real time to techniques they can actually use in rehearsals (assuming, of course, that they will get into shows with their glorious, newly-tweaked audition monologues).

So, we had a blocking class. I asked them to sit facing the chalkboard and give me twenty minutes to teach them how to write down their blocking. Nothing too complex--just marking crosses with Xs, the directions on the stage (SR, SL, USR, DSC, etc.), and levels. I quizzed them briefly just to make sure they got the concept. Then we put the papers away and I set blocks, tables and chairs out as if in a hotel lobby, and I went through the set and labeled each place. "This chair represents a fireplace," I said, "and this table is actually a stove." And so forth.

One by one, I had actors come up for an exercise. I would start the actor in a unique spot, doing a unique thing--far upstage and staring out the window, or down a level behind the couch, etc.--and give them 4-5 blocking instructions. Then I would let them walk through their blocking, just to review. They next had to create a character, conflict, and story using only their blocking as a guide. The audience guessed at what was going on, and based on whether anyone got it right, the actor would repeat the scene, trying to make everything clearer. The kids seemed to enjoy it, and I started having fun with it, too. I took an abandoned slipper, called it a dead fish, placed it in the middle of the stage, and made it part of one kid's blocking to pick up the "fish" and put it in his hat. I made one kid jump on the couch before suddenly running to hide behind the table. What they came up with were brilliant flashes of imagination, completely in-the-moment creations based only on movement and stage position.

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After my regular class, I got to work with the kids who are doing an abbreviated version of a famous musical (because of royalty rights, I cannot say which). These are the older, more advanced kids at the camp, so I felt that I could do more with them in a shorter period of time. They had spent countless hours working on vocals and dancing, but in the process their acting had been overlooked. It happens often--too often, in my opinion--in musical theatre, that the musical part of it gets all the attention, while the theatre aspect gets dropped or lost.

So we played.

I began by telling them they could sit anywhere in the room--on any platform, in any seat, anywhere on the stage--and that they should feel comfortable. I told them what I thought about the show they're doing, what I sought to accomplish, and that I was counting on them to give everything their full effort in the next hour.

First, I had them do a simple centers exercise, borrowed from something we did in a college acting class. They walked around the space casually and I would call out body parts that they would then lead with. I told them to pay attention to what their body naturally did, and how they naturally felt. For example, when I yelled out, "Lead with your head!" they dropped their heads forward, their walks quickened, their brows furrowed and they felt like they were looking for something, etc. We led with heads, chins, foreheads, chest, alternating breasts (that is, with each step, the opposite pectoral leads), stomachs, hips, hips-and-hands, and knees. Then we talked about it.

When I told them to apply a center or lead to their character, it was obvious to me that they had never before considered the physicality of their roles. And it made me a little sad.

Second, I had them assume their characters and decide what body part they would choose to lead. They could walk at their own pace but were not allowed to talk to anyone else. I had them freeze and lock eyes with someone across the room. I told them that they were insanely jealous of that person, and when I unfroze them, they needed to behave accordingly. I repeated the freeze several times, having them choose different characters to relate to each time, with various situations. For example, "You are now terribly in love with that person," or, "You want that person to know you are better than them." They would have to communicate such things without words. We talked about this exercise afterwards as well.

Third--and this was the last thing we had time for--I had them pair up as their characters and tell the story of the musical from that character's perspective. I switched up the pairs three times so that they would have the experience of improvising with different members of the cast, or more precisely, with different characters. I wanted them to think about their relationships, which again was something they didn't seem to have worked on at all.

When it was time to go, I told them that I hoped they could take something away from the class, and that they would continue to use improvisation as a tool for out-of-rehearsal character development. I encouraged them to eat lunch the next day as their characters, even if only for a minute. And so on. I think they actually might take something valuable away from the class, and that, too, made me feel damn good.

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Other things happened yesterday, too, but I don't really remember them. It was a good day to be an acting teacher.