Words That Don't Mean Anything

"What are you like to work with?"

It's a fair question. It's 90% of theater, right, is working together?

And yet, it can stump us. Especially when it arises unexpectedly.

Here are some WORDS we tend to use to describe ourselves and the way we work...words that mean little, if anything, unless you go into more detail. They came to mind, because it was a question R asked during auditions...again and again, we got the same two or three words thrown back by actors who were caught off-guard...

"Generous"

"Collaborative"

"Open"

"Play"

"Physical"

Good to have something more concrete than that, no?

What Do We Ask of the Actor?

This is something we did in our "Collaboration" class, back along, and of course everyone has different answers.  But how nice to hear, up front, the demands of a director -- and THEN decide whether you want to work in a process that makes those demands.  Here are several I heard recently:

1) That the actor be able to hear "that was terrible" and take it as an invitation to do better (parallels Halena Kays and the "rub dirt in it" school of acting).

2) That the actor, given 52 different ideas, come back with 52 BETTER ideas -- rather than freeze in the face of innovation.

3) That the actor take DIRECTION as a DARE -- that, given the impossible direction, he or she say "oh yeah?  Watch me!"

On Auditions

Attended auditions for the play I'm helping adapt.

Interesting to watch a very good, very smart director run his audition process.  And to see how actors respond to that.

R.P. says he looks to answer five questions during an audition:

1) Can the actor move?  What is the quality of his or her movement?

2) What is the quality of the actor's speaking voice?

3) What is that actor's emotionality/access to emotion?

4) What is this actor's relationship to RISK?

5) Who is the PERSON in the ROOM.

What was interesting to me is that there wasn't, necessarily, one "right answer" for these questions -- how much agility, vocal ability, emotionality or willingness to take risks might change, project to project or role to role.  But those five questions set up an interesting matrix within which to evaluate a potential collaborator.  Where R.P.'s process was new, at least to me, is that he has made explicit the variables in that matrix.

I wonder, what are the five questions we need answered, as playwrights, in order to find our collaborators?  What do directors or producers need of us?  What are our criteria, and how do we evaluate a potential partnership?

In talking to actors, he stressed that he wanted everyone clear on the following by the end of the process:

1) How does the ACTOR work.

2) How R.P. works.

3) When is the actor's "moment of crisis" within a rehearsal process, and how does he or she approach/move through that moment.