Finding Viola

I had an incredible rehearsal last Friday.  It was so incredible (as was the weekend that followed) that I have been unable/unwilling to write about it until now.

But now I have homework looming in front of me and a script to go over (because my first theatre mentor said: Go over your script every every day) so, of course, now is the best time to write about it!

The rehearsal started off with just myself and the director.  People think auditions are nerve wracking, and they are, but one on ones with the director are, in my opinion, even scarier; however that could just be me and my fear of disappointing people, so let's move on, shall we?

We started with the characterization of Viola/Cesario.  My director (I'll just refer to him as D from now on, it's easier that way.  #lazy typist).... where was I?  Right.  D had me stand on stage in a neutral position and then had me characterize Viola from the ground up.  She stands with the weight on the balls of her feet, leaning forward a bit.  She's curious and interested in people; she wants to help them.  Her hands are clasped in front of her, right in front of the stomach.  She's an optimist and tries to think well of all she meets.  Her head is slightly cocked to the right; she listens to people, and is often amused by what she hears.

Viola came to me quite easily, which is odd, because for most of the play I am not Viola, I am Cesario. I had a lot of trouble with Cesario, and I still don't think I have him fully.  This is Viola's attempt at being a man.  At first I tried doing a John Wayne impression, but that didn't really fit the setting (1920s), nor did it fit the lines.  Cesario retains Viola's love and interest in people, but she is able to be much more active and vocal as Cesario.  I will continue to work on the characterization, but I do know a few things.  The head tilt goes away; Cesario holds his head up high, except when he's around the duke, then it's bowed down a bit.  His hands are either in front of his thighs or crossed.  The shoulders are broad and the pelvis is thrust slightly.  Now, this is probably not how a normal man would walk, but I'm doing a woman's caricature of a man.  It's difficult, but I think I'm settling into it.

After that exercise, we started in on Viola's big speech.  It begins "I left no ring with her.  What means this lady?"  As I was saying it, we did another exercise that is probably my favorite thing to do in the theatre.  D would snap his fingers and I would have to change from Viola to Cesario or vice versa.  So much fun!  It helped me find places in the monologue where Viola is channeling Cesario and when she is being honest.  I've taken that exercise and applied it to the entire play, so now I have a much better idea of when I'm totally committed to the role of Cesario and when I let him slip and show Viola.

After that, Olivia and Orsino came in and we worked the two wooing scenes and the two scenes where Orsino sends me to woo her.  All four of those improved by leaps and bounds!  We cleaned up the blocking and did some serious character work.  I found that Viola has empathy for Olivia, she too lost a brother.  Viola understands Olivia's mourning, and she also envies it, because Viola cannot mourn.  She doesn't have that luxury.  And in the second tete-a-tete with Orsino, I school the heck out of him.  D made me sit for most of the scene and have Orsino stand, and I rule him with my lines.  Even though I'm sitting for a few moments I have complete control and teach him a lesson he sorely needs.  It is absolutely amazing!

And now the guilt of ignored homework as grown too great, so I must depart and be studious.  Cheerio!

Short and Sweet

Well, we got the cuts to the script.  All our hearts, including the director's, were bleeding as we went through them.  Cutting Shakespeare is difficult and painful, but it is necessary sometimes.  In our case, the director wanted it cut to 90 minutes.  That's a lot of discarded lines.  Painful, but necessary.  It was interesting to see the reactions as he read out the cuts.  Some people were relieved that they now had less to memorize, but the true ones were sad as they went over all the wonderful lines that they weren't going to say.  It may seem kind of silly, but certain lines are simply fun to say, whether it be the emotion behind them, the action or reaction to the line, or the wording and phrasing of a line.  Some lines are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.  'Twas well writ.

Since yesterday's rehearsal was just about getting the cuts down so that everyone knew what was going on, today's rehearsal has all the meat on it, though, I'm afraid that meat is a bit lean.

We only have about three weeks until the show is up and running (heart attacks happening now!) so we're getting into the nitty gritty details, only they're not quite nitty and gritty yet.  We have to have awkward and slightly repetitive details before you can upgrade to nitty gritty.

Today was an odd day for me.  I wasn't sure if I was "on" or "off."  I certainly gave everything I did my all, but I sometimes think that I could have done a better job, especially IIv.  That scene is going to kill me.  I thought the scene in IV... scene iii I think...was going to be difficult, but it's the Wooing of Olivia that is the hardest to encompass.  I could probably rant and rave about something for a while, but I'm getting tired, so goodnight!

The Important Things

I learned two very important things in rehearsal today.

1.) White men can't jump, but green men can. (Hulk saving Iron Man in The Avengers)
2.) Wolverine, due to his regenerative powers, needs no restorative period after coitus.

This is what happens when you give a bunch of nerdy actors an indefinite break during rehearsal.  From Batman to the X-men, from Mass Effect to Star Wars, we covered everything and anything.  Nerds usually get animated when talking about nerdom, and actors get animated over anything anytime, anyplace, anywhere.  I'll leave it to your imaginations to picture how we raved and gesticulated.

Our director actually had to call us back to rehearsal twice before we responded, and rebuked us once for rowdiness onstage, but he wasn't annoyed.  A play is only as strong as it's cast, to play on an old phrase, and a cast cannot be strong without bonding.  And nothing bonds geeks more than arguing over canons, or commiserating about tri-colored endings.

But onto the actual meat of yesterday's and today's rehearsal.

Yesterday was a large step forward for me, because I finally started to internalize the Viola that our director envisioned, instead of the stereotypical self-righteous woman that I turn to when characterizing.  It never ceases to amaze me how difficult it is to play characters simply, freed from all the method-acting detritus that supposedly makes "real" characters.  No one comes to the theatre to see an actor feel.  That would be a boring, pointless production.  Not only would the play be tedious and overwrought, but the acting would be horrendous.  You can't play 'sad,' anymore than you can play 'happy' or 'angry.'  Emotions are not created in a vacuum, they are born out of relations with other people.  The best way to go about finding your character is to listen to what the other people on stage are saying.  Listen and React.  The emotions that come from your character's reaction to what the other characters are saying are going to be much more true than those coming from a complicated process of dredging up personal memories from the depths of your psyche and torturing yourself until you feeeeeeel the character.

But, let us move away from my soap box towards tonight's rehearsal.  We have blocked the entire play now, blocking the last act tonight.  During the final scene, we stumbled upon a passage that confused both the actors and the director.  It is the speech of Orsino's directly after he has been spurned by Olivia.  It is very exaggerated and stuffed with flowery language of how Orsino will kill that which he loves as a sacrifice to the "raven with the heart of a dove."  The actor playing Orsino delivered the speech with such vitriol that I suddenly realized he was talking about killing Cesario/Viola, since Olivia loves him/her.  I asked the director (because it isn't polite to question your fellow actors about characterization) if Orsino was indeed plotting to kill me.  Rehearsal came to a bit of a standstill as the three of us, myself, Orsino, and the director, tried to puzzle out the meaning of those lines.  We finally came to the conclusion that Orsino isn't actually trying to kill Cesario/Viola, but rather having a reaction (hey wasn't I just talking about reacting earlier?) to the spurns of Olivia in front of the court, almost as if he's having a tantrum.  Even so, the director promised that we three would get together to work on that little part of the scene.

The last thing of note that happened in tonight's rehearsal is that I was struck by how important blocking is to the effectiveness of a scene.  In the downtime when we were waiting for some late actors to arrive, (early is on time, on time is late, late means you're fired!) our director had Orsino and I run through the latter part of II,iv, where Orsino sends me to Olivia's for the third and final time.  When we had run through it a few days earlier we had both been standing close to one another and it was awkward for the both of us.  Today he started out by having us stand on separate edges of the stage, but stopped about five lines into the scene.  It was simply a bad staging:  it looked wrong; it felt wrong; it was simply wrong.  Then he had Orsino begin by sitting and motioning him to join me.  As I joined Orsino on the floor, something clicked for us and the scene took off.  The emotions and lines flowed freely and the rest of the movement was born out of those natural emotions.  It was a magical moment as, for the first time, we started to see the play truly come to life.

Well, that's it for the first week of rehearsals.  We'll be getting the cuts to the play soon.  That will be interesting....

Until next time!

Occam's Theatrical Razor

One of the problems I encounter when I embark upon characterization is that I tend to overcomplicate things.  I also tend to fall into two types.  I usually begin with a strong, angry woman, or a tortured, despondent woman.  Now, there is nothing wrong with these types, though there are many more out there, but I begin the play and the scenes at a zenith already.  I have nowhere to go, no growth to accomplish.  This rehearsal tonight was a step away from that pitfall of mine, and into a much better way to work on character.

Occam's Razor is a philosophical idea or premise or whatever they call it, that roughly states that when faced with multiple explanations, the simplest answer is the best and most acceptable.  I need to apply this thinking when I approach my characters.  I clutter the lines with overwrought and complicated emotions, losing the main focus of the scene.

For example, one of the scenes we worked on today was the "wooing of Olivia" scene, where Viola, dressed as Cesario, and Olivia meet for the first time.  When I auditioned and cold read this scene, I played it full of mournful sighs to the audience, completely wrapped up in the misery of Viola having to woo a woman for the man that she loves.  My director thankfully stripped all that fluff away and gave me a very clear goal: Stick to the plan.  Viola has written and memorized a nice speech and she is going to say it to Olivia come hell or high water.  That is her goal, her motivation.  She doesn't get her goal in end, but that's another story.  My director's way of doing makes so much more sense then the way I originally approached it, because last night we had already established that Viola, far from being completely in love with Orsino by the end of Act One, is just beginning to admit her feelings for Orsino.  Orsino has sent Viola to woo, and, for respect, friendship, and the beginnings of love, Viola has decided that she will woo with all her might.

With the new motivation, that scene, which I thought was going to be difficult is proving to be easier than I had imagined, though I shouldn't have worried, because I ran into a truly difficult scene during the last half-hour of rehearsal.  It's in Act II scene iv, the first part only, where Feste is singing to Orsino and his court.  I do not have any long and drawn out speeches, instead I have a few lines scattered throughout the scene.  I've always find that scenes where I speak less are always more difficult that scenes where I speak more.  Fewer lines means more work and thought for the actor, because the character doesn't have a speech or monologue to help clue us in to what they are feeling, they only have a few sentences, but in those few sentences they have to have a full character as if they were a soliloquy from Hamlet.  It will be a good challenge for me.

My director said something to me tonight that not only helped me figure out II,iv, but will also impact everything I do with Viola.  He told me that the hardest thing about Viola is not acting like she is concealing anything.  He told me that I shouldn't show the audience that I'm concealing a gender secret, I should actually conceal it, totally and completely.  I was showing the audience that I was concealing things, that was my whole idea behind Viola, that is what I did when I auditioned for her, and yet my director is having me go in a completely different direction.  He wants a funnier, less despondent Viola.  It makes me wonder why he picked me if my initial characterization was so far from what he wants...I don't know why, but I'm incredibly glad that he did.  This is proving to be a most amazing show and an incredible learning experience.

Plus, it's a barrel-full of fun!

A Classic Blunder to a Stronger Character

I have been cast as Viola in a production of 12th Night or What You Will (this is the only Shakespeare play with a double title, possibly because Ole Bill was making fun of a pretentious double-titled play that Ben Johnson as written a few months earlier.)

Anyway, this is exciting to me, and I enjoy writing about things that are exciting to me, so I'm going to write about my journey as I move through these rehearsals and discover the character of Viola.

Let us begin with an amusing anecdote.  It is the friday of the first week of rehearsal, and we are finally getting to move about and begin characterizing.  All of the actors sit in a circle and perform their scenes in the middle of the circle.  We're all having a blast and being generally ridiculous when ridiculosity (Shakespeare made up words and so can I) is called for.  The final scene approaches and Viola is finally reunited with her long lost twin brother Sebastian.  Sebastian and I are very emotional and excited by this scene, obviously.  There is a point when Viola cries out, "I am Viola."  I approach the line and pass it, but as soon as I say it, the entire cast falls down in laughter, leaving me standing in bewildered silence.  When someone finally tells me what I said, I join them on the stage floor in gales of laughter.  Instead of "I am Viola," I said, still completely in character, "I am Volivia!"  Thank you, ladies and gentleman, Volivia has left the building.

Amusing anecdote done with, let's get on into characterization.  My first thoughts about Viola without even looking at the script were that she is in love with Orsino and she is going to have a lot of fun double meanings in her lines, and will be exquisitely tortured by the love triangle between Orsino, herself, and Olivia.   I worked with these initial feelings and plastered my script, in pencil thank heavens, with notes about how this line was an admittance of love and this line was a double meaning, and this one was tortured, etc.  I even went as far as to change the punctuation of a line slightly so that I could make it seem like Viola already had a tiny crush on Orsino.

I went into the first big rehearsal tonight full of these wonderful thoughts.  Of course, by the end, they had all been tossed out and new ones put in their place.  I feel victim to one of the classic blunders, though at least I didn't go up against a Sicilian when death was on the line.....

Our director said two things during rehearsal today that resonated with me.  The first thing he said was that the lines that you speak should never be simple exposition.  This is true with all plays, but Shakespeare especially can become full of monotonous explanations if you don't put a personal emotion and reason behind everything you say.

The second thing our director said was a piece of advice that seems so self-evident, yet I had never thought about this before.  He told us that decisions should not be made off-stage.  They should be made onstage where the audience can see them.  Seems simple, right?  I've often found that the most helpful acting tips are the simplest things that you never manage to think of yourself.  I guess that's why we need teachers.

This might not seem like a big deal, but it completely changes how I play Viola.  Instead of starting Act I; scene v already in love with Orsino, I am now just discovering that I love him in this scene.  The other scenes I have will be a deeper discovery, understanding, and acceptance of this love, which gives me a fun and exciting character arch to play with!

The other scene we worked on tonight was I,ii, the first time the audience sees Viola.  I had originally cluttered it up with double meanings and the like, but our director quickly cleaned things up, making the scene about nothing more that Viola and her friend the captain trying to figure out how to survive in this strange land of Illyria.

The Viola that I started out with is very different from the Viola that came out tonight.  This Viola, the Viola that the director wants, is a lot more honest and straightforward than the Viola I had envisioned.  I think that this simplification of Viola will ultimately be better than my initial interpretation.  Simple and clear character choices always read better onstage than the convoluted drivel you create in the isolation of your home.  This is why rehearsals are so important.  No matter what you come up with outside before the rehearsal, afterwards, you almost always come out with something new.