As students are working through our scene work (we’re working on “Key Exchange” by Kevin Wade), we are coming up against the inevitable problem of remembering the text while still maintaining contact and connection with your partner. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call the text our “enemy”, it is certainly true that text, even at the best of times, can serve to get in the way of the moment. Even when actors are completely comfortable with the words, simply the knowledge of where the scene is going or what the other person is going to say can be enough of a reason to stop listening to what is happening around you. The scenework we’re doing in class tries to show students how to move the focus from remembering and saying words back and forth to each other towards actually working off of each other the way we would do in a repetition exercise.

To that end, we use repetition exercises when working on scenes. After doing the first reading, students are asked to go off and memorize the scene. There are various ways of doing this, but the best ways are ones that don’t impose any one way of saying the lines (ie, it’s bad if you always emphasize one word in a phrase). How you say the line will come from what your partner is doing in the moment and how that works into the circumstances that you are living out. When the partners come to work again, we can start with something that looks like a first reading, but when one partner says something that the other person doesn’t believe (and that happens when the person who’s speaking is only doing so because that’s what it says to do on the page: “oh, I’m supposed to say this bit of text now, so I’m going to say it” rather than in response to anything their partner is doing), the line or phrase gets repeated back and forth until it touches some true place in the person who’s line it is. Then the partners move on to the next line.

A variation on this would be using a repetition exercise to get into the scene. That is, start with a repetition exercise and forget about the text. When you are connected and working truthfully off of your partner, throw in a line of the text. It can be from anywhere in the text, just something that fits with what is going on in the moment. Repeat that line back and forth or, if it already causes a response in you, say the next line. As soon as one partner has to go up into his head to get the next line or to think of what should happen next or how you messed up, go back to behavior. Behavioral repetition will bring partners together and connect them. Text will tend to put you in your head and move you apart. Only say text, then, when you are connected and go back to behavior when you get disconnected.

This way, you will build up a habit of being connected all the time regardless of how the scene is supposed to go.

As we enter the last two weeks of the Spring Term, we have started working again on text. It is amazing how having the words you need to use with your partner given to you makes actually listening to what they have to say (and really saying what it is you have to say) so difficult.

Again and again, we come back to this: The contact with your partner is the most important thing. It is more important than the lines you have to say. It is more important than any accent or external characterization that you have thought up. It is far more important than how you think the scene “should” go. The contact with your partner, which you get from really putting your attention on him or her, really listening to what they say and how they say it, really picking up on their behavior even at its most subtle, will allow you to take the pressure off of how you’re saying the words.

With a script that is even remotely well written, when actors simply listen to each other and respond instinctively to each other, the scene comes alive. When we let that be at the foundation of the scene, then we always have a core truth to fall back on. Then on top of that core truth we can add all the bells and whistles which move the actors from a simple doing of the script to really performing it.

But without the foundation, the scene feels flat. It feels like work. It misfires and sputters like an engine that’s out of tune. It doesn’t feel like fun, like you’re on a roller coaster. It might even be boring to you to go through it!

So actors, when doing a scene (and there is a large portion of work that is technical and requires your intellect as well as your intuition that happens before you “do” the scene), forget about everything else but listening to your partner. They will give you everything you need!