So its now just over a week until the opening of our next production, Peter Gordon’s ‘Murdered To Death’ and it’s time to take stock. This production has been unusual in that a lot of the aspects of the show have been out of our control. That is not to say that we have no control over them as such, rather that we have no direct control over them. For example rehearsals… So far we have had only one rehearsal were the full cast has been present. Through no fault of their own we have struggled to get a full cast to turn out and poor Dot has had to step in an play any number of roles during the rehearsals. This of course doesn’t make for an ideal rehearsal as you really can’t get your ‘bounce’ from the person you should be playing against. It’s not the only problem we have had but is the most frustrating.
But it is this time that the show finally comes together and we build the set on sunday and get a chance to rehearse on the set for the first time shortly after. I love it when we first get the set together as I find that I really get into my character from that point.
Speaking of characters I was looking through some of my old essays and found one on the subject of first readings of scripts and the characters we create. I thought it might be useful to copy some of it here for you… I’d be interested in your comments.
“There are two things to remember about sight reading. One is that most people hate it, the other is that…. most people hate it!”
Sight reading is when you read aloud a script for the first time, having had no time to prepare and not knowing the story.
I got the guys to do an exercise; reading a portion of a script that they have never seen before. Once the monologue was finished we discussed what we had learned about the characters and their situations from their speech.
Actors are obsessed with working on their characters, developing the way the characters think, work, feel and look. They use Stanislavski’s ‘System’ and emotion memory to flesh out the character and make them real. The work endlessly for weeks to understand and become the character.
Yet it was clear from the discussion that we had picked up 90% of the characters qualities and traits, accurately, during a reading of only two minutes in length. A reading in which the actor had no chance to prepare or work on his character and didn’t even know the name of the play, the story, the characters accent, skin colour, social background or, in fact, anything.
Where the scripts so good that everything we needed was already there?
Was the actor that good that he or she imbued the character with the correct traits automatically?
The answer, for me, was probably a bit of both. Whilst it does somewhat make a mockery of the actors who spend years ‘working’ on a character it is, for me, a useful tool. If at the start of a new script I have a session of blind reading and then brainstorming the characters traits this can then be used as a base for the characters in the full play.
If we as readers find these traits in the characters when we first read them; then surely the audience on first seeing the play performed will see the same traits.
