Sometimes a script seems impenetrable and the greatest challenge for the actor is finding a way in. While there are many different approaches to discovering or making your own doorway, you should have several available to you so that you can get into any script.
The approach I want to suggest to you in this podcast is that you think of the script as a topographic map, filled with dramatic highs and lows and stretches of subtly shifting landscapes. You, the actor, are on your bicycle and riding through the landscape. To ride effectively, you must learn to read the map so that you can shift the gears correctly, to maximize your pedaling.
With this analogy in mind, read the script and think about what your character is going through and how you need to shift gears in each scene, to play moments or reach objectives. Thinking about the dramatic situation as a three dimensional landscape will help you to see how often you have to switch gears as an actor. It will help to keep you from playing all your scenes in one gear and it will highlight the importance of tempo-rhythm in your acting. Suddenly, the speed and syncopation of the character and of each moment will make more sense when it is played out in movement through space.
Actors, like bike riders, must constantly be shifting gears. The character achieves a goal and a shift happens. A character changes strategy or responds to something new and you have to shift the gears to move onto the next moment. Actors, who act in a single gear, with a single tempo-rhythm through the scenes and script, are boring.
“Our movement in time is much more similar to movement in space than we are accustomed to imagine.”—Jaan Kross, writer.
Eric Barr. All rights reserved
