Shakespeare Festival

Last night we went to the - wait for it - Otago Regional Festival of the Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand University of Otago Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival. Yeah, I know, quite a mouthful.

Basically it's the regional part of the finals that will take place in Wellington at the National Festival later this year. 48 of the young actors chosen to represent NZ then go on to work together for a week in the National Shakespeare Schools Production. I wrote about this last year, when the NSSP week was held in Dunedin. And then 24 of those actors are invited to go to the Globe in London for a two and a half week intensive course with actors, directors and back stage staff. They finish up doing a performance there.

I hadn't been to the regional festival before, and of course the standard varies quite a bit compared to the productions that are presented in the NSSP. The performances are either five minutes or fifteen minutes (roughly). The five minutes, I think (I missed out on getting a programme), are generally directed by the students themselves. The fifteen minute ones are directed by drama teachers in the schools.

As I say, I didn't have a programme, so I can't name names, but I wanted to make a few comments. Overall the standard was high, and there were some wonderful moments of pure theatre, and some laugh-out-loud moments. Shakespeare still cuts the mustard.

There were also scenes in which actors, having learned their lines, spoke them at such speed that not an actual word could be heard, or ranted them in such a way that the sense was lost. Part of the learning curve, I guess. Shakespeare just needs to be spoken; he does all the work for you. Speak it clearly and we'll all hear it and (mostly) understand it.

And some actors were on the move the whole time - I'm not going to focus on any particular performances in this regard, because too much movement is something the directors need to deal with. Actors can be just as intense standing still as moving. On the other hand, standing still in a line saying a couple of pages of dialogue is the other extreme, as happened in one piece.

But there were many wonderful things: the four boys doing the scene from Love's Labour's Lost, in the equivalent of a messy student flat. Hugely energetic (one lad leaping straight up into the air and into a large box; quite a gymnastic feat), and very entertaining. The French/English lesson from Henry V was done absolutely wonderfully, with the French being spoken as fluently by the two actresses as was the broken and battered English. And the young man playing Henry did a great job too. The background actors in this piece were also wonderfully on the mark, and the costumes and props were excellent.

The incredible fight scene from Romeo and Juliet, with Tybalt and Mercutio throwing each other off the stage onto the floor of the theatre, narrowly missing a chair that had already been tossed down there, and leaping up and down onto the stage again in the course of it.

A very much over the top performance of Pyramus and Thisbe from A Midsummer Night's Dream; it was almost too over the top but managed to maintain the balance. A good strong performance of the Brutus/Cassius scene from Julius Caesar. Quite a difficult piece to do without the context of the rest of the play.

An intriguing performance of a scene from The Tempest in which a very athletic-looking Prospero berated Ariel (continually bowing down and slithering around the stage; one time in which all the movement was justified). Prospero's make-up was crazy, and yet it worked.

These are the stand-out performances that come to mind immediately. I may remember more as the day goes on, in which case I'll add them into the post.

You can see some photos from last night's performances on the ODT website. 

Michael Caine on learning lines

I read a small book by Michael Caine called Acting in Film over the holidays. It was timely, as I'm due to start rehearsals in another play in a couple of weeks. What's that got to do with acting in a film, you might ask. Quite a lot, as it happens. Certainly there are differences, but in one respect in particular Mr Caine offers some excellent advice, and that's about learning lines. What he has to say may not be everyone's view, but I found it helpful.

The first thing of note is this: The first step in preparation is to learn your lines until saying them becomes a predictable reflex. And don’t mouth them silently; say them aloud until they become totally your property. Hear yourself say them, because the last thing you want is the sound of your own voice taking you by surprise or not striking you as completely convincing. If you can’t convince yourself, the chances are that you won’t convince the character opposite you, or the director. You’re your first best audience long before anybody else hears you. So don’t be an easy audience. Keep asking for more. I learn lines on my own; I never have anyone read. Nevertheless, I try to learn lines as dialogue, as logical replies to what someone else has said or as a logical response to a situation. You’ll never find me going down the page with an envelope, blocking out my own speech and revealing the one before because it then becomes nothing more than “cues” and “speeches.” If you haven’t grasped the logic of why you say a particular thing, you won’t say it properly or convincingly. And if your thoughts aren’t linked to what you’re saying, then you won’t be able to say a line as if you invented it on the spot. So you must be familiar with the whole conversation, not just your own bits. One of the most crucial jobs you’ll have as an actor will be to know what you’re thinking when you’re not talking.

I've found as I've got older that fluency is something I struggle with, that sense of being able to say the line without stumbling over a particular word. Caine writes here that the lines need to become a predictable reflex, your 'property.' He notes elsewhere in the book that the difference between working on stage and working in movies is that the stage actor learns more about his part as he goes through rehearsals, but a movie actor is expected to turn up on the first day of the shoot and get on with the job as though he'd been rehearsing for months. But I've found more and more that if I know my lines in advance, before I start rehearsal, I feel much more confident. Of course, if it's a big part and you've only been informed that you've got the part a little while before rehearsals start, then you may still be getting the lines under your belt once you start rehearsing. However, with this current part (which is a small one) I'm going to aim to have my lines learnt before we start rehearsing. It boosts the confidence enormously, and that's something Caine is all for doing.

He adds: Say your lines aloud while you’re learning them until you find what strikes you as the best possible expression of that particular thought. If there are plausible variations, develop them, practice them, too; but keep them up your sleeve. If the director rejects your brilliant interpretation, you’re not left in a blank state of horror. You've already imagined and prepared other reactions to demonstrate. And most important, you’ve allowed for some element of malleability in your performance. Give your best reading as if it were the only one possible; but your mind should be hanging loose enough to take a leap, if necessary. For the moment, go with the line readings that seem to you the most valid. It may take some doing, but once the thought process is right, the words will follow. So much of it really is a matter of repetition, of saying the lines over and over again until you’re sick of them; until someone can give you a cue, and you can say, feel, and react to the whole cycle of events, including those related to everyone else’s parts. That confidence is your safeguard against terror. Otherwise, in the tension of the close-up, when you’re standing there and someone is saying, “Quiet! Turn over! Speed! Action!” you may well go, “To bum or not to bim, that is the question!”

Of course the stage actor doesn't have anyone insisting you say the thing correctly from the word go, but some directors do make you tense, and if your preparation of the lines is sound, then at least you won't be forgetting the lines because some other aspect of the rehearsal has upset your equilibrium. Anyway, even as an amateur, it's good to have a professional attitude. 

He also writes: It may sound like a contradiction, but you achieve spontaneity on the set through preparation of the dialogue at home. As you prepare, find ways of making your responses appear newly minted, not preprogrammed. In life, we often pick up the thought that provokes our next remark halfway through someone else’s speech. Thoughts don’t leap to the mouth automatically. We don’t interrupt at every occasion when a thought formulates itself; or, if we do, we don’t have many friends. Similarly, in a film script, your internal thought processes might well start articulating themselves long before you get the chance to speak. The script sometimes directs you to interrupt, but if it doesn’t, your thought may start well before you get a chance to respond. There may be a key word that triggers you during the sentence the other actor is saying. So pick up on that; form your thought and be ready to speak. For example: Other Actor: I’ve got to get a bus to Clapham—I’m already late for my date. You: You won’t get far. There’s a bus strike. The other actor doesn’t stop talking after he says “bus,” so you can’t get in and say your line at the actual moment of thought recognition. But when you hear the key word “bus,” from that point on you know what you’re going to say directly after he stops. You can show this by your reaction. And that bit of acting can only come from serious listening.

This is good advice altogether, but again the important thing for me is that achieving of spontaneity by being thoroughly prepared. And part of preparation is trying out all sorts of ways of saying the line, so that it doesn't sound stale. 

There are a host of other things in the book that apply not just to film acting but to acting in general, and I think any actor could benefit from it.  

Acting in Films

Acting in Film: An Actor's Take on Movie Making by Michael Caine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a shorter book than I expected. Nevertheless, it has a great deal of valuable advice, especially for actors working in the movies. I don't anticipate doing this myself in the near future, but I do a bit of acting on stage (as an amateur) and some of what Caine says here is applicable to that. I like his basic down to earth approach, no frills, just good solid hard work. It's his professionalism that shines through in this book. Don't think of being an actor (a professional one, anyway) if you're not prepared to give your all to the time you're being paid to work.
He's helpful with learning lines, and with working on a character; while he's not a method actor, his 'method' is sound and useful. He's very helpful in making the distinction between stage work and screen work. There are still very good stage actors who get caught out when they first work in a movie.
The book started life as transcripts from a masterclass Caine did, which explains it's rather bitsy style. However, it's a good little book for actors, and I'm certainly glad to have come across it.

View all my reviews

Learning lines, and memorizing

I've mentioned recently that I was playing a part in the play Hamp, put on by Stageworks in Dunedin at the Playhouse.

With this play, and the one I did last year - The Sunshine Boys - I found something curious had happened to my learning of lines. In previous plays I've had to work endlessly hard to retain the lines, and even then not felt very secure. But with these two plays, once the lines have been learned, they're secure, and only a distraction (such as happened one night during Hamp) puts me off saying the right thing in the right place.

This is curious, because by rights, you'd think, being now at an exalted age, it ought to be harder for me to learn lines. And I'm not aware that I've changed my approach to learning them, except in one respect: I work through them one at a time until I can do a page or so of them from memory. Then I read the cue from the other actor, (either out loud or in my head) and (with my line covered up) recite my own line.

I learned the lines for Sunshine Boys very quickly with this 'method' last year, and the lines for Hamp came pretty quickly too, although, as always, there were one or two that remained sticky until late in the proceedings. But I didn't feel perturbed about that. I knew they'd come.

So maybe it's just a gain in confidence. Seems unlikely; I've been reasonably confident on stage these last ten years or so.

I do insist on one thing: that the lines are learned as they're written. If this isn't done, it's too easy to veer off course. You'd think that all actors (amateur actors, I'm talking about here) would learn the lines that the author gives them, but some don't. They have a tendency to partly learn them, and then, of course, they find themselves in trouble on stage, and have to paraphrase. The mind has the extraordinary ability to paraphrase, to substitute words with similar meanings, if we get into any trouble. But I prefer not to rely on that, and it's not ideal. It can be off-putting for other actors waiting on a particular cue.

Anyway, that's one aspect of memorisation. The other is that the only other thing I've really memorised over the last year or so is Psalm 119, that great hulk of a work with 176 verses, and a huge amount of similar lines. With this Psalm I had to use all the techniques I could think of to hold it together in my head. I got it to the point where I could recite it through, last year, left it alone for a while, and have been revising it this year, reinforcing things, and checking that I'm actually saying the right words in the right places.

The interesting thing is that even though I'd left it alone for a few months, the basic structural approach I'd taken to learning it survived, and kept the piece mostly in my head. Some details had wandered, and had to be pulled back into line, but having done that, the thing is once again on a secure footing. Furthermore, I'm now able to get past the techniques and listen to the words themselves, something that was quite hard to do when I was learning it.

A few days ago I wrote myself a note: now is not the time to give up memorising. I've memorised Scripture and poetry for years, mostly during the half hour walk I took to work in the mornings. But I haven't revised a lot of that material for some time, and the other day I felt it was time to put the revision work in and get some of those things back into my system.

I started with Hebrews chapter 12, something I learned many years ago. To my surprise, it was basically still intact, once I'd run through it a few times; the lines that had seemed hard to get under my belt all those years ago came back without too much effort, and already I'm feeling as though it's well within my grasp again.

The joy of memorising things is that you really get to know them. We can read something over and over and still find that we skim bits, or ignore some things. Once you start to memorise, you have to learn every word, and learn it right. This does something very good for the soul...

More on memorising

I’ve started getting to grips with memorising Psalm 119 again – verses 65-72 are mostly under my belt, though they need regular revision to make sure things stick.  Only another 100 verses or so to go - and strictly speaking I've memorised the last stanza in the past, so hopefully I'll be able to dredge up some of what I learned again when I come to it. 

I’m starting to feel I’m getting to grips with the meaning as well.  I’m not sure why it should be that when you learn lines in a play you pretty much get the meaning from early on, but with learning Psalms or other Scriptures, it’s an altogether slower process.  I guess there’s a kind of distance at first, as with any reading of Scripture, and it takes the work of the Holy Spirit to put that meaning into it so that you gain an understanding.  The words themselves are clear enough, usually; it’s the feeling that it relates to me particularly, as opposed to being general stuff on a page, that takes time. As well as this, the peculiar tricks and techniques that are required (at my age, anyway) to learn the stuff in the first place means that it’s quite a time before you get hold of what you’ve actually learned as having meaning; for quite a while you’re still struggling to hold the mnemonics in place, and often they’re distracting as far as the meaning is concerned.   

And of course Psalm 119 is particularly difficult because initially, and for quite some time after, it seems as though there isn’t much connection between one verse and another – even between one line and another in many cases.

In relation to memorising a play script, I came across this in a book called Acting Skills by Hugh Morrison, on page 116. 

Older actors in particular should make an early start on learning, as age makes memorising lines harder, and all actors should find time in rehearsal to take notes of any useful and important points that arise.  Some find it useful to write out a paraphrase of a scene's content, the character's intention, situation and progression of emotion.  Learning lines is an actor's basic chore and it's sensible to learn moves at the same time, to gain physical freedom as soon as possible.  Difficult business with props, dancing, fights must be worked at from an early stage of rehearsal.  Don't lay down your script till you are reasonably sure of the lines, as someone being prompted every other line is tiresome for the entire company.  Long speeches in particular need early examination; how much do they advance the action of the play?  How do they deepen our understanding of the character?  What reaction does the speech produce in other characters?  What is the climactic point of the speech or the most important thing said?  This mini-drama is the actor's equivalent of an aria, and must be examined for its variety of tempo and tnoe, after some discussion with the director.  

Actors rehearsing, courtesy of thirdage.com

I'd agree with all of this, in principle, although trying to learn complicated moves and hold a script at the same time can be very frustrating.  For me, I think, it's better to have the lines firmly in your head - as least as far as you can - before the director starts getting into too much detail.  It's just as annoying for other actors to have someone constantly referring to their script when they're trying to work from learnt lines as it is to have someone constantly being prompted because they haven't learnt their lines thoroughly enough to get through more than a few lines at once. 

But I'd agree most of all in this paragraph with the opening statement: '...age makes memorising lines harder..'  There's no doubt about this, and what's worse, you lose fluency with age.  You can say the lines at home when there's no pressure, but trying to put them across fluently in rehearsal can become a real trial.  In the last two plays I've been involved with, I've managed to put the script down much earlier than in the past, basically by saying to myself that the sooner I free myself from the script the more relaxed I'll be about speaking the lines without it.  And it's worked.  Certainly there are times when everything suddenly goes in rehearsal, or lines get themselves thoroughly tangled.  But these situations are normal enough.  Having the confidence to say to yourself that you can do without the script improves your concentration on the other actors' work, and on the director's instructions, and gives you a sense of freedom that's lacking when you have the supposed security of the script in hand. It's the way I'd work again, if anyone ever asks me to act in another play!

Round up of the week

I keep thinking it's Saturday.  In fact, it's Friday.  (Well, it's actually Thursday for a great many people in the world, but we won't go into that.)  I don't know why I keep thinking it's Saturday: perhaps it's because it's the first day this week when I haven't been committed to do something specific, something that takes up enough of the day to make it feel as though I'm actually busy.  (I am, but we won't go into that either.)

Monday I accompanied Arnold Bachop at Les Cleveland's funeral, at First Church.  I hadn't seen much of Les in recent years, but when I was younger we had a good deal to do with each other when he was singing in various shows I was involved in.  His extraordinary buoyancy and delight in life was spoken of again and again, and when someone said that they heard him climbing up the steps into a plane and saying, And how are you, my fine friend, that old Cleveland vibrant bass came back to me instantly.  I've been addressed as his fine friend on a number of occasions, as no doubt has half of Dunedin.  What an extraordinary larger-than-life personality he was.  How it makes you feel that your own funeral is going to be a bit of a non-affair!

Normally on Monday afternoon I'd have been working with the Choristers, a group of elderly ladies who sing and give the occasional concerts at old people's homes. But we had to cancel this week's practice because of the funeral.

Tuesday we went to see Social Welfare to sort out the money we've made in the last financial year over and above what we're allowed to earn on top of the pension.  That was a bit stressful, even though we were pretty sure of the outcome.  It didn't take up a great deal of the day; nevertheless, it used up a good deal of our emotional energy, I suspect. 

Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday: in the evenings I've been rehearsing The Sunshine Boys, along with various members of the cast.  Some scenes are going very well; one that was going well fell over on Thursday, for no accountable reason.

Wednesday I met up with one of the members of the church's youth group, for lunch, and then went on to do some data input for the church office, only to find that some of the input I'd put in last time had gone AWOL and had to be put back in, and that after I'd input the recent data, I was left with $2.00 out.  Very annoying, and I couldn't solve it at the time.  Will have to have another look.

Thursday, I played for Arnold again, and for Peter Chin, also an old friend, and up until fairly recently, the Mayor of Dunedin.  (Oh, I walk in exalted circles, I can tell you.)  This time we were at the Senior Citizens afternoon that's held (I think) once a week in South Dunedin.  A pretty cold day, so most of the Senior Citizens wisely stayed home, and our audience was less than twenty.  Never mind, it was a cheery concert and we all enjoyed ourselves. 

And so to today, where the only thing I had to do was give one of my granddaughters a piano lesson.  That wasn't until late this afternoon, so the rest of the day was free. I spent some time brushing up on my lines for the play, particularly the scene that had gone awry last night, and sending off three flash fiction stories to an NZ contest that closes at the end of the month (I'd written all three of them earlier in the month, but tidied them up today).  Did some more Arabic with my wife, took the dog for a walk, and generally potted around. Or so it seemed. I kept feeling all day that there was something I should have been doing, but whatever it was it didn't eventuate.

Watched another episode of Trial and Retribution, a series Lynda La Plante initiated back in the late nineties. At that time there was only one episode a year, and they were great massive three-hour jobs, usually spread over two nights. The later episodes (the series finished in 2009, I think) got shorter, and had less detail in them, which was a pity. Only two of the original actors made it through the whole series: David Hayman and Dorian Lough. They played two of the detectives in the series. 

The show originally featured a long police procedural section followed by a trial, in which sometimes all the police work was unravelled and the criminal got away.  However, in the later episodes, the trial section vanished almost completely (there was no trial whatsoever in the one we watched today - Ghost Train - for instance).  There have been two distinct features of the series: a split screen technique which will often throw different elements of the story together (apparenlty La Plante wasn't fussed about this idea), and a kind of dwelling on of the grotesque details of the person murdered.  Not only do we often get a glimpse of the deceased in all their gory glory, but the director will hark back to this several times during the show, so that all the hard work the make-up people have put in will get its due worth.  Some of what they do is too graphic to watch, we've found, and we just have to shut our eyes until they get onto the next part of the story.  Apart from that element, and La Plante's typical modus operandi of preferring female victims to male ones, females who are often badly abused by the males, the series makes gripping watching.  It's had a real run of wonderful British actors, and Hayman in particular has been a wonderful anchor for the show.

Just as a side issue for those who enjoy these things, the man who plays Miranda's boyfriend in the popular comedy series of the same name, Tom Ellis, was a murder victim in Season 11, which aired in February 2008.  Seemed a bit odd killing of someone we like so much in a different setting...

A different approach to learning lines

I've just been running through one of the bigger scenes in The Sunshine Boys with my wife reading in for the other character(s).  I'm very pleased to find that most of the lines are intact in that scene, as they are in the first scene.  So that's great progress.  There's only one other big scene to get to grips with, and some of it's already there.

I don't know whether it's a matter of experience but I'm finding it easier to remember the lines for this play than I have for practically every other play I've done.  In fact, I've been confident enough to put down the script quite early on and just see how much I can remember in the rehearsals.  I remember that in many of the previous plays I've done I've been quite anxious about this aspect of acting; it seemed as though as soon as I got hold of a line it would go, and then when I got hold of it throroughly it could still vanish when I needed it in a rehearsal.  In the past I've tended to aim to be able to work through all my lines without necessarily referring to the cues - I've known that the other actor(s) will be saying 'something' but I won't necessarily know what they're saying.  This isn't the best way.  It may seem to be a good thing to be able to go through all your lines in your head in order, but it doesn't hold up well when it comes to the actual performing. 

This time I started out in the usual fashion, even putting the other actors' lines on a recording and leaving room for me to fit mine in.  It worked, but only in a kind of fashion.  I reverted to the way I'd started out learning these lines: holding a bit of paper over the line and reading the other character's cue.  Then I'd attempt to say my own line.  To my surprise this has worked far better than I expected.  I can't comfortably run through every one of my lines in order, the way I've done in the past, but when the cue comes I know what my line is. That's an odd thing: it's encouraging and yet it's not at all like I've worked in the past.  It creates much less anxiety because I'm not relying on myself to remember everything, but on the other actor's cues to act as a prompt.

Now the thing is, I'm not learning the other actor's lines; that would be more than I need to do. But reading them frequently while following up with my own, I find that I've got enough of a handle on their line to be confident to know what comes next.  The trick is, of course, that the other actor has to be as confident of his lines as I am of mine.  Many of the scenes in this play have just two actors on stage - so it's a business of bouncing the ball back and forward between you.  If one of you drops the ball, of course, it makes it tricky, but usually you find you have a pretty good idea what's coming next, and you can ad lib to help the other actor get back on track.

The memory is a fascinating thing.  I've spent years attempting all sorts of techniques and tricks to help me remember things, and yet here I'm relying greatly on an outside source - the other actor - to become my memory prompt.  It's most intriguing, and feels like something of a breakthrough. 

Being random, as the blog's title implies

1. My wife and I were outside this morning in the sun chopping down the upper half of the holly hedge that separates our house from our neighbours' place.  It was a beautiful morning.  We then spent nearly an hour around 1pm talking to my son and his wife in the States, on Google's equivalent of Skype, went to go outside and found it was pouring with rain.  Since then the temperature's dropped considerably and we're now trying to get the house warm.  After all the fine weather we've had any cold day comes as a bit of a shock.

2. A friend lent me a copy of Edmund Gosse's book, Father and Son, a couple of weeks or so ago.  I'd heard of this book over the years, but never got round to reading it, even though it has some status amongst the English classics.  What an odd book!  Gosse was the sun of Philip Henry Gosse, who was a famous zoologist in the 19th century, around the time of Darwin.   He was also a Puritan Christian, as was his wife - the mother of Edmund: she died of breast cancer when Edmund was still under ten years old.  Philip married again, a few years later. 

The book is supposedly the factual memoirs of Gosse as a child, and of his relationship with his father, who, according to the book, was virtually a recluse, and a very rigid Christian.  (Gosse's mother was as puritanical as her husband, according to Gosse junior.)  The book claims to be fact, but later biographers of both father and son have found a good deal of fiction in the writing.  It's very much the view of a man who has cast his parents aside along with his religion, but in writing about it he colours the characters of his parents - his father in particular - in such a way as to make the reader recoil from them. Knowing that Gosse's writing is more biased than not is quite helpful in reading the book: you see how he shows himself as the one treated somewhat unjustly, when in fact this was apparently less than the truth.  He also, perhaps unwittingly, shows himself as rather pompous and quite class conscious.  Those who are lower than him in the social scale are written about in such a way as to show that Gosse despises them - it's not just what they do, it's how the author describes them.  For example, in describing John Brooks, a poor man who doesn't do the right thing according to Gosse's lights: John Brooks was a heavy dirty man, with a pock-marked face and two left legs...  I'm not sure how Brooks manages to have two left legs, but doesn't it immediately make you feel he's something of a monster?

I'd got to a point with the book where I thought I wouldn't finish it, but I will.  However, Gosse has lost my sympathy quite some time ago! 

3. I'm currently learning lines for the play, The Sunshine Boy, in which I'm playing Al.  He has a substantial enough part, but it's nothing like as long as that of the main character, Willie.  There's a great deal of humour in the play, and it'll go across well with an audience.  The line-learning has kind of interrupted my latest attempt to learn Psalm 119 (the longest in the Psalmody).  It's a tough psalm to learn, but I'm making slow progress on it.  I'm also singing with the Sunny Side Up group tonight, at one of the retirement villages, and I'm revising words and music for that as well.  So the brain is getting quite a work out at present!

The Sunshine Boys

I've been offered a part in the Repertory Society's coming production of The Sunshine Boys, a play by Neil Simon.  I'd heard this was in the offing three or four weeks ago, and got a copy of the play to read.  It's very funny, sometimes in a kind of aggressive way, and the three main characters are great to play.  I'm doing Al, who doesn't appear till the second scene. He's the bête noire of the main character, who's being played by Bert Nisbet.  Bert's character is onstage for a great deal of the play - even when he's not onstage, he has lines that he has to fit in from offstage.  I'm relieved that I have several sections of the play when I get a break - and time to cram up on my next lot of lines, no doubt! 

Apropos of this, I've been memorising Psalm 119 over the last few weeks - it's a slow process, because there isn't a kind of narrative flow to the psalm.  The sometimes seemingly random statements - which use the same words over and over in different ways - don't easily connect to one another in the brain, so you have to have all sorts of links to keep track of things.  The part in the play is a piece of cake to learn by contrast with Psalm 119, so in a way I've been doing some mental exercises in preparation.  However, it's also the longest part I've ever learnt, I think, and will be kind of tough to deal with.

I was in a play last week on the life of Rosalie Macgeorge, the first missionary to leave New Zealand from the Baptist Mission Society.  I had only around twenty-five lines in the play all up, and for once I was word-perfect.  My aim is to be word-perfect in this play too, because I feel that if you don't get the words right, not only does it do a disservice to the author, but it also makes it harder to remember whether you've got the line quite in its proper shape.  The brain delights in muddling those who don't learn things exactly (it can muddle those who do know things exactly).  It may seem picky to want to learn the thing perfectly, but I know from experience that if I don't I'll have trouble at some point in the performances.

Learning lines

I've been thinking again about the process of learning lines over the last few days.   A few months ago I bought a little digital dictaphone, and have been using that to assist in learning lines for the play, The Mousetrap (as I also did for the previous play I was in, Shadowlands).
 
I find that while I have a certain ability to listen and learn, I'm much better if I've seen where on the page the lines lie, and remember that as well.  Having that visual focus seems to make all the difference, especially when it comes to odd lines that are disconnected from any other dialogue I have.   It's the single lines that pop up without reference to anything else I've said that I find hardest to place, and often they're the last ones to be learnt.

When there's a chunk of dialogue with just one (or maybe two) other cast members, it's much easier to get a handle on the lines, because in a sense, I just reel them off down the 'page' in my head.   I get to a point where, with a sequence of lines, I can remember them almost as a single 'speech' - this helps, especially if the cues aren't quite right from the other person, or if they miss something out entirely.

The problem is, I think, that I don't tend to learn the cues for the odds lines well, because I don't particularly need to for the sequences of lines.   Plainly I need to do some work on this aspect of line-learning for future productions - if I do any more!

My mother said my father (whom I don't remember at all) had a photographic memory.  He was a top-class chess player in his day.   I don't think I have a photographic memory particularly, but I do have a 'picture' of where lines are on a page - this applies whether I'm learning a poem, or a piece of scripture, or lines for a play.   If I see the formation of them on the page my brain recalls them much better.  That picture seems to be part of the learned process, in fact.   So, while the dictaphone is very helpful, on its own it isn't enough.  Lines learnt in isolation, as it were, don't seem to stick nearly as well as lines learned with a visual clue attached. 

The photo is from the scene where my character, Paravicini, arrives and, in a somewhat theatrical fashion, informs the young couple running the guest house, that he is the 'man of mystery'.   Photo from the Cortland Repertory Theatre, Ithaca.

Learning lines

In this blog, I've several times written about the difficulties of learning lines for a play. Last Sunday afternoon I was supposed to do a short skit with a friend of mine at a concert I was also playing at, accompanying a number of my friend's wife's singing pupils. I'd had some trouble learning the lines - and so had he - because there was a great deal of fast-paced repetition, and it was easy to confuse one set of repeats for another. At home, with my wife giving me the cues, I could get through it. And the same went for my friend. On stage, in a pre-concert practice, both of us were getting tangled, and it was such a disaster that I can only say I was immensely relieved when my friend was as happy as I was to abandon the thing. Maybe we'll do it another day. (Stress from issues at work probably wasn't helping my concentration either.)

Talking of plays, next Wednesday several of us are going to do a read-through of the musical script the collaborator and I have been working on for much of this year. I printed it out today (not using laserjet 5500 toner since my printer is a Dell and only takes specific Dell products, nothing generic, and only available from Dell overseas - just thought I'd throw that in) and made several copies on the photocopier at work. It'll be interesting to see how the script reads when a group of people unfamiliar with how it's been put together get a hold of it.

In my last post I mentioned that I had a pile of books to read, and, fatally, I went to the library today and brought home yet another. However, I'm already 100 pages through it (reading in the bath is a great place to focus), so it shouldn't put the other books off for long.

It's Keith Osborn's Something Written in the State of Denmark and is his diary of the time he spent acting with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2009 (?), doing three different plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, and Love's Labours Lost. I like his easygoing style, and the way he records the details of rehearsals and production, the gradual movement from not knowing the play to knowing it so well you can do it night after night with ease - mostly.

Coming back to my opening theme of learning lines, I found that Osborn has an interesting section on learning lines, which I might just quote in full...he's talking at this point about being an understudy for Patrick Stewart, who played both the Ghost and Claudius, in Hamlet.

"Learning lines when you're actually playing the part is much easier than understudying it for several reasons. Obviously you have hours of rehearsal to get to grips with it, as opposed to whatever time the assistant director can filch from the main schedule. But also when rehearsing you get to associate physical actions and moves with the lines which help them to fuse with the cerebral cortex. As an understudy, lines are learnt in isolation, the actor alone with his script, at home or on the way to work, in shops or the Post Office, or wandering the streets. To that end it's a question of repetition, repetition, repetition of small chunks of speeches, then on to whole speeches, then whole scenes one by one until the whole play is built up incrementally in one's head. Then back to the beginning again, then again, then again....

"Although the language is difficult, Shakespeare's verse helps in several ways. The rhythm of the iambic pentameter is itself (de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM de-DUM) can act as a hook to catch those elusive words and meanings. Also whatever internal rhymes, alliterations or antitheses can be found help too.

"Basically, magpie-like, you steal whatever tool you can to burn the lines into the synapses. At some point, you think 'phew, it's all in there, HURRAH!' BUT in rehearsals on your feet more often than not even this relatively mild performance pressure means that what's been rock solid in your bonce whilst on your own in the comfort of your armchair, with a beverage of choice, turns to complete slush in front of your fellow understudies. With inexorable cruelty the lines melt like snowballs in the sun - or the hell of your own paranoia - as you conclude that THEY'LL NEVER SINK IN! Of course eventually they do but boy oh boy oh boy sometimes it feels like they just won't." [pg 100]

Osborn appears in the photo to the right rear - this is A Midsummer Night's Dream, which was done in modern(ish) day dress.

Pressure-Cooker

Well, we began Act 3 of the play this week - short of one rehearsal (on Tuesday) because the carpet-layers were laying new carpet round the theatre. It's a bit scary: we open on the 23rd and at this point we've done Act 3 about four times - and because of the directing style of the director, we don't often go back over a scene once it's done. She relies on our innate and excellent acting skills to get us through - along with a small amount of instruction about where to move if we've bumped into each other.
We've still got Sunday and next week to go as far as rehearsals are concerned, and then we're into the last stretch before the opening. At this point, most of us are still struggling with our lines in this third Act. Crikey. I'm used to long rehearsal periods, where you can 'learn' your way into the part. This is all a bit pressure-cooker (and not just for me; others in the cast are feeling the same pressure). Guess we'll get there, but it's a little nightmarish.
Simultaneously, I'm involved in the first of a series of short dramas that are going to be presented at church over the next couple of months. They'll be using the same group of actors fairly regularly, and....most of the dramas aren't even written yet.
The first of these goes on this Sunday, and isn't too much of a stretch because it consists of four monologues, so we don't have to learn cues or interact with the other three actors. We've all got speeches that last a couple of minutes, but you can take them at the pace that's right for the part, and since I'm playing a somewhat sceptical older person (it's not entirely based upon me!) I can go at an unrushed pace without it being out of character.
When I began to learn the lines for the first act of the Priestly play, I felt as though nothing was sticking. Somehow, since then, the lines are coming much more easily, and it hasn't been too drastic an effort to learn lines for two different plays at the same time (as it were). However, I'll be happier, once the Priestly is out of the way to be able to concentrate on just one play at a time. Think it'll be healthier!
Meanwhile, the essay for Varsity which I'm supposed to have got into tonight has taken a back seat to blogging. Not really good enough....

All too much - almost

I make mention on my other blog of not needing to look for the best diet pills on the market even though I seem to have put on weight as a result of my recent(pre- and post-op) inability to exercise as much as usual, or even to walk at a reasonable pace. Thank goodness I'm now (literally) back on my feet and (generally) walking at my old (near-frenetic) speed. In fact, it was only today that I realised I'm no longer conking out at work from tiredness, or having to come home and have a lie-down from exhaustion. So I am making progress. (Though not with my overexcessive use of brackets.)
We've had time off rehearsals for the play this week; there's another play on at the theatre, so rehearsals are out. But next week we're back into it with a vengeance, and I'm trying my best to have my Act II lines under my belt before we start rehearsing that section. As in Act One, I only have one scene, but this one is a two-hander with one of the other cast members, and goes on for about five pages. I've taken it in sections, so as to get a handle on it, and have been practicing tonight with my son reading the other part. But it's still not all there. And it doesn't help that in this scene the character is somewhat drunk and tends to repeat himself. I learnt the worst bit of repetition first, since I thought it would take longest to get into the brain, and I was right...
Meanwhile, our church is getting back into short dramas - they're to accompany a special series of sermons. I was at the brainstorming session last night, and somehow wound up with a part. Not just a short bit in one short drama; the characters in these dramas will appear fairly regularly throughout several weeks of plays. Of course the first drama will be on within a few weeks, while the rehearsals for the other play are still going, and as well I'll be trying to get my head around the Varsity work (which, thank goodness, finishes the week after the main play).
I tried to get them to cast someone else in the role they were suggesting for me, but it looks as though that may not be a goer. However, there's a suggestion that they'll avoid having me in the drama that goes on the day after we start performances of the main play! I should think so, too. Who do they think I am? Laurence Olivier?
Kind of apropos of what I've just been talking about, it's curious how rehearsing in a particular place seems to embue that place with some kind of residual emotional feeling. Every time we've spent several weeks rehearsing in a particular building, I can't pass the place by without feeling a kind of nostalgia. And when I first appeared in the Narnia series of plays, which were performed in the same auditorium in which we had church at that time, I used to find that whenever I passed the dressing rooms I'd get all emotional. Weird.
Check out some photos from that first production - I'm playing Mr Beaver and appear in the first and third photos.

Rehearsing the play

We're well into rehearsals now - three nights a week at present for those who are in any particular act.
I'd thought I was only in Acts One and Three, which meant I'd have a couple of weeks out in the middle of the rehearsals, and then one of the other cast members, who'd done the play before years ago, said, You're in the Second Act as well. We debated this a bit, because I was sure I'd checked, but of course she was right: I have a whole scene with just one other character in the middle of the Second Act. Which means more learning of lines, something I wasn't anticipating quite!
The trouble with line-learning these days is that the recording system is great still, but the playback isn't so hot.
And it doesn't help when you have (slightly drunken) lines like this:
Ah, yes. Always together...side by side....through all life's sunshine and storms....hand in hand...in good times and bad ones...with always a loving smile. [The other characters says a couple of words.] In sickness and in health....rich and poor....still together...side by side...hand in hand...through all life's sunshine and storms. At which point the other character, not surprisingly, tells him he's repeating himself!
However, it's a fun part, and certainly more enjoyable to do than the part I started out with.

And in a footnote regarding my post headed up Major Biosecurity Alert!!!, I noticed in the letters to the editor in the D Scene last week that someone else had thought using a Botany Department Masters student as a source of un-information was also a bit below the standards required of your average newspaper. The writer said that making a major headline out of a piece of non-news wasn't really doing the freebie paper any good. Hear, hear, I say!

The Director

There are two sisters acting in the play I'm currently involved with (And Then They Came For Me). One of them, who played Anne Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank, in which I had the role of Mr Dussel, the dentist, now plays Young Eva, the main character. The other sister plays Anne Frank (!), who though she has a smaller role, is still significant in this play.

I've been a bit concerned that the girls haven't been getting too much coaching in how to work their lines, so I suggested to their mother a couple of weeks ago that perhaps I could take them through the play and look at some better ways of dealing with the lines. Because I've been directed by this lady in the past (in the Narnia plays we've done) she was quite happy for me to do this.

So the two girls came round to the house and we worked through their roles, line by line, trying to see how best to put across the stuff.

I got an email later from their mother, full of enthusiasm for what had been achieved. I confessed to her that I must be a 'closet director'. She had no hesitation in agreeing!