Had rehearsal today for the tougher play. (Tougher is an ironic word choice to describe it, but I'll stick with it).
I once heard Dennis Hopper say that on the set of Giant, James Dean would spin around in circles before going on screen when he would be playing drunk. Hopper did this too for the film Hoosiers. Pretty simple concept, and pretty effective too, but sometimes you just don't think of little things like that to take it to another level.
Well today, I did a little Deanian device before I went onstage.
My character (before he is seen) is looking for someone in a psychologist's office, so before my scene I paced back and forth for about about 20 minutes or so (because the rehearsal was stop-and-go) and when my cue line was delivered I burst into the office (well, walked out from behind the curtain and onto the stage with dramatic force).
And it worked.
I had the most energy of any rehearsal so far for myself and I really felt like I knew who I was out there.
Before rehearsal started, our director said that she was going to stop us when either she didn't believe what we were saying or wanted to know what we were doing (the technique of asking the question and then the actor responding with a certain verb). Going into it, I thought I would probably get stopped a few times here or there because before today for some of my lines I wasn't 100% sure on how to deliver them.
However, after the pacing (which definitely helped me get into character) I did not get stopped once during my lines, and thinking back on it now, I think I was the only one who didn't get stopped, so that's a good feeling. But there is still a lot of work to be done, and I have to keep the energy onstage up, so there's no time to get cocky. At least I now know how to reach that level of energy though.
Who would have thought that something so simple, like pacing or spinning in a circle, could make such a big difference.
Maybe that rebel was onto something with this whole method acting thing?
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