The Night Heron part two

Having a clear grasp of the series of events that lead up to and continue through the play, allows me to begin to think “imaginatively” or perhaps better said “creatively” about the play and the character. I can review this story, this series of events, over and over in my mind, eventually filling in further details as I do, all based upon things said or done in the script itself. I know the time, the place, and the conditions of each series of events that are referenced. I feel like the logic of the progression of events is sound. So then I start to ask myself the question “what would it be like to be in that situation?” Now here’s the catch. I am an actor, and therefore my “answers” to that question have to manifest themselves in behavior, not in description. So while yes I can explain to myself what each situation may be like, and while its not unhelpful for me to do so as an actor, it doesn’t really set the conditions for my body to learn what it needs to learn in order to “get it” and do what it needs to do on stage in the moment of performance. As an actor, I have to have thought and speech and movement and feeling and intention all rooted in these events, these experiences. And having been educated, trained, and artistically tempered in a particular way, I don’t want my final rendition to be merely natural like behavior that is truthfully based in those experiences, but rather beyond that I want it to be a clear and precise poetic expression of the ideas of the play as they exist living and breathing in this character’s actions. So how do I begin to answer the question “what would it be like to be in that situation?” I search and explore the situations biologically - with my senses, and I allow a certain amount of free association to arise as I do. I let my body start to find impulses and thoughts and movements and sensations based on being in those situations. I don’t (or try not to) judge the behavior but rather I try to allow my instincts to work unhinged. Mind you, this is a very disciplined approach. This is not an anything goes way. The parameters are strict and tight. Think mustard seed. But with this work that little bit of faith in the situation or rather my body’s responses to the situations is established. Actor. Behavior. Action. The work continues.