Thursday, September 20, 2012
Working on The Night Heron
Working on the role of Jess Wattmore in the play The Night Heron, by Jez Butterworth, at the Rogue Theatre.
Beginning work - tracing the line of action, trying to articulate and understand the sequence of events that are referenced in the script. Going one by one to get the time and place and basic result of each one. (Side question - why on God's green earth do modern playwrights, those of the 90's and 2K's, like to leave things so "mysterious," so two-sided?). I need to be able to tell the entire story alluded to in the script to myself in order to begin to make sense of the action that will actually occur on stage. This is a process of coolly examining the facts and circumstances as presented by the script. I am not imagining or inventing or adding to what the playwright has offered. Take what is offered and see if the logic follows itself. If it doesn't make sense on the first try, reread and rethink. Don't make things up in an attempt to understand events individually and don't try to shape them to fit personal opinion or wish-fantasy. Try to get the whole. If the script is well written, the logic of events works out, including disruptions. So for example, based on what the script of The Night Heron says I can begin to tell myself a basic story about Jess Wattmore, in context with the basic story of the entire play. "Jess is working as a gardener at Cambridge. He is working in the quince tree when Floyd Fowler's boy comes around, etc. Jess is with the Scouts when he slaps one of them. The story of it comes out in the newspaper. Jess gets dismissed from his job. Jess starts helping, working with Dougall (who had earlier been employed with Cambridge also, etc). Something about Floyd's Fowler's boy comes out, accusations. Jess is out on the road at night and gets beat up." That's the idea...but I'm leaving out some details as a matter of writing here. I don't leave them out in my head though. Until I can tell the story of the play and the story of Jess Wattmore in detail to myself I won't be ready to go on to other work.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Thank god you're finally writing again! And this is a great post. BUT, I would say that the difference between you and other actors is that you can bridge action and thought. For most actors, that approach above would lead to some dreadful head case stuff.
ReplyDeleteHmmm...at this point the work shouldn't be heady at all - especially because no acting is actually happening yet. This is just an attempt to get a clear understanding of the narrative. The depth of the experience or impact of each event may not be grasped yet either but everyone should have the ability to lay out the facts in their logical sequence. We are not analysing the script and the character with metaphor or comparison nor are we adding our fantasy or jumping to conclusions. It's only this happened and then this happened and then this happened.
ReplyDelete