TS1101e: Creating theatre in a pandemic

NUS Theatrette (Photo by me)

The first time I ran lines with my younger sister, I was still deep in the process of character analysis and scene study. Even then, I soon found that Undercover was a joy to read and rehearse due to its regular structure and linguistic quirks, which made memorizing the story a lot easier than the average student film.

Nevertheless, this is the first time I'm using realist acting on an actual stage (school productions where we just recited lines don't count). It was a challenge that I had been waiting for, and I'm excited to get started.

Memorizing lines (again)

It's hard. There's no shortcut. Don't learn them too fast. Story first, intentions second, emotions third. The lines would follow naturally. I had learnt from experience that line internalization is really about reaping what you've sown: Put in the work, and trust that you have it down. I started by annotating my script with Stanislavskian realist principles - the scene objective, the individual intention of each line and the tactic changes based on the given circumstances as defined by the play. This would be the framework of Jane's headspace, and it was the core of what was happening on stage.

I wanted Jane to be a psychologically driven character whom I could stand for as an actor. She was a living, breathing and three-dimensional human being, and she had personal insecurities and internal conflicts just like all of us. In order to fully present myself as Jane, I crafted a personality that worked within the script I was given. Jane is a government operative sent to seduce Qiang, but she is also a human with real emotions, and those genuine moments presented themselves every once in a while throughout the scene.

As I tripped over my lines (earning glares from my sister as we went over the script for the fifth time that night) and smoothed them out, I learned to understand the world of the play from the perspective of Jane. I began to see not just my changing dynamic with Qiang, Jane's love interest, but also the way she interacts with her surroundings. As time went on, I was beginning to flesh her out, and little surprises like exasperated eyerolls, mock offence and a bit of unexplainable joy at hearing that Qiang was divorced surfaced and made their way into my notes. From a large mass of scribbled words in my notebook, Jane was becoming a consistent track that I could play back over and over in my mind.

Next step, getting our hands dirty on stage.

Putting it altogether

Four days after we were allocated our scenes, we agreed to meet at the NUS Theatrette to rehearse. I set the agenda for our meeting:

1st hour

- 15 min physical/vocal warmup

- 15 min actor training

- 15 min collaboration (character work)

- 15 min 1st run through

2nd hour

- 15 min collaboration (scene study)

- 15 min 2nd run through

- 30 min discussion and wrap

We got an astonishing amount of work done in two hours. Really, I'm blessed to have a scene partner who is so professional and open to the most unconventional ideas. During the two hours, we experimented with physicalizing our characters through our walk, our stance and the way we reacted to various stimuli. We also practiced modulating our voices and creating subconscious personalities.

By the end of the day, we had begun blocking and creating our own unique interpretation of Undercover. We tried to put in as much subtext as possible and paid attention to the details in each line so that we could create bold choices that the audience would pick up on, not from the text but from our interpretation of it. We ended the day by discussing set design and our costumes.

Monday rolled around. We ran our lines a few more times before our turn.

Time to show them what we've got.

Rehearsal and Feedback

Before we went up to perform, I tried the Meisner technique with Karis to attain a bit more spontaneity in the way we delivered our lines. While I'm not an expert on the subject matter, I understood that Meisner defines acting as the ability to live truthfully under imagined circumstances. The Meisner technique hence uses repetition exercises to showcase how the same set of lines can change in meaning spontaneously based on how each actor reacts to the specific way that a line is being delivered. It's one of my favorite techniques in acting as it places emphasis on the liveness of theatre and being in the moment (and helps me to get over stage fright and nervousness). As we bounced Jane's and Qiang's lines repeatedly back and forth, we actually managed to find new intentions behind our lines.

By applying the Meisner technique, I was able to get out of my own head and wholeheartedly focus on listening and reacting to Karis word for word. I gave her the attention that I felt that Jane would be giving Qiang at various points of the text, and by reading Qiang's lines I was able to create acting moments even when Jane was not speaking. The idea of spontaneity was such that I responded to what Karis does in the moment, and in the event we forgot our lines, I hope that we would be able to recover as quickly as possible by continuing to live in the illusion of the given circumstance instead of breaking character.

Finally, at the end of the scene, we had some feedback about the movement and gestures used in our scene. I realized that I could have moved around the space more and interact with the imaginary environment (Qiang's bedsit), and I took note of that when I attempted the scene again after the lecture.

We'll be rehearsing a few more times over recess week. Hopefully, I'll be able to juggle all of my assignments in time for Week 7 and 8.