Using Open Scenes to Act Successfully on Stage and Screen

Dan Carter, Brant L. Pope

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000535006
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Recitazione e provini

Using Open Scenes as a "way in" to scripted material, this book establishes a foundational actor training methodology that can be applied to the performance of film or television acting, commercials, and theatrical realism.

Unlike other methodologies, this unique approach is devoid of casting considerations or imposed identity, providing actors opportunities that do not rely on nor are restricted by age, gender, race, ethnicity, regional accent, body type, identity, or other defining or delimiting aspects that come into play during the casting process. This allows the actor to focus on personal authenticity as they develop their skills.

This book will appeal to undergraduate students, acting teachers, and the contemporary actor seeking a career in film, television, or other electronic media.

Visit the companion website www.usingopenscenestoactsuccessful.godaddysites.com for additional Open Scenes and more.

1

Acting and Performing

The Difference Between the Two

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242444-2

The Performer as Storyteller

Of all the things we have said to actors over the years, the one that probably causes the most looks of surprise is when we tell them that they can never be the storyteller. To them, this seems contrary to what they assumed acting was. So, we explain to them the difference between acting and performing. When we call them performers, we mean that the artists on the stage are operating in the same reality as the audience. This could be a solo performance like standup comedy or a play such as Anna Deavere Smith’s Notes From the Field: Doing Time in Education. In this work, Smith employs a journalistic approach in which she interviews members of a particular community in search of the reasons why there is a pipeline between school and prison. She then tells their individual stories to the audience in her performance. She is, in effect, the storyteller and like a musician, she is “performing” her play with a direct relationship to the audience. Because she is the storyteller and existing in the same reality as the audience, we call what she is doing is “performing.”

The same can be true for a performance with many people in it. When director/creator, Will Davis speaks of his production, Bobbie Clearly, it is obvious that he is constructing a performance piece. Again, by a performance piece, we mean a theatrical endeavor where the artists on stage are themselves the storytellers and they relate directly to the audience. They are performing for the audience as part of telling them the story, or perhaps confronting the audience with the sociopolitical significance of the piece. For Davis, this production was a documentary-style work, playing out like the filming of a documentary. The story is about a boy who shoots a girl in the middle of a cornfield in a small Nebraska town. What makes it a performance piece is that the artists on stage are primarily engaged in direct address to the audience. Director Davis wanted a town hall type of space and the feeling that the audience and the performers were “all in this together.”

What differentiates acting from performing is the purpose of the theatrical art object and the function of the artists on the stage. In realism and naturalism both in the theatre and in film/television, the people on the stage or on the screen are behaving truthfully in an imaginary premise different from the reality of the audience. There is no direct relationship with the audience and in fact the premise of the form is that the audience is watching people on stage who are unaware of their presence. They are not the storytellers rather we call them actors (instead of performers) because they are required to adopt the psychology and behavior of a fictional character in a pretend reality and behave as if it were true. The people they are impersonating are called the characters, and these people have no idea that they are in a story. So, whereas the performer is the storyteller, the actor can never be the storyteller. In fact, one of the most difficult aspects of training an actor is to teach them to never play the story. One of the reasons this is so difficult is that the actor KNOWS the story as soon as she reads the play. The story is right there in the script. But what happens if the actor (who knows the story) allows her character to know the story? The character would suddenly have mystical, psychic powers allowing them to know what happens in the future. This is one of the greatest challenges in acting: the actor must always know the story, but his character can never know the story.

It is important at this point to note that there are numerous examples of realistic plays that also use direct address to the audience in the script, or “breaking the fourth wall,” as it is called. In otherwise realistic plays, many writers use elements of direct address such as asides and monologues to the audience as a tool for telling the story. In some plays or films, one of the characters may literally serve as an omniscient narrator; however, when performing their actor function, they must revert to the reality discussed here; which is to say they must behave truthfully and only with such knowledge as they had at the time the scene actually occurred. For example, in her wonderful play, How I Learned to Drive, writer Paula Vogel alternates realism with scenes featuring a male and female, Greek-like chorus to comment on the action of the play. So, it is not our contention that a play is either complete realism or something else. Rather, that we are focusing our concern on the situations when the actors on the stage are impersonating social reality by engaging and living in an imaginary world different from that of the audience. Since Henrik Ibsen began writing his great realistic plays in the 1870s, it has been obvious to theatre artists that special training was needed to learn how to work in these kinds of plays. Inspired by Russian director, Konstantin Stanislavsky, generations of acting teachers and numerous acting methodologies have tried to address this duality of actor and character. This book uses Open Scenes to provide an interesting new way to solve this problem.

Conversation in a Restaurant: A Story Appears

Recently, one of the authors of this book was sitting in a booth on the other side of a small glass divide that separated him from a married couple. Despite his every attempt, it was impossible not to overhear the conversation between them (as if eavesdropping through a fourth wall), especially since it became heated and rather dramatic. The issue was whether the wife would quit her job to be a stay-at-home mother for their young child. The contention, at least on the surface, was over the financial impact of this decision. The husband was insistent that this would bankrupt them, and his spouse was equally passionate that the child needed to be with his mother and not raised by strangers in an expensive and distant daycare.

The encounter had all the ingredients of a scene from a play. First, there was something tremendously important at stake; namely, which is more essential, the financial health of the family or the well-being of their child? Then, there was a conflict in that both of them were deeply invested in changing the perspective of the other. This conflict, called dramatic action in the theatre, allowed the unintended audience to learn a tremendous amount about these two people that would have been impossible had the author simply overheard them talking about a movie they saw or which kind of car they want to buy. In other words, this was precisely the kind of scene a writer would choose to include in a script.

Because the subject of the argument was so critically important to each of them, they both brought every element of their personality to bear in order to win over their partner. In just five or ten minutes, a complete picture emerged of who each of these people is and how they feel about each other. The man displayed anger and aggression about the decision and demanded that his wife change her mind. The woman appealed to her husband’s feelings as a father and to the love they had for each other. As does an audience in the theatre or a film however, the author was able to see much more deeply into their personal psychologies than they could ever know or admit or intentionally share with strangers.

It was crystal clear that the man was feeling a deep sense of guilt and inadequacy about not being able to support the family solely on his own income. Because he was unaware of this or unable to admit it, he blamed her for what he feared about himself. He accused her of wishing she had married “some lawyer” with a big paycheck rather than him. He manipulated her by using her love and decency against her and making her feel that she was “betraying him.” It was also clear that she feared that she wasn’t good enough for him and that he thought she had changed since they had the child. Much of her energy was in the direction of “If only he would know how much she loved him, he would be able to accept this.”

So, while the small story was about whether or not the woman would quit her job, the bigger story was about love and marriage and gender, and sociological pressures. If this were fictionalized, the writer might be trying to illuminate a universal issue by plumbing the depths of a very specific incident. The actors’ job, however, is to focus on the specifics. The two people in the booth struggled to solve their problem and because of their behavior, the author (the audience) got their “story.” This is exactly how realism works in the theatre. The characters (the couple) are engaged in trying to change each other, and the audience puts it all together and figures out the story. Those two people in the booth had no idea they were in a story and hadn’t the first idea how things would turn out. Because they were completely in the moment, it allowed the author to see inside their souls. As it turned out, the woman broke down in tears and promised her husband that she would “give work another try.” But there was no indication that this would be the outcome until the final moment, and the author almost leaned over the glass divider and implored her to keep fighting for her decision. Their little scene had completely engrossed the author, and he marveled at what a great little ten-minute play it was.

The Burden of the Script: The Trap of Playing the Story

Almost all theatrical projects begin with a script. We are drawn to a project because of the power of the story and the richness of the characters, perhaps by the historical or social backdrop. As creative artists, we want to be involved in getting great stories out there for the public. When we have a great script to work with, we know our odds of success are better, because it all begins with the script; however, the very act of addressing the demands of the script is precisely where the problems begin.

What would happen if this argument in the restaurant had been recorded and then written down in dialogue form? It would seem to be a wonderful scene because there are two distinct points of view, a very clear relationship with emotional claims on each other, and a most important sociological subject. It is also important dramatically that there is no obvious “right” solution, because each person’s “win” is the other person’s “loss”; that is, there is absolutely no way for both people to get what they want. (These are often called “mutually destructive motives” precisely because only one can be successfully brought to fruition.) Theatre isn’t often about “win/win solutions.” So, if two actors were handed a script of this encounter and told to read it for an audition or work on it as a scene, why wouldn’t it be just as good as the original? What could go wrong?

When the two actors are handed the script and told they will perform this scene, they have an incredibly difficult journey in front of them. As soon as they take hold of the printed page (the script), the trouble begins. When they read the scene for the first time without actually realizing it, they have become the first “audience.” Inside their head and in their imagination they “play” the scene and see the two people sitting in the restaurant. From that first moment with the script, the actors are seeing the encounter between the man and the woman from the perspective of the “watcher.” From this watcher’s perspective, the people in the scene are “he” and “she,” and they are engaged in a situation that the actors observe and from which they draw conclusions. The actors see the situation from the outside and quickly make a judgment about what kind of people these two characters are, especially because they know how the story ends. They see the “story” of the scene in their minds, and when it comes time for them to sit down and begin working on the scene, it is almost impossible for them not to reproduce the story they have played in the imaginative theatre inside their own heads.

So, the actors are not truly engaging in what literally happened between the two people in the restaurant. They have been given a script which is only a record of what was literally said between the two people. The script has no context, it does not reveal any of the emotional background information of the relationship between the two people, and because it is a literal transcription of what was said between them, it has no way of conveying the nuance and purpose of how and why the two people used that language to communicate to each other. When the script is especially good or is written by an acknowledged master, the temptation to “serve the script” can be even greater as the actors feel the need to “rise to the material.” In short, the script gives the actors very little information, so when the actors read the script and play the scene in their heads, they supply what the script is missing. The actors “figure out the story” by reading the lines and making intuitive assumptions about the situation. They get the story from the script even though this might be quite different from the actual event that the author witnessed. This is the dilemma that actors face, and the purpose of this book is to use Open Scenes to help actors avoid the trap of “playing the story” and instead remind them that they actually do something quite different. This book is about what they do and what the audience does. When the actors do this well, the audience will do the same thing the actors did when they first performed the scene inside their heads. The audience, and not the actors, are the ones who “figure out the story.”

This is the essence of what happens in realism in the theatre as well as film and television. Actors are given a script of dialogue that took place between (usually) fictional characters, and it is their job to impersonate those people truthfully so that the live or viewing audience can experience it and imagine it is happening in real time. In order to help them with the context, the story, and the character relationships, a director is hired who works with them on the text. The director sits down with the actors for the first rehearsal, and the next series of problems begin. The director and the actors talk about the story and the characters. The director is the ultimate decision maker about how the story will be told, so he or she describes the situation from their perspective, and it is the actor’s job to conform to the director’s vision. Now, we have THREE people all dedicated to telling the story, and yet the premise of this book is that the actor can never tell the story. We have a problem, obviously.

What does it mean to “play the story,” and why is this bad?

Playing the End of the Scene

First of all, the story is an interpretation of the situation, and if the actors are telling the story they are showing the audience what the situation means instead of just behaving as the two people did in the restaurant. If the actors know the story, they of course know how the story ends. Did the two people in the restaurant know in advance what would happen by the end of their conversation? When they sat down and ordered their food, were they psychically aware that they would have a fight and that it would end with the young woman breaking down in tears? Yet, the actors begin the scene knowing that a fight is coming and who wins and who loses. The first danger then is that the actors will allow their knowledge of how the scene ends to make sure the story “comes out right,” and it will be evident from the first moment that the scene will end with the woman breaking down in tears. This is called playing the end of the scene and it happens when the actors think of themselves as the storytellers and do their best to “make the story come out the way it does in the script.”

Playing the Character

The director then makes this worse by talking to the actors about the characters in this story. They speak of these two people from the perspective of the watcher who observed their behavior. They analyze the behavior of the two people in the restaurant and draw conclusions about what kind of people they are. Right from the beginning the actors are seeing the characters as “them” and trying to figure out what kind of people “they” are. Taking their cues from the “story,” the director and the actor playing the man in the story analyze the behavior and jointly arrive at a “characterization.” They might conclude that the man in the story is the kind of person who retains power and control over the woman by making her feel guilty and making her feel that the problem in their relationship is her fault. The director might say to the actor, “look what a skillful manipulator your character is. He gets his wife to do what he wants and even gets her to apologize to him.” The director and actor then have “nailed” the character and it is time to turn to the script.

The same process happens as the director turns to the actress playing the woman in the scene. “Tell me about her,” the director might say, “what kind of woman is she?” (Many directors will demand that the actor speaks only in the first person: “What kind of person are you?” This is problematic in that it forces a situation wherein the character is speaking to a stranger—the director—about their most intimate feelings even though these feelings may be repressed.) Taking their cues from the story, the actress might conclude that her character is deeply insecure about the relationship with her husband and feeling ashamed and conflicted about her wanting to stay home with her child. The director and the actress might conclude that the woman in the story is the type of person who is needy and inclined to beg for her husband’s love. “Look how your character lets herself be manipulated and give power to her husband because her need to be loved erodes her self-esteem.” The director and actress have “figured out the character,” and now they can turn to the script.

From an analytical standpoint, the actors and the director have done a good job in preparing to begin rehearsing this little play. They know the story, and they have “nailed” the characters. But what happens if the actors go ahead and do just that? What happens is that they will make...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• Foreword Page
• Introduction: You’re On, and It’s All on You
• 1 Acting and Performing: The Difference Between the Two
• 2 Open Scenes (Without Context): Finding the Action
• 3 Investigating the Script: Give Me a Place to Stand On, and I Will Move the Earth
• 4 Open Scenes Applied to Commercial Copy: Booking the Spot
• 5 Open Scenes and the Day Player: Film and Television
• 6 Problem Solving With Open Scenes: Using Open Scenes to Address Specific Problems in Scenes From Dramatic Realism
• Open Scenes
• Appendix
• Index