Theater for Beginners

Richard Maxwell

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781559364232
• eBook ISBN: 9781559367189
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

"One of the strongest directors out there—an artist committed to making us see the world for what it is." — New Yorker

With his ongoing exploration into actor behavior and an ever-innovative body of work, Richard Maxwell has written a study guide to the art of making theater. This illuminating volume provides a deeper understanding of his work, aesthetic philosophy, and process for creating theater.

Richard Maxwell is a director and playwright and the artistic director of New York City Players. Maxwell's plays have been commissioned and presented in over 20 countries. He is a Doris Duke Performing Artist. Maxwell has been selected for a Guggenheim Fellowship, two OBIE Awards, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, and he was an invited artist in the Whitney Biennial (2012). Maxwell is the recipient of the 2014 Spalding Gray Award.

Rehearse

Rehearsal is the period in theater-making where the actors and the director actualize what is written on the page.

Rehearsal is a time of approaching and trying to answer questions about the writing, directing and acting, as well as the other departments of theater, like set, lighting, sound, costume, etc. In this way, the shape of a particular project can move from unknown toward something more known.

Rehearsing for theater is unique. While rehearsal happens in other mediums, there normally isn’t a process of rehearsing for weeks, hours on end.

Primarily, rehearsal in theater involves repetition, and the repetition defines the relationship between the actor and the text.

We repeat in rehearsal because there is a portentous sense that with each new audience, the people on stage will only get one chance; there is no do-over.

For you, the actor, there is no escape from the question of how you should behave on stage, mainly because it’s been decided that you shall be seen when the audience shows up.

Some of the questions or challenges that come up in rehearsal get answered, some do not.

At the start of rehearsal, scripts get handed around...

As you read through the script, try differentiating between what the text is saying and what the text might be suggesting. For instance, Hamlet says to Ophelia, “I have heard of your paintings too, well enough...” The line’s meaning lies in the verb “heard” and the subject “paintings” (“makeup”). In other words, Hamlet is telling Ophelia he knows women like to wear makeup. What this text might suggest is that Hamlet thinks Ophelia is two-faced. That might feel like a safe assumption but it remains suggestive.

Understanding the difference between meaning and suggestion helps define the actor’s relationship to the material. How does, or should, rehearsing allow the images and ideas that the text suggests to materialize?

Lakpa and I met while working at Paradice Café on 43rd Street. English is not his mother tongue. In rehearsal, Lakpa and I try to find something that’s recognizable in order to help communicate the story. I bring a scene to him and Alex, and we work through it. Lakpa has a line to Alex, “So we have each other.” But Lakpa is saying the line like this, “So we have each other,” giving the word “each” emphasis in the sentence. I ask him why he’s saying the line in this way, and try to get him to say it without accenting the word. It’s difficult because I don’t want to show him by saying it myself: I want him to find it on his own. Meanwhile, he is insisting that I do show him by saying it myself.

At the same time, I am intrigued by his reading. Not just because it is unexpected, but because I feel Lakpa is sincere and unapologetic as a person, and he is, after all, satisfying technically the requirements of speaking a line: it’s audible, enunciated, and the words cohere.

Finally, I decide that who and what I know Lakpa to be exceeds what I had assumed in terms of the value of this particular line of text, and I leave it alone.

I think Lakpa and I are both foregoing in this instance our individual understanding in order to share what is written on the page. We arrive at a mutual place that figures in the circumstances of the moment while working on a play: his sensibility, my sensibility, how much rehearsal time there is, how this line measures against other lines, whether the unorthodox reading of the line is theatrical or distracting, and so on.

And while I am aware that his reading of the line risks being seen as “wrong” or “weird” in the eyes of an anticipated audience member, that’s not a problem, because I know (and I think Lakpa knows) that we are doing the best we can; allowing our course to be generated by the living work we’re doing, rather than by some private notions about how things are supposed to be.

Ultimately, the “broken” line that Lakpa speaks, which got discovered in the rehearsal room, is given to the audience, and broader exploration, I expect, is opened up in the presentation of this person and character.

An actor could view the example above as a person struggling with the English language, and thereby exempt themselves from this “problem.” But I choose actors not in what they can do as much as who they are.

If an actor doesn’t suffer from speaking English as a second language, they certainly suffer, as we all do, from some other kind of interference, be it nerves, habits, fears, or other predispositions.

The actor steps into place and reads his script out loud...

Historically, the actor tries to align, in real time, his mental images with the author’s intentions. But the imagery an actor has doesn’t correspond with the writing and, more to the point, doesn’t need to.

In fact, the author’s intentions that are perceived by the actor are never official or legitimized, even if the author condones it.

I’m thinking about the impulse I feel to write text that I know people will one day speak. Maybe I’ve made some realization about the way commuters behave on the subway. I may love that moment, think it is funny or touching, and I write it down. This text gets woven by way of a character into the thing that will become a play. The text travels on a circuitous path and, while there might be a way to trace back what it felt like originally, it doesn’t matter now. Now, it’s words that remain on the page and we’re in a room trying to make it somehow work in the present moment.

As the writer, I can’t hold on to the feeling I had. It fades away as soon as I write it down. It may have value but the value is priced in the here and now, in the room where we work. It’s a hard rule, but I have to play by it.

There is a parallel track that is part of the actor’s journey in rehearsal.

Here is how a task you thought you had when you first ran the scene actually transforms from the second time forward:

Let’s say I’ve been cast in a scene and I’ll call the scene “First Kiss.” The writing is about my character getting to know a girl and the scene ends with a kiss on the lips.

I think back on my life to a time when that actually happened. I remember my sophomore year in high school; a semester spent with Mikey, around Christmas. She was my first kiss. I recall that kiss, made with a chain-link fence between us.

All the ingredients seem right for the scene when I run it: I like the person I’m acting with, I feel like we understand each other, and now I’ve got a handle on my lines and where the scene goes. I hit my marks in the blocking, and while the scene is unfolding, I find that I am “in it.” I am moved. I connect to my scene partner emotionally, and it’s just happening, happening as though the first kiss is actually happening. I am feeling what I felt kissing Mikey over that fence behind the movie theater, and my memories intersect with the interactions of my stage partner.

The scene ends. Everyone involved seems impressed.

“Great!” the director says, “I’d like you to do it again.”

So we do it again.

It’s nice. We do it a little more comfortably this time, perhaps basking in the glow of the first time. But, it’s still great.

And now, after some adjustments to blocking, the director says, “Let’s do it again.”

This time, I consciously try to summon what I remember liking in that firs...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction
• Learn Your Lines
• Learn Your Blocking
• Warm Up
• Build a Set
• Listen
• Rehearse
• Why Are You Here?
• Perform
• Continue
• About the Author