Hello, my fellow artists! I hope you’re all having a great week. For the past two weeks, I’ve been sharing my rehearsal process experiences for scenes I’m working on for my acting class. Keep reading below 🙂
In Part 3, I wanted to share my experiences of going through the second 40 percent of the rehearsal process. 40/40/20 is a technique created by Richard Lawson to help us effectively utilize the time we have to work on something. The first 40 percent of the time you have to work on something consists of research and gathering information. The second 40 percent of the time you have to work on something involves implementing and applying the research and information you gathered in the first 40 percent (aka getting it up on its feet.) The last 20 percent of the time you have to work on something is devoted to locking in your product and coasting towards the finish line. Keep reading below 🙂
It had been a while since I last rehearsed a scene in person, so this second 40 percent was like learning how to ride a bike again. Here are some highlights from “Yellowstone”. Rehearsing face to face, in person, was a wildly different experience. I had to deal with another person in the flesh, and the level of energy and impingement was higher. More visceral. There was no Zoom screen keeping us apart or keeping us safe. We did a rough walk through and I blanked out on my lines. “Oh yeah. I need to remember how to walk and talk again!” I found myself being uncomfortable with stillness and feeling like I needed to move. I found myself being uncomfortable with arbitrary movement and feeling like I needed to be still. I implemented different ways of sitting at the top of the scene to discover which position would put me into the belief and experience of my actual event and moment before (I haven’t nailed this sitting position yet.) Keep reading below 🙂
Back at my office, I watched one of our recorded Zoom rehearsals, and took notes of what I wanted to change from my performance. Funny, I record all my auditions to see if my work is translating on camera, but this was the first time I recorded rehearsals for scene work. Duh! Recording the rehearsals and watching them afterward was invaluable. I spotted a technical and performance thing that I wanted to change. In this second 40 percent, we also had a couple of rehearsals over Zoom where we identified one emotional throughline at a time and played it throughout the entire scene to see what we could discover. Keep reading below 🙂
For “Beverly Hills Cop 2”, we did a series of improvisations to carve out our relationship and to implement some ideas we wrote down from previous rehearsals. It was great to see how several of the questions we asked and the research we did together made their way into our improvisations. Through these improvisations, we saw how the history of our relationship evolved and progressed to the present-day scene we are doing. I also began implementing the beginning of my character’s wardrobe and his physical stance in the scene. We implemented our subtext in a few of our run throughs and also implemented ideas into certain sections of the scene. I also recorded these improvisations and watched them back to study my performances. Keep reading below 🙂
See you all next week where I will share an improvisation or two from “Beverly Hills Cop 2” and continue the journey through the second 40 percent.
Chasing The George 