"The energy of absolute intimacy"

In this video, Pasty Rodenburg, head of voice at Guildhall, explains how we shift out energy from inwards to outwards - and how performers, dancers and everyone can be anchored in the present...

If life is too easy...

"If life is too easy, you lose your joy"
Hopi Camp chief - Patsy Rodenburg's Presence

Body and soul

Interesting article about stage nudity and female body in the Washington Post. Very honest. 

(Photographs by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

I particularly like this line:

"In our culture, women’s sexuality doesn’t tend to be funny. Women’s bodies are almost never a punchline the way men’s can be. For better or worse, there is a cultural seriousness to female nudity. And when women act sexy, at best they are setups for punchlines: Meg Ryan’s extended fauxgasm in “When Harry Met Sally” wasn’t the joke; it was the tension-building prelude . “I’ll have what she’s having” was the joke."

Sex and the theater: An actress bares all about onstage nudity

SummerFolk

Act 3's  PiqueNique scene - Design by Faye Shortall

Summerfolk opening night

Last director's notes - avoiding silence

 As we prepare for our opening night of SummerFolks, our director Max Key just gave us some last notes. He reminded us to be super on cue, and not let any silence/ small pauses happen in-between lines.

He told us that it took him 12 years to work out this simple genius theatre tip:
It's all about focus. If there is silence, the audience doesn't know where to look - and we lose them. So, always good to do a double-speed run of the show...

The smallest part in the show

I'm currently acting in a production of Gorky's Summerfolks, and I have literally the smallest part in the show. I basically serve tea, announce a few people and look for a lost little boy. 7 lines, max.

I spent a lot of time trying to understand why Gorky - and others playwrights - would bother adding such a small character in their scripts: why waste precious stage time or make the play even more expensive to produce? Of course, there is representing the working class in the world of idle bourgeoisie (Summerfolk is set a few years before the Russian revolution). Also, the importance of sticking to reality: these characters wouldn't have prepared tea themselves.

But as rehearsals advanced and the acting became more precise, I also realised how the play could not be without the servant role:

Changing the course of action
by coming in and out, I give the main characters/ actors, a pause, a time to breath and change their mind... thus changing the course of the discussion of events. They are about to explode and fight - then tea arrives and everyone calms down - giving the audience a glimpse of the characters' feelings but not allowing events to unravel.

Giving flavour to the relationships
By announcing characters differently - the mistress' best friend or the master's untrusted assistant - I give the audience context about the relationships, and colour the whole play.

Crazy, the responsibility on my shoulders now....

Intention

Cherry Orchard at Young Vic

During out last directors notes call, we spoke about how harder the acoustics are in the theatre we're performing in than in the rehearsal room. Our director made a point, then: He told us that when our intention is clear, the audience always hears us, even when it is just a stage whisper. Whereas when we don't know why we are talking, that's when the audience doesn't hear us.

Cicely Berry's being yourself

I started to understand what 'letting people come to you' means, and how it actually relates to voice and body technique.

In 'Voice and the Actor', Cicely Berry - voice director of the RSC - writes about the importance of working with one's own voice instead of trying to 'correct' it or 'make it better' (sic) 

"I think one of the greatest fears of the actor is that of not being interesting. This really need never be a fear because everyone is interesting in that he is himself. When you get to the point which says: 'This is me; it will change and perhaps improve, but this is me at this moment', then the voice will become open."

Jazz and the fine balance of performing

Last night we went to a super cool jazz club in Dalston, where a jazz trio was performing (perfect Friday eve). At some point, the bass player went into a solo, and by went I mean "really went for it" - performing with close eyes, body moving with the music, and the very expressive face of someone transported by music.... The music was beautiful indeed, but the question on our lips was: is he faking it?
When I practice the flute, my body doesn't really move - I concentrate on my breathing, the technique, and my fingers' rapidity. However, when I perform for someone I always find myself moving my body much more with the melody. To be honest, it is a bit to show off... but it also helps me feel the melody much more and be more musical.
And then I always reach a point where I feel that the body movements overtake the technique and my sound gets weaker - then I need to tone the "performing" act down.

I was thinking last night that acting is similar - we feel the emotion, then we push it out for the audience to see, which makes us feel it even more and gives strength to our movements... until the point where we feel that we just overacting and losing the connection between performance and feelings. Then we need to find the fine balance between "feeling in" and "showing out".

Tongue Twisters

I wish letting people come to me would mean entrancing the audience with my delightful French accent but let's face it. If you are to act in the UK, you need to sound like someone from the UK. It's bloody restrictive for an actor if you can't be somebody's mother, aunt, daughter... because you sound like a foreigner.
So I started classes in Received Pronunciation with a wonderful coach and fomer classmate of mine, Anna O'Hara.
We're working on the 'O' to start with - which apparently British people pronunce something like 'O-U' - and she's making me work with tongue-twisters:

Better Botter bought some butter
But she said this butter's bitter
If I put it in my batter
It will make my batter bitter
So she bought some better butter
Put it in her bitter batter
And it made her bitter batter better

What makes a good actor?

I don't know but in the past three days I have seen amazing yet extremely different acting. Some looked effortless, some looked like acting but were so compelling.

Let's start with Harriet Walter's King Henry in Shakespeare's Henry IV, directed by Phyllida Lloyd. There is so much to say about the direction already (the play is set in a contemporary female prison...), but let's focus on the acting for now. How did she put off such a threatening and authoritative king, without never pushing her voice?

Pace
She spoke mainly slowly, as if she had all the time in the world - which she had in a way, because as the king everyone was bound to listen to her.

Calm
In a oestrogen-fuelled world (all-female cast), where all scenes were conveying an impressive dose of energy, she was always calm and collected -even in her orders, even when the play threatened to burst - which gave great inconsistency to the play in general and separated her from the rest of the actresses.

Fragility
Somehow she managed to make me fear for her loss of power. She was mainly alone on stage, and her loneliness made it even more impressive that she'd have achieved power. Throughout the play I was kept thinking that she'd probably earned her power over the others due to her intelligence more than by force

Ballet dancing

Today the director I am working with described to the cast how as a young boy he used to go to be sneaked into the Royal Opera House by his father who was working there - he got to see a lot of rehearsals.

One day, he was placed backstage for a ballet rehearsal: he saw the dancers perform beautifully, effortlessly pirouetting from one side of the stage to the other.... gracefully leaving the stage...then arrive in the wing breathless, swearing in their effort to catch their breath again.... they would then put a smile back on their face as the time came for them to 'effortlessly' jump and pirouette into the stage again...

He compared it with acting: like these dancers, you should give everything you have. You should give your mental and physical strength, and your soul to the audience - and come offstage exhausted without a single breath of air left in your body. Because it is too easy for the audience to drift off if we ourselves are not working our hardest to convey some emotion to them. 

Taking time on stage

I always rush my lines, my steps, and even my pauses. And I find that a lot of other actors do. Why is it that some of us actors, who strive to be on stage, want to 'just get it over with' as soon as we are given the chance to perform?

Maybe it's the combination of our desire to shine with our complete shy-ness, low-confidence level, shame at lack of technique.... or whatever it is that makes us want to go in and own that stage for once?

I wonder if there isn't a way of using those contradictory feelings while acting. Maybe it gives more depth to a character to approach it with both a desire to embrace everything she/he says, but also with a heightened awareness of who we are. Or it makes us more interesting to watch if we fully embrace all the contradictory emotions we are feeling on stage. Does it?

Accepting your posture

My voice coach told me that the thing with postures is that there's the ideal straight and balanced one, and the one we have - and that we just got to work with the latter.
It got me thinking, as I always try to straighten myself and pull my shoulders back. Maybe letting people come to you means using all our flaws on stage? Working with them, from them?

One of my former directors once told me: Alexanders technique students are boring because throughout their studies and for 5 years after that, all they do is with the alexanders technique principles in mind. they will sit on a stool thinking of their posture, and thus become very boring to watch. 

Can you change your hair just after getting some headshots done?

Because I just did it. And though it was probably not the best idea I badly wanted to chop all that hair.
Apparently, what most headshots photographers say online is that what you shouldn't do is cut your hair just before, as haircuts need a few days to settle. But I asked around - my tutor told me it really doesn't matter that you have the same haircut as before or not.

Which leads to another question: what should you do with your hair if you want to act?
One of my actress friends told me that she keeps her hair long to be able to do more with it on stage. Another friend of mine recently posted on facebook that she dreams of going half-shaved but fears she'd lose out on some roles. Which is probably reasonable as the small productions she'd be hired into at the start would probably not have a massive hair and make-up budget. Also, some very trendy haircuts can feel old-fashioned in a matter of months, and we could end up having to do new headshots every months.

I guess that in a world where the way we look matters so much, we should just select the haircut that fits us best today.

In which case I definitely need new headshots.... 

Dirty Butterfly

I saw Debbie Tucker green's Dirty Butterfly last night. I was not so fond of the direction, but I was impressed by Seline Hizli's (Jo) performance. She felt like the most alive of all actors on stage.

Something to offer

Discussing about what it meant to "let people see you on stage this morning", I realised the first step was probably understanding that you had something to offer as a performer. That giving a voice to a character starts with out own voice and body. And that no other performer would give it the texture you're giving. Which somehow brings back to the idea of confidence in one's own skills.

(picture from Oliver Dubois's tragedy)

Connection

"In order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen - really seen."
Brené Brown
These days, when I read about acting, I always stumble upon the concept of using ourselves, our personality as a starting point, instead of imagining who the character is or would be.Michael Shurtleff, in his book Audition

Brené studies human connection - She talked at TED on vulnerability