What's Your Tell?

When we get out there to perform or create, all of us -- all of us -- are attempting to do something special every time.  But all of us are forced, at some point or in some situtation, to cut corners whether we like it or not -- and sometimes we don't even realize what we're doing.  Now, the problem with cutting corners as an actor is this:  sometimes whatever technique we employ becomes part of our style.  Yikes.  Forget about doing something special when we're just doing the same old same old.

I call these bad habits 'tells'.  A tell, in my mind, is a repetitve behaviour that implies the actor is opting for the first solution or thought or technique that pops into her head.  Now, is that such a bad thing?  The first thing that pops into our head, the thing we do naturally, is by definition organic, is it not?  Well, no.   Tells are quick, shorthand solutions to acting problems.  They might be good or bad but, by definition, they are not special.  Over time, the impact of a performance can be undermined by choosing what's there as opposed to digging for what's difficult to find.  Great performance, like any art, is hard.  So, funnily enough, for such an organic director as I, I tend not to leave it as it was at first.  I like to keep sifting for those tiny little specks of gold.  And, I encourage actors to do the same.

So how do we clear ourselves of these tells, these bad habits?

Firstly, we need a third party observer.  Usually an acting coach or teacher, director, or friend, our third party observer should, over time, be watching our performances for those moments/motions/actions that are the same.  You can be your own third party observer if your performances have been videotaped.  Catching your own tells are hard (remember you do them because you like them or are confortable with them); you'll have to be honest with yourself.  But your first job in clearing up tells is identifying them.

Look, a cautionary word about this.  Your third party observer is not there to make you feel crappy about what you're doing, or to create a voice in your head that makes you  constantly question the authenticity of your work.  Choose someone who makes you feel at ease with yourself as a performer, someone you can trust to leave their own ego at home and assess your acting in a neutral and kind way.  This person can be your maiden aunt, for goodness sake.  All they need to be able to do is see when you are moving the same, or employing that same vocal turn.

Once you identify your tell, life can be a lot easier.  You want to use the tell not as a thing to fight -- fighting rarely achieves anything in art (or in life for that matter) -- but more as a sign, a marker that shows you where you have more opportunity to dig a little deeper.  So, you know that thing you do when you put your hand on your hip and shift just a little to the right in that almost coquettish way?  Or that way you drop your voice and avert your gaze?  Those are your tells.  When you find yourself doing them, take the opportunity to work a little harder.  There might be an emotional issue with the character that you are avoiding facing head on or an aspect of the character that you are having trouble understanding.  Happily, your tell could be showing you those places.  Nice.

Now, some people might call a series of tells acting style.  I dunno.  I personally don't think so.  But when you catch yourself using a tell, ask yourself one simple question:  Is this really how this particular character would act?  If the answer to that question is 'uh, well, no, not really' then, awesome, great.  You've got a chance to drop the tell and tease out a performance that might be more authentic, more believable, more special.

Better than the same old same old.  After all, you don't want them walking away even a tiny little spackle of bored.


Jacqui is a theatre director and writer.  Current projects include  The Pretender, an online, serialized detective story, and Wrong For Each Other, a Norm Foster play she is directing, opening the end of April.

Squirrel!

After the success (completely in my own mind) of my first play writing attempt in recent years, I am off, again, scribbling a new one.  This a full length and, hopefully, funny play.  I have the outline all figured; plot twists, such as they are determined; a solid understanding of the characters and their motivations are outlined clearly.  Nice.  That took two days.  But the framework is there.  It just needs to write itself.  I just need to focus.

Wow, okay, what was that over there.  Look!  A friend of mine just posted on Facebook:

"Love don't need a reason, love don't always rhyme.
But love is all we have, for now. What we don't have is time.
~ Peter Allen

Wow, super sweet, considering it's Valentine's.  I really like the sentiment.  Nice.  I am going to 'like' this.

Oh wait, a talk by Noam Chomsky.  Facebook is so coolie.  Hmm, sound quality's not that good.  Best get back to...

Yikes!  Ten more tweets on Twitter.  Just a sec, here.  Extreme yurt building, what's going on with theatre in Toronto, a valentine's card from a version of Nunsense they're doing out there in Scarborough....  So much to read.  So little time.  Best get back to....  Oh, ten more tweets on Twitter....

Oh hee.  Just got poked on Facebook.

Whoops, it's getting pretty late in the day already.  Almost time for my daughter's guitar teacher (who happens to be an old friend) to remind me that she has a guitar class.  Best get the day rolling.   Shoot, I didn't get one word written on that play.

Well, at least I got a blog entry done and posted.  That's important.  :)

The Ride Begins

 I have done a few shows over the years, some of my own choosing, some not.  Some in a significant capacity, some not.  Most just because I love it.  But you'd think that you might get a bit jaded over time, that some forty years on, the process would become pedestrian, normalized, maybe a little boring.  Yeah.  Well, no.  An emphatic no.

At some point as I approach the start of a project, regardless of how burnt out I am, or tired, or stressed, I always get that tingle, that sense that something extraordinary is going to happen.  That it might be fun, or difficult, or intense but never dreary, never mundane.  I have been lucky enough to never start a show without getting that feeling and I hope I never will.  If I do, that might be the day I move on to do something else.  Could you imagine?  Jacqui without theatre?

Tonight, we audition Wrong For Each Other for Encore Entertainment.  This is the second in my Norm Foster offerings for this season and we are looking for Norah, a highly contained, fussy but surprisingly fun-loving Arts Administrator who falls in love, despite seemingly insurmountable differences, with Rudy, an entrepreneurial house painter.  The marriage fails but a chance meeting of the pair in a restaurant and  their subsequent reminiscences allows us to see the history of their relationship play out.  It's sweet, sentimental.  And despite its simple premise, it will be a challenge to do well.

Every show is.

Okay.  Hey!  What are you hanging on for?  Arms up high.  Eyes wide open.  Here we go.  Wheeeeeee!

Shut up? Hell, no! Active Listening On Stage.

One of the hardest things to do is listen well on stage.

Now, a nice thing about a blog -- no one interrupts me.  I can talk and talk and talk and, no matter how irritating that talk might be, I get to finish.  I get to play my dainty world view, spun on gossamer, all the way out, and back again.  Nice, nice.  Satisfying for folks with control issues (and if you think a former Stage Manager turned Director does not have control issues, you're insane.)

However, real life is not like that.  Real life is full of conversations, conversations we can't control. These are rarely one-sided (in the manner of the delicious blog); conversations in life are a back and forth.  And, if a conversation seems one-sided, remember it takes two to tango.  The silent one is choosing to remain silent and in conversations on stage even more so because every conversation on stage is important, taking place at an important juncture -- or we wouldn't be seeing it. A moment on stage is never another-boring-bacon-and-eggs moment, even if they're just eating bacon and eggs.  The moment presented is important to both or all characters involved, especially if the conversation seems banal.

So, I ask you, what are we often doing while another person is talking, say, at a dinner party.  We are listening to the witty banter or funny anecdote, we are smiling, responding, but we are also thinking about what we are going to say. We almost always have an idea in our head of how we are going to respond.  We have our own anecdote or witticism or story we want to tell.  We are listening (passive) but involved in creating our next contribution to the conversation (active).

Now, most actors slip into a soley passive posture  when listening on stage, especially when another character has a long monologue. I am not talking about the classic problem of 'phoning it in' (when an actor shuts down unless she is speaking) but I am talking more about the lack of forward energy when an actor is listening.  Though the actor is present, engaged, attentive, maybe with an underlying attitude, the dominant stance is one of passivity.

However, if we consider that the listener would probably not be just sitting passively, if we think that the listener would actually choose to say something if given the opportunity, the process becomes more alive, more interactive, more interesting, more true.  The long monologue, then, when more than one character is onstage, could be a kind of conversation.  The speaker is telling his/her story or feelings or doing whatever she or he is trying to do -- but the listener is constantly reacting to the monologue because she/he has a story of her/his own, has something that she or he is trying to do.  The listener is not allowed to speak -- there is no dialogue -- but her lack of speech can be as telling as speaking.  Does she choose to not speak?  Does she try to interject and get cut off by the monologuer?  Is she dismissive of what the speaker has to say?  Or is she devestated by what the speaker has to say?

Even if you have nary a line, ask yourself about your character's silence and what that character is doing with that silence.  Remember, every time you are on stage, you are doing something; you are acting.  Ask yourself basic questions for every scene, beat, moment, line, or silence:

What are you doing?
How are you doing it?
Who or what are you doing it to?

Try it next time the playwright was dumb enough not to give you something to say or do.  Because your character definitely has something to say or do.  Always.  And silence can be as telling as telling.

They often say that what is not there is more important than what is.  Except in a blog.  Jacqui likes blogs.  Blogs are yummy because they are all about me.  Plays are yummy because they are not.  Now, what do you think of that?

Just Say Yes

I have, this year, become Ms. Norm Foster.  Mr. Foster had nothing to do with it and I'm sure, given his druthers, he would have chosen someone a bit younger and cuter.  Funnily enough, it wasn't my druthers either.  And maybe I'd like someone younger and cuter, too.  But it is what it is.

Some of you may not recognize Norm's name.  (You may also wonder what I've done with John but have no fear.)  Norm Foster is, quite simply, Canada's most produced playwright.  He was born on February 14, 1949 but wasn't exposed to theatre until 1980 - and he fell in love with it.  Since then, he has written many plays, over forty of which have been produced professionally.  He is most often compared to American playwright Neil Simon and has a knack for writing characters we recognize, laugh with, laugh at, and love.

Well, I didn't really care about this going into Affections of May produced by Scarborough Theatre Guild, my most recent directing effort.  I didn't know that much about Foster, period.  I was just trying to help out the group.  They phoned me, explained the situation (that they needed a Director and folks weren't coming forward for the play), asked me if I'd do it, and - I didn't think about it much - I said yes.  Well, what the heck.  I had a bit of time and could squeeze it in.

So you might expect me to report that the rehearsal and run were not that inspiring, considering I hadn't chosen the play and might not be that emotionally involved.  But a curious thing happened (as always happens when I am given a project as opposed to seek it out), I fell in love with it.  And I fell in love with the people and the experience and ended up having a super time.  The show ran to lovely reviews and the members of the cast and crew I would number, now, amongst my friends.  That's quite a statement from a gypsy like me.

So it was a good experience, excellent in fact.  And I wouldn't have had the chance to do it if I hadn't closed my eyes and jumped.  Now, listen.  I am fully aware that my open attitude toward the work makes me seem undiscerning.  Some might read this, turn up their noses, and pronounce me a whore, but who cares what they think?  Most professional theatre people are a bit whorish.  They'll do pretty much any project to stay in the game because every project is a gift.  It's only pretenders and indie film makers who are too good for the work.  People who love theatre just say yes.  To pretty much anything.

But I suppose it can be the same way in life.  If we're too discerning, too picky, we start to miss out.  I wonder if we all shouldn't be a bit whorish, a bit gourmandish.  Take a huge bite of whatever's on the table.  Go ahead.  It's good.