So you have avoided the character breakdown, you started by reading the script out loud, and you’re ready to start really digging in. At this point, many actors will highlight their lines in the script.
I’ve always had an aversion to highlighting scripts. My students know my mantra, “The words are your friends, the page is your enemy,” and highlighting feels like making a commitment to something I want to get away from as quickly as I can. But worse than that, highlighting might reinforce the ideas that the scene is about the lines and the scene is all about me – two terribly misguided notions.
But Tony Barr offers some sage advice about highlighting, and it is the core of our next habit: Don’t highlight your lines, highlight the stimuli that make those lines happen. Look at the other person’s speeches and business, find what triggers the next response, and highlight it.
You’re achieving the practical goal of finding your place while working with the pages, but you’re doing something far more valuable: you are learning the role, asking questions, and focusing on the other. Even at this early stage, your energies are focused outward, and you’re not thinking about what you are obligated to say, but instead exploring what kinds of stimuli you have to play with.
Any habit that fulfills a practical goal while keeping you philosophically on track is worth putting into practice. Try it the next time you highlight a script, and I’ll bet you never go back.
Next up: Keeping focused when rehearsing.
But Tony Barr offers some sage advice about highlighting, and it is the core of our next habit: Don’t highlight your lines, highlight the stimuli that make those lines happen. Look at the other person’s speeches and business, find what triggers the next response, and highlight it.
You’re achieving the practical goal of finding your place while working with the pages, but you’re doing something far more valuable: you are learning the role, asking questions, and focusing on the other. Even at this early stage, your energies are focused outward, and you’re not thinking about what you are obligated to say, but instead exploring what kinds of stimuli you have to play with.
Any habit that fulfills a practical goal while keeping you philosophically on track is worth putting into practice. Try it the next time you highlight a script, and I’ll bet you never go back.
Next up: Keeping focused when rehearsing.