It’s prevalent to the point of cliché, seen in countless gag reels: an actor loses focus and starts to laugh, so he stops to gather himself. He comes back into the scene and only gets a word or two out before falling apart all over again.
I’ve seen this move from actors countless times: when our focus goes afield, we close our eyes, look down, turn inward for a moment, and take a deep breath. Some even add a meditation gesture, touching thumbs to fingertips.
It’s a behavior born of instinct and observation, and it offers no real help at all. Which brings us to our third habit: stop doing that. If you are rehearsing and your focus is eluding you, don’t do anything that takes you out of the scene. Take a deep breath, take your pause, but stay focused on the other.
What could be the reason to leave the scene and look at the ground to find your focus? It can only be a need to reinvest yourself in the fiction of the scene: “Okay, get it together. I’m not me, being amused by my partner’s funny accent; I’m Hamlet . . . See myself as Hamlet. Okay, here we go . . . .” And back into the scene you go, no more convinced that you are Hamlet than you were five seconds ago, and now even more stuck in bad-pretend-acting mode.
You are not there to play the fiction of the scene. Your focus should never be on trying to believe something that isn’t true. Your focus must be entirely on your partner: what do you want from them, and how are your tactics affecting them? If you begin to lose your focus because some new element enters the rehearsal – a stray thought or unexpected interruption – you have two choices for dealing with that, and neither of them involve leaving the scene. The first choice is to play the moment as it’s happening; if you begin to laugh or your partner begins to laugh, see what that does to the scene. Even if it’s an angry break-up scene, you’ll be surprised by what trying it while laughing will teach you. The second choice is to pause and gather yourself before moving on. But in that pause you look at your partner, acknowledge what they are doing, and remember what you need to be doing to get what you need from them. But at all costs, keep that connection alive. Find your focus by staying invested in the scene.
This instinct to step out of the scene for just a minute to recover is natural and understandable, and you may be convinced that it’s helping. But it is destructive. Fight it, stay in the moment, and stay on task. Make it a habit to keep your energies from folding inward, even for a moment.
The “look down” is but one of the ways I see actors take themselves out of the scene, so my next post will address the bigger picture: staying in the scene from action to cut, even when rehearsing.
It’s a behavior born of instinct and observation, and it offers no real help at all. Which brings us to our third habit: stop doing that. If you are rehearsing and your focus is eluding you, don’t do anything that takes you out of the scene. Take a deep breath, take your pause, but stay focused on the other.
What could be the reason to leave the scene and look at the ground to find your focus? It can only be a need to reinvest yourself in the fiction of the scene: “Okay, get it together. I’m not me, being amused by my partner’s funny accent; I’m Hamlet . . . See myself as Hamlet. Okay, here we go . . . .” And back into the scene you go, no more convinced that you are Hamlet than you were five seconds ago, and now even more stuck in bad-pretend-acting mode.
You are not there to play the fiction of the scene. Your focus should never be on trying to believe something that isn’t true. Your focus must be entirely on your partner: what do you want from them, and how are your tactics affecting them? If you begin to lose your focus because some new element enters the rehearsal – a stray thought or unexpected interruption – you have two choices for dealing with that, and neither of them involve leaving the scene. The first choice is to play the moment as it’s happening; if you begin to laugh or your partner begins to laugh, see what that does to the scene. Even if it’s an angry break-up scene, you’ll be surprised by what trying it while laughing will teach you. The second choice is to pause and gather yourself before moving on. But in that pause you look at your partner, acknowledge what they are doing, and remember what you need to be doing to get what you need from them. But at all costs, keep that connection alive. Find your focus by staying invested in the scene.
This instinct to step out of the scene for just a minute to recover is natural and understandable, and you may be convinced that it’s helping. But it is destructive. Fight it, stay in the moment, and stay on task. Make it a habit to keep your energies from folding inward, even for a moment.
The “look down” is but one of the ways I see actors take themselves out of the scene, so my next post will address the bigger picture: staying in the scene from action to cut, even when rehearsing.