Rehearsal for Dracula With Director Bill McNulty
I have so much to learn
So I’m here in rehearsal with a director who’s incredible and directed this show for 15 years at Actors. Intimidated, is more than an understatement of how I feel. It’s been about a week since we began and I just had my first rehearsal where it was me, him, Havalah, and the stage manager and I was finally able to let my belt loose a little bit. Let go of the, “I’m a student, you’re incredible, and I’m not doing anything that you want”, mindset. Its really hard to think of myself as a peer with the folks in the cast. As much as we’re told to, its hard to wrap my head around it.
So I just took this rehearsal to listen. To listen to everything he was giving me, and not feel like I had to get it THAT instant to impress him, or show him that there was a reason he cast me. I had a good hour.
Play the action –
Work with what you want the OTHER character to feel –
Work what you want in the scene –
Those are the main things he kept pushing at us. Those are the things I forget about when I’m in my room running lines and working beats. I start talking and think, Oh, yeah, that’s a good line reading. Or, oh nice, that’s a nice bit.
Bill brought this up, recognized it, and kind of made a joke about it. He said you do all that, but then when you get into the room with the actor and they start giving you something different, you have to roll with it and let it happen. That’s the only way to get something organic and valuable.
He just kept on pushing to keep your action in the back of your head; what is your action in this beat. Once I got it, once we both started just leaving these line reads and these bits at the door and just played off each other with our actions in mind- it started to happen. Work, actual, valuable work started to happen. I started to feel, for the first time today, that I was contributing.
Today’s rehearsal got me thinking about a bigger issue as far as my craft goes –
My process –
One of the things Michael and Amy asked us to do when we got here was, “Articulate your process. How do you create a character? What do you do when you get in a play?” I didn’t really know what to tell them.
I don’t really know what my process is- My process of creating a character and a world in a play. I just memorize the lines, find the beats, think about what the character wants and start rehearsals. I want to be able to actually bring ideas into the rehearsal room, not just know where the beats are.
So, today’s rehearsal was good. It’s the first scene study rehearsal I’ve felt good about. I feel good about it because I was able to drop nervous Ryan for a while and just play around with smart actor Ryan, who doesn’t come out very often. J
More later about fight choreography…..
