7 vs. 93

The words of the script are pre-written, pre-scribed, and the literal meaning of the lines decided already. The 7% of human communication that is verbal has been taken care of by the writer.

The 93% that remains is your responsibility. But part of that 93% is not deciding the best way to say the lines in advance. Yet this is the way that orthodoxy would have us rehearse.

Let’s decide how to say these lines in the best and cleverest ways and then work really hard to convince people we didn’t work this out in advance.

But as mentioned in Sunday’s blog, when the words and actions of a person are not in line, then the discrepancy demonstrates hypocrisy, an actor who is doing one thing and saying another.

In class today, one of my Step 2 students was asking a question about responding to a word in a scene, because in life, it would cause an internal psychophysiological response.

That’s true. And I’m so glad that he wants to be sensitive to what is coming at him. He wants to be affectable.

But for you to respond to that word would mean giving that word some kind of undeserved meaning to you. Pretending it means something to you, that it doesn’t.

Instead, by fixating on the 7%, you deny yourself the opportunity to sensitively deal with the human being in front of you. You choose a meaningful phrase over a living being. The other actor offers you infinite opportunity, the line offers you 7%.

You must react to the 93% of the other person, and act with 93% of yourself. The 7% can take care of itself.

There are several exercises that help this, Moment to Moment Recycling and the Gibberish Exercise would really focus the actor on being present in the now and dealing with the person and not the words they speak.