Help! My Scene Partner is UNDEAD!

This is a blog post that relates to a recent email from MICHELLE in Kansas City. I really need to start offering classes in the US, I’m wasted here at home :o)

It’s true that no matter your training, nothing can prepare you to work with one of those actors that gives nothing. Like the undead, they show up for rehearsal but they offer you nothing. Michelle says it’s like the ‘ball isn’t being hit back‘. Actually I say screw them, there is something you can do, but it requires a bit of bravery and a strong commitment to changing their behaviour.

First, you need a very strong achievable essential action. This is something that can be achieved from your scene partner, and is the essence of what the character in the play is doing during the scene. Don’t try to attain the character’s goal, they’re fictional, and you’re unlikely to fool yourself long enough to believe that you can actually share their aim, want or objective.  Read my Blog on Essential Actions to get a better idea of how this works. If you struggle to come up with your own essential actions, visit my UK or US bookstore (link is down on the right) and buy A Practical Handbook for the Actor, because it’s the best guide to creating one.

Anyway, the simple answer is this, once you have something achievable to do in the scene, you can try to get it from them no matter what they give you. So for instance you choose the essential action of ‘To Get Someone To Back Off’, well, whatever you do in the scene, focus on changing their behaviour. The harder you work, the more engaging you’re going to be, and it will be eventually impossible for them to stay unmoved, or the director/acting coach will surely say something to them. So in order to get them to back off, choose tactics that make them back off regardless of what they’re not giving you. Focus solely on them and trying to change their behaviour through the scene. Take your focus off the words and place it on the Zombie Scene Partner from Hell and if they make you mad because they don’t give anything back, that’s fine. There’ll be real emotion in the scene from your annoyance with the idiot you’re acting with.

You see whilst your scene partner is the fuel for your scene, it’s your attempts to engage with achieving your essential action that will make the scene successful for you. No matter what they do, even if they sit still and bleat like a sheep, you will have some form of stimulus to work off. This can apply to auditions or casting where someone blankly reads the other character’s lines. You still have something to work off, if they’re quiet you’ll need to make them loud.

When you do real things to real people, you get real results. 

To You, the Best

Mark