Rehearsal is the Death of Live Performance

After virtual retirement from theatre directing while building the studio for almost 4 years, I am currently working on a number of projects with my most advanced students.

Collectively we are called the Spartan Ensemble and while our main focus is telling a good story (through existing plays or new writing), it is our working methodology that is our USP.

You see, I believe that live theatre loses its most important innate quality, immediacy when it is rehearsed in the traditional sense and that to be truly spontaneous and immediate, you can’t rehearse it at all. What’s good enough for improv is good enough for me.

This is the experimental starting place that Spartan are using as their point of departure.

I realise this is yet another act of heresy on my part, and I appreciate that it is counter to traditional practise. But I think that repeating something over and over kills it.

But don’t for a second mistake me. I am not suggesting that the actors turn up at the theatre and just middle their way through the play. I’m sure it would be awful.

I am advocating that we change the way that we think of rehearsal, so it is less and less about repeating something until it is ‘right’ or in line with the director’s vision (I have no problem with the director auteur) and more and more about the immediate moment to moment connection between the actors, with a respect for the script which would include leaving it the hell alone.

Blocking becomes more organic, although positioning for lighting would be acknowledged of course.

We begin with considerable time exploring the script together, an open dialogue between actors and the director, answering questions that aim to translate the written word into action.

Next we break down each actor’s script into beats of action, in terms of what the character is essentially doing and what they want the other character to do. We transform that into an achievable task for the actor.

The actors then learn the lines for that beat cold to prevent line readings.

We take the first beat and we ‘as-if’ it, we ask the actors to try to achieve their task and a physical cap from the other actor without pretending anything. However what they do to the other actor should parallel what they would do if they were trying to achieve their task from a person of a similar relationship type. All the time, the director tosses in tiny instructions, reminders, tactics to try, status or stake raising or lowering. Coaching the actors rather than telling them what to do and only stopping this process if they have come off the rails.

When the actors are in the groove of their task, when they fully embodied it, they are asked to use a full sentence of gibberish instead of their own words. This gibberish isn’t translating the words, but gives the actor something to say that represents having to speak words you do not invent yourself in the moment. This forces the actor to make the words work for them and forget trying to make them mean something.
It also encourages them to work off each other. The actors dip in and out if the gibberish and scene.

When we have a string of gibberish scenes, they work on going into the scene for longer and longer.

Very little is set in stone with this way of working, it requires actors trained to deal with this intense level of improvised moment to moment work and it really isn’t easy.

But the work it creates is very watchable because it in no way smacks of the pre-rehearsed.

Of course there is more to it than I can write in one simple blog. But this is a working method that works for us, it might not work for you and that’s cool, it’s not a competition. If you have a good way of producing immediacy with traditional rehearsal I would love to hear it. Please feel free to email me.