Under the Words is Action
This seems to be the theme of the week in the studio, last week was Ice Skaters, this week is what’s going on under the words.
99% of actors seem to think their job is to act out the words. What this translates to is actors animating someone else’s lines in a way that makes it sounds like they mean them. This isn’t easy and not everyone can do it. That’s what most actors are doing. They take some of the cues for how to deliver the line from the context of the scene and what the other character just said, and they endeavour to make it a truthful response.
But what if I said that wasn’t your job at all?
Rather than pouring all your ability into the lines, instead your focus should be the human to human, real world, present interaction between you and the other actors.
The 99% say that’s what they do. But it isn’t. Go and watch and live stage production and I’ll guarantee that if you put your fingers in your ears, they aren’t really responding to what the other just did, they are responding to what the other just said.
7% of human communication is verbal. That means that 93% of what you communicate to the audience is through your tone, facial expressions, gestures, posture, speed, pitch and rhythm of speech and other body language. The 99% are communicating through the 7%. They are acting out the lines. They are communicating the meaning of a line that already has meaning.
Take this sentence: I do not like Debenhams (that’s a shop if you’re not in the UK – actually I do like them but it’s for the purposes of drama) The line has a clear meaning. I could write it on a banner and you would understand it. But you wouldn’t need me to explain it to you. So why do actors belabour the lines by trying to reinforce the meaning that is already apparent. They act out the lines and kill them.
The most respectful thing to do is leave the line alone.
Now I don’t mean to do what some of David Mamet’s favourites do and speak the line as if they are robots, in a shallow and meaningless way. I mean that if you leave the line alone and work on under the line, everyone wins.
This is done, not by predetermining, or actually pre-scripting (actually prescribing) how the line is to be done, but by working off what’s happening in front of you.
I must use a tactic on the other person that changes them, the person, not the character, with a tactic, not the line, and the tactic will come under the line, full of the all the components of the 93% non-verbal communication and it will add depth to the line.
Now when I say the line, my intention changes everything. And the line about not liking Debenhams becomes a diversion, a joke, a flirt, a challenge. It all depends on what the line needs to do to the other actor in the moment.
But when actors act out the lines themselves, none of this occurs. The line comes out with a single shallow meaning, which we didn’t need an actor for in the first place.
When you speak, you do not intend merely to communicate a thought to another, you intend to have an effect, an AFFECT actually. You intend to impact on the person with both what you say and how you say it. 93% of that impact comes from non-verbal signals.
When you speak a line of script, you do not even want to say it, you are only saying it because that’s part of the job. So you have no reason to say it. So we end up acting out the line, as if the other actor and the audience don’t understand what it means. Focusing all the impact on the 7%. Sure, the 93% comes to our rescue, but only to reinforce the narrow meaning we are attempting to reinforce by conveying the simple meaning of the line within the context of the printed page.
When we act, we must interact, and that requires something to happen under the script, and for the meaning of each line to remain flexible to the moment, to the task we have at hand and to what our scene parters are doing. Then we act with 100%, not just conveying our understanding of the lines.
COACH