The parts and the whole, and hole

This is my first update on the progress of the play. Some interesting things have already started happening. Asimov writes quite long, wordy sentences that work well when read, but are a mouthful to deliver with kind of modulation, and variation.

So far with the actors, getting them to sound natural, and varied, over their longer, and seemingly he bland dialogue has been a challenge. One thing that really helped us get over the edge, is we made actors say the dialgogues usig different situational emotions. Essentially we made people say the dialogue like cats, dogs, whiny aunts, professors, other actors, anything, to change the cadence of the words.

The entire process was strangely revelationary, cause it gave us serious insight into the s, and varied attitudes one might speak any combination of words, and how much of the meaning of a dialogue, or sentence depends on the cadence.

This is something all actors are used to of course, you can say HEY in such a way to mean I love you, and just as easily convert I love you into a death threat, but right now is when I come to the second aspect of the exercise

Recognizing the whole while working with a small part of it, is very important, the only way to really break out of the singsong and repeating cadence of ‘reading’ is to have people understand the situation, and drill that into them. The sense of continuity and development, exists within the play as much as it exists in the creation of a character by an actor.

To the audience a  character is a blank slate, when he/she first appears, and then it develops through the course of the play, in pretty much the same way a character evolves out of an actor during the development of the play itself. Keeping this in mind is very important. An actor cannot be responding to stimulus he hasn’t yet received. So keep that in mind as you attempt to create a real character on stage. What you come into the play/story, knowing, what you end up becoming, needs to be a transition understandable to the audience, and equally important, it has to seem organic.

Having actors tell their stories, will really help which is what I am going to do today.