From Ivo van Hoe (dey/dem):

Hiya. I am an emerging director, and really love to stage exciting, dramatic, even melodramatic works. I find that it’s often really hard to give actors permission to go “big” - and that that language often isn’t helpful at all. It, obviously, may get them to be louder or gesture broadly, but it’s not connected to their performances at all and often results in flat decisions. I know Meisner (is it Meisner?) says “truthful under imaginary circumstances” - but I feel that this sometimes misses the notion of “under imaginary circumstances In This Kind of Play.” What are some ways to communicate scale to actors in rehearsal, especially if it’s beyond realism, and encourage them to let the melodrama free them a bit?

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Dear Ivo,

What does truth even mean these days?! If the world is this dramatic and over the top, then shouldn’t the acting style match that?

I find that current acting training favors film/TV style performances. I’ve had so many young actors tell me that they need to feel it to be able to act it. I don’t know what is happening in these college programs, but IT IS NOT HELPFUL.

Here are a couple of strategies that I use to help get them to understand the style of the play and the technique that theater requires:

• Remind them that all theater is fake. If the actor is “feeling it” then the audience isn’t (i.e. if the actor cries, the audience won’t).
• Theater requires them to have their brain be at 40% actor brain/60% character brain. I need their actor brain always turned on and reading the room. I have students who assume that acting means 100% character brain all the time. I remind them that it’s not fun to watch.

If you’re asking actors to go bigger and it feels false, they A. are probably insecure about it and B. don’t understand why they need to perform this way.

So you’ve got to make sure that your vision is clear to them, that they understand the why of performing like this. They also have to trust that you won’t let them look stupid. There’s safety in underplaying, so encourage them to take the risk of taking up more space and having fun.

(This might be a total faux pas, but I also refer to clips/movies that are in the style I’m looking for. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had an actor watch the ‘Paul Rudd cleans up the plate’ scene from Wet Hot American Summer and told them to do that).

Yours in the stupid renaissance,

Fefu

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