Audiences and Words

You read the lines, you learn the lines, you deliver the lines you've learned and it's very important to get the words right. A rough approximation simply will not do. The writer will have gone to a lot of trouble to compose each line so that it reveals character and advances the plot and it is disrespectful to cast his or her intentions aside and deliver your own version. Of course, in rehearsal, you may well find instances where a line does not roll off the tongue easily. If you want to suggest a change ask the director, who may well refer it to the writer.

Sometimes a problem with a line can be resolved by a change of emphasis and actors need to be adept at this. A good exercise is to take a sentence and run it repeatedly with all the possible emphasis in turn. For example:

"SHE said she was happy ... she SAID she was happy ... she said SHE was happy ... she said she WAS happy ... she said she was HAPPY." Feel the different implication of each version. Start by hammering out the words in capitals, then gradually make it more subtle and therefore more realistic.

And another important thing to remember: the audience is not stupid. They are intelligent people. You don't need to lead them to conclusions by the nose. If it's there they will 'get it.' No need to exaggerate. Subtleties are better than stereotypes.

It's what the audience believes that counts

Words of Wisdom: It's what the audience believes that counts. Here's an example of how an audience's belief can be broken. At one time I was co-director of Anna Scher Theatre, a theatre for young people in London. The members used to put on short plays and there were various stage properties that they could use in their performances. Among these was a large, thick, silver coloured plastic dagger, not an object that anyone could be hurt by, but, as teenagers' plays often feature a good deal of violence, one that was used quite a lot.

Then one day a group was down in the coffee bar, preparing for a play. Someone went behind the bar, where they shouldn't have been, opened a drawer and found a large, pointed knife that was used for cutting up food. They decided to use it in the play.

Well. the moment came in the play when the knife was produced and immediately a murmur ran through the audience. Some were thinking "Wow! That really is a big knife." Others were thinking "They shouldn't be using that" or "If someone gets stabbed they'll be hurt." The point is that if they had used the old dagger, the audience would happily have believed it was the real thing, but when they used the real thing, reality intruded and the audience became focused on the knife and stopped believing in the play.

The stage is a medium that works by using words and actions to make the audience feel as if they are watching something real. If the actors do something that reminds the audience that it isn't really real, then the performance fails. This is particularly true of things that are spectacular or 'scene-stealing' which may create a big effect but may also damage the production as a whole. It's what the audience believes that counts.

The audience is not stupid

It's hard to define what good acting is but we sll know what overacting is and recognise it when we see it. It's excessive emoting that isn't true to life. It doesn't allow for the audience's intelligence and this week's Words of Wisdom are The audience is not stupid.

In particular there is one aspect of intelligence in which an audience is more sensitive than an individual person and that is emotional intelligence, based on the ability to share and understand other people's emotions. As we are social creatures we are naturally equipped to feel the pain and joy of others. Someone feels a particular feeling, smeone else receives that feeling, shares it and transmits it again. It is obvious that in a large group of people the feeling will be that much more magnified. That is why a crowd will often behave much worse than any of its individual members would. That's why the larger a demonstration is the more likely it is to turn into a riot. If we are sitting at home watching a football match we can see the game perfectly, it's as if we are sitting in the best seat in the ground, but it's much more exciting to be at the match and experiencing the atmosphere, the shared emotion.

So the audience at a play also feel the shared emotion and are particularly sensitive to falsity. Often their unconscious mind will be telling them that something is not quite right. If the actors are overactiing and not believable the performance will not communicate true emotion. It may be superficially impressive but will lack honesty.

The audience is not stupid.

Favour the audience with your face

And this week’s Words of Wisdom are Favour the audience with your face. Whether you are performing in theatre, film or television, your body language and, most importantly, your facial language express at least as much as the words you are saying. In fact this is true in non-visual media as well – radio, voice-overs, recording a song – you should use body language in all of these, because after all, you can hear a smile on the telephone, can’t you – but that is by the way.

So if your facial expressions are very important and the audience want to read your face, because that’s the part of you they look at the most, then you must make sure they can see it as well as possible.

Cheat the angles so that your eyeline is closer to the camera or the audience than it would be purely geometrically. In close up you will normally be directed to hold a certain position but don’t always assume this is going to be done for you.

Know whether you are left- or right-faced. You can check this by looking in a mirror or at a photograph and drawing imaginary lines across your lips and through your eyes. If this opens out on the left side of your face then you are left-faced and you will tend to shoot better from the left.

NEVER put your hands to your face or to your hair unless there is a compelling reason in the script to do so.

Study your facial expressions in a mirror as you say a line to yourself with different inflections. Notice how subtle facial language can be and now false it looks if it is overplayed and doesn’t come from the inside.

Be prepared, both for the stage and the screen, to be directed into unnatural positions relative to other actors. Invariably, one of the reasons for this is so that your facial expressions will be more evident to the audience. For example, you might be at the other character’s shoulder and looking in a parallel direction to them. That may feel very strange but it will look good. Favour the audience with your face.

Share

And so the Words of Wisdom this week are simply: Share. Work with your fellow actors, not against them. If you make them look good then your performance will be all the more convincing. Competing with other actors for the audience’s attention is self-defeating. Treat everyone in the cast with respect, whether their part be large or small. You’re part of a team and everyone should pull together. If you’re working on a big movie the team can be enormous, and there should be no division between cast and crew. And finally, the most important entity to share with is the audience. Always have a corner of your mind working on how best to share what is happening with them. Without the audience there is no show.