The Maps
This video follows the work on from the previous technique of ‘Maps.’ First, the Map of Me, then the Map of the Character, and next, the Map of the Speech or Scene. These give:
- The experience of a strong personal connection between the person writing the Map of their lives and the images on the page. The Map of Me.
- The parallel strong personal connection between the actor drawing the Map and the very different imagined Character whose words and actions are being put on paper. The Map of the Character
The Map of the Speech or Scene
In the Map of the Speech or Scene, the Map is expanded and made specific by drawing pictures/images of the words spoken by the character in this scene/speech. As the actor looks across from the printed text to the paper she is drawing on, she finds a new personal connection and curiosity about those words. When she first read the script quickly through, maybe she made assumptions, instant judgements, about the character and began, unconsciously, to plan how she would act those words. She probably also began the inner struggle of learning the lines. So she separated herself as actor from the direct experience of the imagined character in the Given Circumstances of the scene.
We can slow the whole process down by making it physically active through drawing. The actor now has the opportunity to allow the words and their deeper meanings to change her mind, her breathing, and her personal connection with the imagined character. She ‘translates’ the ideas, thoughts and emotions expressed in the printed words to her individual pictures on the page.
The script now belongs to the actor. The physically active connection between the ‘2 sides’ of concrete Player and imagined Role/Character are united in playful action: the Creative State.
This personal ‘heart connection’ also means that the lines are learned effortlessly and will not be forgotten, because the thought-links are embedded right from the start.
In the video you will see that Luke (playing the words of the sexist Nick) uses his drawn ‘script’ to remember the words easily and accurately, after one brief look at the text before starting the exercise. The prompting he occasionally needs he gets from his own pictures, as did the Spanish actor I mention at the start of the video, who carried his Map of the Scene through a workshop performance.
In the interview with Kate at the end of the video (from another workshop), she tells us how the exercise gives her confidence in acting and in effortless memory of lines.
I find that nearly everyone enjoys this technique and finds it helpful. It consolidates the necessary hard concentrated work on the text while eliminating the stress and tensions of ‘study.’ It keeps the actor as close as possible to the playwright’s words (or the words of the actual person, used in a documentary) and so avoiding those grabs at instant ‘interpretation,’ where meanings can be twisted by an actor more concerned with being ‘interesting’ and ‘different’ than being true to the text.
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