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Well, first of all, I read it as many times as I can.
Better if it's before the first read-through.
I try to read it 5-10 times. Before the first rehearsal,
before I ever worry about getting off book or anything like that.
Once I've read it at least a couple of times,
I'll start thinking about Character Arc. What the Grand Arc is...
...for the character throughout the entire show and then the little mini arcs are for each beat.
By the fifth or sixth time I'll start breaking it down into beats.
Figuring out where the changes are occuring,
what the characer's goal is and what obsicles are in their way,
and what tactics they are using to get around to the goal.
So, yeah, I do a lot of scrip annalysis.
I am blessed and lucky that I am awesome at cold reading.
Whenever a theater audition is cold reading I pretty much get it. I'm just a really good cold reader.
Probably because I'm such a book nerd? But it's a skill set some people have and some people don't.
Some people just aren't good at cold readings.
You can throw a script at me, and I wouldn't fully annylize but I'll give you paragraph right away.
And that probably also comes down from doing over 13 years of voice over work
where they do just throw the script at you.
I'll have 20 seconds to look over it really fast before we start.
But yeah, you do have to think on your feet, you have to think fast.
You have to be able to just say "OK" you know?
The producer just gives you a little tiney two scentance description of your character
and you've got to invent a voice and go from there.
Not really, it's always been pretty straightforward.
I will say there have been some characters that
I've come to the show already knowing them so well
that I didn't bother to go through it as much as I've gone through it before.
Like one was Mark from Rent.
And another was Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the Rocky Horror Show.
These were two chartacter that I knew so well coming into the show
that I didn't have to do an annalysis. I already knew the shows back and forth.
A trick that I really really like when I feel like I know the characters too well
(I may be worried about things getting a bit stale
or maybe I wont come up with anything new coming to the table at rehearsals)
...is I give them a secret.
So, like, you give your character a secret that only you know about.
Nobody else in the cast knows,
the director doens't know, the audiance doesn't know
but you know that secret. And because you know that,
it gives you extra subtext to work with.
I just did a play like that recently.
Called Our House by Theresa Rebeck.
In fact, she writes Smash. And her style...
Do you know David Mamet? It's Mamet-esque style that is sort of off-the-cuff, fast, fast, fast, fast.
It's called Go on stage, say the words, leave.
Because if you bring any "acting" into it, if you try to make moments out of it,
you miss the rapid-fire of the dialougue. So, once you give in that where ok,
I've got the lines, and I'm off-book, I'm just gunna go out there and say the lines.
And sort of vomit the lines out. And then... you start to realise...
you do start haveing shades of different things that start to compliment him.
But where to begin with a Mamet play is just,
you literally walk out on stage, do your blocking, you say the lines,
and you don't over-think it, and you leave.
And that, I've never done that before.
I've done shows that are a little more fast-paced but I'm so used to like
you know, you fall in love with the language of the play and
you really play the language and you don't o that with her.
It's written perfectly already, like,
the style it's a very specific style. Really rapid.
and it was really challenging because as a voice actor I'm used to really paying attention to text
and really, especially when you narrate books you really play into the text
and the director is just "You've got to just say the words."
He was saying it to all of us. We were all kind of struggling.
"Just say the words. Say the words and it will happen."
It was really weird. It really changed my approached.
A play is something that can only exist in front of a live audience.
Theater is its own really special world, right?
and you're working with immediacy. When you're working with,
you know, the audience is an organic part of the play.
Wheather you're breaking the fourth wall or not.
So a theater peice to me, a good theater peice is something that's written with all of that in mind.
that it's this kind of living breathing organizm
that changes night to night. And it depends on the audience
and it depens on the mood of the actor. it depends on what choice,...
and sometimes your choices change.
sometimes you're going through the motions of the play and for some reason
someone make a different choice and it can change the whole night around.
I mean you've got a framework that you play within,
the director's told you, but within that framework you've got this whole organic living breathing thing.
And i think that's what makes a play a play.
versus dubbing anime or doing an audiobook
or doing a chemmercial or doing film. I think it's all about
giving life to a 3-dimentional living breathing organizm
where you are in the same room as these people telling a story.
not removed from them at all.
in fact sometimes they're in your face.
and you're in their face.
There's nothing like it, you know?