Teaching the Actor Craft by Jon Jory

Author:Jon Jory
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781575257921
Publisher: Smith and Kraus Inc

THE SLOW PART

Having already done the quick part exercises, it won’t be too hard to understand what we’re up to now. However, it wouldn’t be amiss to talk a little bit about slow generally. I notice a lot of actors are talking faster than they can think and the result is often shallow, callow, and thin. This is often the result of a personal addiction, or a directorial request, for “pace.” Pace is often someone’s Rx for the fear we’re boring, or the text is boring, or the narrative is boring. The problem that results is that boring isn’t less boring when played faster, and that which might be essentially interesting is made boring by going by us too quickly for us to sort out the interest. Now, faster” can help when what is said and felt is really quite simple and thus easily assimilable, but it’s the aspirin of acting and directing, the nostrum given for all theatrical illnesses. I’m all for the actor fully understanding that it’s valuable to put back some “slow.” The following should be tattooed on some visually accessible part of our body: There is no slow without quick, and there is no quick without slow. I’ve spoken already about the fact that many actors seem totally unaware of the rate at which they are playing. I say, “Slower. No, slower than that. Slower still.” By the third exhortation, they sometimes find the will and confidence to actually reduce their rate. Take the phrase, “I don’t want to do that.” It can be played in one gulp if absolute certainty rules the moment, but if there is any ambivalence, any confusion, any sense of insecurity, you will probably have to slow down to allow those things into the line. Plus speed without variety tends to flatten the text and sometimes makes it impossible to follow emotionally and intellectually. So let’s look for the quick part and the slow part in an exercise or two.

EXERCISE

(The quick part is underlined, the slow part is italicized.)

A

I’ll take another cup of coffee if you don’t mind and that’s with much milk, no sugar, and I’d be pleased to get some honey if you have it. I would really like it if you’d take me back, because I’m changed and I’m ready to do this now.

COACHING

Now tell the actor to do the slow part slower. Now ask them to do it even slower. See the value? The slow part, if we’re working on prose, can have pauses in the middle. In the next, use a quick part, a normal part, and a slow part.

EXERCISE

A

Really, I thought you were crazy, what else could I think? I had never seen someone yelling at the conductor at the end of a concert. You were completely outraged about this tempo and that tempo and how the whatsits came in earlier than the other whatsits, it was pretty sexy actually. I love what makes you different, okay, and I’m getting the idea you don’t recognize that.

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