Improvoker

I kind of feel, in my own work, that when I start to focus on one part of my performance — another part falls apart. This seems most true when I focus on game. When I focus on game I find most of my scenes get less and less of it. This is in part because game doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Game can only truly show itself when performers on stage are making strong choices about their viewpoints, relationship, and situation.

One simple tool in getting into this game producing state is to pick an emotion for your character toward your partner. This isn’t to say every scene has to be super happy, super sad, or super angry. It just means pick an emotional vantage point for your character. It doesn’t have to be an extreme emotional vantage point, it doesn’t have to be big, it just has to be an emotion toward your partner. This very quickly creates a sub-context to the scene, creates a relationship between the characters, and adds depth to scene — which helps scenes that suffer from talking heads.

Emotion is also one of those choices which you can sustain through a scene without much thought. I find that the more heady scenes become, the harder it is for me to follow and keep on anding. Emotion, on the other hand, is fairly easy for me to keep going because I can rely on my own capacity for emotion rather than my capacity for hilarious lines.

Which are few and far between.