The Rehearsal Process

Rehearsing Julius Caesar.

I have had many a discussion with my film director/writer friends about the subject of rehearsals in movies. Some of them are for it and some against. This is on filmed TV shows too.

If you've ever wondered about the TV Series Dragnet in the 1950s, and why everybody seemed to speak with that same staccato type of delivery, it was because the producer/star Jack Webb wouldn't let anybody see the script before shooting it. They would pin the lines up, next to the camera, and the actors would read them as the scenes were being shot.

I believe Dragnet originated on radio and when they did it on TV, Webb didn't get the same kind of feeling in the dialogue, so he resorted to that technique.

That is what it sounds like without rehearsing at all.

When actors do movies now, or TV, and there is not a rehearsal period, they run through the lines before doing the scene – over and over again. Whilst they do this they kind of direct themselves – they ask each other questions about the character, the arc of the scene, the motivation (a dirty word to some), what the character wants and where they have just been.

As most movies are shot out of sequence it is a good idea to know where you have just been.

The most important thing is 'what the character wants;' everybody wants something all the time and when you've figured that out you're half way there.

I was working with an actor once who was the Sandy Meisner type of actor; he had studied under someone who followed that kind of technique (Sandy Meisner's) and he would not look at any part of the script that his character wasn't in. I found this ridiculous; what if another character talked about him and mentioned some kind of trait or something that they had done? His book was coloured in with yellow highlighter and those were the only pages he would look at.

It's always interesting to work with American actors who come from many different schools of acting.

I can't remember anything in the bits of Sandy Meisner that I looked at about not reading anybody else's lines.

In Meisner classes students work on a series of progressively complex exercises to develop an ability to improvise, to access an emotional life, and finally to bring the spontaneity of improvisation and the richness of personal response to textual work.

Well that's clear isn't it?

Sandy Meisner was educated at the Lee Strasberg Actors' Studio in New York who adapted his own theories from that and Stanislavsky from Moscow; Meisner developed from that theory.

Marlon Brando, one of the greatest actors of the 20 Century, said he (Strasberg) was a phony and studied under Stella Adler – so much for Sandy Meisner.

But it doesn't matter how you do it as long as the whole cast is on the same page when you open on the first night or shoot the movie.

There are some terrible things that happen on stage; some actors from one discipline or another do things that have not been rehearsed.

Sometimes an ad-lib works – an actor thinks of something on the spot and, tries it, and keeps it in if it works.

I have read Strasberg's book A Dream of Passion: The Development of the Method and Stanislavsky's An Actor Prepares and they are very interesting.

I also read David Mamet's book True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor and, even though it's been many years since I read it I seem to remember him advising actors not to think – just do it for the audience. I think that's why his films are so neat, clever, tidy and boring. They have no heart; no matter what you might think of Strasberg his acting had heart.

One of the greatest film directors who used rehearsal time was Sydney Lumet; you could tell his films were rehearsed as they had little bits which can only be discovered in rehearsals.

Now what do I mean by that?

Well you discover things in rehearsals; not on the first day but you might come in with a different pair of shoes one day, you may come in scruffy and any of those things will affect the way you move. You may get told to sit behind a desk and that give you and awful lot of authority.

These little things the audience might not be conscious of but they work.

The problem with some directors is that they don't know how to direct.

Some directors will try and tell you how to play the lines – they will literally say 'shouldn't you say it this way' – like a teacher might say to you. Such a director is Roman Polanski and I know an actor who thumped him for it.

It's a wonderfully satisfying period when you rehearse.

Some time ago I worked at the Royal College of Art, London, as a visiting lecturer; sounds very posh but that's how I was categorised – in actual fact I had to be directed by about 12 different student directors. They were more interested in how things should be shot; what angle should the camera take and where would it be.

As an actor I wanted direction. The directors were given a choice of two scenes and I had to play both of them ten different ways.

One of them said, in a scene from Mona Lisa 'I think you should be chewing gum; why?

Another, in a scene from Educating Rita, said 'You're drunk.' Maybe he should have said I had drunk a bottle of whiskey and maybe then I would decide how drunk I should be.

A lot of directors who work with stars, and are a big deal and who do the hiring, cast certain actors because they know their limit and know that they will stay within that limit so they don't have to direct. They have heard that John Ford or Howard Hawkes did this - well phooey!