PHASE #6. sex.blood.violence.gore

That's right. An all-female cast.

I have a penchant for post-modern local writing, and so when Andrew handed out the stack of papers (yes, the stack I’ve been dreading from the beginning) I was delighted to find a piece by Alfian Sa’at.

It was an assigned reading. But I was more than happy to read the whole stack in one sitting.

However, Andrew’s word of advice – that the script is important, but acting is more than a played out version of script analysis.

To illustrate this very concept, he handed out another sheet of paper; thankfully, with barely over fifty words.

There were five or six scenarios, each with two lines of dialogue. We were to create our own logical circumstances surrounding those lines and to act it out. Naturally, we spent most of our given time thinking up ‘creative’ situations and had fun play-acting them. But when we performed it before Andrew, he was less than impressed.

He told us that we were too focused on the wrong thing. The circumstances shouldn’t shape the dialogue; rather, the dialogue should shape the circumstances. We were allowing the setting to control and limit our abilities to improvise as actors. What, instead, we should do, was to simply come up with minimal setting and let it go from there, all on the spot.

We tried it out again, to incredibly different results. As we said our lines, we were able to go beyond the initial dialogue and let the interaction flow naturally. This, Andrew later remarked, was to actually listen to your fellow actor and let the moment be rooted in reality. Our acting felt much more real, without all the pomp and circumstance we had been so excited to create. And, ironically, it became so much more interesting and engaging to watch because as audience, we could relate.

We asked Andrew why the lines were so limited. His response? That dialogue should never be the main focus of any play. Sure, it is crucial as a catalyst of the plot. But we are able to create expression on more platforms than the verbal one. Our body, voice, imagination and the surrounding space are all equally important in building up certain emotions and charging up a scene, and we should never neglect the use of the other three for the voice spectrum alone. We have to learn to control and curb our impulse to speak out and explain everything through verbal cues to set our performances apart from the rest.

Trust Andrew to turn twelve lines of three-worded dialogue into such a powerful teaching tool!