Don’t break!
How often have you said that to your students? I know it was said often during my high school days and I certainly said it to my students a lot. The problem for young actors is how to learn not to break. It’s something that can only be accomplished by doing (or not doing) it.
When I was in high school, we had the experience of a custodian entering the theatre during a live performance, turning on the work lights, walking across the stage, retrieving a trash can, walking back across the stage, turning off the work lights, and exiting the theatre. How does anyone deal with a bizarre occurrence like that?
In order to help my students learn how to cope with the bizarre, or even the normal weirdness of live theatre, I created the Disaster Rehearsal. This is a rehearsal during which anything and everything can and does go wrong. I usually scheduled this as the last rehearsal prior to tech week so sets and lighting are mostly done and they can work as closely in the performance environment as possible. The “disasters” can be simple, normal, or really weird. For example, I might give an actor the direction, “When you enter in ACT Two, you cannot remember your lines. You cannot remember them until someone helps you.” Another time, “When you enter down the stairs in ACT Three, trip at the bottom and fall unconscious. You may not recover.” That one got really funny because some of the performers, during the notes session later, were really proud that they hadn’t broken. “We stepped right over him and kept on dancing.” I had to point out to them that, yes, they had kept dancing, but they had left an unconscious cast member behind them on the stage! The idea is not to just ignore any incident, but to learn how to deal with it in the context of the show. The actors received two objectives at the start of the rehearsal. 1. Don’t break no matter what. 2. Get the show to its proper conclusion. The second instruction is really important, because this process can easily go off the rails with weirdness if they don’t keep that in mind.
In the Disaster Rehearsal, I would create disasters for the performers (“Go get that trash can!”) and I would also allow cast and crew members to create disasters. The rule was that any disaster they were contemplating had to be approved by either me, or the Stage Manager.
Some additional disaster ideas.
· The lights go out.
· The lights come up on the wrong part of the stage
· Your microphone is not working (or it’s really not working).
· Make your entrance in the next scene late.
· Don’t make your entrance in the next scene.
· Make your entrance in the next scene early.
· Enter from the wrong location.
· The prop needed for this scene isn’t available. (This one happened to me in college – and it was my fault!)
· The prop / set piece that you are working with in this scene breaks.
· Your costume is missing.
· You will faint in the middle of the scene.
· A random person walks through this scene. (Remember that custodian? I do.)
· A set piece collapses. This one can be hard to arrange safely, but I’ve seen this actually happen during a live performance, so I always like to include it.
· The door is stuck and you can’t make your entrance through it. (This one happened in my production of Arsenic and Old Lace. The character on stage had to tell the character offstage to “Use the side door. This door is stuck.”)
· Let your (evil) imagination run wild.
We’ve all had that show that was a running disaster all on its own without needing any additional help from a “disaster rehearsal.” There have been times when I’ve been tempted not to do the rehearsal because the show was having so many problems that I felt it needed more regular rehearsals, but I’ve always decided to go with it anyway because it was something the students were anticipating and really enjoyed. The first time, I was pleasantly surprised to watch the show snap into focus at that rehearsal and almost all the issues we were having went away. The second time, when the same thing occurred, I realized that the additional focus and energy that this rehearsal takes was just what the show was needing. After that, I simply went ahead whenever I had those doubts. The disaster rehearsal never let me down.
In that same production of Arsenic and Old Lace that featured the stuck door, we had a student from the audience leap onto the stage during a performance and yell, “Oh s**t, I forgot the fabric softener.” And run off stage right. Fortunately, he made it to the woods surrounding the school before the tech crew caught him. My actor’s response? In the interrupted scene, they just kind of shrugged. In the following act, Mortimer was going on about how everything was going wrong and inserted the line “and Uncle Henry forgetting the fabric softener.” This acknowledged the event and even made it part of the show. In my production of Kiss Me Kate, Kate forgot her lines in the middle of I Hate Men. She made up a new set of lines in complete rhyme and scansion that fit the show and kept right on going. My students knew that they could deal with anything, because they had the practice and had proven to themselves that they could.
I urge you to give the Disaster Rehearsal a try. It’s fun. It’s a really effective actor training tool and it amps up the energy and focus on the production. I will say that I sometimes didn’t use it when doing a musical. I left that choice up to the Musical Director as it would affect the musicians as well as the actors and some of them were not comfortable with that.
Please share some disasters you’ve experienced. It might give someone ideas!
------------------------------
Robert Smith
VA Co-Chapter Director
Virginia Thespians
VA
------------------------------