Post date: Apr 30, 2015 2:6:29 AM
Today we worked on the ending and it is in a much better place now. Robert told me about a thing called the subtext game, where the actors stop after saying each line and restate them, but this time saying what they really mean. We tried it starting from where we left off last class through to the end of the scene. It didn't seem to do much for them across the middle, but it seemed to help them more once we got to the end, so we concentrated on really building on that part. Now, they seem to have a much better handle on the ending and the beginning from last class, but now that I've seen what they can do with those parts, it's really obvious how much the middle is falling really flat. So, next class we are going to concentrate on trying to improve the middle. To hopefully maybe help with that, I asked them to write down their answers to the subtext game for the whole scene over the weekend. Their problem with it through the middle was that there are a lot of lines there that seem super straight forward, things like "It's a birdcage." So I asked them not just to think about what they mean, but also why their character feels the need to state a fact. What do they get out of saying? Because otherwise they wouldn't bother. Anyway, hopefully that will help.