This title just isn’t giving me the glam factor – but I love this topic!
One of the challenges that young actors face in character study is to distinguish between that which is set in the script (given circumstances) and that which is created by the environment, response to the moment at hand, and conjecture at what is likely. Sometimes the actors have trouble separating the givens from the “likelies.” To assist them, I have asked them to work in both pen and pencil.
Pen is reserved for the given circumstances. It is indelible. It does not change. It is locked down. Once written it cannot be taken back. Pencil is designed for the likely. You can erase the pencil information. You can shade the pencil from light to dark depending on the pressure you give the pencil. Pen can always go over the pencil once you find that it is actually not a variable, but pencil does very little to distort the writing of the ink underneath it.
I help the actors see this point by pointing out the pencils and pens in their own life. Bare with me. When born, one is given a blank book called My Life and the parents are given full, indelible ink pens. The parents will spend the next several years writing in this book with ink. Every bit of praise, chastisement, love, resentment, guilt, shame, joy, and respect is written hard and fast in this book. The child will often grab the pen him/herself and note what they find out about adults by watching how mother treats dad and how dad talks to mom. They write the love languages that are spoken in their home. Young children also take this pen and go beyond words and create drawings: drawings of Christmases, problem solving, coping, order and chaos. The book fills up fast.
Then those dangerous teen years – when the child will refuse to give the parent the pen back. Where did the pen go? The child was the last one to have it, and it is missing? Where is it? The child will then reach in their pocket and hand the parent a pencil. Now everything the parent writes is not indelible, is not permanent, and can easily get rewritten with the nearest eraser. Parents mourn the loss of the pen – but the pen will never appear again. Now the game is all about the pencil.
Hopefully, by this point, the parent has written enough in the book with ink that there is actually something there to read to plot the future – something that will stick to the page through the rains and mudslides of adulthood. Cause if it ain’t written by now — all is vulnerable to the eraser.
Now the child will run about the block with their book willing to hand the pencil to damn near everyone in the street. Pencils will be plentiful. Erasers will be precious. Children will turn to those ink pages and erase and erase, but that ink stuff ain’t coming up! They will never be able to erase, they will just turn to a lot of pencil!
Honestly this IS an acting class, but how can one talk of acting without talking about life? Seriously aren’t they the same?