Just as last week was ending a took a pair of actors out into the hall to have a first red through of their scene from The Elephant Man. The actors came to the moment very unprepared as the script had just been handed to them a day or so before. For the first rehearsal, I asked them to do all they could to STOP as they were reading – – to take the moment in and to try to make sense of what was being sent and how it was being received by their acting partner. BUT what I get is actors who are reading along and PAUSING – not stopping. And a pause ain’t a stop! They think that when I say pause it is as good as saying stop. These are going to be the same citizens who will be pulled over by the police regarding a recent stop sign in their life only to know that even legally there is a wee difference between stop and pause.
But a wonderful pair of students – – caring about their literature as only a handful of students do – were sitting outside in the hall with their scripts ofThe Elephant Man truly stopping along the way to just sit and breath. I like that. The script likes that. Oddly enough the eyes of the young man scared me a bit. They were far away in his imagination and yet right there with his partner matching her breath. He was not memorized. That was not part of the game right now. But he was indeed mesmorizing. I, in fact, didn’t need to follow along with my script. I put my script down. I could read the whole play in his eyes. Words were such a minor part of the moment. He didn’t need me. He would – – later – – but on this slightly rainy afternoon in the hall, he could have taught me about acting.
Part of a medical doctors creed is to “do no harm.” Sometimes I feel like that as an acting coach. Sometimes all of my fancy ideas from 10 years of college and decades in the classroom hurt more then they help. My boy was fine on his own. He was talking, moving and reacting. He had reached beyond his mentor – – for the moment.