Speaking prose

Progress at the Actors Centre... Last night was the first session of scene and text with Vicki. The first hour was theory - analysing a script into objectives, units, events etc; the last part was practice - playing around with the opening pages of Mike Bartlett's Cock.

Like Monsieur Jourdain in Moliere's play, who discovers he has been speaking prose all his life, we opened our eyes to what we presumably already knew without naming it: that plays do not exist without a purpose, that actions and lines move the plot forward and the more we analyse a text, the better we are able to understand it.

The final part of the evening was assigning different, and sometimes contradictory, attitudes (Vicki called them actions, but I find that term confusing because it makes me think of physical acts) to the duologue between M and John in Bartlett's play. It was an interesting exercise - saying "don't fucking do that" in a loving tone in the midst of a speech that was definitely written as aggressive. It was also difficult to switch from mood to mood within a few words, particularly when we were still reading the lines. And it would have looked ridiculous on the stage. But it was an exciting and energising process that opened up the potential in both the text and ourselves. I went home once again feeling that I had learnt and progressed.

So much for business. What about pleasure? Once again, when the class ended, the eleven of us (one of the most talented has dropped out) scurried away, unlike my last acting course, when we filled the local boozer each night. I've suggested that we all go for a drink after class on Saturday evening, but I'm not convinced there'll be more than a couple of us. Group bonding does not seem to be our forte...