Breathe and Speak

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Breathe and Speak
A Scene Book for Actors

Breathe and Speak: A Scene Book for Actors

Marc Clopton

2004 • 1-58510-115-X • paper • 180 pages • 6 x 9 • $14.95

This book is a collection of "open scenes" for actors. The scenes contain little to no stage directions or indications regarding specific emotions. The actor learns to say, “I don’t know” to many details of the scene. This is on purpose. In this way the actor must trust both the text and him- or herself, his or her partner, and the moment.

| About the Author | Contents | Preface | Introduction | Review |

Author

Marc Clopton studied with Gene Bua in Burbank, CA, and went on to teach in Gene's expanding studio. Marc has taught for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences at Paramount Studios in Hollywood and in the UCLA Continuing Education Program. Marc has been teaching in Newburyport for more than ten years. These scenes were written and performed for and by those students.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Giving Yourself the Premise
18   Male/Female Scenes
9   Female/Female Scenes
7   Male/Male Scenes
5 Non-Gender Specific Scenes
6 Three Person Scenes
4 Female Monologues
4 Male Monologues
1 Non-Gender Specific Monologue
Note from the Author

Preface

In the many places I have taught acting, one truth has remained constant. Whatever I think I might know about another person is laughable. Also, how and when and why a certain script ends up in the hands of a certain actor is a marvelous mystery. Even in my own classes when I’m picking the material. When that script finds that actor, I see something I’ve never seen before; something I couldn’t have anticipated; something that takes my breath away.

As a result, over the years, I have become freer and freer with the script choices I make for my students. I give each student every kind of character to play, every type of scene and situation. And we’ve had every sort of result, from calamity to transcendence, and learned to absorb them all.

In his book, The Shifting Point, Peter Brook says, “I have never believed in a single truth. Neither my own, nor those of others… But I have discovered that one can only live by a passionate, and absolute identification with a point of view”. My unshakable belief is this: Every human being possesses the capacity to be fully, emotionally expressed. Also, no single actor comes to the table with more or better humanity than any other. Some find it easier to express than others. How do you get it flowing? How do you get it to come out? How do you teach someone to trust their own feelings and to follow their own impulses? You get them up there on stage. Get them connecting with the text, finding out what it feels like and give them many different experiences with a good variety of material.

I offer this book of scenes as a compliment to the rich library of American plays from which we draw our inspiration.

These scenes are not associated with any well-known performances or high profile productions. There is no one to mimic. There is no award winning performance to erase from the mind’s eye. There is no scholarly interpretation to fall back on. Given that, they add an interesting dimension to the work. I hope you enjoy them and find them useful.

Introduction

Much of my work in theater has been in training actors. The scenes and monologues in this book have, for the most part, grown out of my acting workshops. As with learning many academic subjects, craft skills, and sports, every actor learns how to differently. These scenes are not intended to be experienced in a vacuum. They are a complementary part of the vast arsenal of dramatic literature available to us today. In the short run, some academicians may disagree with me on the primacy of the actor. In the long run, I think we may find that we are not so far apart.

Some actors are drawn into the moment by their appreciation for and
understanding of the literary context of the play. On the other end of the spectrum, some actors learn best by throwing themselves into a scene and finding out about it through encounters with the other actors and by encountering their own emotions and intuition. Between those two extremes, we can agree, there are countless variations. The point is, if you’re an actor, you want to give yourself every opportunity to succeed.

The short story writer Grace Paley says of writing: “We write what we don’t know we know”. The novelist Italo Calvino speaks of a voice that comes from “somewhere beyond the book, beyond the author…from the unsaid, from what the world has not yet said of itself and does not yet have the words to say.” The same can be said of actors and acting. We plumb the depths of our selves to find what we don’t yet know and to discover what we have not been capable of until the very moment it happens. If we can say, “I don’t know”, without shame or apology then we can open ourselves to create a capacity, a skill, a presence of our own that might not have been.

I believe that one advantage of working with open scenes is that there is no specific target in mind. You have to rely on your own sense of what feels authentic, both in yourself and in your scene partner. By practicing this, in addition to your regular scene study, you will build confidence in knowing what is unique to you. I believe this confidence promotes a willingness to go beyond what you already know you can do.

To maximize the workout, the scenes contain little to no stage directions or indications regarding specific emotions. You will be saying, “I don’t know” to many details of the scene. This is on purpose. You must trust both the text and yourself, your partner, and the moment.

There is a method to the madness of exercising this way. You become intimate with your own instrument and learn to be guided by internal sensations without anticipating a specific outcome. This does not make for sloppy and inconsistent acting, as you might fear. Quite the contrary. This process allows you to be very specific in performance without losing the quality of the first time experience. Developing internal awareness and flexibility, you will not only be more available to the specifics of your character when you do perform a full-length play, you will also be more directable. This may seem like a statement of the obvious. I believe that the better you know your own instrument, the more accessible you are to different directors, no matter what their background, training or style might be.

I hope that you find, as my students have found, that you are so much more than you could know at this moment.

Review

“....these scenes are the sort of scenes that are needed in nearly every acting book, but which acting books, by their own lengths, cannot include.”

-- Deborah Kinghorn, University of New Hampshire

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