A few years ago, I decided I wanted to learn to surf, which sounded easier than it has turned out to be, but I keep taking lessons, and I love those moments when everything comes together and I am borne forward by a wave – almost flying, it feels like. I understand how people become obsessed with surfing; there’s a release and letting go into the moment that seems like magic.
Recently, I’ve started using surfing as an analogy in the acting classes I teach. Students often have ideas about how the scene should go – this makes sense, because, as we read a scene, we see it unfold in our minds; that’s how reading works and why we enjoy it. And we want to do our best to give the audience what we think the playwright intended.
But acting a scene is different than reading a scene, in the same way that having a conversation is different from reading one, and in kind of the same way as watching surfing on television is different from doing it in the ocean. We read in overview, but we act (or surf) in relation to things outside ourselves – another actor, or a wave.
We can’t decide in advance how the other actor is going to say the line or how we will be affected by the way they say the line, just as, in surfing, we can’t know in advance what the wave is going to do, when it’s going to curl or break. A wave is its own force. So is a scene.
We don’t even need to decide what we will feel at the beginning of the scene – we have the circumstances and the lines, and we can just ride them and let them take us down the line – and it’s sometimes scary and always exhilarating to allow ourselves to fly in this free, unplanned, unplannable way.
When we let ourselves be borne along by the scene in the moment as it is happening, the experience of the scene is brand new for us – and then the audience gets to see this particular story being told for the first time. And I think that is what we want to give them.
– Kate
Upcoming classes with Kate include Professional Scene Study I: The Tools starting 9/30, and Beginner Acting Class I: The Basics also starting 9/30!
Check out TBG’s full schedule of classes, including youth options!