Scene Work...

This week I was forced to analyze scenes from How To Succeed. Unlike a lot of people I actually enjoy this stuff. It's tedious and frustrating but interesting and so valuable (and it makes me feel smart). I was meaning to do it from the start but it was a combination of laziness, fear, and confusion that was stopping me. So now I have it done for two scenes and I already have such a deeper understanding of my part. A brief character description: Hedy's dream is to become a big businesswoman . She is cleverly working her way to the top using sex. She is starting to take shape in my mind. I can see the way she walks, I can hear the way she talks, and I understand what she wants. Even more valuable than that, I understand what's going on in the scenes. It's shocking and a little embarrassing how clueless I've always been. Simply understanding the plot is not nearly enough. So here's the obstacle. You know the saying "the more I see the less I know"? I feel like the more I learn about acting and the more I analyze the script the harder it becomes. There's so much information to process and I can't seem to figure out how to apply my analysis to the scenes without over thinking and as a result completely shutting off. I always knew acting was hard but I never realized how much thinking there was involved. But thinking will be the death of me. As a person my problem is always thinking too much, and therefore I have the same problem as an actress. I think I have a remedy. I have to keep in mind that there's no one way to do something. Just because one approach doesn't work for me doesn't make me a bad actress. The greatest part is I already discovered something that works for me, subtext. Both the verbal and physical action (this really helped me with Chava last year). Somehow talking and moving inside my head helps me to get out of my head. I think it's partly because it makes it more fun. And now I have a way of applying the scene analysis. It gives me a starting point to derive my subtext from so it works for the scene. Of course my ultimate goal is for this to be simply a means of getting into it and once the scene takes off I will just go along with the ride. But if that doesn't happen that's okay. After all, a little thinking never hurt anybody.