The Scene...

I've never really understood how to apply "repeating" to a scene until  now. It's all about getting your attention on the other person, because once you do that  you're golden. Once I learn to do that 99.9% of my problems will be solved. When we started to do the scene with repeating I noticed that I was getting better. I am not there yet, but I am on the right track. It really clicked for me when I learned to laugh. Kadambari said a line, and it wasn't meant to be funny, but I found it funny, so I laughed and repeated it back to her. The scene went on and I continued to laugh. It was my first instinct and I didn't fight it, even though my brain was telling me that "my character shouldn't be laughing"... "it doesn't make sense in the scene". It's kind of a break through. Before I go on I should address another one of my problems. I think this is a universal problem for all rookie actors. You start thinking "my character is supposed to be feeling ______" so you try with all your power and might to feel that way. To put it simply in the scene my character, Laura is nervous, ashamed, and uncomfortable. My first instinct is to be like okay, take a deep breath, close your eyes, count to 3, and be nervous! Well, that just doesn't work. It's those preconceived ideas of a scene and character that really kills us as actors. We are too worried with making the scene make sense for the audience. If acting is meant to be truthful, the only way we can really tell the truth is by being ourselves (the minute you try to warp your feeling to fit the characters' you're lying). Whatever you're feeling you're feeling, and there's nothing you can really do about it. This concept was always so hard for me to accept but for some reason while we were repeating in the scene it clicked. It didn't matter that I had thought that when Laura says "Please don't stare at me mother" she is ashamed, I was looking at Kadambari who was giving me a funny look, so I laughed. It was so easy, almost too easy. There has to be something more to it. It just seems too passive. This is where my confusion started to kick in. I was re-watching Les Miserables and couldn't get  Anne Hathaway out of my mind. Her character Fantine has literally had everything taken away from her. She is the epitome of helplessness, pain, and suffering. When you looked at Anne Hathaway you could almost see it in her eyes. They were filled with sorrow and grief. You could literally see her heartbreak, misery, and despair written across her face. Now, there's no way anyone can tell me that this wasn't truthful. She couldn't have delivered that kind of performance by merely pretending to feel this way. Her feelings and Fantine's feelings coincided. I have a hard time believing this was simply a coincidence.  She obviously did something, but what?!?! How did she do it!?!?!?! This has been driving me crazy. 
As we continued to rehearse the scene my confusion continued to grow. When we took the repeating out of it, it started to fall apart. Everything that worked before vanished. The truth, the attention, everything! I tried to just let myself be, not to try to make myself feel anything and just let Kadambari affect me, but that didn't work. I tried to put all my focus on Kadambari and forget about myself, and that didn't work either. This time it wasn't out of fear. I literally couldn't see her. My eyes would be looking at her, but something would stop the image from processing in my brain. It's like a brick wall between my eyes and my brain. I didn't know what to do with myself. This was so frustrating because just when I thought I was making a breakthrough, I had a set back. Things were just starting to make sense and then suddenly I was thrown back in to a whirlpool of confusion. It's possible that a major part of the problem was out of my control. This is all new to me and really in the grand scheme of things,  I think I know about .00001%  about acting. My problem is a lack of experience and only time can fix that.