I have a very dramatic fall. We staged it Thursday night. To fall sideways safely, the sequence (quickly and fluidly) is knee-hip-wrist-elbow-shoulder-back-head. Each bit absorbs SOME of the gravity so that no one part absorbs all. Most stages are going to be hard wood, so you can’t stop it from hurting a bit, and bruises are going to happen. I’ve been rehearsing in knee pads for the past couple of weeks, but I’ve got a nice solid bruise developing on my left hip and it will probably stick around until November.
Bruised skin is a good result. The bad results we avoid with the bruises are broken bones and concussions. This show isn’t Spider-Man but even little moves can be much more dangerous than they appear after they’ve been rehearsed well.
You have to do this stuff so often that you stop thinking about it. One of the reasons that Wesley v. Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride is one of the greatest sword fights in movie history is that, in order for the humor to work, they had to have the choreography cold so they could deliver their lines with that arched casualness through it all. So any minute on set that they weren’t in the scene, they were practicing the moves, making them automatic.
I feel as if I have to work extra hard because I don’t have any formal movement training – no pantomime, no clowning, no dance, no body-mapping, none of those disciplines actors add to their toolbox to prepare for a highly physical role like Renfield. I’ve done some basic exercises in general acting classes, and picked a few things up as needed for shows, and by observation and mimicry. But I think if I had internalized a broader sense of the fundamentals, I would be more instinctively expressive with my body and the character (whose body language must be a fractured as his mind) would come across more cohesively. I think I’m doing well, but I think I would be much better with that in my arsenal already. Classes may be in order next year.
Still, I am getting some amazingly positive feedback. Tonight the director paid me one of the highest compliments I think a director can give someone like me. He said – and I am paraphrasing – that he had been wondering for weeks what he was going to do with lighting in order to create a certain scenic effect, but that my acting had rendered it unnecessary.
That made me smile and smile.
