The ladies worked at the table this evening, mostly drilling lines but also talking through some backstory questions with Eileen.

I really enjoy the job of holding book and giving line notes, or, as some might call it, "being the word nazi". My current system is an adaptation of some things that Abby taught me when I assisted her on My Fair Lady, mixed together with the advice in Lawrence Stern's excellent book.

I keep a copy of the script for prompting and blocking notes separate from the one I will use for calling the show, the one with light and sound cues written in. As the actors work a scene, I make a pencilled notation in the prompt script where there's a problem with a line.

When I decide to give a note, I fill out a little form that I've xeroxed onto a sheet of 5-1/2x8-1/2 paper. This paper size is big enough to write what needs to be written (and the bigger I write, the more legible I can be) but small enough that the actor can slip it into a script for later reference. The form has a space for me to write the character's name and the page number and location on the page. Then I have checkboxes where I can indicate that the problem is one of missing words, substituted words, a line delivered too early, or what have you. In the blank space at the bottom of the form, I write the correct words with as much context as necessary: I underline missing words and mark extra, wrong words with parentheses.

I distribute my little stack of forms to actors at the end of the evening, after the director has given acting notes. This is a much more effective use of everyone's time than giving line notes orally, and it becomes an objective exercise: "this is what I heard, this is what is in the book, please refer to page X." I also try to keep track in my prompt script whether I've given a note for a passage before; unless it's really a critical passage, I'm not going to beat up an actor by giving him the same note several times.

Whether to give a note requires some judgement, If an actor is clearly still learning a passage, is stumbling through to find out how much he knows and how much he doesn't, I don't give a note. I try to intervene at the point that the actor has started to set things, when he's at the point where he thinks he knows what the words are but is in fact mistaken.

It also depends on my assessment of the actor's facility for mastering his words. If he's all over the place, if he delivers the same line six different ways in six different rehearsals, then I will focus on getting his cues consistent and leave the rest.

But if I've got a good actor who demonstrates that he understands that the playwright chose certain words for a reason, then I will nitpick. Sometimes an actor will shortchange himself, and forget one sentence out of the middle of a monologue. That's a minimum of one opportunity missed—a thought, a moment, a color—for the actor to show us what it is like to be that character. Or it might be that the actor has learned a wishy-washy word like "very" when the playwright has written a high-stakes word like "extremely."

I don't worry about getting every last interjection in the right place. Particularly with Independence, there are some passages where two or three characters can jump cues and overlap dialogue and we can figure out what's going. Sherry is the character with the dirtiest mouth, and I don't sweat all the details of her profanity (though Maura did take my note correcting "I'm supposed to be this little bitch" to "I'm supposed to be this little shit"). What I'm hoping to reproduce is (my perception of) the sense and the rhythm that the playwright put on the page.

I have a checkbox for indicating a line that the actor needed to call for, but I don't use it too much. Actors usually remember where their trouble spots are.

posted: 11:53:31 PM