Combing Out Rehearsal Snarls

The Blindfold Rehearsal

Today, we’re returning to our exploration of organic rehearsals, with a brief look at Step 4 in the Seven Steps to Acting Heaven: Scene Combing. With his permission, I’m summarizing a chapter of Manuel Leybas’s book manuscript on organic acting.  

Step Four generally occurs after lines have been internalized and onstage movement has been established. The actors and director have already done reading rehearsals, where they deeply discussed the script and the author’s intention. They’ve done communion rehearsals, where they practiced conveying the emotion in each scene to each other. And they’ve blocked the scenes with Walk and Talk rehearsals, where movement arose organically out of their emotions and intentions. 

Scene Combing is a strategy for working through trouble spots like you would comb through stubborn knots in your hair. It isn’t usually applied to the entire play, but to scenes that aren’t quite landing, or becoming mechanical, or maybe just not living up to their potential. 

Because this is a slow process, and because the discoveries it produces arise from the actors themselves, more than from the director’s vision, traditional directors often resist it. But done well, scene combing can enliven performance, create authentic emotion that arises out of the action, and foster dynamic performances that are responsive rather than planned and mechanical. 

At its most basic, Scene Combing involves line by line exploration of the whole scene. This is different from a reading rehearsal because it includes action. Actors deliver each line and movement while focusing their attention on: 

1. What is shifting in their thoughts, emotions and tactics as they respond to new information; 

2. How they are seeking to act on the other character/s (persuade, test, seduce, protect, provoke, intimidate, etc)

3. How the dynamics of the scene are changing (where power shifts, expectations fail, characters adapt, the scene takes an unexpected turn). 

4. The relationship between every line (each word matters) and their character’s emotional arc, objectives and responses to changes. 

There are some additional Scene Combing techniques that can be used to work through specific problems. 

If actors are needing to dial into subtext, Role Reversal and Emotional Reversal rehearsals can be helpful. 

Role Reversal

Here, actors read their opposite’s lines to each other. For example, Romeo would read Juliet’s lines and Juliet would read Romeo's. Receiving their own lines from their opposite can also help actors better understand the stakes, and listen more deeply. 

Emotional Reversal

The actors identify the emotion they think the text wants from them, and then they play its opposite, without changing the text. “Anger becomes restraint, fear becomes boldness, tenderness becomes guardedness, and confidence becomes uncertainty,” Manny explains. Sometimes, they’ll discover that the scene deepens when they bring an unexpected emotion to it, which highlights the hidden subtext. Other times, the scene falls apart, confirming their original emotional choice but in a way that is now “more grounded, layered and restrained. The emotion is no longer performed – it is earned.” This approach can also help budding actors who struggle to convey emotion by challenging them to convey emotional opposites so they learn the difference. 

If there are pacing problems or actors waiting on each other to deliver their lines, a Rapid Fire Line Rehearsal may be in order. 

Rapid Fire Line Rehearsal

The stage director has the actors speak their lines faster and faster, without movement, until they are no longer able to express emotion or intention, they are just working with “the raw architecture of the language.” This reveals whether they’ve internalized the text (by way of reading their scripts seven times each day, rather than mechanically memorizing). It allows them to own their lines and have the confidence of knowing they do. If they don’t, they now know where they need to work. And they can then work on emotion without worrying about what they’re supposed to be saying. 

For greater depth and breadth of characterization, a director might call for a Foreign Language Rehearsal. This will be planned well in advance so that actors can prepare. 

Foreign Language Rehearsal

First, actors will consider where their character came from. What were their and their ancestors' habits and diet. Then the cast will translate their lines into their characters’ original (or ancestral) language. Mr. Leybas recalls, “During a production of Evita, my cast completed an entire rehearsal in Spanish, with several actors receiving coaching from native speakers from Argentina. The shift in rhythm, breath, and emotional emphasis was unmistakable. Even when the production returned to English, the characters carried that deeper linguistic truth with them.” 

Another tool for switching up speech rhythms is the Eating Rehearsal. This is especially useful when cast members have begun to speak in ways that sound rehearsed and artificial,

Eating Rehearsal

During the eating rehearsal, actors bring fresh fruit or vegetables (apple slices, celery or carrot sticks, etc). Before they speak a line, they have to take a bite of food. Then they speak around it. “no one speaks in a fake pattern while eating or chewing food,” Manny explains. “The Eating Rehearsal restores natural speech by reintroducing a physical reality that demands attention and disrupts memorized rhythm.”

Finally, there’s Manny’s favourite, the Blindfold Rehearsal that can unsnarl a variety of problems. 

Blindfold Rehearsal

The magic of wearing a blindfold during rehearsal lies in the reality that “when one dominant sense—especially sight—is removed, the brain reallocates its attention to the remaining senses.” Actors who suddenly cannot see are going to become more keenly aware of sound, touch, and sense of each other’s presence and movement, all in a way that helps them connect with intentions in a deeper way than they can do while overly relying on visual cues. In this kind of rehearsal, all cast members are blindfolded. They need to listen closely to each other in order to orient themselves. Removing sight engages their prefrontal cortex, strengthening their decision making, impulse control, and attentive focus. It helps them break away from dependence on their scripts and moves dialogue from short term recall to long-term memory. “What consistently emerges is a powerful discovery. Actors realize that they know the scene more deeply than they assumed. They begin to trust their listening skills, their scene partners, and the emotional logic of the text,” Manny notes. “The result is acting that is less manufactured and more alive—grounded in genuine human connection and moment-to-moment truth. To conduct this rehearsal safely, multiple sighted stage managers must be present to ensure a secure and supportive environment.” This rehearsal needs to be supported by an adequate number of stage managers who are not blindfolded, so protect everybody’s safety. 

On a personal note, I find this information exciting. I’m in rehearsals right now and struggling with my part. The writer is also the director, and it’s easy to lean on him too much, instead of really connecting with my role. I believe these tools are an enormous gift that can help me focus on the intricacies of of my character, on power shifts, energy changes and so forth. 

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