Nailing Emotion with Communion Rehearsals

Actors practice conveying their character's emotion to their communion partner

Today, we’re returning to our crash course in organic acting, with seasoned organic director Manuel Leybas. As explained in Part 2 of this series, the method’s developer, Dr. Jerry Crawford, identified seven steps toward acting heaven. Step one is Reading Rehearsals, during which the cast and crew become intimately familiar with the play, reading the script aloud, sharing insights, and working to deeply understand the author’s intention. Manny begins each of these reading rehearsals with a short “Circle of Truth” where cast members each answer a question in turn, during which they learn to find and project their voices, developing camaraderie and trust with each other. 

The second step is a Communion Rehearsal, which begins after the series of Reading Rehearsals, when the cast has studied the script well enough to be firmly grounded in the story the author intended to convey. They will do this with their script in hand. Organic actors are asked to read their lines at least seven times per day, which helps them learn content and phrasing in context, rather than emphasizing "memorization" which sounds like work. For this rehearsal, exact phrasing isn't important. It's the emotion that needs to be transmitted.

According to Google Dictionary, “communion” means “the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level.” So communion rehearsals are all about helping actors to convey the emotional, mental and/or spiritual experience of their characters in a way that connects with the audience. 

“Mechanical acting relies on actors receiving feedback from the director—being told when to touch, how to look, and what to feel,” Manny explains. “That approach is artificial.” The actor is focusing on physical manifestations of the emotions their director wants to see, but may not actually be connecting to them. 

In method acting, everyone tries to become their character. This can also have a downside, especially when some characters are unkind and the actors’ emotions don’t instantly turn off the moment the scene has ended. 

In organic rehearsals, Manny says, “the actor is allowed to touch another human being while sending the deepest emotional truths of the character.”

“There is an old saying: ‘The eyes are the windows to the soul.’ When full eye contact is combined with physical touch, the receiver often feels the emotion instantly and can truthfully tell the actor whether it worked.”

It’s important to establish ground rules for physical touch that are comfortable for cast members. Stage managers can also serve as recipients of an actor’s emotion, when that would be helpful. 

The entire cast gathers together, in fluid pairs determined by who is speaking to whom during the play. They run through the entire script while sending the emotional experience of their character to their communion partner. When it’s their line, they become the “sender” and their partner becomes the “receiver.” The sending actor is in character. The receiving actor is not. The sending actor experiences their character’s emotion and transmits it, through hand and eyes, while speaking a sentence or two from the script to the best of their recollection. They then break eye contact and let go of each other’s hands. The receiving actor gives feedback,  with simple statements like, “You made me sad,” “I am afraid of you,” “I felt it,” or “I didn’t believe it.” 

If the emotion was successfully communed, they move on to the next line in the script. If not, they try again. “It is rare for emotional transfer to take more than two attempts.”  If the next line belongs to another character, that actor now becomes the sender and their partner is the receiver.

“This constant shifting [between sending and receiving] allows actors to move in and out of emotional reactions both as the speaker and as the listener. Experiencing the scene from both perspectives creates an uncanny ability to remain fully in character later in rehearsals and during actual performances,” Manny relates.

“As actors engage in this process, they come to understand that each reply from another character causes a subtle emotional shift within themselves. These changes may be small, but they awaken new feelings and insights that deepen the scene. Over time, this work translates into greater sincerity and emotional continuity when the lines are eventually run without pauses in later rehearsals.”

Going through the entire script in this manner is time consuming. Manny recommends planning at least three hours of rehearsal time, broken into two or more parts, with a lunch (and maybe supper) break in between. If it’s scheduled for a Saturday, that allows you to begin early and continue into the night, so that you can complete the entire play in one day. “This structure allows actors time to rest, reflect, and return with renewed focus, which supports the collaborative and immersive nature of organic acting.”

There is no blocking during a Communion Rehearsal. The point is to focus on emotional transmission, not movement, and the actors are wholly engaged in the process the entire time, whether sending or receiving (even if they aren’t the official “receiving” partner at the moment). The director is also fully engaged, paying attention to the experience of every line.  There are some lines, like asides or soliloquies, that don’t lend themselves to a receiving partner. In those cases, the director explains how the emotional content of these lines should affect the audience and gives feedback, “helping the actor calibrate intention, emphasis, and connection.”

Communion rehearsals are a vital step to preparing for performances that will fully capture the audience. Manny explains, “​​In a live production, an actor normally relies only on voice and physical movement to ‘infect’ an audience emotionally. Imagine if an actor could physically touch the audience. Would the audience believe the character was real? Absolutely. They would be hooked from that moment forward.” Communion rehearsals give actors precisely that experience, preparing them to be able to transmit their character’s emotional experience across the entire theatre.  

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