Optimizing For the Audience

Video Playback Is Crucial to Informed Blocking for Actors

Today, we’re returning to our series on Organic Acting for directors. We’ll be looking at “Setting the Blocking” which is Step 5 of organic acting’s “7 steps to heaven.” The information I’m sharing with you comes from seasoned organic director Manuel Leybas, who has taught theatre arts in every educational setting from homeschool to university. Manny is drafting a textbook on the subject, parts of which I’m summarizing here. 

In terms of what it produces, Setting the Blocking (Step 5) may look more like traditional forms of directing than the previous steps (Reading Rehearsal, Communion Rehearsal, Walk & Talk Rehearsal, and Scene Combing). What’s different is that it comes quite a bit later in the rehearsal process and so it needs a different approach. 

Traditionally, blocking depends primarily on the director’s vision and may begin with pre-blocking, even before the cast begins rehearsing. In organic acting, movement onstage is arrived at more collaboratively. It arises out of the discoveries the actors have made about their characters during the first four steps. They naturally begin to translate the story into movement during Step 3: Walk and Talk Rehearsal, and they’ll start refining that in Step 4: Scene Combing. During those steps, the artistic director acts as “a magnificent audience of one” giving feedback that helps the actors to connect ever more deeply with their character’s experience, while also making it readable to people watching.  Manny instructs that before blocking begins, “every single motivation, expression and action has been discussed thoroughly,” between the actors and the director.

Now, in Step 5, the director helps the actors pivot their focus to conveying the truthfulness of their characters’ experiences to the audience – the entire audience, including those on the back row or in the balcony. Movement that arose organically may now need to be adjusted, including moving to specific locations on the stage, opening up positions to include the audience instead of just the characters, and so forth. Manny explains, “While the communion step allowed emotional infection to pass truthfully from actor to actor, performance for an audience requires that this infection extend outward, from the stage to the entire house.” 

For new actors, the adjustments they’re asked to make may feel counterintuitive or awkward at first. Video recordings of the scene in rehearsal are crucial. These should be from various locations in the house. Playing them back for the actors allows them to see what the audience will be seeing, and may help them to self-correct without needing to be told. It also deepens their trust in their director. Trust building exercises, like the Circle of Truth, can be used in the middle of a rehearsal in order to resolve issues where there is resistance. 

The fundamental goal of setting the blocking is to expand the connection that the actors have made with their characters and story to now include the audience. “This expansion does not negate truth; it translates truth for scale,” Manny explains.

To me, “Setting the Blocking” sounds like a lot of work, compared to traditional blocking. But it also sounds like a process that results in a deeper story being told than is possible when blocking is all about the director’s vision. Deeper and more collaborative, which I think maximizes the impact of the production on both the actors and the audience. 

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