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The second benefit of reading aloud is that this can begin thc
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process of owning the characters. Just as each actor must "own" his
own character, the director must own each of the characters, seprrately. At this point you have not yet begun figuring out what thc
words mean. You are allowing them to find breath and voice in your'
own body. You are beginning to take them off the page.
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Then you can start putting their lines into your own words. Docs
this sound a bit radical? I don't know. This idea is based on a vcry
effective exercise I use in my classes. I ask the student to say the lincs
of a monologue she has learned. Then I ask her to tell me what is
going on in the speech, what she understands about the charactcr
from it, starting with the words "This is a character who..." I tell hcr'
that her paraphrase can be any length: it can be much longer than thc
speech or much shorter; it can go far afield; in effect, she can say
anything that pops into her head"/ After this I tell her to do the sanrt:
thing again
again putting the'speech in her own words, allowirr4
her impulses- to take her wherever they go
only changing the pro- character.
noun from "she" to "I" when she speaks ofthe
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The purpose here is nlt rewriting the script, but "owning" thc
characters and accessing your intuition about them. Ideas often sur*
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Often, the first thing students say when I ask them for the facts
of this scene is, "stephen wants to leave." This is not a fact eithcl'.
Besides describing a state of mind, this statement is contradicted lry
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If they
have known each other, are they the same age? Were they
in the same grade? Were they good students? Was either of them
ever kept back a grade? What kind of friends did each hang out with?
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scene. we want to find out what the scene is about, and its central
emotional event.
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