Filmmaker Magazine
Mary Ann Marino Investigates the Dynamic Workshops of Joan Scheckel
Joan puts us in the hotseat!" Alison Maclean (Crush, Kitchen Sink) chuckles. I'm talking with her about Joan Scheckel's directing workshop, Working with Actors, an intense five-week rehearsal lab designed to allow directors to deepen and expand their abilities to work with actors. Continues Maclean, "Joan makes us do what it is we're asking our actors to do. The lab is quite intense -- it stirs up a lot of real emotion."
Adds director/editor Curtiss Clayton, "Joan has a genuine enthusiasm for the crafts of acting and directing, and her approach integrates the two. You realize that it's all one journey that the director and the actors are going on together. This steers directors away from that classic superior and disdainful attitude towards actors, which really comes from not understanding what it is they do. It's like being a good general. You can't ask your troops to march if you're not willing to risk taking a bullet yourself."
Joan's coaching work is a direct result of a lifetime immersion in the performing arts. As an actress, she's worked with some of America's most visionary theater directors -Anne Bogart, Joanne Akalitis, David Warren, Meredith Monk -and has consistently drawn rave reviews. A New York critic once admitted to being "stunned, laid out, and shattered" by her acting. The acting work inspired her experimentation with technique and, in 1995, she began leading workshops for actors on the empty, expansive soundstages loaned to her by Warner Hollywood Studios. Scheckel now conducts workshops for directors and writers as well. Over the last few years she has become a significant resource for independent filmmakers and is the first place The Sundance Institute and the Independent Feature Project/West send directors who want to brush up on their skills.
FILMMAKER: So what makes a great performance?
JOAN SCHECKEL: A great actor lives naked on the stage or on screen, meaning that he is completely revealing of the self. Not the ego, but the self. He is intellectually, emotionally, physically free so that he is unencumbered - he is free to reveal the depth and nuance of a character's inner life. (He is) adept, surprising, revealing - in that magical state of living which is receptivity and response. I never know what he's going to do next - I relish that. When we go to see a film, we participate in a dialogue, one that can help us know ourselves and the world in a deeper more beautiful way. And for me, what is beautiful is what is real.
FILMMAKER: Most serious filmmakers would probably agree that they want to inspire this type of performance. The question, then, is how?
SCHECKEL: Yes, how? That is the question! Even to ask it is a good thing. It's a question the actor and director can address together, if they are prepared to. But if you work long enough you become well aware that actors and directors experience difficulty in communicating with each other. And yet we share a common goal- to express what needs to be expressed in the film. But directors are not always taught acting craft, so actors can be mistrustful of what they say. So I teach acting craft in the workshops, basic tools of communication. We lay a foundation.
FILMMAKER: Some directors and actors deny that they use any technique at all. Is there danger in being too analytical?
SCHECKEL: The point of craft is to free the imagination, not intellectualize it. In the end, it's whatever works. It's interesting -a great director or actor may say that they never think of technique. And they may not, because at that point in their career it's second nature to them. Once you've grasped and internalized craft, you can forget about it. It's there, within you, Supporting you, allowing you to truly be free in the moment. I use the metaphor of a dancer a lot. I can see a dance in my head, I can feel it within me, but if I don't know that my legs are strong enough, if I can't communicate with my foot, if I don't have the bodily - strength or flexibility, if I haven't prepared myself, then in the moment when the music comes, I can't dance as I feel it, envision it. Worry interrupts: "If I leap, will I break my ankle?' So maybe I don't leap. Self-consciousness strikes. As a director, that's one of the main issues you're confronted with in yourself and in the actor...self-consciousness.
FILMMAKER: I spoke with Christopher Munch (The Hours and Times, Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day) about the workshop and he said, "It was very useful, cultivating tools that help when you get into a bind. You can methodically figure out what to do. If you have tools, you won't have to feel panicked."
SCHECKEL: Yes, it gives you something to do instead of panic. Clarity of vision helps with that too. Right at the start of the workshop we investigate what the directors really want to express with their pieces. I ask them, "What kind of performances do you love? What makes you feel energized? What do you want to say?" That is the ground to stand on. If there isn't clarity there, it's hard to listen if someone else has an idea, and conversely, it's easy to get swayed by someone's strong opinion which may seem good in the moment, but ultimately may not benefit the overall vision. Also, I'm very interested in the clarity and nuance of the emotional journey, the transformative journey of the character. The structure. And how a director maps that journey.
FILMMAKER: Eventually actors are brought into the workshop...
SCHECKEL: Yes, and that's part of how it's very hands on. But first the directors explore basic acting craft by going through some acting exercises themselves. It's a very quick way to develop sensitivity towards the actor.
FILMMAKER: And this is what Alison Maclean refers to as the hotseat!
SCHECKEL: Yes! But it's not fire as in "Danger!" but fire as in "Life!" In the lab, we do exercises to develop flexibility or a responsiveness to quickly changing situations. My classes are not standardized. I teach tools, so there is a foundation, but I also try to inspire creative investigation. The tools include script analysis, character development, transformative journey work, blocking, how to deal with egos, vocabulary, camera placement, the relationship between visual style and emotional reality -but, ultimately, this is a laboratory where the director can come and find out what moves him. The human being understands nothing unless it is perceived through the senses. The work in class is about revealing. The director must reveal what he wants to express. The actors must reveal what is being felt. The work is to reconnect the director, and thereby the actor, with the surprise, the shock, the delight of living. People easily become dead the delight of living. How do we reawaken and reconnect? The artist assists us in that reawakening.
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