Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Interview with Lauren Brotman: Erna (Part I)

How did you go about developing your character? Did you do any research?

My approach to my character was in some ways similar and in some ways very different to my usual approach. In preparing for a role, I always seek to find out as many specifics about the world and the character as possible, to make it more real for me. This process began with reading the book, which is a luxury that one doesn’t normally have, and also a challenge. What presented a challenge was that the book was mainly told through the perspective of Nini so I really had to translate her experience into my own for Erna, and make as much out of the details as I could. The novel is filled with rich imagery and details about the Karpel family and their Viennese/Shanghai experience. The world became very clear and real for me. While reading the book, I took about 10 pages of notes, of things that may become useful to me later.

The next thing I did was read and re-read the script, marking down any initial impulses I had about the scenes and character. Then, I began my character work. I went through the script line by line, writing down the lines I say about other characters, the lines I say about myself, and the lines others say about me (about 13 pages). This gave me a huge amount of insight into my character—her values, beliefs, fears, wants, needs, and her relationships with every single character in the play. After that I created a timeline of Erna’s life, from the time she was born, until the end of the play. Some of these were things I gleaned from the book and script, others were made up so I could make her real for myself as an actor.

Next, I began text work which involves writing down all my lines, paraphrasing them into my own words, and writing down their subtext—that is, what Erna really means when she says each line. I then asked myself what are the needs and wants of Erna for each line, and what does she want to do the person she is speaking to. These 36 pages gave me even more insight, and it’s also a great way of becoming familiar with the lines! From here, I will breathe it all in, trust that the work is in me, let it go, and discover new things in the moment I get into the rehearsal space with the rest of my ensemble.

What did you get out of the process of developing the script? Can you describe the workshop process so far?

I love the workshop process. My experience is much different than the rest of the Ten Green Bottles team because I only came into the process last month for a one day workshop. I felt like I had a really thin essence of the play compared to everyone else who had been with the play for months. As well, the characters had been mainly developed through improvisations, and the text I had to work with came from someone else’s experience. This made the experience more like a traditional rehearsal period where you’re given a script, which is great because you have a bigger resource pool of choices, but also presents a challenge because I felt the character was so far from who I am as a person. She is thoughtful and quietly passionate, while I think my choices may have been much more explosive—but what a wonderful opportunity for me to play someone so far from who I am, and make her my own!

The one workshop day I took part in brought us all onto the same page; as an ensemble, and as characters. The cast and director and the rest of the Ten Green Bottles team made me feel incredibly welcome, and as though I had been part of the experience from the first day. We did some text work, which gave me a much richer connection to the material and we did some improvisations, which allowed me to contribute my own voice to Erna, and with the other characters, and solidified even more my relationships to the ensemble, both in and out of the play. We explored the movement vocabulary of the piece and of our characters, which I think is essential when telling this kind of a story, where we don’t have the time to tell a 30 year story with words only.


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