Day 16 (BCII): Scene Study

Warning: This post has been attacked by my Inner Sailor.

I am so fucking frustrated right now. First of all, my scene partner and I got together before class today to rehearse since yesterday didn't work out, but we spent the whole hour running lines, which is not the same thing.

So when we performed the scene in class it was shitty, shitty, shitty. Even though I had intellectually picked out a few actions to play during the scene, they didn't come across at all. Carrie said I was just playing an emotion. She asked me what my overall goal was, and I said I didn't know, that I spent hours studying the script and I couldn't figure it out. And that by itself fucking frustrates me, I feel it shouldn't be this fucking hard to figure that out. BUT I can see so many different things in the script--I actually found a transcript of the movie at Script-O-Rama, but that's all it was, literally a transcript of the dialogue all run together, without labelling which line(s) were spoken by whom, or any differentation between scenes. But it was enough for me to get an idea of the characters' history, however. So in our scene, there are so many different things going on I don't know how to make the best choice, and Carrie disagreed with my initial take on it. She said that it happens a lot that you can look at a scene for hours and not be able to figure it out. She recommended that my partner and I sit down and go through the script beat by beat, and simply repeat and think about what it was we were trying to do to each other, and not move forward to the next beat until we've figured it out. And then as we figure out what it is we're trying to accomplish in each beat, it will reveal the overall goal of the scene. So my partner and I tried that after class, worked about half-way through the scene, and I honestly don't know if what I found is right, it seems too simple, too dull, I don't know. And for some reason it is so fucking hard for me to figure out what to do to the other person in the scene, and it shouldn't be this fucking difficult, should it??

And the other thing that is fucking frustrating me is my apparent inability to connect with my partner in a scene. All this worrying about what action I'm playing is putting me in my fucking head. And it shouldn't be this hard to connect, should it?? I know that I can connect because I am getting better and better in the repetition exercises in the Meisner Plus class, so why am I having such a hard fucking time with it in the scenes?? I know that I can connect in a scene, because I was able to do so in Scene Study in Boot Camp I, plus on the last day of Meisner in BCI, I was able to allow my parnter to affect me without loosing my own intention. So what the fuck is the problem now??

And it seems to me I'm missing an important link somehow. All of my teachers have said being in a scene should feel just like being in a repetition, except that we're using the playwright's words instead of our own. But for me, when I'm in a repetition, I'm not trying to do anything to the other person. I'm simply present with them, allowing their behavior to affect me, and reacting to that. (We haven't done any activity repetitions at all in BCII.) But the minute I try to do something to the other person in the scene, I'm in my head, playing the actions instead of actually doing them, instead of being present with my partner.

AAAARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!