Daniel Koster

This week's rehearsal has started to see some serious improvement between Griffin and I. Only a week ago, we were stumbling through lines for the first two minutes and didn't even think about blocking. Now we are entirely off book and already have some blocking figured out for parts of the scene.

Throughout rehearsal, both Griffin and I try to make the other actor react naturally to our actions. This is especially true for how Griffin negotiates his more passive Ben compared to my loud, energetic Kenny. For example, there's a line where Griffin asks me, "are you supposed to be drinking that?" While we were rehearsing, I was walking around and Griffin was sitting down. With no warning, he got up and looked me in the eye and delivered the line. I wasn't expecting him to do that. He challenged my characters authority and forced me to react the way I would when someone calls me out. By getting this natural reaction from me, Griffin's acting methods made for a better blocking product.

My own process in memorizing lines has been filled with annoying my friends and funny stories. Griffin and I have only so much free time to meet together and it feels unfair to make him listen to me try to memorize lines. My friends, on the other hands, I have no problem forcing them to listen me lecture them. My roommate, not my closest friend in the world but a friend nonetheless, had some choice comments about my acting. While I was running through the script at the Bon with a friend he kept on trying to distract me and kept saying I was doing a bad job with the script. At the end of the scene, I needed to use the book to get through the speech at the end. As I was finishing up the speech, I put down the book, looked to my left and said "oh shit" several times as indicated in the script. My roommates response to this was, "what is it? whats up?". I was so excited I told him "screw you I'm a great actor" and got up and left for a minute. The guy saying I was a bad actor had just been convinced by what I was doing!!

My own experience trying to memorize lines is filled with stories like this where I act in spaces in public with friends often to mixed reactions from those around me. This process seems to be working for me, however, and Griffin is also doing a great job getting his lines memorized so we're in a really great spot!