A REHEARSAL STORY: JAMES ALEXANDER RANKIN

A fantastic rehearsal story from James Alexander Rankin:

“The majority of my theater experience has been on the stage; I haven’t had a massive amount of formal training. As a result, sometimes it takes me years to drink in a concept. That is usually paired with me observing actors around me, trying to understand their process and how they do things, or it can be me talking with directors and reading books on theory ad nauseam. Even after all that work it still takes an epiphany during a practical experience for me get an inkling of understanding.

We were working this December on Psychological Gesture, a concept that I have been aware of for years. Physically, I understood the concept. Mentally or emotionally, I’m not so sure yet. We were paired off after reviewing the core list of phycological gestures with our scene partners. We would perform a gesture with a line to our partner, and then they would respond with a gesture and a line.

Now, the idea of a psychological gesture is simple. You perform an archetypal action, like “to smash” and that physical action should be able to elicit certain sensations within your body that in turn bring out your inner impulses. It’s a tool that we can use.

So as we moved through this exercise, back and forth, I could not get out of my head. I couldn’t understand it and it started causing me anxiety. I was aware that physically I was doing the right things: I was doing the appropriate form for “to smash”; I was fantasizing, then doing, then radiating; it was full bodied, simple, strong. I had tension though so I couldn’t find ease. The more I thought, the harder it became. But then my partner did something: she made me laugh which I hadn’t done yet that day.

She made her gesture from behind her mask with a smile in her eyes and the words came out, but I could feel her intent was to share with me and my insides shook with joy and my body took over and jumped into a gesture to reciprocate. I had been doing everything as if there was a right way; I forgot that this is about finding the joy and creativity. I stopped thinking, and I listened to my partner. I stopped thinking about why and just started letting the exercise be. After that, I understood a little more. We were communicating, and the exercise was helping us to specify our qualities, and letting us come to a deeper understanding of why or what we feel.

It was doing so much more than that, but it is a process filled with exploration and discovery and I look forward to learning more as we go. Thank God we have time, not just for my brain to understand it, but so we really take these things in and apply them skillfully with joy and ease.”