This is a chance for you to test your work. Your job is to WATCH, RECORD and ASSESS. Do you have an agenda for the reading?
What do you want to find out?
- Story/plot: is the story clear? Is it told the most effective way?
- Language: are there distinct and individual voices? Subtext?
- Character: does your character move? Profound or surface?
- Theatricality: Is it a play?
- Is it funny/serious in the right places? Do they get it?
- Is it interesting?
RULE 1: Watch your audience.
Watch the people you don’t know. The ones who have no idea what the play is about or what is going on? Are they following? Are they laughing? Are they feeling it in the right places?
Mark where they laugh. Mark where they got it. Mark their reactions.
RULE 2: Follow the script, Not the performance.
Scribble on it. Make a mark where it doesn’t work the way you want it to. Slash and burn. In moderation!!! Check where your stomach turns, or where the hairs on the back of your neck raise, or the flow is interrupted.
- Check your handling of the material
- Check there’s no gaps in your emotional story
If you are imagining the correct performance, the one you’ve written in your head and the response isn’t correct, it may not be the actors’ fault. What have you given them? Perhaps there’s a better way to write this?
- Check your set ups. What is stopping the response? Have you overcrowded information?
- Levels of subtlety. Are you too subtle? Not enough?
RULE 3: Accept interpretations, AND EMBRACE THEM.
Take it on the chin and LEARN. If it happens and you don’t like the interpretation it might mean that your intentions were not clear enough in the blueprint you offered.
RULE 4: Check your scenes
Have a look at what you thought you were offering and what was received? Is there a difference? Is there a build in dramatic tension?
- Are your scenes working? Is there a change in each? Does your character transform? Is your intention clear?
RULE 5: Check on what you want the audience to come away with…
DID THEY?