The Blind Leading the Blind

In preparation to direct a film or play, I make a rehearsal plan. It involves much more than a schedule of sessions to read the script together and block the scenes. One of the first things I do is conjure a metaphor for each scene. Last week I did my metaphor work for But A Dream. I wrote "The blind leading the blind" for Scene 2. When I looked at my notes a few days after that, I had no idea what activity I intended for the blind leading the blind in rehearsal. I let it go until the next day. Still nothing. We were on Scene 1 in our rehearsal, so I let it go again. Five-thirty this morning I open my computer to look at my notes before going to get the boys. There it is: "The blind leading the blind." I don't know what that means yet. Oh well. "Trust," I tell myself.

I know what the phrase means in a conventional sense, but I'm not interested in a literal reenactment. I needed to set up an activity that will allow it to happen between the two actors. I also had this quote in my head from one of the Flying Wallendas - "Being on the tightrope is living, the rest is just waiting." So there's two blind guys and a tightrope in my head. Not really making sense to my pre-dawn not-yet-caffeinated brain, so I let it go again. In the meantime, I get back to basics and have the boys move out across the park and back in the manner in which we've been training. They come back. I give them some notes on their movement then we do a variation that was closer to the given circumstances of BAD. It started coming together for me as we were working. "Okay, good let's go over to the playground area." I didn't know what we we're going to do, but instead of thinking about it, I started running and said, "Let's go." I was really letting go of it. By the time I was half way across the park I saw some bleachers by a baseball diamond and voila!, it all came together.

I had Joey close his eyes and stand on the diamond. Heath was next to the bleachers with his back to Joey. Heath had to maintain a field of vision to the front. He had to whisper instructions to Joey to get him around the backstop and up the bleachers without looking at him. In doing this we (re- )discovered that Joey is afraid of heights. His whole body trembled, but he kept moving.

But A Dream is about a soldier that can't take another step for fear that he'll step on a landmine. It's a reasonable fear in a minefield, but standing still in the middle of a field is not a soldier's primary objective. It's Heath's task to get Joey across the field. When Joey auditioned he was doing the dance of being too afraid to step forward. I thought it looked phony. When I saw Joey unable to climb those steps this morning, my judgment was confirmed: Joey acting scared and Joey scared are distinctly different.

So we moved on to a tightrope-like exercise -- crossing a narrow bench -- while covering one another. Joey did it without a problem. On the third run through I told him to stop halfway. Heath berated him, shamed him, reminded him of the mission. Stuck. "Tell him a joke, Heath." He does. Joey steps. Heath tells him another joke. He turns to me, "This is taking too long." "Sing a song," I direct. He does. Joey sings along and we're off the bench.

After rehearsal Joey told me, "You know when you're scared, you don't have to act scared, because fear produces more fear. All I had to do to be scared was focus on the fear I was actually experiencing."

Equipped with little else but a metaphor, we rehearsed the scene. What happened is exactly what happens on the page. There is no need to memorize lines. There's no blocking or practicing for performance to be done.
It truly is the blind leading the blind.

I love this shit.

Ciao,
Signore Direttore