Tablework Means Shit.

Hello everybody,

Today I learned an important lesson about the necessity of tablework and how it all unfailingly falls to shit. Always.

Lets start from the top. Table work is necessary. It's your building block for you character and for the scene in general. To go on stage, or generally perform without it is (as i now see it) ridiculous. Scene and Primary objectives are the motivation for your characters behaviors and can explain every line the character says. On top of this, dividing the scene into beats gives the actor a clear sense of the general flow of the scene and how the characters eventually resolve their objectives.

This being said, ultimately tablework means jackshit. Going into your scene you can have this grand idea of how your character says a line and then reacts to how your partner responds and when you finally get to the scene, all of a sudden your partner does something totally different then you expected. For example, Andrew and I had originally slated our scene as him being elated and me being confused the whole time and a little put off by his advances. This, needless to say, all fell to shit. He acted manic and a little off and that messed with me a bit. I was thrown off. The worst thing is that i didn't act off of it. That would have been perfect had i been like "DUDE WHAT THE HELL" but i let myself be caught in my head. With Danny it was totally different. I had no idea what he was going to do so i reacted more naturally, like it was just a normal conversation. In real life, one doesn't know what the other person is going to say, or how they will react, and the same goes for a scene. No matter how much table work you do about emotions and strategies and objectives, it all comes down to impulse and being in the moment. Your parter may cry, you may laugh, your nose may bleed, who the hell knows but you just have to take what you got and use it to the best of your ability.