The MOPA Approach - The First Rehearsal
A brief insight into The MOPA Approach in action, through an explanation of the process applied at the first rehearsal of a production...
In the next ten minutes I am going to try to explain the seemingly unexplainable; what the MOPA Approach is and why it matters.
Traditionally actors use a script as a starting point for text-based productions, beginning rehearsals with a company read-through followed by work with book in hand.
MOPA does neither of these things.
We begin with a discussion of what people in the rehearsal room know of the play’s story, and then the actors get up and act out what they know.
They can not use books or words as crutches or guides; they must use their own thoughts and understanding, and commit to these as actors in order to generate words, actions and maybe even feelings.
They may not understand much and so their acting out of what they know may not last very long. They might do the whole play in five minutes. Or twenty.
As they act the play (for that is what they are doing), they will face challenges.
At times they will not know what comes next and will either begin waffling and digressing “in-character”, or else will step “out of character” to ask for help. This will indicate inexperience in working the MOPA way. For a MOPA Actor knows an improvisation of a story begins only when you know where you are going and how you plan to get there. Plans can change – especially as other people throw unexpected things in your way – but if you ever lose sight completely of the end point then you were not sufficiently clear about it or its importance in the first place.
So a MOPA Actor has an understanding of where they are headed.
But this understanding must not be of an end point in isolation. An outcome is worthless unless you know the route which gets you there. To illustrate: both Macbeth and Richard III end up being killed on the battlefield but how they get there are different stories; different routes.
So the MOPA Actor needs to grasp something of the route – or series of actions, episodes and events – as well as the end point.
This is what the first rehearsal discussion focuses on: not our ‘interpretation’ or ‘thoughts’ on the play, but our understanding of its plot… of its sequence of action and outcome.
Our first acting out of the play involves simply acting out the plot or story.
But this acting out reveals much. For starters it reveals where people have not understood something about the plot.
Misunderstandings or lack of understanding are revealed when an actor or group of actors make things happen in ‘their’ plot which do not happen in the real plot. Or where they make things happen out of order. Or where they make things happen with less – or greater – significance than in the original.
Take Macbeth again: a first telling of the plot may result in - among many other things - an absence of soliloquies; confusion as to which murder comes where; only one appearance of the ghost of Banquo; Macduff appearing in scenes where he shouldn’t; omission of the action of Act 5 scene iii altogether; a failure of Malcolm to establish a new order in Scotland at the end of the play.
Now many omissions will be relatively unimportant because no-one in the rehearsal room really expected them to be otherwise. But some omissions or errors will be glaring. Because either the story fell down without them, or else someone in the rehearsal room believes that the missing thing is fundamental to the story and can not possibly be left out.
And here’s the rub…
It WAS left out.
So it was not as fundamental in the understanding of at least ONE person (probably many more) in the room.
This is where the MOPA Approach is utterly distinct from standard practice. For with a book in hand nothing CAN be left out, and therefore we never CAN identify where someone’s understanding is fundamentally erroneous at a holistic level.
Moving on…
Discussion of what was missed out, what was in the wrong place, and what was neglected or given too much prominence, leads to a re-evaluation of the internal plot of the play. Connections between disparate scenes emerge, and triggers that fundamentally cause changes of direction, thought or action are identified.
But it is all provisional. For just as what we knew yesterday has been changed by what we learned today, so what we learn tomorrow will change our understanding once more…. and new errors and misconceptions will be revealed, and new adjustments in triggers, direction, thought and action will be required.
But what of the book, the words?
The book/script is now in the rehearsal room as a reference tool. It provides answers about the order of events and the sequences of action that make the play.
It does also give us the playwright’s words but as these words are the result of a perceived sequence of action in the playwright’s mind, there is little point in ‘learning’ them or religiously using them until we are clearer about the plot and action which gives rise to them.
Of course an experienced MOPA Actor will know to read the words and work at a level above them for as long as possible. This means continuing to use the script as a ‘reference’ point for as long as possible, and avoiding any temptation to start memorising or fixing their meaning or interpretation.
This last point is challenging to most actors and perhaps one of the ‘impossible’ things to explain. Because most people, after a very short time of work with a script, will be able to interpret the words and might therefore reasonably feel ready to begin learning them.
But interpreting the words on a page and interpreting the words at a point in the play are of course two very different things. And until you understand the point in the play where the words come, you can not begin to interpret them at that point in the play.
With book in hand you have no such problem: you just interpret the words on that page.
And here’s the next big issue in explaining the MOPA Approach on paper…
For most people both over-estimate and underestimate how much they know of a plot.
They “over-estimate” because they think they know the plot of a play they are working on inside out. But ask them to tell it to you and they struggle (try it and see!). But they “underestimate” because actually, with a little active thinking away from the crutch of a text/script, most people discover that they know more than they thought they did.
How can this be? How can someone ‘struggle’ to tell a story and yet know more than they thought – when they ‘thought’ that they knew it inside out!
Because, for a MOPA Actor, to know a story inside out means that you know :
a) the order of events from beginning to end in a story that you can tell effortlessly without fear of losing your way or forgetting what comes next (because it is so logical to you)
b) what the turning point of each event actually is, so that you can summarise it in a few words (and still tell the whole story) or delve into great detail (and not lose your way).
The fact is that few if any actors in a conventionally rehearsed theatre production will be able to do both a) and b) in relation to the play they are working on.
Yes, they may know the lines inside out. And with some effort they might be able to track their way through the ‘production’ to give an explanation of the ‘order of events’, but these are only signs, ultimately, of rote learning and not of true understanding.
So the MOPA Actor builds understanding of the plot and events and sequences of action within the play and, from here, finds the purpose and action behind the words themselves.
But, I hear you say, you work with Shakespeare and he does not just write words… he writes verse.
Indeed. And an actor with half-decent training will know that Shakespeare’s work – like that of any playwright – has features of language that are part of the story. And when, on day one of rehearsal, the actors acted out what they knew they will, presumably, have incorporated not only a sense of space and audience but also language. For this was something they knew… surely?
Well, it ought to be. But many actors unfortunately do not ‘know’ blank verse. They think it is something distant from their own language and have never been helped to understand it is simply a game of rhythm and meaning that applies in any language – including text speak.
So they find it as difficult to bring the language element into their acting of the play, as they do to bring in things in the plot that they do not understand.
Equally worrying is the fact that actors, when asked to act out what they know at a first rehearsal, invariably fail to take account of the audience. Or of basic stage techniques such as ‘making an entry’ or ‘not upstaging’.
But the MOPA Approach allows blind-spots and misunderstandings to be exposed immediately. And an actor’s failure to engage an audience or poor spatial awareness or ignorance of linguistic form will be exposed early and, like their understanding of the plot, will be developed and improved and built upon through the rehearsal period.
There are one or two techniques to support the main body of rehearsal work but this here is pretty much the best explanation I can offer this morning on the fundamentals.
And so, with the MOPA Approach, what we should have within 30 minutes of the first rehearsal starting is a company of actors acting out the story of the play in as much detail as they are able, without losing their way, taking account of style, technique, language and audience and space – as well as plot and other actors – in a microcosmic version of the final performance. The actors can – and will – even be using rudimentary costume and props in this initial draft version (subject to an understanding of the need for them, of course).
In reality, modern actors are so ill-prepared for this direct approach, that we invariably find this first rehearsal is somewhat monotone and barely providing 1% of what is required. But it’s a start.
And it proves again and again to be a much much better starting point for any actor than a company read through and a rehearsal with book in hand.
If you can not see, or do not believe, the truth of this statement then you need to see a MOPA rehearsal at work.
If you CAN see the truth of this statement then start doing it and let me know how you get on.