Drama veterans, rookies sharpen their stage skills
Feel the character

By Lorin McLain
The Daily Courier

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Twelve adults and one Chino Valley high school student lie silently face up, palms against the ground, eyes closed.

Their instructor tells them to take deep breaths, three times in and holding it to a count of three, slowly exhaling.

Meditation?

Well, sort of.

The exercise is one of many drama instructors Jean Lippincott and Jonathan "J.P." Pervich lead acting students through in the scene work workshop.

"I want you to say your character's name in your head. Say it in different ways, slowly drawing out the syllables. Say it the way you mother would say it when she was mad," Perpich says, before taking students through other aspects of "getting into your character's skin."

Lippincott, a veteran director and performer with the Prescott Fine Arts Association, and Perpich, a veteran performer with PFAA and Arizona Classical Theatre teach the weekly class running in seven-week sessions in Lippincott's home on Wednesday evenings.

During the three-hour session, Perpich and Lippincott lead the students through a variety of technique exercises, like this class' opening exercise of depicting an emotion with a given physical movement, in addition to improvisation and working in pairs on scene development.

Perpich said the objective of the class is for participants to leave the class with a set of tools to create characters in whatever roles they might assume in future projects.

Participants range from veteran performers like Paul Epoch and Linda Fine - skilled actors who regularly act with Prescott Fine Arts Association - and two newcomers who have never acted before.

The blood starts pumping with a rapid fire improv exercise called "hitchhiker" that demands spontaneous interaction from four actors at a time, or a call and response "bomb dropping" routine: a girl tells her dad she is "knocked up," a nun tells the mother superior she has a crush on her, a man tells his wife about his sex change, and so on.

Perpich said the exercise helps actors develop their trusting instincts, and "to help the other actor out of a jam and not take away" in an event such as forgetting a line or a hang up in a scene.

An actor has "to learn to trust your instincts, and not try to think of something clever and grind through a moment," he said.

To learn about aspects of character development, the actors pair up to perform scenes from assigned scripts they received in earlier class sessions.

Lippincott and Perpich drilled Fine and Lance Sandleben as they played out a scene from "Last of the Red Hot Lovers." Perpich asked Sandleben to name three things about the apartment where the scene takes place, what he wants from Fine's character, what he is afraid she might do and how would he react at his job if a customer bared her breasts.
"Where did you just come from? What are you afraid will happen," he asked Fine.
"The more you can do to get in that character's skin, the more you'll start to discover," he said.
"It's all about making sure you know who they are."

In a scene between Briana Polland, a Chino Valley student who starred in the PFAA's "The Children's Hour," and newcomer Becky Mills, Lippincott asks them to drop the scripts.
"Talk to her, don't worry about the words. If you don't know, improvise," she said.

Eileen Dirienzo, who has never acted before and took the class out of curiosity, said acting entails more work she originally assumed.
"To develop a character, you have to use your imagination to fill in the parts of the character that the script doesn't tell you," she said.

Perpich said that talented veteran actors returning to the workshops reassures him that they are offering valuable insight to the craft.

Lippincott said she tries to mix a steady balance of improvisation and technique exercises, scene work and one class on cold reading "so that they have some idea of what goes on" in working on a stage production.

Contact the reporter at lmclain@prescottaz.com