ABSTRACT
Rehearsal itself is a fluid concept. In many ways, it is all about repetition. Part of the problem lies in the very way in which plays are traditionally rehearsed. Actors are so anxious to learn their lines as swiftly as possible that they do not actually hear either what they are saying or what the other characters are saying. All too often, these early rehearsals turn out to be rather superficial, and the actor ends up reworking everything once the actors are all the more familiar with the script. This is because the brain activity involved in reading lines off a page is completely different from the brain activity involved in communicating living thoughts and responding to each impulses. The first encounter with a script can be wonderfully fruitful, provoking intuitive discoveries. Round-the-table script analysis can involve all kinds of forensic exploration. One of the soundest ways of unlocking the shape of a scene is to break it into its bits of action.
