1. Lesson objectives
Understand rehearsal techniques by Trestle, Boal, Adler and Stafford-Clarke.
By applying them to Woyzeck.
To create an evaluation of the techniques in reference to your own use.

2. Trestle – Status Cards
- Adopt the status of your card (Ace is lowest, King is highest) - Move around the room, showing that status and interacting with each other, without speaking. Experiment with ways you might do this!

3. How well did you communicate status through physical, non-verbal expression?
- How could you apply this to Woyzeck?

4. Boal – Cop in the head
These exercises help to reveal the internal oppressions of a character, or ‘the cop in the head’. These oppressions are normally transferred from the outside world, into the head of the character.
What oppressions are in the society in Woyzeck?
What oppressions take place in Woyzeck’s head?

5. Scene 8…
- Think about the oppressions going on in Woyzeck’s head and in this scene whilst you watch it. Think about what we learn from the dialogue between the characters.
Create a frozen image that shows one of these oppressions.
- Create a monologue in your frozen image – what is happening, what are you, as this image, thinking? Repeat it over and over.

6. What was the effect?
Did we learn anything about the oppressions going on in Woyzeck’s head?
Where else in the script could you use it?

7. Stellar Adler – Inner Justification
The playwrite gives the lines and the actor justifies them.
By justifying the lines, you are creating a reason for the action in order to gain a deeper understanding of your character, experience the lines, and create a successful performance.
An Example – In a play, a lady in a cafe is asked, by the waiter, if she would like sugar with her tea. She says “No thank you”. Her action is to reject the sugar and her justification is because she has diabetes.

8. Have a go….
- Choose any line in the script and bring it to life by imagining, in detail, the reasons you are saying the line, try to make a strong choice!

9. Max Stafford Clark – Actioning the text.
An action explains what a character wants to do, most of the time to another character, through the line that they are saying. The subject does something to the object, this is why you use a transitive verb.
“on stage your doing something to the other character as a means of provoking a natural response, so in a sense the drama is always kept active and never gets ‘airy-fairy’ or over-subtle.”
MSC asks his actors to go through the whole of the text and action every line, they must find a transitive verb to accompany each individual action.

10. An Example…

11. Have a go…
In pairs/threes pick a scene from Woyzeck and have a go at giving an action to each line to pinpoint what that line is doing. Use the sheet of transitive verbs for help!

12. Which of the script based techniques did you find useful?
Why?