Read the scene (and I mean read: with your eyes down the page, and then again aloud) a couple of times before trying to break a scene into beats. Your first reading should be a clean read, with no marks, no notes.
On a second read of your scene, start to break the scene down into beats.
A beat is the smallest piece of the action or dramatic movement. As you read, note places where the dynamic of the dialogue shifts, or the focus of a character, a balance of pressure, or new information coming into the scene. This is where you can break a scene up into beats. These places will be different for every director, since everyone will find a different shift.
Now that your scene is broken up into beats, you’re ready to add in actions for each one. Think about what is happening between the characters. How are the objectives shifting? Who is pressuring who, and who is pushing back? What is changing? Make a note, in active verbs. This is important: your notes should be actionable, so that the performer has something to play (and to try). So think about the objective of the character and what action(s) they are taking to achieve that:
- persuade
- avoid
- pressure
- reassure
- interrupt
- test
- confront
These active verbs are much more helpful for actors than emotions, which actors can’t really make happen, and instead need to be the result of actions. (If we think about emotional states like sad or angry, and apply them to an entire scene, then the only real objective is to create a sad scene, or an angry section.) These active verbs will also help you to avoid the trap of randomly breaking things up into equal pieces, or breaking beats where there is a change in volume, or a big pause, or even a big move (since that would mean the breaks are being based on movement, rather than the other way around. The breaks should dictate the movement, so if the breaks are based on a movement it can be hard to find other meaningful ones.)
These notes in the text are just notes, and should be tested in rehearsal. At the start of rehearsal, let the performers focus on these actions, and the shift between them, with limited movement.
Next time in rehearsal, you should test those actions and the shift between them. (If you have a question about where the shift happens, or how they should physically be moving in that shift, then that’s when you should change something. One thing at a time, and try the new change. Is it still unclear, or is it helping the shift make sense?) At this point it’s helpful to have a notebook or something to jot down notes. Jot down the number of the beat (or how it’s marked), the action you’re working on, and what you tried or asked to be tried. Write one note about what happened (maybe the distance between them changed, or that you rejected each other harder, that the physicality started to match the language…).
By noting where the balance of power shifts, or the way one person rejects the other, or the way a character moves physically to show their change in power, you’ll build an understanding of how the moves and blocking in your staging should feel. Rather than trying to figure out where to move around randomly, you should have a clear sense of what the moves are doing, based on what is happening.
