Rachel is the central character, a nervous, neurotic, crazy, unstable, abandoned woman who finds herself in a hotel room and has to check out but she refuses to do so before finding out why the man she spent an incredible night with, vanished.
Sarah Lemmonier, a talent Portuguese screenwriter, wrote this piece for me. When I first read the script I got immediately nervous. I had an ideia of the character, I could see her and I could listen to her voice deep inside of me, but I was not sure I could actually do it.
I only had three days to find Rachel and to prepare the script, so the most important thing for me, was to master the script, to master the intentions, the objectives, the character's journey, her words. If I had more time I would have tried a different approach, I would have found Rachel in a different way, through music, through cinematic references, through pictures, smells, different exercises, acting games. But time is a luxury. You're suppose to make quick choices and to go for it!
My choice was to learn the script, to respect the screenwriter's words and to discuss alternatives. It's important to be organic. I red some parts of the script, I recorded those readings and I sent them to Sarah. For me, a script is a music score. I asked Sarah... "What do you think of this voice tone, of this rhythm... these intentions? Does it sound like the Rachel you imagined?" It was funny to share these recordings with Sarah because she told me: "I need the voice to be more like this in here and like that in there".
Then, after mastering the voice and the tone, I tried to find techniques to unlock complicated moments, moments where my memory just fails. I am lucky to have a good memory but I have the most ridiculous games and associations to unlock complicated moments. I draw stuff, I make sound games, I make stupid associations in my head that I don't tell anyone, but that's the only way to remember what's coming next! When you finish a sentence and you're actually one step ahead... because in your head you're already reading the first word of the next thought. No one needs to know but there's nothing more stressful than killing the text's musicality because we're struggling with our memory. We can't be open to the environment, to eventual surprises because we're not sure of what's coming next. Once I get rid of the text and the words, I am free, completely free! That's what I feel... maybe you have other techniques, but this one has been very helpful for me.
Off course I like to improvise and I do it a lot.. But improvising comes with confidence as well! It needs to make sense. It's not that random. This is like jazz... You're given a key and if you don't remember something... you improvise... But you improvise around that key.
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