Zoo Story (continued) chapter 12

I gained more and more insights about Jerry.I went thru every line in the play. Jerry has some very descriptive dialogue and I worked until I had a very good visual image of everything I was describing as the character. Terms that I heard at HB Studio made more and more sense to me. In acting class we would theorize about moment to moment acting but now I was experiencing it for real and for the first time. The actor playing Peter would react slightly differently every time and that would change proportionately what I was doing. I had set mental images to everything I was describing to Peter. For instance, there is one point where Jerry talks about this woman who lives in his flop house that he has never seen but hears her crying all the time, whenever he passes her door. For this I used a combination of fantasy and reality. I took my mother and put her behind that door crying all the time. I pictured my mother, down and out living in a flop hose which wasn't true. One of the main subjects that Jerry talks about is the landlady's dog. Here I had to make up an image from total fantasy as I couldn't think of a animal in my own life that was at all like the dog in "The story of Jerry and the dog". Here I was using the Strasberg technique of affected memory, using real objects in your own life to get to the reality and the Meisner technique of using fantasy. Combined, they worked very well together. (continued)