Units, Units, Units….

The worst day of rehearsals for me is always the first day and this is often because the ice is not fully broken between the different members of the group. It’s often when all the actors meet for the first time (if possible, that’s a situation best avoided).

As a director you’re the conduit for every aspect of their work; you are the person who helps to channel all their hopes and fears into productive, workable material. The sense of responsibility can be crippling and often it is possible to cut the nervous atmosphere with a knife.

My favourite way of dealing with it is to work as closely as I can with each cast member on an individual basis – often for several months before full time rehearsals start. It necessitates a degree of tenacity but means we go into that month with a basic shared understanding of who we are and what we are like, rather than starting from scratch.

If you have a cast of 12 then you are in effect directing 12 different plays, and it is in those first few days of rehearsals that the director must establish the tools which give actors a good start. But starting can be a torturous process – and hard to plan or get right. Flexibility can be everything. Will this idea work? Will that technique fall flat or be a raging success? And then there’s all the preparation too…

So let’s get to the point. A few months ago a director I greatly respect was talking about ‘units of action’. What, you may want to know, is a ‘unit of action’? Well they are some times also called ‘beats’ and were first suggested by Konstantin Stanislavski as a means of helping actors determine the through line of a role.

I found this in a dictionary: ‘A unit is a discrete piece of action in a play-text, marked by a significant change in action.’

Units are also used by writers and dramaturges as a means of analyzing text for editing purposes. Dividing text into units makes it more manageable and easier to edit. They also make it easier to understand!

None of Marlowe’s plays are divided into acts or scenes – any scenes or acts that you see in published editions today are at the editor’s discretion. This means it is important to go through and define the action very clearly – and in lots of different ways.

Everybody has a different view about ‘the unit’. And each character will have a different set of ‘units’. For me, a unit of action is a way of identifying the ‘wants’ of each character, and then identifying the different actions that they undergo to achieve what they want. So it might be that Barabas does certain things to get what he wants…and Selim-Calymath does other things. What, for example, are the units of action that lead up to the murder of his daughter, Abigail?

Acting is about ‘doing’ more than it is about ‘feeling’. Using this technique is a great way of making ideas specific, and in this case, making the huge vista of ideas in the play manageable.

With a play like this one, there are also a million ways to work the principle of the ‘unit’ to advantage. It’s a bit like being let loose in a sweetshop (or in a bookshop – much better). So be prepared – I think this blog is a theme on which there will inevitably be variations…

There’s a certain person who’s been encouraging me for some time to get to grips with the Unit (you know who you are). I hope you’ll finally be glad that I‘ve started to get the message!