The Lying Down Line Thru

For the director…

A great exercise to create intimacy and build chemistry among your cast is to have them lie down next to each other on cots (or on the floor) and go through the entire play. Line by line.

Legendary director Mike Nichols used it extensively in rehearsals for his plays and even some of his films. Here’s Lee Grant talking about it during the original run of Neil Simon’s The Prisoner Of Second Avenue (excerpt from the Mike Nichols excellent biography, A Life)…

“Our only intimacy was onstage. Offstage, we had no relationship at all. He (Peter Falk) didn’t want it. He would go to the Art Students League and paint every day. That’s what he had plunged into as a way of keeping himself alive in New York.”

To bring them together, Nichols reached back to an acting exercise from his Chicago days.

“He made Peter and me lie down together on a cot backstage. We lay there, close to each other in the dark, and went through the entire play line by line,” with a prompter standing by in case one of them couldn’t remember the words. “It was brilliant. You know, lying there, you feel somebody breathe and you feel them cough. You hear when their nose is stuffed. We had to become a couple, and Mike helped us do that.”

Besides creating chemistry, this exercise eases tension, builds concentration and reinforces learning lines. A trifecta of awesomeness!