3.1: Scenes vs. French Scenes
Breaking your script up helps you focus on the content of each scene, each character's immediate objective, and determine what each scene is ultimately about. Upon your initial read of the play you determined your theme and know the overall story. Breaking up the script allows you to delve into the scene and find out where the specific scene fits into the overall narrative and how to make each scene climactic. You want each scene to be an event and the plot and pace of each scene should build and lead to a climax which ends the scene. You can break scenes up into two different ways.
Scenes
A scene is a particular section of the show that the playwright has selected and labeled. In a scene characters will enter a location and each will struggle to get what he or she wants. Once enough tension builds a character will make a choice that either succeeds allowing them to achieve their objective or fails and complicates the situation. When you break a play into scenes you are focusing on the scenes objective and how it fits into the overall plot. You need to be aware of pacing and how each character adds tension not only to the circumstances of the scene but also the main character’s plight.
While studying the scene look for big moments or shifts where something happens or is revealed and mark them in the script. Make sure to write down what you want the audience take from the scene. Finally make sure you get a strong sense of how the scene should build tension and create a successful climax that you can build off of in the next scene. Make sure that you do not make the tension so great that it upstages the actual climax of your show.
French Scenes
A French scene begins and ends when a new character either leaves or enters a scene. This is a very beneficial tool in understanding characters and in helping your actors. Breaking a scene into a frech scene allows your actors to think about which characters are in the scene with them and determine how much of the character’s objective would be shared in that situation. Human beings alter their behavior depending on the people they are with, why would a character be any different?
Breaking up scenes into french scenes also allows you to build small climaxes within character relationships. If two characters are attracted to each other and are finally alone, a french scene can help you make the most out of the limited interaction those characters will have before another character walks in.