Working With Actors.....On Low Budget

Today we used Her Big Chance (pg.103) of Alan Bennet's Talking Heads for an exercise, an actress named Rachel played the lead role of Lesley.
The exercise was Rachel acting as an actress reading the lines of Lesely in Her Big Chance. We started by having her do her bit and having Chris play the role of a director. The aim was to watch Chris and say "stop" if we though that that he was doing something wrong, or had forgotten too mention something to the "actress".
A few of us then took the position of director using the same premise.
The exercise was beneficial as it allowed us to make mistakes and ask questions and understand things from the actors perspective.
Some things that came up included over telling the actions to the actor, which is what Mamet had mentioned previously. The less you tell the better, but at the same time be direct.

Chris also gave us a few pointers to consider during the exercise.
-The final performance doesn't take place on set. It happens in the edit.
What he meant by this is that we have time and there's no need to rush, as long as we feel that we have everything that need.

Rachel also let us know a few things
-Make the actor feel important
-After being used to acting in a "safe space" with a lot of encouragement and praise, they will feel odd not to have that anymore, so let them know taht the work that they are doing is good.
-Give the actors a space of their own on set to have fun//let loose and practice.
-Don't tell them to "improvise" they need some kind of guidance, or direction/starting point.
-Don't tell them "Read it like this" and proceed to read it like you want it to be heard, because this will never work and you'll never hear what you want to hear and it feels as though you're telling them how to do their job.