A New Therapy Podcast: How It Connects to Text Analysis
While I’m working, I typically prefer the sound of the human voice — digging into true crime podcasts or rewatching episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I think it boils down to my love for eavesdropping and the thrill of overhearing conversations. I’m on a trend of listening to podcasts about therapy sessions and have found them to be helpful tools for text analysis and encouraging creativity in the rehearsal room.
I’m binging through “Where Do We Begin with Esther Perel”, where each episode follows a one-time therapy session of couples during quarantine. I began to see parallels on how a couple’s therapy session starts off a short two person scene — two people fighting for their point of view in a shared event.
Then as Perel began to unpack and challenge the couple’s behaviors and points of view over the shared event, elements similar to scene analysis rose to the surface. What just happened to make you do that? What is the combination of circumstances that got you here? What is at stake if you don’t get what you want? Perel’s methods become a way of uncovering each person’s deeper actions through the layers of subtext.
Here’s a few ways that Perel’s therapy podcast has contributed to my approach of text analysis.
Layers of subtext.
Rarely it’s an argument about the dishes. There is something deeper that the couple needs to discuss and don’t have the communication tools to do so directly. The sessions usually start in the subtext event of the dishes and the session dives deeper to unearth what is the true event behind the conflict.
In my work, I strive to find the event of the scene. What is the story telling function of this moment and how do the character’s actions act as a series of building blocks towards the event. In scene work, we would explore the dishes argument as a tactic in service to the greater objective.
I encourage the actors to create flawed, unhealthy people who maybe don’t know why they are acting the way they do. Most playwrights will make the scene about the dishes argument and the rehearsal room must uncover the subtext fueling the text on the surface. People who communicate effectively will not make an interesting scene; we want to see flawed people doing their best and if characters start flawed then they have something to overcome.
Incorporating Perel’s methods helps to unpack as much as possible, and really dig into the deeper subtext behind what the characters are actually saying. Once we have a better grasp of what is fueling the words, we can pack all of the subtext into one simple action with more weight behind it.
What keeps you in the room?
A theme through the podcast is that couples come to therapy either to work through a particular event or gain tools to prevent future miscommunications. In both scenarios, the couple has made a choice to stay in the relationship and find a way to make it work. Perel inquires in her sessions about what is keeping these people together — what do they need from each other? What do they gain by staying in the relationship?
I ask the actors during scene work what keeps them in the room. This opens an investigation of what they need from the other person. No matter what the other character says or does, people in plays do not give up. They continuously change tactics until they get what they want or are introduced to a new point of view that changes what they want. Scene work becomes about the concrete need that keeps the characters pushing towards their goals.
Characters have to pursue objectives for as many pages as they playwrights give us. We as artists have to back up every moment with a need to keep speaking and trying new tactics. Perel’s questions of staying in the room help the actor to craft a stakes-filled reason to keep pursuing an action for as many pages as the playwright gives us.
Questions to inspire creativity from the actors.
My favorite parts of the podcast session are when the couples reach an impasse. They cannot see a different point of view or better understand where their partner is coming from. Perel takes this impasse as an opportunity to challenge the couple’s behavior and ask about how they arrived at their rigid point of view.
Sometimes we get stuck in rehearsal. We feel the moment isn’t working and we don’t have that same spark we found beforehand. I feel this happens because the room has evolved past the initial idea. We’ve gotten to know this moment deeper and it demands a more layered approach. I’ve found that Perel’s methods when the couples reach an impasse are golden to opening creativity and encouraging the actors to find a new way to give weight to the scene.
Perel methods dissect the event, asking the couples to factor in backstory and deeper relationship context to arrive at a new way to view the moment. “Why when she said this, do you want to do that back?” “What came up from you just then?” and “Why did you feel you were stuck there?” are open questions that invite the rehearsal room to investigate further on the moment and come back with something we haven’t found before.
In my directing process, the actors have to do the work to arrive at what they want and I serve as a guide to help them get to where they want to go in service of text. Therapy podcasts provide me with a set of tools on questions to awaken creativity and exploration as they craft characters that are uniquely their own.
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