What was the hardest scene you ever had to act in?

Here's a question to all the actors on the board. What's the hardest scene you ever had to act in? Whether it be a scene that was emotionally taxing or hard to memorize.

I'm currently in my schools production of West Side Story and I'm the understudy for Action. We just blocked the taunting/rape scene of Anita tonight and I found it extremely disturbing. It's weird to put yourself in that sort of mind set, and it was hard for me because I think rape is one of the worst things you could ever do to another person. It was also odd because the girl who is the Anita understudy that I have to play opposite played my daughter in the musical last year.

So what scenes where hard for you guys to do?

Without a doubt it was when I played James Keller in a local production of The Miracle Worker. The scene was the big confrontation between Captain Keller and James and the director came up with a whole bunch of strange stage images and uses for props at the dinner table to sell the scene. Her vision worked. It was just very taxing to remember all the minutia of the stagecraft and reach the peak of James' arc at the same time. At one point, I was blocking Captain by holding a chair up like the ladder in the first act. The director had a very specific vision for each scene and it involved a lot of busywork onstage as a way to distract the family members from the struggle of living with Helen.

The set design didn't help, either. The director wanted a big unit set where you could see all of the rooms in the house at the same time. Everything was covered in latticework that really screwed with my eyes under the stage lights. There wasn't much room on the platform in front of the table and I fell off quite a few times during tech/dress rehearsals.

Reviewing the Situation in Oliver. Lots of emotional levels. :P

not so much as a scene... but i find emotional songs/scenes so much easier for me to perform... now comedy... it's pretty damn hard for me to do songs and scenes justice... doing a show now where i have to do comedy and i'm almost embarrassed in rehearsals because i'm so self conscious

so i have a lot of respect for comedians and comedic actors.

So far for me, the most difficult has been playing Jacob Marley in a female production of Jacob Marley's Christmas Carole. I've never had to memorize so much before (about 80% of the script).

Biff confronting Willy at the end of Salesman

dramamama, I think you're being unfair to OperaBdwyLover, sometimes - often - the tears need to be in the audience, not the actor. And often an actor has to walk a fine line between the way he or she personally feels - including tearful - as someone hearing or reading a piece from the way the character is feeling. There are scenes that should get tears from the audience (including the actor if he were in it, but he isn't, he's on stage) but not from the performer, and there are scenes which should get tears from the audience precisely because they are not getting tears from the performer.

The response one experiences reading, seeing and understanding a scene is not necessarily - and is often completely different, and dependent on the very difference - from the emotional condition - inside and out - of the character who is in the scene.

One might well cry watching Shirley Booth or Anna Magnani when they are not shedding a single tear.

I don't know the scene OperaBroadwayLover is talkingabout, but of course OperaBroadwayLover had to think about what she was saying while performing the scene, but to think about it as the character did (using the actor as the medium to find the character), not necessarily as the actor did if he or she were in the audience. And there are many times in life one has to act because of painful experiences while connecting with what the painful experience is forcing us to do in the present rather than what the painful experience meant to us at the time.

And there is no reason to believe OperaBroadwayLover either held back on emotion or wasn't astounding.

Updated On: 3/2/13 at 08:33 AM