Deborah Sussel

Senior Lecturer Emerita, U.C. Berkeley, Colleague, MFA Program, American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco

You wouldn’t necessarily think that Kevin Jackson’s “Rock Star” exercise and a small paperback book “The Penguin Guide to Punctuation” would have anything in common, but they do. Both “Rock Star” and that little book on punctuation require discipline, the discipline to be absolutely specific.

Kevin would ask the students to choose and watch a rock star singing one of their hits. They were then to precisely model the singer’s costume, make-up, behavior and physical life, enabling a complete transformation.

This attention to detail infused the students with an enormous amount of confidence and became a true metamorphosis.

Where that little book of punctuation comes in is that Kevin recommended it to me when I was looking for a text which could help my students with their clarity of utterance. I’d coached a fair amount of Stoppard plays at A.C.T. (The American Conservatory Theater) and knew how much Stoppard valued punctuation. “Without clarity of utterance on the actor’s part an audience doesn’t know what is being said, and the rest of the actor’s work is wasted” he famously said.

Punctuation functions as a map of meaning for the actor. Kevin understood this more than anyone.

Bonne nuit, doux Prince
Deborah Sussel