By James Slaymaker.

The Rehearsal embodies the three core characteristics of the essay film as outlined by Rascaroli: it is a hybrid form, crossing genre boundaries and destabilising the line between ‘fiction’ and ‘non–fiction’; it is highly self–reflexive, constantly encouraging the viewer to consider the construction of its own images and their tentative relationship to profilmic ‘reality’; and it is rooted in a rhetorical strategy of direct address….”

Since the inception of the form by Michel de Montaigne in his Essais (1993 [1580]), the essay has been theorised as a genre that foregrounds the subjectivity of its author, seeking to capture their process as they intellectually work through a particular subject (or subjects), rather than simply providing an objective report of the author’s conclusions. In seeking to communicate the author’s thought, the essay is characterised by digressions, self-questioning passages, and false starts. As Rick Warner observes of Montaigne’s Essais, ‘what [Montaigne] wants his book to possess is the volatile and digressive character of his thinking process, even if this means allowing errors and rushed observations to stand, and even if this risks losing the reader’(2011: 297). Much like its literary forebearer, scholarship surrounding the essay as a cinematic form has largely revolved around the intertwined issues of personal expression and authorial self-inscription. Laura Rascaroli writes that the cinematic essay is ‘an overtly personal, in–depth, thought–provoking reflection’, Paul Arthur describes the cinematic essay as lying at the ‘intersection of personal, subjective and social history’, and Phillip Lopate asserts that the essay film ‘must represent a single voice’ (2011: 33; 2003: 58; 1998: 283). While voice–over narration and the presence of the filmmaker on–screen are the most cited strategies through which the filmmaker can imprint their personal stamp and address the spectator directly, Rascaroli notes that authorial presence can also be communicated through formal elements such as editing choices, intertitles, and frame composition.

The essay film, then, constantly reminds the viewer that they are not watching an object report of the pro–filmic world, but a constructed object that has been shaped by an extra-textual author. The cinematic essayist, in foregrounding the workings of their own creative mind in the midst of creative labour, also reflects upon their own methodology. As David Montero argues, essay films ‘focus on a reality which is inseparable from the language in which it is expressed’, and therefore self-reflexively call attention to the strategies of their own production. The essayistic text is ‘confirmed as first–person discourse precisely in the way such material is assimilated, reaccentuated, appropriated and represented to the viewer within a process of ideological becoming’ (2012: 47). The essay film, therefore, exists as a mode of authorial self-portraiture, whereby the filmmaker does not directly recreate events from their own life, as in a traditional autobiography, but rather imbricates the spectator in a shared way of seeing.

This article undertakes an analysis of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal (2022—) through the lens of essay cinema. While existing scholarship has explored The Rehearsal through the frameworks of documentary, reality television, and the mockumentary, none has yet situated it within the essay form (see Mittel, 2004; McLeod, 2018; Schonig, 2025). Nevertheless, this article contends that The Rehearsal embodies the three core characteristics of the essay film as outlined by Rascaroli: it is a hybrid form, crossing genre boundaries and destabilising the line between ‘fiction’ and ‘non–fiction’; it is highly self–reflexive, constantly encouraging the viewer to consider the construction of its own images and their tentative relationship to profilmic ‘reality’; and it is rooted in a rhetorical strategy of direct address, establishing a relationship of ‘communicative negotiation’ in which the viewer is called upon to critically interrogate the filmmaker’s propositions (2009: 50). Although my close reading of the text will illuminate the essayistic properties of Fielder’s work, it is not my intention for this article to function as a mere exercise in categorisation. Instead, I will demonstrate that establishing a connection between Fielder and the essay form facilitates a richer understanding of the intricate dynamics of performance, communication, and self-portrayal within the series. To keep things clear and concise, this article focuses on the first season of The Rehearsal, with a follow-up piece planned to explore these themes in season two.

Nathan Fielder Plays Himself

Drawing on Thomas Waugh’s seminal research on modes of performance in documentary cinema, Rascaroli argues that there is a distinct style of authorial performativity within essay films. Within classical documentary cinema, two styles of performance dominate. The first is ‘representational performance’, in which subjects do not acknowledge the presence of the mediating apparatus, and instead create the illusion that they are acting naturally. Within this mode, documentary subjects ‘“act” in much the same way as their dramatic counterparts except that they are cast for their social representativity as well as for their cinematic qualities, and their roles are composites of their own social roles and the dramatic requirements of the film’ (Waugh 1990: 67). The second mode is ‘*presentational performance’, in which the onscreen subject acknowledges the presence camera and openly addresses it. This mode is predominantly engaged in by the filmmaker themselves, a narrator, or the subject of an on-camera interview. What unites both these modes in the classical documentary is that the subjects do not call attention to the act of performance itself. Even when the subject directs their address to the audience, it is taken as a given that the *on–screen portrayal of the subject accords with how they behave off-screen. Processes such as selecting an outfit, determining an appropriate tone of voice, writing content, composing the image, and editing the footage, are not acknowledged within the text. Furthermore, the viewer is not invited to consider how alternative modes of presentation might have shaped different impressions of the subject. The classical documentary, then, maintains the illusion that the identity of each subject on screen can be captured and communicated through the filmmaking apparatus.

In contrast, the act of self-presentation within the essay film is never straightforward. As Rascaroli argues, ‘[e]ssays are open and fluid textual structures, searching for their own rules; in other words, they are intrinsically performative acts’ (2009: 51). Therefore, although the essay film highlights the presence of its author in a particularly overt way, it also openly grapples with the problematics of self–portrayal and acknowledges the inherent unreliability of the cinematic image to capture a person’s true essence. Performance in the essay film, therefore, draws on the ‘presentational mode’, but does so in a deliberately self-reflexive, deconstructive way. This is firmly in line with the complex portrayal of the authorial self in the literary essay. In his Essais, Montaigne writes of his intention not to present a conventional autobiography, but to construct a portrait of himself as being perpetually in a state of transience and transition, a self embroiled in the turbulent flow of thought’ (1993 [1580]: 907–908). At the same time, Montaigne expresses an awareness that the use of the written word will inevitably erect a barrier between himself as an empirical subject and the embodied reader. Therefore, the act of writing necessitates the creation of a textual persona that exists independently of the ‘real’ Montaigne. This, however, does not mean that communication between himself and the reader is impossible. On the contrary, Montaigne describes the construction of a ‘calculated self–performance’ in his writing to the process of preparing oneself to go out in public: ‘To be ready to appear in public you have to brush your hair, you have to arrange things and put them in order. I am therefore ceaselessly making myself ready since I am ceaselessly describing myself’ (1993 [1580]: 424). It may be impossible for the reader to truly know the ‘real’ Montaigne, then, but it can just as accurately be said that we never truly ‘know’ anybody we meet in social situations – engaging in conversation always requires an element of fabrication, concealment, and creative interpretation.

In Montaigne’s conception, a person’s identity is not singular, it is dispersed, multifaceted, and is dependent of the different mental images others have of them. Along similar lines, Montaigne acknowledges that every reader will form a different impression of the author, and none of these will directly align with the author’s own self–image. For this reason, he declares: ‘I have no more made my book than my book has made me’ (755). The construction of the textual figure named ‘Montaigne’ is thus shaped by the interplay between his conscious authorial performance and the subjectivity of the reader who interprets it. Yet in offering, with exacting detail, the artistic process through which he constructs the literary ‘Montaigne’, he enables a form of communication that may be more substantial than that offered by texts which claim to offer straightforward, transparent autobiographical representation. Montaigne therefore frames his book as an extended process of dialogical exchange between himself and the reader, in which he aims to ‘efface the seam which joins them [the writer and the reader] together’ so that they may work as ‘wills work[ing] together’ in the negotiation of essayistic thought (209–213).

It is clear to see how Montaigne’s approach to self-presentation and communication accords with Fielder’s approach in The Rehearsal. Just as Montaigne deliberately destabilises the notion of the ‘I’ and reflects on the mechanisms of his own construction as an authorial persona, so too does Fielder use cinematic self–reflexivity to navigate the complexities of cinematic interpretation and interpersonal communication. As Kate Rennebohm perceptively observes, The Rehearsal ‘eschews such fictions of direct, omniscient access to the interiority of others, leaving its audience members to read for the ‘internal’ in the same way they must in daily life’ (2022). I agree with Rennebohm on this point, but contend further that the show does not reject the possibility of genuine communication. On the contrary, by drawing attention to the performativity inherent in social life, Fielder seeks to establish the conditions for a new, more contingent form of connection: this applies equally to communication between the various subjects who appear on the series, and also to communication between Fielder as an authorial figure and the spectator. In the sections which follow, I will demonstrate how the series constructs a Montaignian self–portrait of Fielder as an artist and establishes the groundwork for constructive dialogue between text and viewer.

The Rehearsal**: Trying to Solve the Enigma of Other People**

At first glance, the premise of The Rehearsal may appear surprisingly simple. Fielder, playing a semi–fictionalised version of himself, offers a series of participants the opportunity to rehearse for an upcoming situation that is causing them some degree of anxiety. The stated philosophy behind this experiment is that, by repeatedly experiencing the uncomfortable scenario within a controlled setting (and preparing diligently for every possible outcome) the participant will feel more at ease when facing the situation in real life. This conceit is clearly established in the first episode, in which Fielder helps pub quiz enthusiast Kor Skeete to prepare to come clean about a long-running lie to close friend and teammate Tricia: that he does not, in fact, have a Masters’ degree. To ensure that Kor’s rehearsal is, in Fielder’s words, ‘as authentic as possible’, Fielder goes to comically absurd lengths to nail every detail of the rehearsals: he constructs an exact simulacrum of the Brooklyn bar where Kor and Tricia regularly play trivia and populates it with extras; he hires an actress to covertly meet with Tricia so she can observe her behaviour; and he constructs an elaborate flowchart to map every possible direction the conversation could take before, during, and after the confession. In the final act, Fielder’s meticulous planning is shown to have paid off. Kor meets with Tricia during a trivia night, following Fielder’s advice on how to minimise his anxiety, and successfully confesses his secret to Tricia. Tricia responses supportively to this revelation, and this moment of emotional honesty facilitates a deep conversation between them wherein they reveal things to one another that they’ve been holding back for years. In a more conventional series, this conclusion would provide closure on Kor’s story, validate Fielder’s approach, and provide a formula for future episodes: Fielder meets a subject who is nervous about an upcoming situation, Fielder prepares them for the event via multiple rehearsals, and, finally, the subject triumphs.

However, Fielder, instead, closes this episode on an ambiguous note which calls into question the true efficacy of his process. Following Kor’s confession to Tricia, he joins Fielder to reflect on the experience. Fielder and Kor are framed in complementary, CU one–shots as Kor effuses about the success of Fielder’s experiment. The camera then cuts back to a lengthy one–shot of Fielder as he makes his own confession to Kor. Earlier in the episode, Fielder had decided that, given Kor’s competitiveness over pub trivia, a bad game might consume his thoughts and leave him less inclined to go through with the confession. Fielder knows that Kor has a strict aversion to cheating, so he covertly ‘feeds’ him the answers through stray clues embedded in their daily walks. Fielder verbally confesses all of this in an extended close-up, and the viewer is led to believe that, when he cuts to a reverse angle, we will see Kor’s response. However, when Fielder does cut, it is not to the real Kor, but an actor who had previously been hired to portray Kor. The spectator realises, at this moment, that they have not actually seen Fielder reveal his deceit to Kor, they have only seen him rehearse this confession within a controlled environment. After a pause, the actor, K. Todd Freeman, responds with deep indignation, expressing his feelings of betrayal and public humiliation, before ultimately calling Fielder an ‘awful, awful person’. The sequence cuts back to the one–shot of Fielder, who now appears visibly upset — but it is left open to interpretation whether this shot depicts Fielder being wounded by the outburst immediately after hearing it in rehearsal, or whether it depicts Fielder in the present, recalling the emotional pain he felt. The sequence then cuts back to the real Kor, anchoring us in the present moment. Fielder then cuts to the real Kor, who stares at Fielder expectantly. Following a moment of contemplative silence, Fielder ultimately proves unable to go through with his planned confession, instead simply commenting that he thinks Kor is a ‘really great guy’. Ironically, then, while Fielder’s rehearsals may have helped Kor, they have no positive effect on Fielder’s own ability to overcome his social anxiety and aversion to conflict. Conversely, Fielder’s rehearsal of that difficult conversation rendered him more reluctant to go through with it in reality. In the staged rehearsal with the actor portraying Kor, then, Fielder is, ironically, more open and honest than in his interaction with the actual Kor. Although this final conversation between Fielder and Korr is ostensibly more ‘real’ than the earlier rehearsals, social niceties and expectations of ‘proper’ behaviour prevent authentic dialogue between the two men. By intercutting between these two conversations, Fielder underlines the extent to which all social interactions are rooted in performance.

From the very first episode, then, Fielder signals to the spectator that they cannot uncritically place their faith in the standard grammar of cinematic storytelling. While the shot–reverse–shot pattern is typically employed to clearly show a dialogue play out between two or more people in the same location, here it is employed in a way that subverts its expected naturalising effect. Rather than elucidating space and time, Fielder deliberately confuses the spectator’s perception of spatio–temporal relations, as well as to destabilise the boundary between ‘true’ and ‘false’. From this point onwards, the spectator is trained not to immediately trust everything they see on screen and to watch with a sceptical eye.

The series offers a compelling case study for three reasons: first, series creator and director Fielder foregrounds his authorial presence in a particularly overt way; second, the series openly and playfully subverts the conventions of classical documentary storytelling, along with its associated claims of balance and impartiality; and third, its examination of artistic self–portraiture is fundamentally connected to its thematic interest in the nuances of performance and identity in social life more broadly.

The complexity of this scene sets the tone for the remainder of the series. From this point onwards, the relatively straightforward, schematic structure of the first episode is abandoned entirely. The second episode sees Fielder commit to a large–scale rehearsal that becomes the primary focus of the episodes that follow. Fielder decides to use the resources of the series to prepare a rehearsal for Angela, a born–again Christian in her mid–40s who wishes to prepare for childrearing. Drawing on Angela’s stated vision of her ideal future, Fielder purchases a large, detached rural home in Oregon and designs it according to her specifications. Child actors of various ages are then used to simulate the experience of raising a child (who Angela names Adam) from birth to age eighteen, with the child ‘aging’ by three years each week. This accelerated timeline, Fielder explains, will allow Angela to prepare for every stage of motherhood within the span of a month and a half. Because Angela intends to raise her child with a husband, Fielder attempts to find another willing participant who might benefit from rehearsing fatherhood. After a series of failed dates, however, Fielder (who, he states, is also considering the possibility of becoming a father in the future) steps in to serve as co–parent.

Rather than focusing on a new rehearsal subject each week, this scenario occupies the remainder of the first season. Furthermore, the success that Fielder has with Kor is not experienced with any other participant: Robin, initially brought in to serve as Angela’s co–parent, leaves the project after being disturbed by the cries of the robotic baby; Angela becomes increasingly frustrated with Fielder’s methods until she quits the project in the penultimate episode; and Kevin, a man rehearsing a confrontation with his brother over a shared inheritance, abruptly cuts off contact with Fielder following an emotional breakdown during a rehearsal. As Fielder contends with successive failures, he first questions the effectiveness of his strategies, and then doubts the ethos of the entire project.

One of the core traits of essay cinema is its impulse to blur the line between documentary and fiction, and The Rehearsal thoroughly deconstructs traditional dichotomies. While the series may initially draw a clear line between the fictionality of the simulations and the authenticity of situations outside the rehearsals, these boundaries collapse as the season progresses. Most obviously, there are several moments that deliberately confound our understanding of whether we are watching a rehearsal or a ‘real’ situation. This is evidenced by the aforementioned confession scene between Fielder and Kor, and by a comparable sequence in the fifth episode wherein Fielder appears to be confronting Angela over her lack of commitment to the project, only for the reverse shot to reveal that he is actually talking to an actress hired to portray Angela. For example, in the ensuing argument between Fielder and the actress playing Angela, Fielder appears more emotionally naked and capable of expressing his frustrations than he does in any ‘real’ conversation with the ‘real’ Angela. In turn, the actress seems to tap into and voice Angela’s anger in a way that the more subdued Angela may be too reticent to do in reality. This not only provides Fielder with valuable insight into Angela’s decision to quit the project, but also generates emotional catharsis for the audience, despite its fictionalised set–up. The idea that staged role–play sessions can produce authentic emotional responses, while real–life interactions often result in participants repressing their true feelings and concealing their thoughts complicates any clear–cut division between what is ‘true’ and what is ‘false’.

The Rehearsal, however, is not founded on the postmodernist assertion that every image is a counterfeit and cannot be trusted, but instead suggests that calling attention to the constructed nature of the image can enable the filmmaker to arrive at a higher epistemological truth than mere verisimilitude. In The Essay Film: From Montaigne to Marker, Timothy Corrigan observes that there is a storied history of reenactments being employed in cinematic essays. As Corrigan writes, ‘‘[b]ecause refractive cinema is an adaptive practice that is essentially critical reflection rather than assimilative commentary, the centerpiece of this type of essay film is reenactment’ (2011: 196). Overtly depicting reenactment in the cinematic text draws the spectator’s attention to the dynamics of performance, staging, and authorship, and therefore aligns with the ‘refractive’ nature of the form. This prevents the spectator from seeing the images as snapshots of real-world events and instead prompts them to see the images as the ‘springboard to thought’ (Corrigan, 2011: 198). Particularly when multiple reenactments are presented with alternations and variations, the cinematic essay emphasises that there is no singular, ‘correct’ way to portray event on screen, instead proposing that there are always ‘multiple positions and incarnations’ the author could take which would shape the viewer’s interpretation of what happened (Corrigan, 2011: 197).

Although the use of role-play in The Rehearsal is predominantly used to visualise future events rather than depict past events (although there are points where Fielder does the latter), we can see a parallel in the way Fielder utilises role–play throughout the series. As Fielder stages multiple rehearsals, constantly fine–tuning them and making adjustments as he revises his methodology, he draws attention to the inherently constructed nature of cinematic ‘truth’. In this light, role–play becomes a constructive tool within an essayistic practice that draws attention to the means of its own in the service of ‘critical reflection rather than assimilative commentary’ (Ibid).

Fielder’s emphasis on role–play, reconstruction, and rehearsal within an ostensibly non–fictional framework recalls the work of the seminal cinematic essayist Harun Farocki, who similarly sought to interrogate the mechanisms through which reality is manipulated, structured, and retransmitted in documentary cinema. As Harun Farocki once remarked:

If you’re a documentarist, you know how unstructured life is and how people are talking when they’re not scripted, but if they have a role–play, there’s already some […] structure and even a wonderful artificiality in the things you are recording’ (Farocki and Paglen 2014)

For Farocki, then, constructing fictionalised scenarios for his subjects to engage in does not detract from the film’s epistemological value; rather, the emotional and intellectual responses of the participants within these role-plays offer valuable insights into their nature. Even though the spectator is aware that they are not witnessing an event as it unfolding spontaneously, Farocki’s role–play scenarios serve as ‘an epistemological resource for viewers and may affect their perceptions of these phenomena on a similarly sensory level […] In other words, viewers can feel sensations and make sense by watching characters feel sensations and make sense within their cinematic reality’ (Grinberg, 2016).

Fielder, like Farocki, consciously blurs the line between truth and fiction to call into question how we define ‘authenticity’. If the person within the rehearsal experiences genuine feelings, does it matter whether the scenario has been manipulated? By extension, should our empathetic engagement as viewers be considered invalid simply because it is prompted by a staged scenario? Is the process of setting up a simulated environment within a studio all that different from the process of setting up camera equipment, microphones, lights, etc. – in other words, the process through which all cinematic images are constructed, whether or not they are framed as being ‘narrative’ or ‘documentary’. The impulse to blur the line between fiction and authenticity is also evident in the way the rehearsals often prompt more authentic emotional responses than the ‘real’ conversations. For example, in the ensuing argument between Fielder and the actress playing Angela, Fielder appears more emotionally naked and capable of expressing his frustrations than he does in any ‘real’ conversation with the ‘real’ Angela. In turn, the actress seems to tap into and voice Angela’s anger in a way that the more subdued Angela may be too reticent to do in reality. This not only provides Fielder with valuable insight into Angela’s decision to quit the project, but also generates emotional catharsis for the audience, despite its fabricated set–up. If our social lives are themselves built upon layers of fiction, can the insights Fielder reaches truly be considered any less valid simply because they arise from simulation? The Rehearsal provides no conclusive answers to these questions; instead, it encourages the spectator to think critically about the myriad ideas that it proposes.

The second essayistic trait of The Rehearsal I wish to address here is the foregrounding of its creator’s authorial voice. As Corrigan writes, the ‘centrality of subjectivity’ is an essential component of the essay film, not to dramatise the ‘coherencies often found in biographical and autobiographical films’, but to position the text as a ‘place to challenge and confound subjectivity as it is played out in a public domain’ (2011: 80). Fielder is present as both an aural and visual presence throughout the series, providing extensive voice–over narration to communicate his plans, insecurities, and doubts directly to the spectator. Through this device, The Rehearsal constantly draws attention to the mechanics of its own construction. In addition to showing us the rehearsals on artificial sets, it depicts the training of the actors, the signing of release forms, the negotiation of employment terms, and other behind–the–scenes processes. The viewer is, therefore, always cognizant of how these material conditions impact the final product. For example, in the final episode, Fielder stages a 9th birthday party for Adam. The home is decorated for the occasion, and a crowd of actors posing as Adam’s friends and their parents are in attendance. Though they engage in an approximation of ordinary celebratory behaviour (laughing, eating, and participating in party games), they remain completely silent. Fielder weighs the pros and cons of this decision, noting that although it saved the production ‘$15,000’, the naturalism of the party was fundamentally compromised.

Fielder is not presented as an omniscient and authoritative narrator, but as an imperfect one, questioning his own decisions, changing course, and redoing rehearsals to achieve his desired results. Fielder is often presented as being both an author and a spectator simultaneously. He is frequently depicted watching his machinations unfold from a distance—either from a control panel displaying camera feeds or while lurking in the background of sets, observing and typing notes on a laptop harnessed to his chest. As the rehearsals repeatedly fall short of delivering the outcomes Fielder envisioned, the focus of the season shifts to Fielder’s conscious examination of the inadequacies of his own project. Role–play scenarios, initially designed to prepare participants for upcoming events, are increasingly used to serve a different purpose: to recreate past events so that Fielder can better understand where he went wrong and what he might have done better.

As the season visualises these efforts, it encourages the viewer to scrutinise Fielder’s machinations with a similarly critical eye. As the various subjects that Fielder was supposed to be rehearsing with leave the project, one-by-one, Fielder steps into the centre in an even more overt way, and it becomes clear by the end of the first season that the true subject of the show is Fielder himself – and, specifically, what his quixotic efforts to plan for every contingency of human behaviour reveals about interpersonal communication, social anxiety, and the desire to exert control through art. As Jordan Schonig observes, the role-play scenarios in the series serve as:

[N]arrative devices whose primary function is to psychologize Nathan, the show’s central dramatic character […] whose incurable loneliness, social anxiety, and megalomania seem to motivate his obsession with extreme preparation for social interactions and life events’ (2025).

It is important to consider, however, that the Fielder that appears on screen cannot be simply equated to the Fielder that exists beyond the text. While Fielder appears as a figure with his own face, voice, and shared autobiographical details with the extra–textual ‘Nathan Fielder’, and while he directs rhetorical questions to the embodied spectator, he also playfully subverts his public persona, thus drawing attention to the inherent disjunct between the performative, onscreen Fielder and the real human being. This tension was also central to Fielder’s earlier series, Nathan For You (2013-2017). Discussing Nathan for You, in which Fielder portrays a socially inept business adviser offering absurd strategies to help boost the performance of struggling businesses, Fielder commented that, while his on–screen persona shares his name and certain details of his backstory, the character ‘[takes] a lot of vulnerabilities and insecurities that I had when I was younger, and I’m exaggerating them for the sake of comedy’ (Fielder quoted in Mcleod 2018, 216). there are clear points of disjunct between the real Fielder and his on–screen counterpart. For example, while the on–screen Fielder is a confirmed bachelor, Fielder was married during the bulk of the show’s production, and the on–screen Fielder doesn’t share his off–screen counterpart’s experience as a creative consultant for comedic TV shows such as Important Things with Demetri Martin (2011) and Jon Benjamin Has a Van (2009–2010). Furthermore, the series knowingly highlights the on–screen Fielder’s ‘narcissism and social ineptitude’ in a way that intentionally creates a disjunct between him as the authorial Fielder who shapes the final product (Mcleod 2018: 217). Thus, while Fielder inscribes himself in the show both aurally and visually, he does so in an intentionally destabilising way, creating a clear disconnect between his on–screen persona and his ‘true’ self – all the while, never revealing the ‘authentic’ Fielder on screen.

Fielder concludes that his inability to fully understand Thomas’ feelings is the result of his insufficient immersion in Thomas’ lifestyle.”

While the persona Fielder adopts in *Nathan for You *is overtly ridiculous, a similar dynamic is at play in his more sombre and restrained self-portrayal in The Rehearsal. Fielder again performs as an on–screen persona with whom he shares a name, appearance, and certain biographical details, and everything we see on screen is presented as the result of Fielder’s orchestration. However, Fielder again intentionally creates ambiguity regarding how much of his on-screen persona can be interpreted as the ‘true’ Fielder. This is evidenced in the first episode, when, after presenting his conversation with Kor as though it was the first time the two men had met, he then reveals, via flashbacks at voice-over, that he had actually rehearsed this conversation multiple times in a replica of Kor’s apartment, and that seemingly tossed-off jokes had, in fact, been practiced and workshopped multiple times. Shortly after this sequence, Fielder goes so far as to reflect on the major difference between the conversation as he had rehearsed it and the conversation as it actually played out – the actual Kor had not responded well to a joke about a plunger, while the actor portraying Kor had loved it. Such revelations undercut the audience’s perception of on-screen reality, reminding us that, ultimately, Fielder controls his self-representation and he can choose to parcel out information whoever he pleases. It also reminds us that even apparently candid on-screen moments are the result of meticulous preparation.

By illustrating the means of this self–portrayal through a calculated self–performance, Fielder does not offer the pretence of fully knowing the author as an extra–textual being, but instead establishes the framework of what Rascaroli terms communicative negotiation. Rascaroli argues that essayistic cinema is founded upon a process of ‘communicative communication’, whereby:

The essayist allows the answers to emerge somewhere else, precisely in the position occupied by the embodied spectator. The meaning of the film is constructed via this dialogue, in which the spectator has an important part to play; meanings are presented by the speaking subject as a subjective, personal meditation, rather than as objective truth’ (2010: 38).

For Rascaroli, then, substantial communication between author and spectator may take place, even though the enunciator/listener are not literally in conversation with one another. Rascaroli here draws on Francesco Casetti’s model of ‘communicative negotiation’. For Casetti, communicative negotiation is the ‘process through which every addressee personalizes the sense of what is being communicated, makes it [their] own’ (2002: 18). Applying this directly to the landscape of essay cinema, Rascaroli argues that the essay film ‘establish[es] a framework for communication’, inviting the spectator to interrogate the thoughts expressed by the filmmaker so that they may accept, reject, or build upon their ruminations (2009: 56). Since the filmmaker cannot fully predict how the spectator will respond, this exchange entails a surrendering of control. As Rascaroli puts it: ‘it is the spectator who has the last word; the director only asks questions’ (60). The communicative exchange in the essayistic text is founded on a mutual respect for the other’s alterity: the author cannot fully know or master the viewer’s response, and the viewer cannot fully know the author as an empirical subject, only as a performative presence within the filmic text. This dynamic between author and spectator, I contend, mirrors the broader portrayal of interpersonal connection in The Rehearsal, which is explored through the intricate layers of performance enacted by Fielder and the participants.

Let’s Go Play

This theme is poetically articulated in the season’s fourth episode, The Fielder Method. In this episode, Fielder determines that his previous rehearsals that his previous rehearsals had repeatedly failed because his actors were not sufficiently immersed in their roles. They had adopted the surface-level appearance and behavioural tics of the real people they were portraying within the rehearsal, but did not fully understand their psychology. Seeking to correct this, Fielder sets up an experimental acting school in Los Angeles, which preaches a philosophy of performance termed the ‘Fielder Method’. After outlining the high stakes of their future performances on The Rehearsal (‘If your performance isn’t accurate, you could ruin someone’s life’), Fielder tasks each student with choosing a ‘primary’: a random person they encounter in the city whom they study as closely as possible without revealing their intentions. Over the weeks that follow, the students are given exercises which gradually increase their proximity to their primary: first they simply observe them, then they strike up a conversation with them, then they take on the same job. Fielder’s proposition is that it is not enough for the student to approximate a person’s behaviour for the length of a scene; they must immerse themselves in every aspect of that person’s life to truly understand what makes them tick.

Fielder’s self-portrayal is particularly interesting in this episode, as he casts himself as a teacher directly imparting the philosophy of his artistic project to his students. Such a set-up may suggest that Fielder is positioning himself as an authoritative figure, speaking before an audience and passing on his knowledge for the edification of a crowd (and, by extension, the viewer). However, Fielder makes a conscious effort to undermine his authority and articulate his misgivings towards his own methods. The first class adopts a traditional, lecture-like structure, with Fielder standing on an elevated platform in front of rows of students. The bulk of the time is occupied with Fielder speaking, occasionally giving the students the opportunity to ask him questions. However, Fielder appears visibly nervous and unsure of himself, unable to project an aura of confidence and incapable of responding to some inquiries. This impression is reinforced through voice-over. As Fielder listens to the students, one by one, asking complex questions regarding the relationship of ‘The Fielder Method’ to existing philosophies and methodologies of performance, Fielder comments that he ‘often finds [himself] intimidated by actors’, as they ‘have a way of channelling other people’s emotions that I don’t fully understand’. Uncertain as to whether he has the credentials to be running an acting class, as doubting the effectiveness of his teaching strategies, Fielder stages a recreation of the class a few days later. He hires actors to play each one of the students, as well as a performer to stand in as himself. Fielder explains that he selected a student to inhabit at random – Thomas.

Observing this recreation, Fielder–as–Thomas notes that the teacher seemed inexperienced and ‘not very good at connecting with us’. He also observes that he wanted to see how other students were feeling during the session, but the layout of the room prevented him from seeing their expressions. In response, Fielder restructures the class for future sessions: instead of being organised into rows pointing towards a whiteboard, chairs are arranged in a circle. This creates a stronger sense of community amongst the students, and decentres Fielder as sole authority figure. The class structure becomes more dialogical and less lecture–based, with Fielder placed on the same level as the students, and greater emphasis placed on shared participation. The act of breaking down the hierarchy between student and teacher is reflective of the series’ attitude towards authorship on an extra-textual level: constructive communication does not occur through an authoritative enunciator imparts facts to a passive viewer, but through a complex dialogue between author and an active spectator, whereby the spectator is encouraged to actively interrogate Fielder’s propositions.

Restructuring the class yields more positive outcomes, and when Fielder recreates the second lesson (again assuming the role of Thomas), he feels that there are ‘no issues’ with his new approach. However, as the course goes on, Fielder notices that Thomas seems anxious about fully participating in the project. Speaking to Fielder one-on-one, Thomas confides that he feels uncomfortable about ‘lying to people’, and believes the method borders on ‘stalking’. Although Fielder convinces Thomas to stay on board, he reflects that this revelation came as a surprise to him, as he ‘had not felt that when I was him’. Now equipped with this new knowledge about Thomas’ feelings towards the Fielder method, Fielder restages the first class yet again. Fielder-as-Thomas now has a new perspective on the class. Instead of focusing on Thomas’ judgement of Fielder as a public speaker and the arrangement of the classroom, Fielder-as-Thomas now asks deeper questions regarding the nature of the project itself. Attempting to immerse himself in Thomas’ headspace, Fielder–as–Thomas voices his confusion as to whether the acting class is merely preparation for the series, or whether this footage will be used in the actual series: if it is the former, then why are there cameras filming them? And if it is the latter, why haven’t they been informed that this is? Fielder then reconstructs a moment that originally occurred off–camera: the signing of appearance release forms in the corridor leading out of the main classroom. Fielder–as–Thomas describes feeling uneasy about the length and complexity of the form, yet feeling pressured to sign by a production assistant who reassures him that the contents are ‘standard’. Observing the other students complying, Fielder–as–Thomas signs the form despite his reservations. He reflects that he would have liked to ask the crew more questions about the show to calm his nerves, but he was worried about seeming unprofessional or impolite. This new rehearsal awakens Fielder to how inaccurate his initial impression of Thomas was when he staged the first class reconstruction. ‘Reliving the day again as Thomas’, Fielder reflects, ‘made me realise there was a whole other layer to his experience I hadn’t considered’.

Fielder concludes that his inability to fully understand Thomas’ feelings is the result of his insufficient immersion in Thomas’ lifestyle. As Fielder reflects, every time he returns home to his real apartment, it breaks the illusion. Wanting to delve deeper into Thomas’ psyche, Fielder arranges for the two to swap homes (falsely telling Thomas that he is being placed in a different apartment to improve the authenticity of his performance). Fielder lives in Thomas’ home, eats his food, and even takes a job at the same açaí bowl restaurant where he had previously placed Thomas in order to simulate his primary’s life. Yet, despite living as Thomas ‘24/7’, Fielder finds himself unable to fully inhabit him: ‘No matter how deep I went, there were still parts that were a mystery to me. But maybe that’s as close as you can get’. More important than any specific discovery Fielder makes about Thomas’s life, then, is his realisation that ‘the last step in understanding someone is always just a guess’. This episode makes it clear that communication is not effortless; it is the product of careful negotiation between multiple parties, each of whom inevitably interprets the other in unpredictable ways, shaped by their own individual perceptions and life experiences. Just as the filmmaker can never fully predict how a spectator will respond to a work, there is no way to fully access another human being’s interiority.

Fielder’s inhabitation of Thomas is valuable in that it allows him to better understand Thomas’ concerns towards the project and adapt his approach to teaching accordingly. Thomas’ comments act as a springboard for Fielder’s own ruminations, leading him to reshape his methodology going forward. In this sense, constructive communication, in the terms outlined by Casetti, can be said to have taken place.

This attitude towards communication is further emphasised in the final scene of the season’s final episode. In this episode, Fielder is distraught to see the emotional pain experienced by one of the child actors, the 6-year-old Remy, when he must leave the project after portraying Adam for a week. Speaking to Remy’s mother Amber, Fielder gathers that Remy was raised without a father, and had difficulty severing the attachment he formed with Fielder. Seeking to determine what he had done wrong, Fielder recreates several earlier moments from the show’s production. At first, he portrays himself in these scenarios, testing multiple variations in which he might have taken further steps to ensure emotional distance, such as refraining from physical touch, or casting an adult actor to portray the child. In both cases, however, Fielder finds that these devices counteract the very point of the rehearsals: to simulate the emotional connection he would feel toward an actual son. As he comments via voice–over, the ‘forced detachment felt like it was defeating the purpose of rehearsing being a parent’. Unable to find closure this way, Fielder adopts another tactic: experiencing these earlier interactions from Amber’s perspective, employing a slightly older child actor, Liam Risinger, to portray Remy.

As Amber, he rehearses many of the earlier interactions he had with her, but from a third-party perspective, attempting to understand how his methods may have appeared to a parent. Fielder then goes further, creating speculative scenarios of what he imagines Amber and Remy’s private lives might have been like before, during, and after their involvement in the show. These scenarios require a high degree of imaginative projection: no longer simply recreating conversations from memory, Fielder and Liam must construct a narrative of Remy and Amber’s relationship based on what they’ve gathered about the pair from their relatively short encounters with them.

In the final scene, Fielder and Liam stage an imagined version of the conversation Amber might have had with Remy following their painful separation from Fielder. As Liam–as–Remy sobs over the loss of his ‘pretend daddy’, Fielder–as–Amber, adopting a warmer, more empathetic personality than his typical on–screen persona, consoles him, and seems to articulate a sentiment which, we can surmise, he wishes he could pass on to Remy himself:

*That man didn’t mean to confuse you, honey. He just didn’t know what he was doing. He’s not that different from you, he’s just figuring stuff out and messing stuff up along the way […] Life’s better with surprises. Some things you want to be prepared for but… you know what I mean.’ *

*The sentiment expressed by Fielder-as-Amber here directly undercuts the very foundation of the project: the future is fundamentally unknowable and unpredictable, and, furthermore, the joy of life comes from its spontaneity. Although Fielder is assuming Amber’s identity here, it is uncertain whether, when he says these words, he is just trying to imagine what she would have said in this situation, or whether he is voicing his own epiphany about the failings of the project. *The difference in this final scene, compared to Fielder’s earlier attempts to embody other people, is that he abandons any pretence to verisimilitude. What matters is not that Fielder fully, accurately embodies Amber, but that his attempt to bridge the gap between them expands his perspective and fosters constructive self–reflection. At the end of this speech, Fielder breaks character, apparently by accident, as he says to Liam–as–Remy: ‘You know what? It’s OK if you get confused, it’s OK if you get sad, because no matter what you experience, we have each other. And I’m always going to be here for you, because I’m your dad.