When directing a play by a living author, who is usually granted the right to attend rehearsals, the director will find himself in an awkward position. The power-base is suddenly split. Surely, the director is the Captain of the ship and his word is law. And yet, here is the author, without whom there would be no ‘ship’ at all - so to which authority should the actor be beholden?
If the playwright is someone like David Mamet, Neil Simon or Tom Stoppard, the author’s influence is often paramount and there are frequent consultations between director and playwright, the contents of which do not seep out to the company except as directives previously agreed between both parties. However, if you are working with a new playwright, you might consider an alternative arrangement which may be more effective.
The first thing to realize is that many fledgling playwrights do not understand the process by which a play gravitates to the stage; that a variety of people with creative talents i.e. actors, designers, dramaturgs, etc., are reshaping the original material in the act of interpreting it. Sometimes, this may alter the playwright’s original vision and sensible playwrights realize this is often to the good. But there are some playwrights who find it difficult, if not impossible, to relinquish the picture of the play they have in their minds, who insist on tangibly reproducing those images that first arose in their imagination. I am not inferring that a mise-en-scene should transform the nature or spirit of the original work, only that the act of interpretation opens doors to other people’s conceptions of what a playwright has created and, unless the writer recognizes he is moving from one genre into another, and one which has its own special requirements, he will come unstuck.
The playwright should be in attendance during the two or three reading-rehearsals in which the actors are seated around the table with script is in hand. He should be pumped for as much information as he can possibly give and everyone concerned with the production should have a chance to bombard him with questions. Once he has been pumped dry and the actors get on their feet, he should be prohibited from attending rehearsals. This may sound draconian but it is a practical prohibition. Once actors have begun struggling with their lines and formulating their moves, they become badly inhibited if the playwright is present. They are not sure whether or not he realizes that those early, tentative, necessarily imperfect efforts are part of the process of looking for and finding the route into the play, and they are painfully conscious of the fact that everything is in disarray; the inevitable disarray that precedes the decisive choices that will shortly be made.
Once the play is ready for its first runthroughs, the playwright should be invited back to see the work in its embryonic state. At that juncture, he will have an idea of which way the material is moving and if he has strong objections, that is the time to voice them. To the director, of course; not the actors. That is the same point at which the director will get an objective impression of what has already been created. The playwright’s absence during the major part of rehearsals has given him an invaluable objectivity which he could not possibly have had otherwise. His reactions at that stage will be extremely pertinent and it behooves the director to give them very serious consideration. Often that is the moment where the playwright himself is inspired to alter and revise, delete or re-angle. It is also the point where the director has an opportunity to ventilate the problems he has encountered with the script. It is the second plateau of the rehearsal period where the production is not quite off the drawing-board, but almost.
Once the impressions of both director and playwright have been honestly evaluated, it is possible to visualize what the shape of the final product will be. The freshness of perspective for both parties provides a great opportunity to seriously assess the fruits of their joint labor. Once this has been accomplished, the remaining runthroughs and previews should try to assimilate the new information.
During that last stanza of the production, the playwright’s criticism should be relayed exclusively to the director – never directly to the actors. Nothing subverts the authority of a director more than suddenly discovering that actors are responding to the playwright’s notes – rather than his own. This is not a matter of bruising egos. It is simply that the playwright has neither the language nor the technical expertise to remedy the problems that have emerged and, just as the director would not have the audacity to revise the playwright’s lines, so the playwright should not interfere with the communication which has been assiduously built up between the director and his company. A playwright may be able to tell an actor succinctly what is wrong with his performance, but usually, he hasn’t the vocabulary or theatrical background to know how to correct it. In short, the chain-of-command which initiated the production-process should not suddenly be subverted as that tends to disconcert actors, upset directors and be fatally counterproductive to the playwright’s own remedial intentions.
When I was directing a triad of plays by Murray Schisgal in London (the first professional productions, in fact, of this writer’s work), the author would stalk up and down the aisle at the back of the theatre wringing his hands and mumbling his irritations with the actor’s work. So much so that the actors complained to me that they couldn’t possibly rehearse freely knowing that the playwright was being so disturbed by their work. I explained this to the author and, to safeguard the morale of the company, I banned him from daily rehearsals until the production was ready to open. This was very early in Mr. Schisgal’s career and no doubt, he thought it very high-handed of me to bar the playwright from his own play but my choice was a simple one. Either the playwright remained and the actors became progressively more distressed, or the playwright went and proper work could be resumed. I had no hesitation in making my decision,
Recently, there was a production of a play in California which I knew was seriously overwritten and badly in need of editing. I also knew the playwright in question was very anal-retentive about his material as I had had a previous experience with him during which I had to forsake a production because of his unwillingness to make changes or deletions. To avoid a reprise of that unhappy situation, I entered into a written agreement with him that a), he would accept whatever cuts the company and I would make in rehearsal and b) that after the first Readings he would leave the scene to return only when runthroughs were in progress. Reluctantly, the playwright accepted those terms. During rehearsals in which the actors and I proceeded to trim the fat from the script, I found myself having to protect the play from the excessive mayhem the actors were anxious to perpetrate. The result, I can report, was gratifying to both the author and the public. But that was a unique situation. Usually, one commences rehearsals with a script already pared down to essentials. In this case, it was a play with obvious excesses, clearly in need of editing which needed to be carefully assessed before cuts were made. It sometimes happens that there is a slender work-of-art entombed in a flabby exterior (like Cyril Connolly’s belief that “Imprisoned in every fat man, a thin one is wildly signaling to be let out.”) That was exactly the case here.
Working with a playwright who has chosen you to direct his play is sometimes like being invited to a sumptuous feast on the condition that you don’t spoil the table-setting by actually eating anything. Or it can be a marvelous tête-à-tête between two kindred spirits who clearly enjoy the same delicacies.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Curtain Calls
Actors are obsessive about curtain-calls and if a director does not comprehend this obsession, it may be his undoing. In the catalogue of professional manias, curtain-calls are second only to billing.
It is the director’s job to organize the call in such a way that it properly reflects the hierarchy of the company. But that is not always easy to ascertain. The supporting roles are clearly identifiable, but when you get to the leads, things tend to get murky. If, for instance, you have a high-visibility actress in the role of Lady Macbeth and a less experienced actor in the role of Macbeth, which should be given prominence in the curtain-call? Most directors would agree that the former takes priority over the latter despite the fact that Macbeth is the larger and more dominating role. But if you have a tetchy actor playing Macbeth, his subordination in the curtain-call may cause resentment. If you give them a joint curtain-call, the more accomplished actress may feel she is not being given her due. It sometimes pays to discuss the sequence of calls with the actors in advance of the curtain-call rehearsal to ‘feel them out’ on what you (and they) believe is the correct order.
Calls are frequently arranged in doubles – or, in the case of larger casts, quartets; two actors or four actors coming out simultaneously. This gets your company on stage in an expedient manner and reduces the length of curtain-calls which can often be tiring on an audience who feel bludgeoned into protracted applause when all they really want to do is gather up their coats and avoid the inevitable traffic jams. But leading players expect that they will be given a solo curtain-call and clearly, if you are presenting Hamlet or Lear, Tartuffe or Tamburlaine, Hedda or Medea, they are fully entitled to it. But what if you are presenting an all-star version of “The Importance of Being Ernest” and your Lady Bracknell is a celebrated character-actress and your Cecily and Gwendolyn are well-known TV personalities? Should one persist in believing that Jack and Algernon are really the leads and that therefore, they should appear last?
The simple solution to pecking-order problems of that sort is to bring the principals out altogether - half from one side of the stage and half from the other – to have an ensemble call. Let each artist individually step forward for their solo call and then gather them all up again, for a final group call. If, as everyone claims, theatre is a collaborative art, collective curtain-calls make the most sense.
These may seem to be infantile quibbles but they are not perceived that way by the players. They have an importance for them which directors do not always grasp. It is their time with the public or, as they perceive it, their public and, in regard to the performance of that play on that night, they are absolutely right. It is their interaction with the spectators that constitutes the show and it is only proper that at the end the two parties directly involved should commune.
Some times, an actor who has been enthusiastically received by the audience is coupled with a weak actor who has left virtually no impression whatsoever. The fact that they share a curtain-call together is subversive to the more popular artist. (“If I weren’t standing beside this galoot, they’d be cheering their heads off.”} Or contrariwise, the duller actor finds himself the subject of an ovation that has no bearing on the tawdriness of his performance. He is, of course, delighted. But his partner, who is the real cause of the furore, has fumes flaring out of his nostrils. Invariably, the unimpressive actor will tell his fellow artists: “Did you hear the cheers they gave me at the curtain-call?” and unless they are particularly spiteful, they will fix a smile and allow their benighted companion to live on in Cloud Cuckoo-Land.
In a production of Ionesco’s “Makbett’ in Coventry, my cast included Harry H. Corbett , who had become a popular favorite in the series “Stepney & Son”, and Terry Scott, a popular TV personality in his own right – both of almost equal standing as British comedians. Corbett automatically assumed he was the star of the show and behaved accordingly. At the end of those performances where audience-reaction was particularly warm, he would step forward from the curtain-call line-up and, blithely assuming the leadership of the ensemble, make a little speech on behalf of the cast. Scott, frozen in the line behind him, would seethe quietly and go purple in the face. His speech completed, Corbett would smile his goofy, ineffectual smile and step back for a final round of applause, assuming everyone loved and adored him as much as he did himself. I don’t believe Scott’s anger ever erupted but had it done so, it would have demolished the theatre and a good deal of the surrounding neighborhood.
Curtain-calls are mini-dramas in themselves and immensely varied. Some, particularly in musicals, merely merge unobtrusively into the final scene. Some reveal subtle human factors that inadvertently convey themselves to the audience.
Sometimes, at a curtain call, the manic glaze in actors’ eyes suggest a perverse joy, as if the sound of smacking palms were the equivalent of orgiastic flagellation. Sometimes, as in Russia, the actors clap back as if the audience’s contribution was not a whit less than the performer’s. In continental companies, the unrehearsed actors often mill around, bumping into each other, and peer back stupidly at the clamor exploding around them. Some actors give their best performance at the curtain-call. Donald Wolfit used to lean against the proscenium arch clutching the curtain like an exhausted gladiator, implying that no collective burst of energy – no matter how vigorous – could equal the labors he had just undergone.
Some actors don a mask of jolly complicity, their expressions insisting ‘we all did it together’. Some actors, many of the best in fact, go rigid with tension or receive their volleys of applause like so many dollops of castor oil. Still others turn down the sides of their mouths and contemptuously bide their time considering the plaudits of the mob to be a wholly unjustified intrusions into their craft. Some, the more egoistic, wallow in the sound as if it were music from the spheres, exaggerating personal triumphs by mentally transforming dull thuds of polite applause into Vesuvian eruptions. Some stand around jitteringly contemplating the trains they will catch and the late dinners they will shortly wolf down. Some actors, at the end of a long, satisfying performance, step forward like the triumphant torero to receive the ears of the prize bull. Sometimes, in certain political productions, the curtain-call is a massed act of defiance with actors radiating their antipathy to a disgruntled and disgusted public and one can hear the crunch of conflicting ideologies crackling through the auditorium.
There is one curtain call I have never forgotten. It came at the end of the National Theatre production of Carl Zuckmayer’s “Captain of Kopenick” which starred Paul Scofield. The actor, his gaunt, creased tousled head peered into the auditorium, clutching the hands of fellow-actors as if permitting the public to view his genius, untrammeled by art, undisguised by artifice, then stepping forward to the apron and nodded his head with the kind of graciousness King George probably showed to Handel when he stood up in his box during the Hallelujah Chorus of “The Messiah”. Then, being waved forward by his colleagues for a solo call, he tacitly shared with his audience the knowledge that skill and imagination had combined to produce an experience which had forged bonds of brotherhood that nothing could ever rend asunder; bowing to acknowledge and, at the same time to confirm, the mastery of his craft and the perspicacity of our appreciation of it. Smiling wanly, as if to say: Life is not all art and you would be wise to temper your enthusiasms with a certain amount of philosophic detachment. Holding out his hands again to invite his fellow players into a charmed circle; they, approached him tentatively as if he were a witch-doctor too charged and holy to touch, but touching nevertheless; grasping his hand on either side and receiving the magic electricity which the house had authorized him to distribute evenly among his colleagues; then retiring with a hand-wave, he shuffled down to the privacy of his dressing-room, causing our din to evaporate in the air like a kind of pointless obstreperousness which, having made its point, had outlived its usefulness.
I can’t for the life of me remember anything about the play, but the curtain-call is enshrined in my mental archives.
It is the director’s job to organize the call in such a way that it properly reflects the hierarchy of the company. But that is not always easy to ascertain. The supporting roles are clearly identifiable, but when you get to the leads, things tend to get murky. If, for instance, you have a high-visibility actress in the role of Lady Macbeth and a less experienced actor in the role of Macbeth, which should be given prominence in the curtain-call? Most directors would agree that the former takes priority over the latter despite the fact that Macbeth is the larger and more dominating role. But if you have a tetchy actor playing Macbeth, his subordination in the curtain-call may cause resentment. If you give them a joint curtain-call, the more accomplished actress may feel she is not being given her due. It sometimes pays to discuss the sequence of calls with the actors in advance of the curtain-call rehearsal to ‘feel them out’ on what you (and they) believe is the correct order.
Calls are frequently arranged in doubles – or, in the case of larger casts, quartets; two actors or four actors coming out simultaneously. This gets your company on stage in an expedient manner and reduces the length of curtain-calls which can often be tiring on an audience who feel bludgeoned into protracted applause when all they really want to do is gather up their coats and avoid the inevitable traffic jams. But leading players expect that they will be given a solo curtain-call and clearly, if you are presenting Hamlet or Lear, Tartuffe or Tamburlaine, Hedda or Medea, they are fully entitled to it. But what if you are presenting an all-star version of “The Importance of Being Ernest” and your Lady Bracknell is a celebrated character-actress and your Cecily and Gwendolyn are well-known TV personalities? Should one persist in believing that Jack and Algernon are really the leads and that therefore, they should appear last?
The simple solution to pecking-order problems of that sort is to bring the principals out altogether - half from one side of the stage and half from the other – to have an ensemble call. Let each artist individually step forward for their solo call and then gather them all up again, for a final group call. If, as everyone claims, theatre is a collaborative art, collective curtain-calls make the most sense.
These may seem to be infantile quibbles but they are not perceived that way by the players. They have an importance for them which directors do not always grasp. It is their time with the public or, as they perceive it, their public and, in regard to the performance of that play on that night, they are absolutely right. It is their interaction with the spectators that constitutes the show and it is only proper that at the end the two parties directly involved should commune.
Some times, an actor who has been enthusiastically received by the audience is coupled with a weak actor who has left virtually no impression whatsoever. The fact that they share a curtain-call together is subversive to the more popular artist. (“If I weren’t standing beside this galoot, they’d be cheering their heads off.”} Or contrariwise, the duller actor finds himself the subject of an ovation that has no bearing on the tawdriness of his performance. He is, of course, delighted. But his partner, who is the real cause of the furore, has fumes flaring out of his nostrils. Invariably, the unimpressive actor will tell his fellow artists: “Did you hear the cheers they gave me at the curtain-call?” and unless they are particularly spiteful, they will fix a smile and allow their benighted companion to live on in Cloud Cuckoo-Land.
In a production of Ionesco’s “Makbett’ in Coventry, my cast included Harry H. Corbett , who had become a popular favorite in the series “Stepney & Son”, and Terry Scott, a popular TV personality in his own right – both of almost equal standing as British comedians. Corbett automatically assumed he was the star of the show and behaved accordingly. At the end of those performances where audience-reaction was particularly warm, he would step forward from the curtain-call line-up and, blithely assuming the leadership of the ensemble, make a little speech on behalf of the cast. Scott, frozen in the line behind him, would seethe quietly and go purple in the face. His speech completed, Corbett would smile his goofy, ineffectual smile and step back for a final round of applause, assuming everyone loved and adored him as much as he did himself. I don’t believe Scott’s anger ever erupted but had it done so, it would have demolished the theatre and a good deal of the surrounding neighborhood.
Curtain-calls are mini-dramas in themselves and immensely varied. Some, particularly in musicals, merely merge unobtrusively into the final scene. Some reveal subtle human factors that inadvertently convey themselves to the audience.
Sometimes, at a curtain call, the manic glaze in actors’ eyes suggest a perverse joy, as if the sound of smacking palms were the equivalent of orgiastic flagellation. Sometimes, as in Russia, the actors clap back as if the audience’s contribution was not a whit less than the performer’s. In continental companies, the unrehearsed actors often mill around, bumping into each other, and peer back stupidly at the clamor exploding around them. Some actors give their best performance at the curtain-call. Donald Wolfit used to lean against the proscenium arch clutching the curtain like an exhausted gladiator, implying that no collective burst of energy – no matter how vigorous – could equal the labors he had just undergone.
Some actors don a mask of jolly complicity, their expressions insisting ‘we all did it together’. Some actors, many of the best in fact, go rigid with tension or receive their volleys of applause like so many dollops of castor oil. Still others turn down the sides of their mouths and contemptuously bide their time considering the plaudits of the mob to be a wholly unjustified intrusions into their craft. Some, the more egoistic, wallow in the sound as if it were music from the spheres, exaggerating personal triumphs by mentally transforming dull thuds of polite applause into Vesuvian eruptions. Some stand around jitteringly contemplating the trains they will catch and the late dinners they will shortly wolf down. Some actors, at the end of a long, satisfying performance, step forward like the triumphant torero to receive the ears of the prize bull. Sometimes, in certain political productions, the curtain-call is a massed act of defiance with actors radiating their antipathy to a disgruntled and disgusted public and one can hear the crunch of conflicting ideologies crackling through the auditorium.
There is one curtain call I have never forgotten. It came at the end of the National Theatre production of Carl Zuckmayer’s “Captain of Kopenick” which starred Paul Scofield. The actor, his gaunt, creased tousled head peered into the auditorium, clutching the hands of fellow-actors as if permitting the public to view his genius, untrammeled by art, undisguised by artifice, then stepping forward to the apron and nodded his head with the kind of graciousness King George probably showed to Handel when he stood up in his box during the Hallelujah Chorus of “The Messiah”. Then, being waved forward by his colleagues for a solo call, he tacitly shared with his audience the knowledge that skill and imagination had combined to produce an experience which had forged bonds of brotherhood that nothing could ever rend asunder; bowing to acknowledge and, at the same time to confirm, the mastery of his craft and the perspicacity of our appreciation of it. Smiling wanly, as if to say: Life is not all art and you would be wise to temper your enthusiasms with a certain amount of philosophic detachment. Holding out his hands again to invite his fellow players into a charmed circle; they, approached him tentatively as if he were a witch-doctor too charged and holy to touch, but touching nevertheless; grasping his hand on either side and receiving the magic electricity which the house had authorized him to distribute evenly among his colleagues; then retiring with a hand-wave, he shuffled down to the privacy of his dressing-room, causing our din to evaporate in the air like a kind of pointless obstreperousness which, having made its point, had outlived its usefulness.
I can’t for the life of me remember anything about the play, but the curtain-call is enshrined in my mental archives.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Director's Notes
When a production reaches the runthrough stage and the need to maintain unbroken continuity becomes essential, the director’s way of making changes and improvements is through notes, usually given at the end of each run. The actors huddle around the director who desperately tries to decipher the scribbles he has made and, by means of verbal corrections and suggestions, attempts to refine and sometimes alter the course his production has taken.
This ritual (and in many ways it is a ritual) reinforces the hierarchy that has always been taken for granted in the theatre. The director, a benevolent or terrifying father-figure and an audience-of-one, conveys to his company what he feels about the work that has thus far been accomplished, the goals achieved or unrealized, the missteps or peccadilloes he has noticed along the way and, in so doing, reconfirms the director’s authority which has been tacitly assumed but never openly declared: viz. that the actors have been giving form and feeling to his vision of the writer’s work.
That is not to suggest that throughout rehearsals the actors have slavishly relinquished their own personal preconceptions of their roles for, in many instances, they have been tacitly clung to and, consciously or unconsciously, secreted into the emerging interpretation. But when the play reaches the run-through stage, any contradictions and misconceptions that may exist become glaring and there is very little time to remove or rethink them. That is the point at which actors pay dearly for nurturing ‘private moments’ whose motivation may be egotism rather than relevance, histrionics rather than plausibility. For at that stage, the arc of the play has become abundantly clear – both to the director and his company - and anything that veers away from that arc needs to be firmly expunged.
Most notes are technical in nature. “Rise here, rather than there”, ‘Cross right, rather than left” “Stress this word rather than the other”, but if they consist only of a litany of technical directions, they will be serving the production very poorly. For it is in the final stages that the director should be revisiting the perceived story of his play, the underlying meaning of its developing situations and the unfolding meaning of its chronology. It is a time for rediscovering the production’s earliest intentions and testing them against final results.
This is also the period when a director, like the headmaster he sometimes is, doles out rewards to his prize pupils, recognizing this one’s humor or that one’s agility, the marked improvement in this characterization or the radical transformation in another. It is also the director’s last opportunity to correct missteps or vague-ness and a time when he must be most politic. In private, he can be as unguarded as he likes to his actors, but in the communal atmosphere of the note-session, it behooves him to use his utmost tact – for each actor is now comparing his performance with another’s and if publicly disparaged, there is danger of imposing a humiliation from which no constructive good can ever arise. On these occasions, it sometimes pays to be oblique. If you want to cool down an overheated performance by an actor who is prone to overacting, it may be useful to address your remarks to his playing partner about the degree of proper intensity the scene requires and, in passing, suggest a lowering of its temperature. The overheated actor will get the point even though it is not directly addressed to him.
Some corrections can be made through notes; many cannot. If it’s a matter of a wrong inflexion or a slightly altered move, an apposite note can usually fix it. But if it’s a piece of business between two or more performers, you would just be wasting your breath. Only finite, hands-on rehearsal can rectify such moments and merely citing the problem in a note without scheduling the time to rehearse it is useless, as actors are being told something is wrong but not given the opportunity to it put right.
The note session imposes objectivity on a process which is enveloped in subjectivity. The actor’s tendency throughout rehearsals has been to shape the logic of his or her role; this inevitably leads to self-absorption; the actor’s lines, the actor’s moves, the actor’s motives, the actor’s psychology. When notes are introduced into the process, the director who has been constantly insinuating his own preferences, posits the first objective view of events the actors receive. It is as if a camera which has been shooting an endless series of close-ups suddenly dollies back to provide a comprehensive long-shot of everyone’s work. It is an essential and salutary change of focus; one which the actor needs in order to be able to evaluate his work in relation to everyone else’s. That is why it is important for the director to speak in general terms as well as merely picking out particular flaws or imprecisions. It is at this time that the actor is depending on his director to provide that larger view which is what the audience will be seeing. If he doesn’t provide that objectivity, if he clings to the correction of his precious minutiae, he is abdicating his true responsibility: to become the representative of a force greater than the writer or his company of actors, - namely ‘the public’ for whom, ostensibly, all of these efforts have been undertaken.
This ritual (and in many ways it is a ritual) reinforces the hierarchy that has always been taken for granted in the theatre. The director, a benevolent or terrifying father-figure and an audience-of-one, conveys to his company what he feels about the work that has thus far been accomplished, the goals achieved or unrealized, the missteps or peccadilloes he has noticed along the way and, in so doing, reconfirms the director’s authority which has been tacitly assumed but never openly declared: viz. that the actors have been giving form and feeling to his vision of the writer’s work.
That is not to suggest that throughout rehearsals the actors have slavishly relinquished their own personal preconceptions of their roles for, in many instances, they have been tacitly clung to and, consciously or unconsciously, secreted into the emerging interpretation. But when the play reaches the run-through stage, any contradictions and misconceptions that may exist become glaring and there is very little time to remove or rethink them. That is the point at which actors pay dearly for nurturing ‘private moments’ whose motivation may be egotism rather than relevance, histrionics rather than plausibility. For at that stage, the arc of the play has become abundantly clear – both to the director and his company - and anything that veers away from that arc needs to be firmly expunged.
Most notes are technical in nature. “Rise here, rather than there”, ‘Cross right, rather than left” “Stress this word rather than the other”, but if they consist only of a litany of technical directions, they will be serving the production very poorly. For it is in the final stages that the director should be revisiting the perceived story of his play, the underlying meaning of its developing situations and the unfolding meaning of its chronology. It is a time for rediscovering the production’s earliest intentions and testing them against final results.
This is also the period when a director, like the headmaster he sometimes is, doles out rewards to his prize pupils, recognizing this one’s humor or that one’s agility, the marked improvement in this characterization or the radical transformation in another. It is also the director’s last opportunity to correct missteps or vague-ness and a time when he must be most politic. In private, he can be as unguarded as he likes to his actors, but in the communal atmosphere of the note-session, it behooves him to use his utmost tact – for each actor is now comparing his performance with another’s and if publicly disparaged, there is danger of imposing a humiliation from which no constructive good can ever arise. On these occasions, it sometimes pays to be oblique. If you want to cool down an overheated performance by an actor who is prone to overacting, it may be useful to address your remarks to his playing partner about the degree of proper intensity the scene requires and, in passing, suggest a lowering of its temperature. The overheated actor will get the point even though it is not directly addressed to him.
Some corrections can be made through notes; many cannot. If it’s a matter of a wrong inflexion or a slightly altered move, an apposite note can usually fix it. But if it’s a piece of business between two or more performers, you would just be wasting your breath. Only finite, hands-on rehearsal can rectify such moments and merely citing the problem in a note without scheduling the time to rehearse it is useless, as actors are being told something is wrong but not given the opportunity to it put right.
The note session imposes objectivity on a process which is enveloped in subjectivity. The actor’s tendency throughout rehearsals has been to shape the logic of his or her role; this inevitably leads to self-absorption; the actor’s lines, the actor’s moves, the actor’s motives, the actor’s psychology. When notes are introduced into the process, the director who has been constantly insinuating his own preferences, posits the first objective view of events the actors receive. It is as if a camera which has been shooting an endless series of close-ups suddenly dollies back to provide a comprehensive long-shot of everyone’s work. It is an essential and salutary change of focus; one which the actor needs in order to be able to evaluate his work in relation to everyone else’s. That is why it is important for the director to speak in general terms as well as merely picking out particular flaws or imprecisions. It is at this time that the actor is depending on his director to provide that larger view which is what the audience will be seeing. If he doesn’t provide that objectivity, if he clings to the correction of his precious minutiae, he is abdicating his true responsibility: to become the representative of a force greater than the writer or his company of actors, - namely ‘the public’ for whom, ostensibly, all of these efforts have been undertaken.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
The Casting Couch
Although it is generally assumed that this is an item of seduction invented by men, it is just as often employed by women on the make. It would be ridiculous to assume it is simply part of theatre-mythology. There are too many anecdotes, both apocryphal and verifiable, to attest to its existence and its usage. What, you may be asking yourself, has this got to do with staging a play. I will try to demonstrate.
It sometimes happens that a ‘sweet young thing’ auditioning for a role for which her talents are not particularly suited, tries to compensate for that insufficiency by insinuating herself with a director on the basis of physical allure and personal accessibility; a promise of rewards to come if she is allowed to place her dainty feet firmly on to the inside track. The director (usually male, but females are just as prone to the tactic) sometimes weakens and, in responding to temptation, casts the ‘sweet young thing’ either with an eye towards future payback or because he deludes himself that she can actually deliver the goods – professionally and sexually.
Once the fatal decision is made, the die is cast. If the tacit bargain between the two parties becomes evident to the company and a cloud of suspicion begins to form over the director’s head, his stock with the cast sinks appreciably. A certain umbrage is taken. It is not necessarily expressed but it is experienced and gradually, it may subvert his relations with the other members of the company; particularly the female members. If, as often happens, there is a subsequent realization on the part of the director that he has made a foolish decision and that co-opting the ‘sweet young thing’ is in fact jeopardizing the success of the show, his situation becomes even more untenable. Now he has to try to remove the weak link without acknowledging the disreputable circumstances under which she was first included. Almost always this sours the relationship between the ‘sweet young thing’ and the director and, instead of receiving pleasurable rewards, he finds himself in a constant state of agitation trying to eliminate an artist who is threatening the quality of his production and probably being privately rebuked for breaking a promise.
In extreme cases, the interloper digs in her heels, cites the relevant clauses of the Equity contract on unauthorized dis-missal and, if the director persists in attempts to remove her, infers that allegations of sexual abuse may ensue. Meanwhile, the esprit de corps is in tatters, and the mounting antagonism of the company is rapidly taking its toll on the production. Everything begins to go to pot and the director’s momentary folly suddenly looms as a dire threat to the entire enterprise.
Outraged feminists will immediately insist this is examining the Casting Couch only from the male point of view. They will point out that the director, being the more powerful figure, has the opportunity to wield it for selfish purposes. He, and not the ‘sweet young thing’ is the true villain of the piece. Often he is. But just as often, the problem has been instigated by a ‘come on’ on the part of the actress and if men are lascivious (which they are) they are also vulnerable, and particularly to female allure. The circumstances under which the Casting Couch is introduced into a theatrical context are many and varied and in describing one possible scenario, I am not intending to accuse either conniving women or depraved men but simply to illustrate that cast-selection is a delicate con-sideration and subject to unexpected hazards, and the greatest of these is the temptation to mix business with pleasure. A faux pas can turn into an awkward situation, a collective embarrassment, a mini scandal and a groundswell which saps the energies of the entire project.
‘Casting couch’ is a loaded term and makes the philistine’s hair stand on end, but it need not be construed as a lurid and diabolical stratagem, an embarrassment or a disgrace. It often happens that women are genuinely drawn to their directors, and directors to members of the opposite sex with whom they are working. Many long-term liaisons have grown out of the intimacy that rehearsals naturally breed between actors and actresses and this is as common in the theatre as it is in colleges, businesses, factories or any human endeavor where men and women are thrown into close proximity for long periods of time.
When women first entered the acting profession in the 17th century, their presence in revealing costumes, their faces embellished with cosmetics bred desires in many men; often they were aristocrats who appropriated them either as mistresses, wives or both. Acting is predicated on intimacy. People embrace, kiss openly, lust after each other and simulate intimate feelings which occasionally segue into personal affairs, extended friendships and marriages. Many a casting couch turns into a marital double bed; many a transient affair into a satisfying, long-lasting union.
Given the sexual mores that now pervade the 21st century, the ‘casting couch’ has become something of a period-piece like love-seats, roll-top desks, rocking-chairs or oil-lamps. If they do still exist, they are no longer the preserve of one gender rather than the other.
It sometimes happens that a ‘sweet young thing’ auditioning for a role for which her talents are not particularly suited, tries to compensate for that insufficiency by insinuating herself with a director on the basis of physical allure and personal accessibility; a promise of rewards to come if she is allowed to place her dainty feet firmly on to the inside track. The director (usually male, but females are just as prone to the tactic) sometimes weakens and, in responding to temptation, casts the ‘sweet young thing’ either with an eye towards future payback or because he deludes himself that she can actually deliver the goods – professionally and sexually.
Once the fatal decision is made, the die is cast. If the tacit bargain between the two parties becomes evident to the company and a cloud of suspicion begins to form over the director’s head, his stock with the cast sinks appreciably. A certain umbrage is taken. It is not necessarily expressed but it is experienced and gradually, it may subvert his relations with the other members of the company; particularly the female members. If, as often happens, there is a subsequent realization on the part of the director that he has made a foolish decision and that co-opting the ‘sweet young thing’ is in fact jeopardizing the success of the show, his situation becomes even more untenable. Now he has to try to remove the weak link without acknowledging the disreputable circumstances under which she was first included. Almost always this sours the relationship between the ‘sweet young thing’ and the director and, instead of receiving pleasurable rewards, he finds himself in a constant state of agitation trying to eliminate an artist who is threatening the quality of his production and probably being privately rebuked for breaking a promise.
In extreme cases, the interloper digs in her heels, cites the relevant clauses of the Equity contract on unauthorized dis-missal and, if the director persists in attempts to remove her, infers that allegations of sexual abuse may ensue. Meanwhile, the esprit de corps is in tatters, and the mounting antagonism of the company is rapidly taking its toll on the production. Everything begins to go to pot and the director’s momentary folly suddenly looms as a dire threat to the entire enterprise.
Outraged feminists will immediately insist this is examining the Casting Couch only from the male point of view. They will point out that the director, being the more powerful figure, has the opportunity to wield it for selfish purposes. He, and not the ‘sweet young thing’ is the true villain of the piece. Often he is. But just as often, the problem has been instigated by a ‘come on’ on the part of the actress and if men are lascivious (which they are) they are also vulnerable, and particularly to female allure. The circumstances under which the Casting Couch is introduced into a theatrical context are many and varied and in describing one possible scenario, I am not intending to accuse either conniving women or depraved men but simply to illustrate that cast-selection is a delicate con-sideration and subject to unexpected hazards, and the greatest of these is the temptation to mix business with pleasure. A faux pas can turn into an awkward situation, a collective embarrassment, a mini scandal and a groundswell which saps the energies of the entire project.
‘Casting couch’ is a loaded term and makes the philistine’s hair stand on end, but it need not be construed as a lurid and diabolical stratagem, an embarrassment or a disgrace. It often happens that women are genuinely drawn to their directors, and directors to members of the opposite sex with whom they are working. Many long-term liaisons have grown out of the intimacy that rehearsals naturally breed between actors and actresses and this is as common in the theatre as it is in colleges, businesses, factories or any human endeavor where men and women are thrown into close proximity for long periods of time.
When women first entered the acting profession in the 17th century, their presence in revealing costumes, their faces embellished with cosmetics bred desires in many men; often they were aristocrats who appropriated them either as mistresses, wives or both. Acting is predicated on intimacy. People embrace, kiss openly, lust after each other and simulate intimate feelings which occasionally segue into personal affairs, extended friendships and marriages. Many a casting couch turns into a marital double bed; many a transient affair into a satisfying, long-lasting union.
Given the sexual mores that now pervade the 21st century, the ‘casting couch’ has become something of a period-piece like love-seats, roll-top desks, rocking-chairs or oil-lamps. If they do still exist, they are no longer the preserve of one gender rather than the other.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Getting Stanislavsky Wrong
In 1923, all of New York was bowled over by the first visit of the Moscow Art Theatre to America. No one in this country had seen such synchronized ensemble-playing or a troupe of individual actors of such power and persuasiveness. When the company returned to Russia after a triumphant national tour, actors such as Maria Ouspenskaya stayed behind and, along with Richard Boleslavsky, an earlier drop-out, began instructing American actors in that strange doctrine known as the Stanislavsky System. One of Boleslavsky's most attentive students was Lee Strasberg. Both Strasberg and his close friend Harold Clurman were early converts to Stanislavsky as handed down by Boleslavky.
The fact is many of the tenets of the system passed on by Boleslavky had already been surpassed by Stanislavsky even as the System was being absorbed by the Group Theatre under Strasberg’s aegis. After a visit from Stella Adler to Paris, where she received private instruction from Stanislavsky, it became clear that elements such as "emotional memory" had been virtually abandoned by Stanislavsky and a new and stronger emphasis placed on "playing actions." These unexpected developments caused severe upheavals within the Group, and there were some, like Robert Lewis, who believed it was this schism which eventually triggered Strasberg's resignation from the company and brought about the disintegration of the Group Theatre itself.
During the next six decades, the precepts derived from the Stanislavsky System became the prevailing mode of tuition for professional actors both in America and Europe and, in many countries, is still the official doctrine for people pursuing theatre studies.
However, no dogma is so persuasive that it does not eventually create skeptics, apostates and even iconoclasts, and, in recent years, aspects of the Stanislavsky System have been seriously questioned and, in some instances, abandoned. Theorists like Michael Chekhov (who broke with Stanislavsky in the 1920’s) and Bertolt Brecht (who found the System abhorrent) have fostered a whole series of alternative approaches inspired largely by a body of plays less naturalistic than those that stemmed from the repertoire of the Moscow Art Theatre. In some quarters, the very ethos of the Stanislavsky System has been attacked and its efficacy put into question.
The Stanislavskian practice most adhered to among students and professional actors is the formulation of "actions" that is, a choice made about the central drive of a particular scene, what a character is going after. It is often the case that an actor in conjunction with a director can come up with three, four or even a half-dozen actions for a particular scene, the justification being that a character's action is never static but always changing. This approach often produces a series of impulses, each duly labeled in advance; these impulses are then assembled as if they were playing-cards, and then tossed out one after the other until the hand is played and the next round of the game begun.
What this tends to do is to divide a scene into a series of finite units with prescriptive action-titles, with actors proceeding on the assumption that these units cover all the minute changes that take place between characters in some dramatic interaction. What it actually does is over-systematize the actor's work and lead him or her into believing every moment of the scene should be strictly accounted for. What it does not do is allow the actor to organically adjust to the variation of circumstances as they unfold in what is supposed to be a spontaneous volley of behavior. In other words, it substitutes cognition for instinct.
In real life, we often go into a situation with a clear-cut objective in mind. Almost always, that objective encounters unexpected resistance or diversions from the people with whom it collides. Our "action" (i.e., fundamental "want") in the situation does not change, but it does alter according to unexpected pressures brought to bear upon it. In adjusting to these unexpected changes we, in a sense, improvise our way around obstacles as dictated by the overall objective that first placed us into those social circumstances. But if an actor has worked out every aspect of what is to come, every buffet, challenge or untoward development, he knows more than he should about his character's activity. He is robbed of the spontaneity that comes as in life from instinctively adjusting to whatever obstacles he may encounter in the pursuit of his objective.
Recently, in Copenhagen, I was assisting a young director with what she referred to as her "game-plan." We had spoken loosely about the character's "want," but what she had formulated was an action for every vicissitude in the scene a scene of about seven minutes' duration to which she had attached over a dozen banner headlines. "Why be so fastidious about every single nuance?” I asked. Reply: “Because I want the actor to understand all the minute adaptations he has to make in pursuing his objective, and therefore every moment has to be accounted for.” But if the actor has a handle on what he fundamentally wants, won't he steer a course based on that original desire? That is, won't he logically equivocate or elude, camouflage or conceal, become wary, suspicious, insistent or frightened? Perhaps, said the young director, but this way he knows every twist and turn the scene will take and can prepare for it beforehand.
That may be true, but such an approach siphons off much of the spontaneity that would occur if the actor was not so totally conscious of every emotional change he was expected to make. What the actor gains in certainty, he loses in spontaneity. Having already decided precisely what his reactions are supposed to be, he merely posits them rather than allowing them to evolve organically from the stimuli of the given circumstances.
It may seem like splitting hairs, but the underlying object of all acting is to create and sustain a spontaneity which, we all know, is rooted in a priori choices. But if the central thrust of a scene is clearly understood, and its overriding action correctly selected, all of those meticulously prescribed reactions take care of themselves and in so doing, retain some of the surprise that life is always handing us just when we are expecting something different.
Overloading the actor with minute actions rather than permitting him to fend for himself in the hurly-burly of changing circumstances is only one of the many Stanislavsky postulates that need overhauling. The notion that all an actor needs do is determine his "action" in a particular scene or formulate a super-objective for the entire play is based on the fallacy that all one ever wants in life is the fulfillment of one overriding conscious desire. Hamlet wants to revenge the death of his father, we are told; Katherine wants to assert her independence from male domination; Macbeth plots and plans to acquire the crown which he believes has been supernaturally promised him. These are time-honored generalizations and, like all generalizations, may be either confirmed or contradicted. Hamlet can just as readily want to do everything he can to avoid revenging his father a) because he is never entirely sure that the "ghost" he saw was a benevolent or malignant spirit; b) because he has scruples about regicide or endangering his mother's status after her hasty remarriage; c) because he recognizes that he will never be the man his father was and therefore could never possibly rule the Kingdom of Denmark, a position he would be obliged to undertake as the natural heir to the throne. Conceivably, Katherine, rather than confirming her desire for independence, may secretly be longing to relinquish it because she has met her match in Petruchio but is now stuck with a fiery and belligerent persona which she cannot shake off. Macbeth, conscious of his indecisive nature, may be terrified by a prophecy which is beyond his true station, and he may sense that the Witches' prediction may be a snare to bring him down rather than raise him up.
Stanislavsky-based actors frequently base their choices on textual considerations rather than subtextual ones. What is apparent in the words a character speaks in a play often has no bearing on what is essentially motivating him which is why we can and do have innumerable interpretations of what, at the outset, appears to be self-evident material. Actions based on professed sentiments almost always produce stale and repetitive theatre. It's only when an actor comes up with a new and previously unconsidered objective one that had never occurred to us before that we experience the frisson of a fresh interpretation.
The other and more perilous Stanislavsky fallacy is the assumption that a character can only want one thing at a time the care- fully analyzed "action" that he gleans from a reading of the text or is dogmatically handed him by a director.
But as we know from our own psychological experience, one can simultaneously have multiple goals and mixed feelings. In the first court scene under the aegis of the newly anointed King Claudius, Hamlet may want to show his contempt toward the ruler because of the incestuous union with Gertrude; he may be squirmingly aware of the fact that there are people at court who recognize that his position as the heir-apparent has been usurped and he has to brazen out his humiliation in public. He may be yearning for a show of solidarity from his mother, whom he may believe was coerced into marrying Claudius; he may be scotching down his contempt for Laertes who is being given leave to go to France, whereas he is not being allowed to go back to Wittenberg; he may be feeling utterly helpless in a court where there is not one person he can call friend. The list of possible moods and mood-changes is endless, and each one of them dictates a different "action," and each action, a different mode of behavior. How can one, in light of all those possibilities, single out a single "action" and say resolutely, this is how Hamlet "feels" and this is precisely what he "wants"?
In the 20th century we learned a lot about the psychology of acting from Stanislavsky, and much of it still applies, but not all of it. In the decades that followed his earliest work, the theories of Michael Chekhov have provided a useful corrective to many of the tenets of the System that had previously gone unchallenged. Acting theory has been evolving since Quintilian (and probably before), and the drama has gone from artifice to naturalism to psychological realism, expressionism, magic realism and the discontinuous demands of performance art. Acting technique has gone from "rules" to assumptions about behavior and widely differing notions of interior reality; from clashes between Diderot to Strasberg to theoretical differences stemming from Jung and Freud. If we revise or even discard certain basic Stanislavsky precepts, we are not dishonoring the Father of Psychological Realism but acknowledging his own belief that in art, the only constant is change.
The fact is many of the tenets of the system passed on by Boleslavky had already been surpassed by Stanislavsky even as the System was being absorbed by the Group Theatre under Strasberg’s aegis. After a visit from Stella Adler to Paris, where she received private instruction from Stanislavsky, it became clear that elements such as "emotional memory" had been virtually abandoned by Stanislavsky and a new and stronger emphasis placed on "playing actions." These unexpected developments caused severe upheavals within the Group, and there were some, like Robert Lewis, who believed it was this schism which eventually triggered Strasberg's resignation from the company and brought about the disintegration of the Group Theatre itself.
During the next six decades, the precepts derived from the Stanislavsky System became the prevailing mode of tuition for professional actors both in America and Europe and, in many countries, is still the official doctrine for people pursuing theatre studies.
However, no dogma is so persuasive that it does not eventually create skeptics, apostates and even iconoclasts, and, in recent years, aspects of the Stanislavsky System have been seriously questioned and, in some instances, abandoned. Theorists like Michael Chekhov (who broke with Stanislavsky in the 1920’s) and Bertolt Brecht (who found the System abhorrent) have fostered a whole series of alternative approaches inspired largely by a body of plays less naturalistic than those that stemmed from the repertoire of the Moscow Art Theatre. In some quarters, the very ethos of the Stanislavsky System has been attacked and its efficacy put into question.
The Stanislavskian practice most adhered to among students and professional actors is the formulation of "actions" that is, a choice made about the central drive of a particular scene, what a character is going after. It is often the case that an actor in conjunction with a director can come up with three, four or even a half-dozen actions for a particular scene, the justification being that a character's action is never static but always changing. This approach often produces a series of impulses, each duly labeled in advance; these impulses are then assembled as if they were playing-cards, and then tossed out one after the other until the hand is played and the next round of the game begun.
What this tends to do is to divide a scene into a series of finite units with prescriptive action-titles, with actors proceeding on the assumption that these units cover all the minute changes that take place between characters in some dramatic interaction. What it actually does is over-systematize the actor's work and lead him or her into believing every moment of the scene should be strictly accounted for. What it does not do is allow the actor to organically adjust to the variation of circumstances as they unfold in what is supposed to be a spontaneous volley of behavior. In other words, it substitutes cognition for instinct.
In real life, we often go into a situation with a clear-cut objective in mind. Almost always, that objective encounters unexpected resistance or diversions from the people with whom it collides. Our "action" (i.e., fundamental "want") in the situation does not change, but it does alter according to unexpected pressures brought to bear upon it. In adjusting to these unexpected changes we, in a sense, improvise our way around obstacles as dictated by the overall objective that first placed us into those social circumstances. But if an actor has worked out every aspect of what is to come, every buffet, challenge or untoward development, he knows more than he should about his character's activity. He is robbed of the spontaneity that comes as in life from instinctively adjusting to whatever obstacles he may encounter in the pursuit of his objective.
Recently, in Copenhagen, I was assisting a young director with what she referred to as her "game-plan." We had spoken loosely about the character's "want," but what she had formulated was an action for every vicissitude in the scene a scene of about seven minutes' duration to which she had attached over a dozen banner headlines. "Why be so fastidious about every single nuance?” I asked. Reply: “Because I want the actor to understand all the minute adaptations he has to make in pursuing his objective, and therefore every moment has to be accounted for.” But if the actor has a handle on what he fundamentally wants, won't he steer a course based on that original desire? That is, won't he logically equivocate or elude, camouflage or conceal, become wary, suspicious, insistent or frightened? Perhaps, said the young director, but this way he knows every twist and turn the scene will take and can prepare for it beforehand.
That may be true, but such an approach siphons off much of the spontaneity that would occur if the actor was not so totally conscious of every emotional change he was expected to make. What the actor gains in certainty, he loses in spontaneity. Having already decided precisely what his reactions are supposed to be, he merely posits them rather than allowing them to evolve organically from the stimuli of the given circumstances.
It may seem like splitting hairs, but the underlying object of all acting is to create and sustain a spontaneity which, we all know, is rooted in a priori choices. But if the central thrust of a scene is clearly understood, and its overriding action correctly selected, all of those meticulously prescribed reactions take care of themselves and in so doing, retain some of the surprise that life is always handing us just when we are expecting something different.
Overloading the actor with minute actions rather than permitting him to fend for himself in the hurly-burly of changing circumstances is only one of the many Stanislavsky postulates that need overhauling. The notion that all an actor needs do is determine his "action" in a particular scene or formulate a super-objective for the entire play is based on the fallacy that all one ever wants in life is the fulfillment of one overriding conscious desire. Hamlet wants to revenge the death of his father, we are told; Katherine wants to assert her independence from male domination; Macbeth plots and plans to acquire the crown which he believes has been supernaturally promised him. These are time-honored generalizations and, like all generalizations, may be either confirmed or contradicted. Hamlet can just as readily want to do everything he can to avoid revenging his father a) because he is never entirely sure that the "ghost" he saw was a benevolent or malignant spirit; b) because he has scruples about regicide or endangering his mother's status after her hasty remarriage; c) because he recognizes that he will never be the man his father was and therefore could never possibly rule the Kingdom of Denmark, a position he would be obliged to undertake as the natural heir to the throne. Conceivably, Katherine, rather than confirming her desire for independence, may secretly be longing to relinquish it because she has met her match in Petruchio but is now stuck with a fiery and belligerent persona which she cannot shake off. Macbeth, conscious of his indecisive nature, may be terrified by a prophecy which is beyond his true station, and he may sense that the Witches' prediction may be a snare to bring him down rather than raise him up.
Stanislavsky-based actors frequently base their choices on textual considerations rather than subtextual ones. What is apparent in the words a character speaks in a play often has no bearing on what is essentially motivating him which is why we can and do have innumerable interpretations of what, at the outset, appears to be self-evident material. Actions based on professed sentiments almost always produce stale and repetitive theatre. It's only when an actor comes up with a new and previously unconsidered objective one that had never occurred to us before that we experience the frisson of a fresh interpretation.
The other and more perilous Stanislavsky fallacy is the assumption that a character can only want one thing at a time the care- fully analyzed "action" that he gleans from a reading of the text or is dogmatically handed him by a director.
But as we know from our own psychological experience, one can simultaneously have multiple goals and mixed feelings. In the first court scene under the aegis of the newly anointed King Claudius, Hamlet may want to show his contempt toward the ruler because of the incestuous union with Gertrude; he may be squirmingly aware of the fact that there are people at court who recognize that his position as the heir-apparent has been usurped and he has to brazen out his humiliation in public. He may be yearning for a show of solidarity from his mother, whom he may believe was coerced into marrying Claudius; he may be scotching down his contempt for Laertes who is being given leave to go to France, whereas he is not being allowed to go back to Wittenberg; he may be feeling utterly helpless in a court where there is not one person he can call friend. The list of possible moods and mood-changes is endless, and each one of them dictates a different "action," and each action, a different mode of behavior. How can one, in light of all those possibilities, single out a single "action" and say resolutely, this is how Hamlet "feels" and this is precisely what he "wants"?
In the 20th century we learned a lot about the psychology of acting from Stanislavsky, and much of it still applies, but not all of it. In the decades that followed his earliest work, the theories of Michael Chekhov have provided a useful corrective to many of the tenets of the System that had previously gone unchallenged. Acting theory has been evolving since Quintilian (and probably before), and the drama has gone from artifice to naturalism to psychological realism, expressionism, magic realism and the discontinuous demands of performance art. Acting technique has gone from "rules" to assumptions about behavior and widely differing notions of interior reality; from clashes between Diderot to Strasberg to theoretical differences stemming from Jung and Freud. If we revise or even discard certain basic Stanislavsky precepts, we are not dishonoring the Father of Psychological Realism but acknowledging his own belief that in art, the only constant is change.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
WORKING WITH EGOTISTS
Everyone has an ego and in the theatre egos come in three sizes: enormous, colossal and humongous. Which is just another way of saying that artists of every stripe have idealized conceptions of themselves which is why they often produce both spectacular successes and monumental disasters.
An actress acquaintance of mine, who over the years had built up a prodigious reputation for herself on the American stage which included Tony nominations and a number of outstanding regional awards, found herself in her 60s auditioning for a television series in Hollywood. The interviewer was a bright young thing recently graduated from UCLA. Her first question was: “Could you tell me a little about what you’ve actually done on the stage?” The actress was a little dumbfounded but felt it politic not to reveal her surprise. She rattled off a number of top-drawer Broadway productions, many of which were opposite a roster of imposing male stars. The names of those productions meant nothing to the casting director and even many of the celebrity names produced only blank blinks. It became clear that the generational gulf that yawned between the interviewer and the actress could never be bridged. As she left the casting director’s office, the actress was in tears and seriously contemplated giving up the business.
To performers, the items on their résumés are a chronology of public achievement, creative experiences they have undergone at various stages in their lives that have turned them into the artists they have become. Their ‘credits’ are, in a very real sense, the ‘meaning of their lives’, a catalogue of achievements and a validation of their worth. But to someone unfamiliar with their work they are simply the names of anonymous plays, films and TV roles, no different from those inscribed on the hundreds of résumés that land on agents’ desks day after day. An actor’s ego is an impenetrable citadel which contains real and imaginary triumphs which, because they have been experienced by audiences and witnessed by professional observers, constitute an irrefutable monument to their reality. To deny that is to deny the very essence of their existence.
Every artist involved in the theatrical collaboration possesses, to some degree, a heightened Sense of Self. It cannot easily be set aside when questioned or assailed by a director. That is why a director needs delicacy and discretion when intruding on an actor’s sense of their role because, in so doing, he may be invading a well-armored fortress which, as is to be expected, will be heavily defended.
At the beginning of a rehearsal period, all the scrutiny is on the text and the slowly evolving performances. Actors do not openly declare that they have ‘a heightened Sense of Self’ nor that they have an instinct about how their characterization should evolve. It is all happening on a subconscious plane but easily surmised in the actor’s manner, inflections and choices. The director divines the actor’s conception of his role through minute hints and suggestions emanating from the actor’s reading. Missteps or serious misconceptions must be detected as early as possible because they are the bricks and mortar out of which the actor’s interpretation will be constructed. If misguided or contrary to the director’s understanding of the material, they need to be deracinated immediately for if they are permitted to grow and take on girth, they will ultimately become impossible to uproot.
The tolerant, easygoing, unobtrusive director who lets an actor’s misconceptions develop, even as he experiences uneasiness about their implications, will have no defense against the actor who, urged to rethink his characterization only days before an opening, complains: “Why didn’t you say something three weeks ago if you thought I was going in the wrong direction? Why tell me now, a week before we have to go up?” In the face of such a rebuke, the tactful, polite and unobtrusive director will not have a leg to stand on. It was his duty to raise a red flag the moment he sensed the actor was on the wrong track.
But let us assume the director does intercede early in the game – say, in the first week that actors are ‘on their feet’, albeit with ‘scripts in hand’. What if the tentative actor resents directorial interference while he is at that delicate stage during which he is still ‘testing the waters’ and experimenting with different options? He can justifiably complain the director is choking off his oxygen; refusing to allow him to find his way, to flesh out his character and formulate his personal interpretation.
It is a legitimate conflict of interests. No actor wants his performance to be ‘dictated’ by a director, and no director wants his conception of a play’s meaning distorted or derailed by an interpretation that runs counter to what he wants his production to ‘say’.
According to protocol, the director should prevail and the actor fall in line. After all, an individual characterization is only a cog in a wheel that contains many spokes. But occasionally an actor’s notion, though opposed to a director’s preconception, will supplement or even improve the whole. Sometimes an alien idea effectively realized will bring an unexpected dimension to the proceedings whose repercussions will enhance all the surrounding performances. Sometimes, in short, an actor’s instinct is superior to a director’s, more inspired and more transformative.
It is in situations such as these that ego most threatens the collective effort. For the director’s insistence on his way may be nothing more than a deep-seated resistance to having his authority put into question. By the same token, the actor may feel that his ‘artistic integrity’ is being violated when asked to surrender to the commands of a director who will not bend to a fresh idea that he did not originate.
Egoistic confrontations of this kind are almost never resolved openly. The actor suppresses his resistance, the director suppresses his indignation, and the company suppresses its inclination to take sides. A contretemps of that kind often can sour the rehearsal-atmosphere irreparably.
As I have said elsewhere, a useful temporary solution is for the director to encourage the actor fully to demonstrate his new insight so that everyone, the director included, can gage its efficacy. If it is subsequently rejected at least the actor has the satisfaction of having given it full vent before an impartial jury i.e. - the company. But if it turns out to be a fructifying idea, one that excites and appeals to others, an idea that causes each member of the company to alter or adjust their performances to the betterment of the whole, the director may have unwittingly been presented with an invaluable gift; a hidden insight which re-fertilizes the material and enhances its power. If that is not the case, if the actor’s idea is ‘off the wall’ and fundamentally wrong-headed, it will ring false to everyone in the rehearsal-room, since all actors are umbillcally connected to the context from which every new idea springs.
So incursions of ego are not to be treated as a ‘nuisance’, a manifestation of the actor’s irrepressible desire to ‘show off’ or ‘hog the spotlight’, but possibly as a lucky strike that owes its discovery to the reflections of an actor who has turned the tedium of a routine, scheduled flight into a rollicking journey on a magic carpet.
We are referring here to ideas which are relevant to the realization of a playwright’s work; always a delicate maneuver fraught with dangers. There are those other, more traditional, ego-problems that concern billing, press coverage, placement in curtain-calls, the size of one’s dressing room, the color or accessories of one’s costume, the length of one’s bio in the program, the degree of illumination on stage commensurate with their conception of their reputation -- all of which are, at base childish quibbles which should be treated by the director in the following manner: A straight line should be formed by the entire company, all of whom should be issued a baseball bat. The offending actor should be forced to stand with his back to his fellow-players and forced to repeat the words “I am an insufferable ham and contemptible human being” at least two hundred times. That done, each actor should take turns whacking the offender firmly on the backside until sitting comfortably is no longer an option. If desired, this ritual can be accompanied by boos, catcalls, whistles and cacophonic music which may give it somewhat greater sense of ritual.
An actress acquaintance of mine, who over the years had built up a prodigious reputation for herself on the American stage which included Tony nominations and a number of outstanding regional awards, found herself in her 60s auditioning for a television series in Hollywood. The interviewer was a bright young thing recently graduated from UCLA. Her first question was: “Could you tell me a little about what you’ve actually done on the stage?” The actress was a little dumbfounded but felt it politic not to reveal her surprise. She rattled off a number of top-drawer Broadway productions, many of which were opposite a roster of imposing male stars. The names of those productions meant nothing to the casting director and even many of the celebrity names produced only blank blinks. It became clear that the generational gulf that yawned between the interviewer and the actress could never be bridged. As she left the casting director’s office, the actress was in tears and seriously contemplated giving up the business.
To performers, the items on their résumés are a chronology of public achievement, creative experiences they have undergone at various stages in their lives that have turned them into the artists they have become. Their ‘credits’ are, in a very real sense, the ‘meaning of their lives’, a catalogue of achievements and a validation of their worth. But to someone unfamiliar with their work they are simply the names of anonymous plays, films and TV roles, no different from those inscribed on the hundreds of résumés that land on agents’ desks day after day. An actor’s ego is an impenetrable citadel which contains real and imaginary triumphs which, because they have been experienced by audiences and witnessed by professional observers, constitute an irrefutable monument to their reality. To deny that is to deny the very essence of their existence.
Every artist involved in the theatrical collaboration possesses, to some degree, a heightened Sense of Self. It cannot easily be set aside when questioned or assailed by a director. That is why a director needs delicacy and discretion when intruding on an actor’s sense of their role because, in so doing, he may be invading a well-armored fortress which, as is to be expected, will be heavily defended.
At the beginning of a rehearsal period, all the scrutiny is on the text and the slowly evolving performances. Actors do not openly declare that they have ‘a heightened Sense of Self’ nor that they have an instinct about how their characterization should evolve. It is all happening on a subconscious plane but easily surmised in the actor’s manner, inflections and choices. The director divines the actor’s conception of his role through minute hints and suggestions emanating from the actor’s reading. Missteps or serious misconceptions must be detected as early as possible because they are the bricks and mortar out of which the actor’s interpretation will be constructed. If misguided or contrary to the director’s understanding of the material, they need to be deracinated immediately for if they are permitted to grow and take on girth, they will ultimately become impossible to uproot.
The tolerant, easygoing, unobtrusive director who lets an actor’s misconceptions develop, even as he experiences uneasiness about their implications, will have no defense against the actor who, urged to rethink his characterization only days before an opening, complains: “Why didn’t you say something three weeks ago if you thought I was going in the wrong direction? Why tell me now, a week before we have to go up?” In the face of such a rebuke, the tactful, polite and unobtrusive director will not have a leg to stand on. It was his duty to raise a red flag the moment he sensed the actor was on the wrong track.
But let us assume the director does intercede early in the game – say, in the first week that actors are ‘on their feet’, albeit with ‘scripts in hand’. What if the tentative actor resents directorial interference while he is at that delicate stage during which he is still ‘testing the waters’ and experimenting with different options? He can justifiably complain the director is choking off his oxygen; refusing to allow him to find his way, to flesh out his character and formulate his personal interpretation.
It is a legitimate conflict of interests. No actor wants his performance to be ‘dictated’ by a director, and no director wants his conception of a play’s meaning distorted or derailed by an interpretation that runs counter to what he wants his production to ‘say’.
According to protocol, the director should prevail and the actor fall in line. After all, an individual characterization is only a cog in a wheel that contains many spokes. But occasionally an actor’s notion, though opposed to a director’s preconception, will supplement or even improve the whole. Sometimes an alien idea effectively realized will bring an unexpected dimension to the proceedings whose repercussions will enhance all the surrounding performances. Sometimes, in short, an actor’s instinct is superior to a director’s, more inspired and more transformative.
It is in situations such as these that ego most threatens the collective effort. For the director’s insistence on his way may be nothing more than a deep-seated resistance to having his authority put into question. By the same token, the actor may feel that his ‘artistic integrity’ is being violated when asked to surrender to the commands of a director who will not bend to a fresh idea that he did not originate.
Egoistic confrontations of this kind are almost never resolved openly. The actor suppresses his resistance, the director suppresses his indignation, and the company suppresses its inclination to take sides. A contretemps of that kind often can sour the rehearsal-atmosphere irreparably.
As I have said elsewhere, a useful temporary solution is for the director to encourage the actor fully to demonstrate his new insight so that everyone, the director included, can gage its efficacy. If it is subsequently rejected at least the actor has the satisfaction of having given it full vent before an impartial jury i.e. - the company. But if it turns out to be a fructifying idea, one that excites and appeals to others, an idea that causes each member of the company to alter or adjust their performances to the betterment of the whole, the director may have unwittingly been presented with an invaluable gift; a hidden insight which re-fertilizes the material and enhances its power. If that is not the case, if the actor’s idea is ‘off the wall’ and fundamentally wrong-headed, it will ring false to everyone in the rehearsal-room, since all actors are umbillcally connected to the context from which every new idea springs.
So incursions of ego are not to be treated as a ‘nuisance’, a manifestation of the actor’s irrepressible desire to ‘show off’ or ‘hog the spotlight’, but possibly as a lucky strike that owes its discovery to the reflections of an actor who has turned the tedium of a routine, scheduled flight into a rollicking journey on a magic carpet.
We are referring here to ideas which are relevant to the realization of a playwright’s work; always a delicate maneuver fraught with dangers. There are those other, more traditional, ego-problems that concern billing, press coverage, placement in curtain-calls, the size of one’s dressing room, the color or accessories of one’s costume, the length of one’s bio in the program, the degree of illumination on stage commensurate with their conception of their reputation -- all of which are, at base childish quibbles which should be treated by the director in the following manner: A straight line should be formed by the entire company, all of whom should be issued a baseball bat. The offending actor should be forced to stand with his back to his fellow-players and forced to repeat the words “I am an insufferable ham and contemptible human being” at least two hundred times. That done, each actor should take turns whacking the offender firmly on the backside until sitting comfortably is no longer an option. If desired, this ritual can be accompanied by boos, catcalls, whistles and cacophonic music which may give it somewhat greater sense of ritual.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
PUNCTUATION
A play is like a sentence consisting of both words and actions and, like a sentence, needs to be correctly conjugated and contain correct grammar and syntax. Most important, it needs to be properly punctuated. When a sentence is properly punctuated, its commas, colons, hyphens, parentheses and periods help make it comprehensible and impose an appropriate rhythm. The same holds true for a play.
On stage, a comma may divide one thought from another or it may distinguish the end of one mood and the start of another. On stage, an ‘indentation’ denotes the start of a new unit signaling the end of one ‘beat’ (or section of emotional content) from the one that follows. The equivalent of a period (i.e. full stop) may denote the conclusion of one objective and the commencement of another. An exclamation point may be used for emphasis, in precisely the same way it is used in writing. The absence of punctuation will suggest a continuum of thought or an unbroken succession of thoughts over a fairly long period of time (i.e. a lengthy speech, a monologue or an extended stretch of dialogue.) Not only must the actor’s text be punctuated for clarity and precision, but the scenes that make up each act need to be shaped for maximal effect – just as one would shape a series of paragraphs written to be read.
On stage, the lack of dramatic punctuation can be damaging to the narrative line of the play. It may blur meaning and combine things that are intended to be separated. It may elongate a tempo which needs to be accelerated or retarded, fragmented or integrated. If in the first scene of HAMLET, Francisco and Barnardo’s text is not broken up with the tensions attendant on their guard duty, the arrival of the Ghost will be neither frightening nor suspenseful. If, in the first Court Scene, Hamlet’s asides are not played in a tonality different from that of Claudius, Gertrude and Polonius, his attitude to both his parents and life at the Court, will be unclear. In the first soliloquy that begins ‘O that this too too solid flesh would melt…etc”, if the disjointedness of Hamlet’s thought, its interruptions and sudden stops and reversals are not clearly punctuated, we will not get the full impact of the character’s inner turmoil, the moral confusions that are swirling around in his brain. Proper punctuation on stage, as in writing, is an invaluable tool for clarity, and virtually every moment of rehearsal is concerned with ‘making clear’ insights which actors and directors have discovered in the play. The quest in rehearsals is always to find meaning and then make it meaningful and dramatic punctuation is the means by which ‘meaning’ is pried out of the text.
Let me switch metaphors.
A play is also like a piece of music the tonality of which is determined by changing key signatures and applying different dynamics. Speeches, scenes, units, beats can often be characterized by descriptive musical terms: largo, presto, allegro, allegretto, forte, fortissimo, piano, pianissimo, andante cantabile, sforzando, rallentando etc. --- all of these musical terms have dramatic corollaries. The start of the Balcony Scene in “Romeo and Juliet”, because it is taking place at night in hazardous circumstances, may begin largo and pianissimo although as soon as Romeo reveals himself to Juliet, it becomes forte and presto. When the danger attendant on Romeo’s rash visit has been put aside by the mutual affections expressed between the would-be lovers, the off-stage voice of the Nurse calling Juliet back into her bedroom may introduce a sforzando which leads to a spirited and somewhat agitated Allegro. The scene is as much about fear as it is love and when emotions such as fear and love are intertwined on stage, one has almost entered a kind of operatic convention and musical terms are not all that alien to describe what is taking place.
Dynamics and punctuation are ways of creating variety in dramatic material and the instinct to vary what actors are doing is a constant factor in rehearsals. The fear is always monotony or not finding those changes which are inherent in a script which usually denote related changes in the sub-text. The director is always using his personal mine-sweeper to discover what is lurking beneath the surface of the text and the actor is always trying to divine what a character is really feeling as opposed to what he or she is saying. Once those discoveries are made, they need to be translated into rhythms and tonalities, pauses and continuums, highs and lows. Once those discoveries are made, they need, via punctuation, to be grooved into the mise-en-scene.
It is important to realize that a script, despite containing conventional grammar and syntax, does not arrive, theatrically speaking, punctuated. It is the director, in conjunction with his actors who are obliged to turn its words into actions, its actions into units, its units into tempi, its ‘lines’ into throughlines. An unpunctuated play is like the ingredients of a stew thrown into a pot that never gets cooked.
On stage, a comma may divide one thought from another or it may distinguish the end of one mood and the start of another. On stage, an ‘indentation’ denotes the start of a new unit signaling the end of one ‘beat’ (or section of emotional content) from the one that follows. The equivalent of a period (i.e. full stop) may denote the conclusion of one objective and the commencement of another. An exclamation point may be used for emphasis, in precisely the same way it is used in writing. The absence of punctuation will suggest a continuum of thought or an unbroken succession of thoughts over a fairly long period of time (i.e. a lengthy speech, a monologue or an extended stretch of dialogue.) Not only must the actor’s text be punctuated for clarity and precision, but the scenes that make up each act need to be shaped for maximal effect – just as one would shape a series of paragraphs written to be read.
On stage, the lack of dramatic punctuation can be damaging to the narrative line of the play. It may blur meaning and combine things that are intended to be separated. It may elongate a tempo which needs to be accelerated or retarded, fragmented or integrated. If in the first scene of HAMLET, Francisco and Barnardo’s text is not broken up with the tensions attendant on their guard duty, the arrival of the Ghost will be neither frightening nor suspenseful. If, in the first Court Scene, Hamlet’s asides are not played in a tonality different from that of Claudius, Gertrude and Polonius, his attitude to both his parents and life at the Court, will be unclear. In the first soliloquy that begins ‘O that this too too solid flesh would melt…etc”, if the disjointedness of Hamlet’s thought, its interruptions and sudden stops and reversals are not clearly punctuated, we will not get the full impact of the character’s inner turmoil, the moral confusions that are swirling around in his brain. Proper punctuation on stage, as in writing, is an invaluable tool for clarity, and virtually every moment of rehearsal is concerned with ‘making clear’ insights which actors and directors have discovered in the play. The quest in rehearsals is always to find meaning and then make it meaningful and dramatic punctuation is the means by which ‘meaning’ is pried out of the text.
Let me switch metaphors.
A play is also like a piece of music the tonality of which is determined by changing key signatures and applying different dynamics. Speeches, scenes, units, beats can often be characterized by descriptive musical terms: largo, presto, allegro, allegretto, forte, fortissimo, piano, pianissimo, andante cantabile, sforzando, rallentando etc. --- all of these musical terms have dramatic corollaries. The start of the Balcony Scene in “Romeo and Juliet”, because it is taking place at night in hazardous circumstances, may begin largo and pianissimo although as soon as Romeo reveals himself to Juliet, it becomes forte and presto. When the danger attendant on Romeo’s rash visit has been put aside by the mutual affections expressed between the would-be lovers, the off-stage voice of the Nurse calling Juliet back into her bedroom may introduce a sforzando which leads to a spirited and somewhat agitated Allegro. The scene is as much about fear as it is love and when emotions such as fear and love are intertwined on stage, one has almost entered a kind of operatic convention and musical terms are not all that alien to describe what is taking place.
Dynamics and punctuation are ways of creating variety in dramatic material and the instinct to vary what actors are doing is a constant factor in rehearsals. The fear is always monotony or not finding those changes which are inherent in a script which usually denote related changes in the sub-text. The director is always using his personal mine-sweeper to discover what is lurking beneath the surface of the text and the actor is always trying to divine what a character is really feeling as opposed to what he or she is saying. Once those discoveries are made, they need to be translated into rhythms and tonalities, pauses and continuums, highs and lows. Once those discoveries are made, they need, via punctuation, to be grooved into the mise-en-scene.
It is important to realize that a script, despite containing conventional grammar and syntax, does not arrive, theatrically speaking, punctuated. It is the director, in conjunction with his actors who are obliged to turn its words into actions, its actions into units, its units into tempi, its ‘lines’ into throughlines. An unpunctuated play is like the ingredients of a stew thrown into a pot that never gets cooked.
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