An Actor Prepares

WORKING WITH THE PLAYWRIGHT

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Marowitz) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:22:00 +0000

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.

Curtain Calls

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Marowitz) — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 12:17:00 +0000

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.

Director's Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Marowitz) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:27:00 +0000

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.

The Casting Couch

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Marowitz) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:16:00 +0000

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.

Getting Stanislavsky Wrong

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Marowitz) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:25:00 +0000

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.

WORKING WITH EGOTISTS

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Marowitz) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:53:00 +0000

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.

PUNCTUATION

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Marowitz) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:28:00 +0000

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.

CHOOSING THE PLAY

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Marowitz) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:07:00 +0000

‘Choosing the play’ is already something of a false start because in most instances, a play is chosen by a producer or a producing organization and then assigned to a director. But just as often, a director finds a new script or an old one he wishes to revive and persuades some well-heeled management to back it with him at the helm. Occasionally, a group of actors anxious to display their talents will raise the money privately, rent a theatre and subsequently ‘rent’ a director as well. Directors should be wary about accepting these kinds of projects as they almost invariably have some interpretative strings attached (an actress who is dying to startle the world with her bulimic version of “Hedda’ or an overambitious youth desperate to foist his roller-skating ‘Hamlet’ alongside Olivier’s, Gielgud’s and Branagh’s) which only become known once the production has set sail and it is too late to do anything - except perhaps, jump ship.

But assuming this is a play you have yourself chosen because you have a notion as to how it should be mounted and are eager to realize it, there are certain steps which should be taken. If a new play, it is sensible to circulate it among three or four literate friends to see whether they share your enthusiasm. If they do not, it is equally sensible to consider their objections. If these do not dissuade you and you believe the work has virtues which others failed to recognize, proceed by all means. Some of the most successful productions have been of scripts that have been circulating for five, ten sometimes fifteen years, the virtues of which no one previously recognized. If your gut-instinct says, this is worth doing, your gut-instinct is probably your best guide in the matter.

If it is a revival of an established play, it makes sense to do some investigations as to when it was last revived - in what part of town - and whether successfully or unsuccessfully. If it had a healthy run, there is a good likelihood people will not beat down the doors to see it again - unless of course, you have such a startlingly new interpretation it can be given a completely new gloss and guarantees an experience unlike the one previously bestowed.

Once you have eliminated good reasons for not abandoning your choice, there are certain steps you should take in regard to the script.
First of all, you should divide it into its respective parts. Which is to say you should examine to see how it divides itself into its various parts, so that you have a clear notion of its literary structure. This done, there is nothing to prevent you from combining parts or deleting others and giving it a shape commensurate with your notion of what you wish to express through it. But before playing fast and loose with a play’s actual structure, it makes good sense to recognize it for what it is. To be negligent in this matter is to discover, often in the middle or late stage of rehearsals, that you have been proceeding in a straight line whereas the play is essentially curvatious or non-linear. As with the interpretation of a classic work, you can proceed in any direction you like - so long as you recognize that it might be a divergence from what the playwright originally intended. The pitfall is being so obsessed with your reinterpretation of the work that you never see the play in its pristine, original form. Many turkeys have been hatched due to the ego’s insistence that what is in the director’s mind is far superior to that which was originally in the playwright’s. But as a hasty corollary to this warning, I have to add that a really new and fertilizing idea is precisely what an old, established classic is longing for - and if you are fortunate to have digested the original and belched up a masterpiece of your own, heave ho!

It is common, in the case of new plays, for directors to organize Readings or Workshops of the work in question, Occasionally, this can provide some useful input on the material because it lets in outside light. But one always has to bear in mind that a Reading is only the tip of a very deeply-submerged iceberg - only one dimension of a three-dimensional object - and for that reason can be misleading. The same is true of ‘workshops’ which, because they are founded on the premise that the play in question ‘still needs work’, can encourage a process which transfigures the work with ‘improvements’ and ultimately, destroys what original value it may have once possessed. (Dramaturgs are particularly hazardous during this process as they too proceed from a premise: namely, that they know better than the author how to develop and improve his play; a supposition I have never known to be proven true.)

Let us assume, you have avoided all the above pitfalls and you have a notion of what you want to do with this script. It is important to safeguard it for, from the very first discussion of the play, long before the first rehearsal, you will be bombarded with other people’s views of the given material. Occasionally these can be edifying; more often than not, they are misleading or subversive to your original ideas. It is a general rule in the theatre that everyone fancies themselves a critic or a play-doctor and almost everyone will have a ‘bright idea’ as to how a play can be improved. Flee from these as you would a squadron of Valkyries for they are usually only the outpourings of essentially uncreative people who believe they have been blessed by the Muse when in fact, they have only been goosed by the Devil.

ESPRIT DE CORPS

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Marowitz) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:47:00 +0000

Esprit de corps is a military term which refers to the ‘spirit of the company’ and is predicated on the assumption that in order for a congregation of soldiers to operate efficiently and effectively, it is necessary for them to be inspired with a pride in their collective identity and proceed with a common purpose.

It is generally assumed that it is part of the director’s role to provide this stimulus and maintain it throughout the rehearsal period. Different directors use different means to accomplish this task. With some, it takes the form of constantly building up actors’ confidence, whether justified or not, on the dubious assumption that ‘confident’ actors will perform better than insecure ones. But viewed objectively, false confidence is a form of deception, or child psychology on (usually) discerning adults, and should be resisted. Any actor worth his salt knows when he is being pumped up with false confidence – just as he or she knows when their work is in trouble and in need of genuine help. The arguments against ‘false confidence’ are manifold. Not only is it an insult to an actor’s intelligence but it is very likely to backfire when a production, buoyed up with unjustified praise, turns out to be a hopeless turkey. This utterly destroys a director’s credibility and gives him the reputation of being either dishonest or stupid or both.

But a sense of communal identity collectively shared (i.e. esprit de corps) is an invaluable tool in drawing the best out of actors. Rehearsals always have a common purpose: the realization of a playwright’s work by that particular confederation of artists. But it is more likely to be achieved through the palpable interaction of the actors involved than it is being ‘handed down’ from above by a wobbly or insecure director. When a director resorts to false confidence, it is an admission that true confidence is not possible, and since only true confidence can be truly beneficial, the aim of the exercise is defeated.

When a company of actors jointly perceive the meaning of their play and develop the artistic means of realizing it, a ‘communal purpose’ organically arises. And how does this salutary state of affairs come about? It happens when actors discover individual truths which are jointly pursued out of a common quest to achieve shared objectives. Or to put it more simply: when actors feel that the directions into which they are being led coincide with their own understanding of the material at hand; when the director’s conception and the actor’s conception of that conception are one and indivisible. When everything is ‘making sense’ because there are no contradictions between what the actor is being asked to do and what he or she instinctively wants to be doing. When everything ‘feels right’ and directorial suggestions are intuited by the actor before they are even given and a director can honestly say: ‘I was just about to tell you to do that the moment before you did it.’
In short, esprit de corps cannot be imposed from without. If it happens, it happens because there is an artistic continuity and an esthetic harmony between all the members of the company.

Let’s look at it from the other angle.

When an actor feels he is being asked to do something that his nature instinctively rejects, which goes against his understanding of both the role and the play, friction is inevitable. It may be overt or covert but it will be there, and if it is, harmony and ‘confidence’ become impossible to achieve. That’s when one runs up against those ‘artistic differences of opinion” which so often precede cast-replacements, postponements or cancellations; when some unquenchable virus has worked its way into the artistic process and corrupted everything with which it has come into contact. The opposite of ‘esprit de corps’, what one might call the ‘contamination de corps’.

True esprit de corps springs from artistic terrain being cultivated by artists who are in tune with one another. It cannot be grown in a hothouse and then transplanted into alien soil. But one also has to be wary of too great a sense of bonhomie.
It is pleasant to have warm social relations between all the members of a company, but it is not a requisite to good work. Often social harmony works against the objectivity that all rehearsals demand. After you become bosom buddies with your leading actors and regularly go out for a pint with them after every rehearsal, it will become harder and harder to criticize them openly, expunge a misconception of a scene or a confusion about their character’s objectives. Meyerhold, a dictatorial director who was often insensitive to his actors and treated them merely as pawns in his ‘master plan’, produced astounding results in the ‘20s and ‘30s in the Soviet Union. Stanislavsky often had very strained relations with the actors in the Moscow Arts Theatre. John Dexter was a monster to work with; Elia Kazan deliberately sowed dissension between his actors when he felt it would produce the effects he was after. In all of these cases, esprit de corps was not a high priority.

One director I know put it this way: “I am there to collaborate with an actor’s talent, not to become their confessor, their lover, their drinking-companion or even their friend. When workmen are building a house together, they want to make sure the carpenters, the bricklayers, the plumbers, the electricians really know their jobs so they can do theirs. I want equality of craftsmanship, not emotional ties.”

The theatre is a place where temperament and conflict preside; where egos collide with egos; where tempers flare and strong feelings constantly well up and often erupt. But it is also a place where conflicts resolve and mutual affection flourishes. It is the Palace of Ambivalence. It always has been. It always will be. If one cannot come to terms with emotional contradictions of that sort, it is probably no place for you.

SETTLING FOR LESS

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Marowitz) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:34:00 +0000

Every director occasionally makes mistakes and the most common errors are often in the area of casting. It often happens that in the middle of a rehearsal process, a director finds that the actor in a key role simply cannot cut it. What is required of him or her cannot be delivered because it simply does not exist. You made a mistake. You were misled by an exceptional audition or persuaded by other people’s opinions and therefore ignored that small, niggling inner voice that was sending out alarms, and now you are paying the price.

The most expedient remedy is to remove the person that’s posing the problem. - Replacement. - It is often the course that seems the most extreme because a) it may disturb the morale of other members of the company and b) it seems a little heartless to punish another for what, essentially, was your mistake. But if all else has failed, replacement is the most practical course - assuming of course, you can find a new actor that can actually deliver the goods.

But at such times, when the director is suffering an anguish that rarely conveys itself to his company but is no less intense for being suppressed, another impulse rears its ugly head: the impulse to ‘settle for less’. He/she can’t get what this role requires, so I will quietly compromise and come to terms with the inadequacy of the situation. This is like ignoring an ex-ray which clearly indicates you have a tumor. The problem will grow and fester and reach a point where, the only way you will be able to bear the inadequate actor is by refusing to acknowledge his presence. But the other members of the company, and subsequently, the audience, will be less inclined to ‘settle for less’. They will receive the full brunt of the problem you tried to sweep under the carpet, and whether they recognize it or not, will react negatively to what they see and hear.

What then, are the choices? Either fire the artist or retain them and accept the harm they inflict on your show. There is a third way and it is the hardest of all – hard on the actor as well as the director. It consists of openly acknowledging the actor’s insufficiency and refusing to let it fester and infect the surrounding context. It involves direct confrontation and brutal honesty. An unqualified acknowledgement of precisely what is lacking in the actor’s performance and a joint resolve to try to supply it: a process which is equivalent to entering intensive care.

This involves stripping away the accumulated traits, readings, inflections and conceptions that have been assiduously built up over the rehearsal period. Going back to square one. Abandoning the text, employing improvisation and a variety of acting exercises and in-depth maneuvers to ‘unblock’ the actor and cause him actively to rethink everything he has been doing from the very first reading. It also involves a certain humility on the part of the director; acknowledging that he too has been wrong in allowing certain tendencies to develop which have led only into a cul-de-sac. Together, the director and the actor drill past the text and the sub-text to that amorphous area below which theatrical gestation first begins.

The nature of the exercises and the subjects of the improvs will always be directly related to the specifics of the problem being tackled and it is best for this work to be done only between the actor and the director and those one or two characters with whom the performer os obliged to interact. It should not be a ‘company project’ conspicuously carried out before all the members of the cast. On the contrary, it can only work if it becomes the subject of intense private explorations between the problem-actor, his immediate playing-partner and the director.

It is a painful process because it is predicated on the belief that there is something terribly wrong and drastic measures have to be employed to correct the situation. But as with a behavioral problem thrust into the hands of a benevolent psychoanalyst, a measure of good will has to exist on both sides. The ‘process’ is not a punishment but an extreme remedy in order to effect a dramatic change where one is desperately required. It is time-consuming and laborious; it can be injurious to the nervous system and can go terribly wrong if a breakthrough is not effected. But when it works, it can salvage not only the actor’s performance but improve the overall texture of the entire production.

In a production of “Othello”, I was confronted with just such a problem in regard to the actor playing the lead role. He was a black actor with a strong voice and a powerful presence but, in all of his scenes, he projected a suave and unruffled façade – even when he was being diabolically manipulated by Iago or cruelly contemptuous of an allegedly faithless Desdemona. It was as if he was afraid to reveal the fire that was burning inside of his character or unleash the ferocity which had been stirred up by Iago’s provocations. Perhaps I had made a wrong casting-choice; had been duped by the actor’s natural attributes; his resonant bass voice and strong physical presence. But I refused to admit that was the case. The actor seemed to have all the attributes needed for the role and there was something either I or he was doing that was preventing the emergence of the character.

We went into private sessions. I was deliberately provocative; I created harsh even humiliating exercises which forced him to react strongly, and little by little, he took the bait. We segued from improvs back towards the Shakespearean text. Iago, with specific instructions from myself which had nothing to do with the logic or truthfulness of the scenes, also goaded and provoked the actor into aggressive behavior – so much so that on one occasion I had to break up a minor scuffle. After an arduous eight or ten sessions, something was loosed in the actor which could be transferred to the character. Rehearsals progressed rapidly to the preview stage. Everyone in the company, who had been tacitly as worried as myself, breathed a sigh of relief. The actor had ‘found his role’. Othello had arrived.

In this case, it turned out that deep within the actor’s psyche there was the fear that if he showed the cruel and vicious aspects of a black character too blatantly, it would in some way reinforce the prejudice that many people felt towards blacks and so, unconsciously, he was pulling all his punches. Had I been an analyst (which I wasn’t), I might have confronted the actor with the nature of this block and we could have discussed it openly. But since I was a director and he an actor, the symptoms of the problem had to be routed out without direct reference to their cause. It didn’t matter. The arduous ‘extra sessions’ managed to unlock what the actor himself had placed in a tight, firmly locked compartment. I suppose, in the early dark days of those rehearsals, I might have ‘settled for less’ but that would have meant countenancing an interpretation which was at odds with the playwright’s intentions and I felt that was an unconscionable. But I have to admit that in other, similar circumstances, I lamely accepted inadequacies which there was simply no time to remedy and I did ‘settle for less’.

Those are the sins of omission which a director never forgets or ever forgives.

OTHERNESS

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Marowitz) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:02:00 +0000

When I started in the theatre, I believed a director was the chessmaster, the stage the board and the actors, the chess-pieces. In my mind, the actors' prime function was to delineate a preconceived pattern of the director's making. The hardest thing, I found as a director, was getting actors to move about the board - for I realized that every cross, every sit and every rise was an expression of some intricate inner necessity which either told the story or obfuscated it. I spent a lot of time doodling diagrams on the margins of scripts to insure that people would execute my choreography.

Most of these preparations were in vain. Invariably my actors' instincts sent them in different directions and inevitably, my master-plan would be upset by their maddening unpredictability. Gradually, I abandoned the whole notion of a master-plan and came to rehearsals with no prescribed moves at all, armed only with a grasp of what I thought the scene was about. As we worked, I allowed myself to be guided by impulses received during rehearsals - a cross here, a turn there - allowing things spontaneously to combust. I took this to be a great step forward because I had stopped directing myself and began instead to find the 'directions' indicated by the actors in the give-and-take of rehearsals.

It is generally agreed that the pattern-of-movement in a play is the externalization of the way a director visualizes it and, by and large, actors tend to accept the spatial relationships imposed by the director. But after I had relinquished my prerogative to work from a blueprint, I was taking my cue, not from my own preconceptions, but from what I took to be the spontaneous impulses of my actors. I was still ‘directing’ in that I accepted certain moves and modified others, but in a very crucial sense, the fulcrum had shifted.

As time went on, I came to realize that the natural impulse of most actors was towards what one might call conditioned social reflexes; rising to greet someone who had come into the room; pacing about to convey anxiety or confusion; slumping into a chair to express contemplation of fatigue. It was not so much that these movements were false but that they signaled emotional responses which had as much to do with ingrained stage-custom as they did the patterns of human behavior. It soon occurred to me that contrary motion or contradictory movement could be just as effective since people often moved in order to compensate for what they were feeling, and what they were feeling was usually very different from what they were saying.

Later I came to understand that behind the realm of psychology there lurked a deeper motivation, one which characters themselves were often unaware. If you dug deeply enough, you could uproot a physical pattern which stood in the same relation to social behavior as the latent content of dreams did to their manifest content. I came to see that physical movement, by and large, was a language, like verbal language, which had as many layers as the individual had secrets to hide or emotions to suppress. Behavior, far from being motion reflected in a looking-glass, was more like light refracted through a prism.

I started to reverse all of my earlier findings. Rather than accept the signal impulses which 'came naturally' to actors and actresses, I delved into what was deeper than their apparent 'natures,' seeking that which their 'natures' were avoiding or denying. As I could not accept my own first instincts in regard to the geography of the scene, so I could not accept those of the actors either. We both had to go further than our first instincts - into areas which were as clouded for them as they were for myself.

But a director, not being an actor, has not conditioned his body to ferret out and then express what is most deeply embedded in his psyche. He may divine it or probe it intellectually, but only the actor can find it kinetically; can bring it to the surface. The director's job was to provide the logistical support needed by the actor to make those self-discoveries and to reject the practiced impulses that frequently blocked the way towards unearthing what lay deeper.

It appeared that inside of every actor there was a hidden actor. Although he could occasionally be glimpsed behind language or characterization, he never wholly surfaced. He often had 'moments' or 'flashes' where certain remarkable things were glimpsed. Through exercises that transcended his normal social functioning, the hidden actor could occasionally be revealed. His uniqueness stood in striking contrast to the more conventional personage that normally negotiated on his behalf. He was much freer and uninhibited than his surface-self and in much closer contact with his deeper instincts. More essence than matter, he could nevertheless shape matter so that it became essential. Although intrinsically abstract, he was constantly looking for ways to make his abstractness concrete. When given free reign, he could transform his characters, investing them with the uniqueness of his own being. The shell of studied characteristics would split apart to reveal a fascinating human being unlike anyone else. When that hidden nature coalesced with inspiration, it brought inert material to life and the hidden actor, now revealed, astonished everyone with whom he came into contact.

How to reach that hidden actor and marshal his resources became the object of intensive labor; a task made more strenuous by the fact that no formula existed by which he could be routed out. It was as hit and miss as everything else that took place in the rehearsal-situation. But in this case, one knew what one was searching for could never be found in the superficies of rehearsal; everything in the production-procedure militated against its discovery. It was in the resourcefulness and inventiveness of the hidden actor that the surface-actor could break through and install the best part of himself on stage. But ironically, it was the timidities and anxieties of the surface-actor that created the barrier which obstructed his emergence. The prime object of rehearsals then, was to create the conditions by which the surface-actor could be usurped and the hidden actor installed. The way to bring this about depended on a delicate conjunction between director and performer. The certainty that this 'other actor' was there justified all the anguish and frustration involved in working with his superficial counterpart.
Insights about acting-chemistry threw the written word into a different perspective. Text yes, and behind that, sub-text, but what was behind that? Character yes, but from what stage in a person's life? Their adolescence, their childhood, their infancy? If the child lives on in the adult, what portion of the adult is made up of the child? What cloaking modifications have been made by the adult? At what point in the civilizing process does the savage get entirely eliminated leaving only the socially-adjusted individual? If a successful and effective black General, fiendishly manipulated into vengeance and jealousy, can turn into something primitive and murderous, does that mean that the upright General was merely a facade? Would the facade have remained in tact if the psychological pressures had never been applied? What would Hamlet have become if never prodded by the visitation of his ghostly father? Would he simply have adjusted to the new dispensation, married Ophelia, suppressed his regal ambitions, made up with his mother and settled for a cabinet post, perhaps Minister of Education, in the new regime?

All of these questions are prompted by the underlying question: what does the inner-structure of a character consist of, and to what extent should these non-manifest possibilities be taken into account in his social persona, given the fact that, under extraordinary circumstances, anyone of them can rise to the surface.

If each character's personal motivation was unique unto himself, was it not false and arbitrary to try to unify them according to one man's (the director's) vision? But then, if every character was given free reign, what did that portend for the unity of the whole? Was a disparate and unvariegated result justifiable on the grounds that it more faithfully reflected the way people actually behaved? But then art, I reminded myself, was not primarily concerned with verisimilitude. The artists - playwright, director and acting-company - made their own unity in the work of art which paralleled or augmented the reality on which it was ostensibly based.
The business of rehearsals was finding things which were not immediately apparent, but if one fell into a formulaic search, it became something of a child's treasure hunt - unearthing only what had already been planted in order to be found. But what was one looking for and where in the actor's psyche and the playwright's material, did one conduct these searches? And with what tools does one carry out these investigations?

Intellectual analysis was a given - no sooner did one read a play or examine one's role than the mind began to suggest a number of interpretative possibilities. The actor could 'experience' information through improvisation and exercise which might cast light on hidden areas of the work. Then there were the leads provided by fellow-actors who, in trying to solve their own problems, threw up provocative challenges to others. One had to make sure there was an open line of communication to fellow-actors which meant reaching out to them without impeding one's own inventions. But in gainfully employing all these tools, there was an initial obstruction which had first to be removed and that was the most formidable obstacle of all.

Just as the actor had his baggage of tricks, mannerisms, short-cuts and inculcated clichés, so the director was burdened with prior assumptions, coagulated beliefs, old admirations unconsciously yearning to be duplicated - not to mention a whole storehouse of received wisdom which, once acquired tended to go unchallenged. The commencement of rehearsals was like the meeting of two magicians each balancing his own bag of tricks on his back and each assuming his was the largest and most valuable. Before one ever got to the issues of the play, one had to negotiate the smoldering but tacit demands of each participant. This involved wheedling, deviousness and dollops of child-psychology on the part of the director; treachery, elusiveness and duplicity on the part of the actor. Meanwhile the author stood by watching his work unravel and wondering if, when it was all put together again, it would ever resemble his original creation. Illusions of grandeur and premonitions of disaster hung heavy in the air. To make matters worse, the tyrannical clock forbade experiment or time spent investigating tantalizing side-turnings which, if explored, might have yielded marvels.

The attitude behind the work became defensive - to ward off those conditioned reflexes which like diseased cells prevented healthy ones from forming. A new strategy was required to avoid the old pitfalls. The notion of ur-text was considered valuable, if only because it held out the promise of life beyond sub-text. Taking an oblique path to the material via improvisation and root-exercises was also beneficial in that it widened the parameters of a written work and allowed ideas to enter its air-space from every point on the compass. As soon as one saw a play as part of a greater entity, it gave actors an opportunity to discover more ramifications than could be found in the closed-circuit work-of-art. It also reminded artists that a slice-of-life, no matter what its dimensions, had to be sliced from something greater than itself and, by identifying that larger mass, it widened the actors' scope and encouraged them to look beyond the parameters set by the playwright. The actor was raised to the level of both the playwright and the director, releasing him from his traditional subjugation to text and mise-en-scene. He was offered a major role in collaboration rather than the self-effacing role of dutiful interpreter. It also, I must admit, opened certain floodgates which encouraged egotism and idiosyncrasy to run riot - but there never is a genuine breakthrough either in art or science that doesn't carry with it the danger of abuse.

The secret at the heart of theatre - if not all art - is complexity. By fastening onto one reductive system which seemed to explain and codify it, we were evading much larger issues. Experience was not there to be compressed into a formula but translated into as many theorems as seemed to pertain to its endless variety. The quest was not for a system or a method, but a state of mind which succeeded in capturing the theatre's ever-changing multiplicity. Systematization and methodology fostered the delusion of having cracked the nut but no one system or methodology could crack every nut. There were more nuts than there were systems to contain them.

In order to achieve the most definitive theatrical result, a technique was needed which was at least as complex as the problem. One that didn't complacently accept the notion that acting was merely projected personality and theatre, the automatic assembly of the playwright's words. It was precisely this kind of niggling dissatisfaction with prevailing standards which had inspired earlier artists to probe more deeply, to reject the familiar and the customary, the manufactured replicas and the reasonable facsimiles. Just as Stanislavsky, Brecht and Artaud had rejected the reactionary practices of their predecessors, so it was beholden upon us to challenge the implicit social and behavioral customs which ran beneath what we, parceling them off from larger in- divisible things, called acting-technique. To be an actor then, meant being a critic of both art and life and, to be an effective actor, that criticism had to be converted into practical maneuvers which combated the banalities of art in order to avoid reproducing the clichés of life.

Ploddingly, through a series of stumbles and detours, collisions with stone-walls and wanderings up blind-alleys, I came to realize that the actor doesn't so much 'build a character' as step into a magnetic field where he is affected by emanations from the ideas, impulses and environment dictated by the production. He doesn't so much 'become a character' or 'live a role' as absorb actions, feelings and experiences relative to his character and, in so doing, triggers like-actions, like-feelings and like-experiences in his own being; that the actor is a conductor-of- energies already mobilized and ready to leap into parallel situations; that he doesn't 'perform' so much as allow the psychic functioning of his character to release universal information already bred in his bone and etched in his memory; that phylogeny precedes psychology and that the physical is only the most conspicuous aspect of the metaphysical. The whole notion of constructing a performance - brick by brick, beat by beat, choice by choice - is a bogus linear illusion fostered by over a hundred years of outworn acting theory and inculcated by a mechanistic philosophy which modem science has effectively refuted, although its residue remains lodged in the actors' mind and locked in his musculature.

The actor is not the walking duality described by thinkers as diverse as Gordon Craig, Constantin Stanislavsky, Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht but a force-field where memories and habits originated in pre-history and the primordial slime, dynamically interact, and that every evolutionary development which has refined the human organism over the millenia plays some part and exerts some influence in the living present. Being an actor is not so much a question of 'training' and 'development' but of awakening susceptibilities to the play's situations, stated and implied; the playwright's intentions, latent and overt; the director's interpretation, articulated and inchoate.

What needed to be abandoned was the idea that an actor was an accretion of conscious maneuvers such as memorization, blocking and psychological intent instead of a catalytic agent which synthesized all of these things, filtering them through an acting-metabolism which enabled him to recreate past experience rooted in conscious and pre-conscious memory and which, under favorable conditions, could manifest itself. Acting was not something you 'do' but something done to you if you were free enough to discard clogging formulae and reductive egotism and open yourself up to a kind of eternal consciousness of which personal psychology 'was only the tiniest fraction.

If one recoiled from abstractions such as these and took refuge in nuts-and-bolts, in 'units and objectives,' in provable premises and common practices, one was cozying oneself into an hermetically-sealed capsule which, though it looked like the macrocosm, was actually a microcosm.

* * * *

The theatre is a serial art; actors and directors go from play to play often working in very different circumstances and on highly contrasted material. Unless blessed with the continuity of a permanent ensemble working in the same venue, each production represents a new start. The insights and refinements created with a previous group of actors do not automatically transfer to a new company. One has to begin all over again and the tendency to do so tends to mechanize a process which should be ongoing and regenerative. Many of the problems thrown up by work in the theatre would either be solved or considerably reduced if the same director worked with the same actors for an extended period of time. After a while, a group intelligence is engendered which becomes greater than the director's and the actors' intelligence combined. But so long as the theatre remains an ad hoc art form, it will be necessary to formulate a modus operandi to enable it start afresh each time.

The key is to maintain a kind of flexible skepticism - a deep-seated reluctance to accept what comes too easily (often automatically) and then construe it as being 'natural.' What comes most 'naturally' to both actors and directors is the tendency to repeat themselves; to print out yet again what has been pre-programmed.

Whenever a company of actors assemble, the onus is always the same: they must for the sake of the work before them, form an ensemble, provide a gloss peculiar to themselves and their work-situation, realize a joint conception of the work in conjunction with the other members of the artistic team and resolve not to repeat what has been done before or promote novelty for its own sake. Because the theatre has to a large extent become routine, play-production has become standardized. No sooner do rehearsals begin than artists feel the pressure to deliver results. Because the text is the most tangible element in the process, it is clung to for dear life. Language is memorized, organized, physically circumscribed and, before the most elementary secrets of the play are explored or discovered, coagulated. During the process, there are gestures to characterization, allusions to sub-text and lip-service to thematic ideas, but the object of the journey is to arrive at one's destination as promptly as possible. The landscape is never glimpsed and, like suburbanites having dutifully caught the 7:04, the commuters conceal themselves behind newspapers so as to have only the most minimal contact with their fellow-passengers. When the train finally pulls in to the station, everyone goes their own way.

But the actor's journey must be the antithesis of the commuter's. There should be dialogue, discussion and the vigorous interchange of ideas all along the way. Every bit of landscape needs to be assimilated; every passing observation analyzed and disputed. On arrival, everyone should jam into the same taxi and be driven to the same address. The arrival should be thought of as the springboard for a new departure; the performance, not the pay-off of rehearsals but, the first phase of the grander journey which is the run-of-the-play.

What hampers us are age-old obstacles: complacency, habitude, ego, and the irresistible tug of the familiar. The economics of the theater promote the idea that an actor is a unit-of-labor purchased at the lowest possible price and then inserted into a larger mechanism which, like him or herself, has limited usefulness and is easily replaceable. But the transient nature of the actor's art is belied by the fact that it has been extant for countless centuries and although generations come and go, varieties of perception contained in timeless artifacts survive in a world without end. That sense of being part of something vast and endlessly renewing is what should give the actor a sense of higher calling which no amount of professional indignity can demean. The actor who feels he is being 'slotted into a role' will act accordingly. The actor who believes that he is being summoned to perform a task which has exercised the keenest sensibilities of both antiquity and modern times, will recognize that only the most strenuous personal effort will qualify him to take his place in the history of the art to which he aspires.

We're all lying in the gutter, said Wilde, but some of us are looking at the stars. The angle of one's head makes all the difference.

READING THE PLAY

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Marowitz) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:04:00 +0000

It has become the custom, particularly in avant-garde companies and unorthodox productions, to replace a first reading with improvisations or exercises in some way related to the underbelly of the work about to be undertaken. Joan Littlewood began work on Brendan Behan’s “The Hostage” with the actors being marched around the roof of their theatre in London’s East End trying to inculcate the kind of regimentation that many of its characters would have experienced in their military occupations. Several companies find it useful to perform a series of sound-and-movement exercises as a preamble to rehearsals in order to loosen up actors and get them to interact with each other without the constrictions that a text will shortly impose.

But these are the exceptions. In most cases, the first day is devoted to the first read-through of the play either with or without the presence of the playwright depending on circumstances. It is a day usually charged with tension as actors feel they have to justify the fact that they have been hired and consequently, try to prove themselves to their fellow actors. Or contrariwise, some actors (usually of the Method persuasion) will deliberately underplay their roles clearly indicating that, since no firm decisions about interpretation have yet been made, they refuse to assert feelings or attitudes about which they are not yet certain. At the first read-through of Peter Brook’s production of “King Lear” at Stratford-upon-Avon starring Paul Scofield, the company began reading listlessly and without much purport but when Scofield went at the text hell-for-leather, they all took his lead and gave a spirited rendition of the play. Scofield wanted publicly to ‘test’ the words he had been studying for many weeks in private and so dove in. Because of the high respect in which he was held by the other members of the company, they felt honor-bound to join him.

The degree of intensity conveyed during a first read-through is very much an individual matter unless the Director cues the tenor of the Reading towards either quiet reflection or full-blooded histrionics. A spirited and all-out reading has several advantages over a subdued or inaudible mouthing of the entire text. It gives the company a chance to experience the shape and sound of the material at hand - which private study before rehearsals cannot provide. It can also be used as a barometer by the Director to test the preconceptions actors have of their roles. Often the root of a characterization problem is immediately revealed in the First reading. One sees in the blink of an eye, an actor’s misconception, a deeply-rooted faux pax which is taking him in the wrong direction, and it signals the remedial action which will have to be undertaken once rehearsals begin in earnest. The great disadvantage of an ‘all-out’ first reading is that an actor succumbs to his initial interpretation of the role and the final performance, after weeks of rehearsal, is little more than a gloss on the rendering he gave when he first sat with script in hand. That is a good argument for a slow, gradual and uncertain start; a cautious crawl before the actor feels able to walk upright.

Certain directors believe the first rehearsal should also be something of a seminar on the play with hefty analyses of writer’s intentions and articulated insights about the play’s intellectual content, social milieu and psychological sub-text. If the playwright is present, that tendency is more likely to hold sway. Even directors, in the presence of authors, feel the need to prove themselves, exhibit their intellectual credentials and articulate their beliefs. It is sometimes useful to hear the playwrights speak openly about their play just to see what seems to be important to them. But in my experience, most playwrights shy away from declarations of intent. They know what they have written and why it has taken the shape it has and rather than incline actors to the author’s version of the material, they prefer to let the play speak to the actors in its own voice to see what will organically evolve. Playwrights like Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter flatly refused to discuss the rationale of their work in any terms and relied almost entirely on the impetus of the material on the talents of their players. That is a sensible policy as it puts the onus on actors to find their own way, draw their own conclusions and exercise their own imaginations.

In the earliest stage of my production of Vaclav Havel’s “Temptation” at the National Theatre in Prague, the playwright spoke only of the circumstances under which the play was written, its gestation-period while he was incarcerated by the Communist regime. He also described how he was gradually seduced by the idea of diabolism which came from his reading of Thomas Mann’s “Doctor Faustus”, Goethe’s ”Faust” and Marlowe’s ”Tragical History of Doctor Faustus”. Nothing explicit was ever spoken about the ‘meaning of the play’ or its author’s ‘intentions’ but the details of its progeny cast a palpable spell on the company and unconsciously directed their thoughts to the issues underlying Havel’s work.

If the actor’s job is to discover the sub-text which gives life to the text of his play, the more he probes its spiritual and philosophic roots, the greater his eventual discoveries will be.

TALKING TO ACTORS

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Marowitz) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:09:00 +0000

Everyone has a language of their own – even if ostensibly we are all speaking English. Class-differences, where people were born, where they were raised, what intellectual stimuli they received or didn’t receive – all of these factors make up the language we speak. On some level of social intercourse, we all understand each other, but that doesn’t alter the fact that each person’s idiom differs from another. A boy brought up in the rough-and-tumble atmosphere of a ghetto will possess a frame of reference very different from that of a boy brought up in a British Public School. Their language will reflect their differing social orientations; comprehension of certain words will ring differently in their respective ears. Just as everyone has their own penmanship and their own set of fingerprints, we all have our own personal glossary and, in the theatre where communication between director and his cast is the quintessential creative tool, it is important to find the language peculiar to each actor in order to be properly understood.

If, for instance, you are working with an actor who is intelligent, well-read and thinks conceptually, you can make reference to philosophical or psychoanalytical terms and, quite probably, he will grasp your meaning and your suggestions will bear fruit. But if you are working with an actor whose education stopped at junior high-school, whose vernacular is simple, unadorned and basic, those same terms will not only be confusing, but irritating as well.

What is the portent of ‘a direction’ anyway? Here is Glenda Jackson on the subject referring to work with John Barton, Michel St. Denis and Peter Brook at the Royal Shakespeare company:

“If a director comes as Barton and St. Denis did, with everything taped, very clear on specifics and how each scene should be expressed, what is never there, in that kind of work situation, is the real energy of the scene. Which is very different from somebody like Peter Brook, who may have no idea at all about the specifics but is absolutely clear on the kind of energy that each scene has to pour into an auditorium. He may simply say: “Well, it’s just on too small a level. It’s very nice but that’s not really what the scene is about. The scene is about a clash of titanic forces.” Well, if somebody says to you “clash of titanic forces” you already have to look and think in a different way and what you then find to express that is always exciting and interesting and invariably organic. Whereas if somebody says, oh, you know, ”He gives her the letter” or “She kisses his hand” or something, and simply gives you a number of specific actions to perform, I find that utterly demoralizing.”

In the instance cited, Brook found a direct path to Jackson’s imagination. He used verbal imagery that gave the actress a kick-start into a general direction which enabled her to find relevant particulars. Knowing Brook, I know there are other actresses with whom he would employ much simpler terms, words more closely approximating “specific actions to perform” and they would be happily accepted by these performers because easily understood.

With some actors, it is sometimes useful to find terms that are specific to their particular frames-of-reference, once you discover what they are. I once had an actor who was an old cinema-buff and when I told him the scene needed “more of a touch of the George Zuccos”, he knew precisely what I meant. Another actor was a car-enthusiast, and when I suggested a speech needed to be ‘nitrus oxidized’, he immediately leapt on the suggestion and charged up his interpretation. I am not suggesting that a director needs to acquire the full vernacular of each and every actor. In most cases, basic English does the trick but if one is trying for a nuance or something that has to be dredged up from a much greater depth, finding precisely the right words is like finding precisely the right key to open a chest or precisely the right power-tool to get a carpentry-job efficiently done.

The other point, alluded to by Glenda Jackson, is that a suggestion directed to the imagination can be much more effective than giving actors specific physical tasks to perform. Specificity of that kind speaks only to the actor’s motor-actions, whereas a stimulating or provocative suggestion couched in a vivid simile or metaphor may activate creative buds that lie beyond signal reactions. Of course, an excess of the latter can easily generate semantic confusion and if a director is too fancy, it not only confuses actors but angers them as well. The great Russian actress and teacher Maria Ouspenskaya, an alumni of the Moscow Arts Theatre, once asked an acting-student to try to ‘be’ a chocolate malted. He tried with all his might to create the essence of chocolate-maltedness in his voice and body. When he was finished, Ouspenskaya shook her head and said in her Slavic-lilted English: “No, you vass vanilla!” - Directorial distinctions of that kind can drive actors to drink, or worse, into TV soap-operas.

The other point about direction is that it shouldn’t be ‘indirection’. If a director out of courtesy or timidity or fear of giving offence, or a thousand other lame rationali-zations, pulls his punches, he will only exacerbate his problems. Obviously one shouldn’t be insulting or contemptuous, but one should be direct, choosing precisely the right adjectives and adverbs to describe what is being presented by the actor and what is being sought. Some directors are blunt, others equivocate. The blunt ones can ruffle feathers because all actors have egos and no one likes to be found wanting. But acting is a profession for adults and if actors are hypersensitive to criticism, they are in the wrong business. Equivocating, finding weaker words to convey strong objections, does a disservice to both actor and director. A good actor will respect honest criticism frankly expressed; a hyper-sensitive actor may take umbrage, but nine times out of ten, the former actor’s performance will be improved and the offended actor will come around. If one wants to achieve honest results, honesty among colleagues is unquestionably the best policy.

APHORISMS FOR THE YOUNG (AND NOT SO YOUNG) ACTOR

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Marowitz) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:50:00 +0000

A bad actor is someone who believes that speaking verse means no longer speaking English.

Perversity is the name we give to objectionable originality.

Creating a role before rehearsals commence is like preparing a meal in June which you intend to eat in December.

If the opening-night is the birth of the performance, doesn't it stand to reason that by the closing-night it should have grown into something else?

An actor who is himself lacking in character will always diminish the characters he is playing. An interesting actor is a gas-pump; a dull actor, a siphon.

Inspiration is what happens when you temporarily loosen the grip on all your most firmly-held convictions.

The most infectious disease in the theatre is boredom. No sooner does the actor feel it than it spreads to everyone else.

If Shakespeare were alive today, he'd probably make a bee-line to the female mud-wrestling.

In rehearsals, the discovery of a contradiction in one's role is like realizing that you've boarded the wrong plane.

Actors spend a good part of their lives analyzing the greatest works of dramatic literature. They probe the deepest motives of their characters and try to correlate them to the themes of the plays they are performing. In researching their work, they study different periods of history, manners, customs and philosophies. They delve into psychology and search for motivation. They dissect language and discriminate between what ancient words used to mean and what they mean today. They probe text, challenge directors, are avid readers of criticism but, as a group, are invariably considered to be non-intellectual. - Compared to most brokers, salesmen, attornies, accountants, journalists, publicists, tradesmen, soldiers, politicians, or clerics, they are mental giants.

Assigning an actor to a vocal coach in the middle of a production is like applying a band-aid to a broken leg.

An actor who burrows so deeply into his role that he severs contact with his fellow-players is like a man digging his own grave in the mistaken belief that he is prospecting for gold.

The worst insult to an actor is being left to his own devices after a director has tried and failed to achieve a desired result.

If, while the actors are performing, the public hears only the playwright's voice, the theatre is being abused. If, after the performance, the public recalls only the actor's voice and not the playwright's, a like offense has been committed.

The actor who prides himself on being instinctive rather than intellectual is like a man who claims that since he has eyes he doesn't need ears.

The most bloodcurdling moment in the theatre is produced when an actor looks into another actor's eyes and sees there only the terror of forgetfulness.

Historically speaking, the avant-garde was a turn of the century phenomenon. To be labelled 'avant garde' today usually means the work in question is about a hundred years out of date.

The mark of a strong actor is his desire to be surrounded by people better than himself. The mark of a weak actor, the paranoia occasioned by precisely the same thing.

The actor who leaves rehearsals without at least one idea more than when he arrived ought to volunteer to have his salary docked.

I've got a System said the Russian . I've got Theory said the German. I've got a Method said the American. I've got a distinct pain in the butt, says the public.

An insatiable desire for stardom is often the creative artist's most effective fuel. Desperately wanting to be famous often unlocks creative reserves that are shut tight to people who are indifferent to career.

The actor wants love. The director wants power. The playwright wants fame. The public wants twenty minutes off the second act. Nobody gets what they want.

A director returning to a play after it has opened and launched its run is like a man trying to revive a love affair with a mistress who has since married and had twelve chldren.

Nothing is but interpretation makes it so.

I rethink therefore I am.

For a director, relinquishing a fallacious idea is like losing a limb. For an actor, it's like sprouting wings.

The best way to escape the tyranny of the clock is to fill up the minutes and ignore the hours.

There are three people who should be summarily executed in the theatre: 1) the stage-manager who, slave to the clock, ends a rehearsal when an actor is in the full flush of creativity, 2) the actor who, in order to 'save himself' for the performance, plays run-throughs at half-cock and 3) the director who believes that the best way to deal with a bad actor is to fill him with false confidence.

An actor who cannot bear the sting of a director's criticisms will have to bear the bludgeon of an audience's rejection.

A bad costume-designer uses an actor as a mannequin; a good one, as a canvas.

Sometimes there is more animosity in a dressing-room than is to be found in the collected works of Marlowe, Strindberg, Mamet or John Osborne. A warm-up in hell never leads to a performance in heaven.

The face of the actor who vigorously nods his agreement to a director's criticism but tacitly rejects it, never throws back a reflection in a dressing-room mirror.

A rehearsal that doesn't begin in the boiler-room will never make it to the penthouse.

The hardest thing for a director ever to get out of an actor is the right inflection. An inflection is the expression of a subtlety-of-thought and an actor incapable of having that thought can never articulate it convincingly. That is why explaining the meaning of a line is always preferable to demonstrating how it should be read.

It's a trade-off. If the actor releases an emotion, the audience may register it, but may not feel it in their gut. If the actor subdues an emotion merely implying its existence, the drama is taking place in the appropriate arena: the public imagination.

A set design that looks complete without a single actor in front of it is usually flawed in some subtle but fundamental way.

In life, we never dissociate feeling from language. We feel, we speak. Only in the theatre, do we first learn the words, and then add the feelings. - Like Hebrews, reading from right to left.

Often, the only consolation of an actor who is thoroughly disliked by all his fellow-actors is that he is beloved by the public.

Just as the child is totally oblivious of the doctor who has delivered him, the actor after an opening-night cannot believe he didn't emerge into the world entirely on his own volition.

A dramaturg is a pimp who takes a fee from both the whore and the john.

A photo-call attended by members of the press represents an incursion of ends into means. It brings hard, cold, careerist thoughts into a realm which, for weeks, has been carefully sealed off from such considerations. It remind actors that there will be a public reckoning to all the private work in which they have been engaged. The best way to handle a photo-call is not to have one.

The actor who gets buoyed up by the enthusiasm of a moronic audience is like an addict getting his kicks from placebos.

The last refuge of an actor imprisoned in a hopeless turkey which has been demolished by all the critics, is always: "The audience enjoyed it."

The actor's unshakeable conviction that he is embroiled in the worst piece of crap ever assembled on any stage can be instantaneously banished by one insincere compliment.

The successful actor of contemporary plays who is afraid to tackle Shakespeare is the equivalent of the dieter who claims to have lost twenty pounds but refuses to step on a scale to prove it.

The best way to gauge the effect of a play is the morning after. If its memory hasn’t made it through the night, it's probably nothing to write home about.

The best way to exacerbate an acting-problem is for a director who cannot put his finger on its cause, to bring it to the actor's attention.

Art which isn't fun isn't art.