Feed my hunger!!!

OK, I know that I can be very anal when it comes to those hidden qualities of a performing arts practitioner; commitment, dedication, good communication and time-keeping, stamina and continuity, and above all, humility.
Such things were driven into my psyche during the initial twenty years of my apprenticeship in the British professional theatre. The very idea that my own personal desires had priority over the needs of the production was not one that ever occurred to me.
That I only worked on the understanding that my personal needs were factored into a training, rehearsal, or production schedule was an alien concept and totally unheard of… and by ‘personal needs’ here I am specifically talking about time-outs for going shopping, for watching a favourite TV programme, for visiting family, dinner with a friend, taking the car in for a service, etc., etc., and so forth the list is endless.
Was I being exploited?
By the ubiquitous PC standards of today, then yes, I probably was occasionally exploited by an unscrupulous director or producer; but then, the very idea of anything being PC was not a part of the public consciousness during those times, and we never even considered the act of willingly working our nuts off and doing whatever had to be done in the pursuit of excellence in our chosen art and craft, to be adverse behaviour. The important words are ‘Willingly’, ‘Pursuit of Excellence’, and ‘Chosen’.
We all had one common objective, from Producer/Director right down to the ASM’s and Stage Crew, which was to produce the best possible production out of whatever resources we could make available.
I’ll never forget the words of my first Stage Director, when, as a newly arrived assistant stage manager at a repertory theatre, I was handed a list of period props a mile long which were needed for the show… “You must provide all these props for rehearsals as quickly as possible; tomorrow morning would be good. You can beg them, borrow them, steal them, or as a last resort, you can buy them.… but if you buy them, you’re fired.” I was terrified!
I worked non-stop with my two co-ASM’s to accumulate everything, which included a old brass double-bed, a suit of medieval armor, a bottle of champagne that had to be opened and drunk each performance, along with two hot cooked-meals that came out of a cast-iron cooking range, and a one-hundred year old newspaper, amongst a myriad other more mundane items.
What we couldn’t immediately find, beg borrow or steal, we found substitute props which the acting company (I was also playing a walk-on role) could use during their daily rehearsals. In one day we managed to get all these ‘working’ props together in the rehearsal room. By the end of the week we had discovered the whereabouts of every ‘Actual’ prop that would be used for the performance. By the end of the second week, (we opened on Monday night) we had every ‘Actual’ prop either in rehearsal or in the store ready for the Get-In overnight on Saturday after the previous show finished its final performance.
The meals, in the form of tinned stew, potatoes and vegetables, were donated by Smedley’s Food Co. in return for a advert in the programme, and were delivered to us by them in a very large lorry. The butler arrived from a nearby stately home with a horse-box full of period furniture AND a suit of armor which the friendly ‘Lord of the Manor’ had been persuaded to lend us (once we offered to muck-out his stables one morning a week). The champagne was actually ginger beer that I made myself in the props-room and put in old Moet bottles (thanks Mum for the recipe). The local newspaper office printed us a replica of one of their old newspapers their archives, for two free tickets. AND we found an old brass bed on a dump-site and wheeled it through the town back to the theatre on it’s wheels; eventually being escorted by a policeman on a bicycle. (‘cos we didn’t have a license to drive a bed on the public road.)
We spent maybe one pound on bus fares, postage stamps, and a few pennies on a bit of ginger-root and some yeast, during the whole process. The show opened and was a hit. We all felt as though WE were personally responsible for it’s success and felt great pride in the production.
The next morning, Tuesday, we were presented with ANOTHER PROPS list, just as long, with just as many weird things to find. We were NOT terrified! We were excited at the prospect of DOING the work! Of finding a way of producing the very
best possible production AGAIN! and AGAIN! and AGAIN!
What became vitally important to us was the desire and the need to create something new, something wonderful; the bar needed to be continuously lifted, new things had to be continuously learned, new ideas had to be continuously explored; there was no room for self-absorption, our own success became utterly reliant on the success of the
production, and we learned to believe in, and to trust each other implicitly.
I still have that desire and that need as strongly as ever, but am finding fewer and fewer opportunities to nourish them. My desires and needs are starving! I am starving, starving for the communion of the equally hungry.
Fewer in the business of creating theatre are truly hungry anymore, and appetites are changing, with the quick-fix rapidly becoming the fast-food of actor-training, and the insidious coupling of the prevailing Celebrity Culture and Political Correctness is producing a generation devoid of all those attributes first mentioned above, being content to wallow in the morass of mediocrity that is the inevitable result of self-
absorption, self-indulgence, arrogance, and the pursuit of cash and kudos.
What is equally alarming is the growing trend within this generation, when formulating a biography or curriculum vitae, to elevate items to perceived levels of importance far beyond their innocuous reality, often by the abundant use of adjectives such as ‘renowned’, ‘award-winning’, ‘nominated’ and ‘highly established’… self-aggrandizement seemingly the order of the day. Of course, any experienced, self-respecting director or producer worthy of his/her salt will see through such nonsense immediately, and react to such blatant subterfuge accordingly.
I have often come across items in an actors CV which state that they had received specific training from me worded thus… “Completed an intensive course in Theatrical Biomechanics training conducted by the internationally renowned director, acting teacher and coach ……………… ………….”… when in actual fact all they did was
participate in a couple of physical warm-ups and a few exercises before a rehearsal, and the fact that am an ex-patriot and not a native of the country hardly qualifies me
as anything ‘international’, much less ‘renowned’.
It would all be very amusing, were it not for the universal decline in standards of performance and production values which is palpably evident throughout the performing arts of today.

Heigh ho!

Theatre Relationships (2)

"I Am The Very Model of a Modern Rude Mechanical"
Lyrics by Elise Berg, to a tune by Arthur Sullivan

I am the very model of a modern Rude Mechanical;

I act the Bard's works - comical historical and tragical,

I've played the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical

York, Lancaster and Agincourt, in order categorical;

I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters directorial,

I understand both blocking and the language metaphorical,

For Shakespeare and his antique works I try not to chew scenery,

With cliches old and awful in the grumpy Dane's soliloquy.


I'm very good at sponge-paint and emergency duct tape repairs;

I build the flats and kick the cats, rewire the lights and paint the chairs.

In short, in theatre comical historical and tragical

I am the very model of a modern Rude Mechanical.

A Wedding Announcement.

The Bard of Avon & Mak Yong in Wedlock

A theatrical event took place the other evening which provoked me to consider marriage; marriage, as considered from a point of view that suggests such unions are best made in heaven.

Shakespeare’s magical romp through the woods, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, and ‘Mak Yong’, an ancient theatre-form of the indigenous Malays of the eastern parts of the Malaysian peninsular, came together in a marriage of what appears at first glance embarrassingly like ‘political-convenience’, if one were to be cynical, but on reflection provided a freshly-painted platform from which to dive into a refreshing stream of theatrical exploration.
An adventure it certainly was, and I commend those match-makers responsible for having the courage to undertake such an enterprise.
If only this marriage can sustain itself beyond the honeymoon, that it be allowed the chance to evolve, develop and mature into a relationship that provides a progeny born of love, of mutual respect and understanding, that is worthy of it’s illustrious ancestry… the genius of Shakespeare and the profound heritage of Mak Yong.
This hope lies in the acceptance of change… there exists no place for the ‘purist’; no place for those who would happily condemn Shakespeare to infinite academic incarceration, and Mak Yong to the museum of mindless fossilisation.

There are few absolute rules about playing Shakespeare, as there are infinite possibilities for style and interpretation, but the heart of Shakespeare lies in his amazing ability to frame the essence of human nature and behaviour.
He was an incredible storyteller, who created universal narratives which are translatable into any culture or language.
He also wrote for the full strata of society; he knew his audience and there is always something in his plays for every level of society to identify with, from the highest aristocracy down to the lowly street-worker. It crosses social and cultural divides.
It is all these reasons that a Shakespearean story can be successfully told through the genre of Mak Yong, despite it being a form of theatre that is uniquely Malay in structure, character and personality, with it’s own stock characters and imagery, that has evolved over the centuries to what it is today.
Lately, Mak Yong has been, arguably, in a sad state of decline, for a number of political and religious reasons, but has now perhaps been given a change of air… a fresh dose of oxygen… it is now breathing freely, unconstrained by the strictures of censorship.
For contrary to popular belief, like Shakespeare, Mak Yong is not about it’s stories. It’s about the manner in which the stories are told. Telling a Shakespeare story after the manner of a Mak Yong performance is to me a natural progression of ideas as a culture broadens it’s cultural boundaries, and it’s society evolves and develops as result of it’s enhanced engagement with the rest of humanity. To attempt to suppress it at all is to smother it to extinction.

Though I would nit-pick like crazy if asked for a professional opinion of the production and performance of “Titis Sakti” I witnessed, and would argue many of the choices made by the writers, director, and actors, particularly in terms of the ‘balance’ and ‘rhythm’ of the marriage, I would wholeheartedly support any future conjugations of this nature.

A toast to the Happy Couple!

Dr. Emanio

The Feather or the Hammer?

We have lived the age of the Sledgehammer!
We have become bloated to the point of torpidity on the visual extravagance of extreme violence and cupidity served up by the brotherhood of film and television ostensibly in the name of ‘creativity’ and ‘art’, but in actuality, in the causes of greed and aggrandisement.

We now live in the age of the Voyeur!
And yet the Sledgehammer persists!
We have become more and more desensitised to the profound, yet often fleeting, sufferings and joys experienced by individuals during the course of their day in the simple act of living, of earning a desperately needed crust. We no longer register the subtle nuances of the human psyche. All is visual… “In yer face, dude!”… “Don’t ask me to think or to empathise, just let me gorge!”

Schadenfreude Rules OK!
We are becoming more and more excited by watching from the comfort of the couch, and ensconced in the security and privacy of one’s own nest, rude mechanicals exposing their inadequacies, both as actors and as human-beings, in masturbatory exercises in socio-futility.

Is it then any wonder that Theatre audiences are diminishing and decaying?
The theatrical establishment is feeling this growing decay with great acuity, and in the effort of regeneration, nay, resurrection, is committing itself to noble acts of theatrical vandalism to persuade audiences away from it’s couches and back into the theatres.

Has the notion of what constitutes ‘Theatre’ been redefined?
Has the face of the contemporary audience evolved to the point where traditional conservative values have lost their relevancy?
Of course, a little conservatism is no bad thing, since it keeps certain traditions alive which have value and can be relied upon when doing Chekhov revivals or Shakespeare. But contemporary audiences, and especially the young need, to see themselves in our work so that their tastes may be expressed. Notwithstanding their tastes may be spurious, such as the need to see a handsome movie actor in a classic, on the whole the youth of today has a sharp nose and knows when to keep away. Youth's threshold of tolerance is not as high as those for whom theatre is also a means of assuaging cultural guilt - they do not need to go to the theatre.

We in the business of making ‘Theatre’ are defined by our audience, and if audiences cannot see their own faces in our work, then perhaps we have become the anachronism. The demoralising state of much of today’s theatre is so because it is not engaged by youthful vision but by the old linear world familiar to us all.

To encourage our audiences away from their couches and back into our theatres, to see our audiences change, we must approach theatre as a constant challenge… to engage the audience by continual experiment… to put the face of the audience back into our ‘Theatre’ without succumbing to the use of the sledgehammer and ‘noble vandalism’, and rejecting the ideology of voyeurism and schadenfreude.

Bring back the Feather!
Toss the Sledgehammer!

Torment of Creativity.

I have over the years developed an active and healthy cynicism for the actor of today for whom any difficulties or failures, however slight, during rehearsals are seen as an emergency, which is quickly followed by a crisis of confidence, and hot on it’s heels by the actor declaiming the director for one who knows not what he wants.

For him everything that isn't achieved quickly is viewed with aversion; anything that requires exploration resisted with the fervor of Henry V’s army on St. Crispin’s Day; the very hint of an utterance, albeit as a low-pitched whisper, of the doom-laden word… improvise… received with an instant need to relieve himself, call his agent, or violently vomit into his text.
He seems quite content to poddle along; learning given words and perambulations, with the sole objective of repeating them as accurately as possible at given moments in front of an audience despite the presence of other actors onstage, who appear to him bent on providing as much distraction as possible to thwart his considerable performance.

This is the actor who has little understanding of Theatre and less of what it means to be an actor. For him his performance exists only as a platform for him to exhibit his prodigious skill of learning words and movements… with both occurring only from the neck up. He also considers all his roles as words spoken by him the actor, rather than as him the character, therefore Hamlet, Estragon, Lear, and Krapp, all appear as exactly the same character, only the words and the scenery differ.

I recently worked with such an actor who, when confronted in rehearsal with a young ensemble actor trained to use the body as an instrument of communication, remarked… “I’m amazed at how much movement you get into this scene.”.
Of course he wasn’t referring to ‘movement’: in his lazy, self-absorbed way he was referring to the ‘action’ that the young actor’s character felt provoked to perform, inspired by the words spoken in the given situation.
Many an hour was wasted during rehearsal in his attempts to limit the ‘Action’ of his fellow actors to levels which reduced the dangers of his experiencing dizziness through excessive turning of his head. (I do not apologize for the hyperbole.) To him all must occur as painlessly, and effortlessly as possible, it seems.
“Acting is about ‘Action’ and ‘Experience’, not words and movement” is an epigram far beyond this actor’s ability to comprehend.

But is it not true that every instant of true happiness is associated with suffering” Having a ‘Passion’ for the theatre means something rather special when one puts it in context of the original meaning of the word… ‘suffering’.
Perhaps it's because most of our torments are so superficial that today we have so little real profound happiness. The concept of 'the torment of creativity' has become old fashioned and has even disappeared from our vocabulary.

According to Stanislavsky the Theatre is spiritual, a living entity. It is a group of people who are united not only by performance on stage but also by shared ideas, shared values, by shared joys and misfortunes. The Art must be an actor’s all-consuming passion; it is not an job, rather it is a way of life.

There is a coarseness of acting techniques we observe today. Actors have lost the art of experiencing things physically on stage. An actor who doesn't know how to perfect his psycho-physical form and doesn't train every day, like a musician with his scales or a dancer with his barre, will develop an impenetrable layer of the armour of mediocrity instead of a fragile skin of creativity.

A true actor understands the need to create the complex human experience that is adsorbing to watch and that could be never achieved in a quickly created commercial performance that this actor delights in.

On the Language of Theatre

As children at play we all involved ourselves in great ‘Cops and Robbers’ adventures; ‘Cowboys and Indians’; ‘Pirates and Buccaneers’; and ‘Mummies and Daddies, and so on.
This ‘Play’ teaches us a great deal in terms of dealing with our environment and other living creatures; how we live together; how we make decisions; the skills of compromise, diplomacy, and leadership; the use of rhetoric and logic, and so on.
Funnily enough, these are all ‘Acting’ skills… so it might be said that all human-beings are ‘born-actors’.

I wonder… is it pure chance that imbues all these ‘Play’ activities with a definite Protagonist /Antagonist form? Such confrontation forms the basis of ‘Drama’, of course, and the apparent ‘choices’ we made during our ‘Play’ perhaps had far more to do with genetic structures and instinctive behaviour patterns than with any conscious decision making on the part of the child: our choices were usually driven by alpha-emotional responses rather than any ‘learned’ behaviour.
In ‘Play’ kids are, in essence, creating imaginary circumstances within which they react quite spontaneously and subjectively in languages, both physical and oral, of their own creation.

This ‘Play’ phenomenon parallels that of an actor’s explorations of ideas and themes in a workshop/rehearsal environment, where the actor is developing form and language in preparation for performance… children follow the same process which prepares them for ‘Life’.

This… Actor-Training begins from the first moment of self-awareness… we begin to train ourselves to talk, to sing, to walk and to run, and naturally we want to do all of these things to the very best of our abilities… we want to succeed. Whether it be on stage, on the sports-field, in the design-studio, or in the board-room, we want to communicate our needs, ideas, and opinions, in the best possible way… in clear, powerful, and effective language.

Many attempt to accomplish this objective through the simple expedient of giving free-rein to instinct and allowing genes to work their ‘magic’. This process works, up to a point, but then it ceases to be enough. We find ourselves in need of more… a better way to communicate… a more definitive language. As our ideas and exploration expands, so too our vocabulary needs to expand… we need to find new ways of expressing ourselves; we need to create new forms and words to articulate new thoughts that reflect the state of man and his society as they exist; not as they have existed in the past, but as they exist now, and as they may exist in the future. This ‘Language’ is not simply a language of words, punctuation, and semantics, it is more a language of ideas, concepts and abstractions.
In search of new expressions, William Shakespeare was responsible for adding about 1500 new words to the English lexicon. Vsevelod Meyerhold, Jerzy Grotowski, and others were constantly in search of new forms and new languages of Theatre, as Eugenio Barba and the Odin Teatret, are today.

"All the thoughts, inspirations and works of all the great artists since the world began are but a preparation for my foundation. Their inspirations are my inheritance. I shall be worthy of my inheritance, and shall build upon it strongly, that I may be as strong a foundation for those who follow me."

This personal invocation from the artist, philosopher and polymath, Walter Russell, (1871–1963), remains a constant source of inspiration to me. It acknowledges the responsibility we all have, regardless of occupation, towards the evolution and development of the communication of thought and ideas between individuals and cultures. Upon it rests the survival of civilization and the human race.

In the microcosm of the theatre the inherent syllogism remains true… if the actor rejects this responsibility he becomes complicit in the degeneration of the language of his art.

Roberta & Judith

I am a very, very grateful and lucky man.

Last night I once more became that awe-filled twenty-something English kid who embarked on his exploration of the world of Theatre, and once more experienced the joys of theatrical enthrallment, by the witnessing of the wholly selfless and powerful performance of a truly gifted and accomplished actor… Roberta Carreri, with her creation of "Judith", under the superlative and visionary direction of Eugenio Barba.

It is not often that such wonders visit my life… not often the pure thrill of freshly-minted theatre thrusts it’s way up my spine, sending trembles twittering along my every nerve. Over the years such rare events have become etched deeply onto my mental hard-disc and have sustained me through the many long periods of creative drought that I have witnessed since leaving my homeland over two decades ago..

It has been many a long year since that day in Paris in 1970 when Odin Teatret fired my imagination with their production of "Ferai", an amazing experience which came hot on the heels of my first theatrical-epiphany… watching Steven Berkoff create Kafka’s Gregor Samsa in "Metamorphosis" at the Roundhouse in London. It was also the year that my first and only daughter arrived to add a deeper richness to my life.

Roberta was not in Paris that year… perhaps it was before she joined the Holstebro brigade… it was, after all, thirty-eight years ago so she would have been a mere slip of a girl. But I did see her work in another remarkable Odin production a few years later; "Brecht’s Ashes"… can’t remember where exactly… but I do recall the same feelings of wonder at the production, and gratitude for having been given the opportunity to witness such incredible Theatre.
I feel certain that the philosophies and methods of the Odin will have developed and evolved since "Ferai", but Roberta’s performance in "Judith" had that same unique identity which always says… ODIN… and wherever you get ODIN you get acting and production of the most seriously good variety.

What makes a company of actors like those of the Odin Teatret able to consistently produce such excellent work?
That is an easy question to answer… WORK… WORK… WORK.
To commit oneself to the amount of work that is needed to be able to reach such levels of acting and production, requires a monumental degree of dedication to the pursuit of excellence. Training never ceases… it cannot. As human-beings, societies, and cultures evolve so too the needs of that culture, society, and individual evolves, demanding new methods of communication, new forms of expression, new techniques to support this expression.

It’s all too easy for an actor to rest on his laurels once a degree of public recognition or wealth has been achieved; to deny the need for further training based on some weird notion that talent alone will suffice; that status or superiority precludes any need for further work; to resist the idea of an audience’ ever-changing perceptions. These are the actors who quickly decline into the morass of mediocrity and by extension, drag the quality of production down into the murk behind them.

This phenomenon can be witnessed each and every night on stages right around the globe, where as much as 95% of the acting on offer is in fact bad-acting… a mere 5% could possibly be considered good-acting… of which perhaps 1% could rise to the level of great-acting.
I no longer have the patience for the 95%, desiring only to seek out, to watch, and to work with the 5%… the 5% that is dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in the art and craft of Acting and Theatre.

I am always seeking the Roberta Carreri’s, for there lies the future of Theatre.