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.

Shakespeare’s ‘Cool’

Most would agree that making Shakespeare accessible to new generations of young people is vital if his works are to endure, as they have endured now for around four centuries; and whatever ‘means’ may be employed to realize this objective ought, on the face of it, to be justified. My concern, however, is that the ‘means’ are not always justified.

Evidently the fear among us is that Shakespeare may not be relevant. So theatres feel compelled to make his work relevant.
Today’s ‘cool’ thing to do with Shakespeare to make his work accessible is by speaking his lines indistinctly, by simplifying his plots, and/or by addressing profound philosophical discourse in a contemporaneous, colloquial, conversational style, and by costuming him in today's fashions,
Now don’t get me wrong here… (apart from the first which merely points to bad acting) I happen to believe that there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things… so long as they remain true to the text.

Over the years I have encountered numerous attempts at making Shakespeare accessible to young people, to adults, and diverse cultures. Some of these productions have succeeded but the majority have, I believe, only resulted in a dumbing-down of Shakespeare’s work, exhibiting little palpable understanding of what really makes ‘Shakespeare’ Shakespeare.
Of course, if we don't want Shakespeare to die, or to become the preserve of a narrow elite, or what the highly respected Shakesperean director, Michael Bogdanov, once referred to as “The Dead-Hand of Academia”, then we must reinterpret him in modern day terms… so long as we remain true to the text.

Bogdanov also said… “There is in today's theatre world what I call THE SHAKESPEARE INDUSTRY. It has sprung from academia, where cultural historians, English professors and inexperienced theorists conspire to write original theses exhuming the true meaning behind the writings of the man from Stratford. Papers roll. Documents flow. Conferences are held. Opinions are spoken. There is Hamlet's Oedipus Complex and Cleopatra's Edifice Envy. There is post-modernism, pre-structuralism, multiculturalism and deconstructivism. There is the politically correct and there is the politically incorrect and there is the politically indifferent. Where, oh where, in all this contorted analysis, is the Shakespeare who first touched our hearts and minds?”

Personally I believe the answer lies in exposing people to Shakespeare as performance; after all, Shakespeare wrote dialogue for his plays, not literature; getting someone to experience, in action, the words of Shakespeare as a spoken language is by far the best solution, whereby they may get in touch with the play and the text both corporeally and intellectually, and consequently experience the plays at an emotional level.
When the Bard's plays are taught as literature, the work can seem dry and the language archaic, therefore we need to educate people, both young and old, to enjoy Shakespeare; letting them see and participate in it as theatre, as a play, rather than as literature, will encourage this… so long as we remain true to the text.

I must disagree with those who believe that because the language of Shakepeare’s time has changed to what it is today, children don't, or won't, understand it. I've worked with young people who not only understood it, but understood it better and grasped it more quickly than many adults I've worked with. When it is approached in the right way, children see the characters and situations and don't get hung up on the language the way adults do. They drop right into it without a problem. Shakespeare's “cool” - kind of like "rap" or other young slang. It's just another way of speaking and kids are into that.

Learning Lines

Probably my most frequently asked question by those who aspire to the dramatic stage is… “What is the best way to learn my lines?”
I usually respond, in my typically glib way, that there exist no hard and fast rules or techniques for the learning of lines, and that if one were to ask a thousand actors how they personally approached the task, one may well receive a thousand different answers.

Having said that, it is useful to have at the very least an idea as to the possible approaches one can utilize when faced with a dramatic text… so here are a few tips from me on learning lines.

An actor's job is not primarily to learn lines but to communicate the character he's playing, so anything that helps him to get learning them out of the way is a blessing. Professional actors rarely learn lines by sitting in a chair staring at a page and repeating the words over and over again; most pick them up by a kind of osmosis during rehearsals. One day they're walking about the set with the book in hand, the next they've left it on a chair. How does this happen?

There are several techniques, but perhaps these are the most important and simplest to master:

First: find out what induces your character to behave the way it does.
At first glance this might seem to have little bearing on line-learning, but believe me it's crucial. In every well-written play, the characters are in conflict with someone or something. The actor has to know what drives his character to participate in this conflict, and every character has a good reason. It's that reason you have to uncover. For example, if your character is emotional, he is emotional for a reason. Every action is performed for a reason, and . . . the REASON precedes everything else.

You cannot learn lines by playing emotion; you can only learn lines by playing the REASON for the emotion.
There comes a day during every rehearsal when an actor will suddenly ask questions like 'What am I doing?', 'What do I want?', 'Why is my character on stage?', 'What is he after?' Each question is really a different way of asking, 'Why is my character doing what he's doing?' A character is not alive until that question's answered. So; don't worry about learning lines; find out why your character says them, every one of them! If you do that, then you'll know them.

Secondly: Make line-learning physical.
Actors think on their feet; they learn lines on their feet. Few actors can learn lines well until they've memorised the blocking. Anyone having difficulty learning lines might try the following excellent method of 'walking' the scene by imagining his character performing the physical actions. For example, once you know the blocking well, talk yourself through it:

My character stands offstage right, with left hand on the door handle, he turns the handle, pushes the door, and shouts "Mary!" as he enters the set. He stops. He looks around. He hears Mary answering from offstage. He walks below the couch to the small table left of the couch as he calls 'Had a rotten day at work; you'll never guess who showed up . . . ' and so on.
Any scene in which the lines are particularly difficult to commit to memory could be approached this way. It works very well indeed.

These two rules work together. When your character says he had a rotten day at work, you the actor not only physically visualise yourself crossing below the couch to the table as you say them, but you also must know WHY your character had a rotten day at work, WHY he's walking to the table, WHY he's telling this to Mary, and so on.

The art of acting is in many ways the art of getting another character to change his mind to support your character's objective. It should go without saying that you, the actor, has to know what your character is after before the lines he speaks make sense to you.

It would be wonderful if all those actors out there would respond with their own experiences and ideas on the subject.

Theatre Relationships (1)

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."
The woman below replied, "You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude."
"You must be an Production Manager," said the balloonist.
"I am," replied the woman, "How did you know?"
"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help so far."
The woman below responded, "You must be a Producer."
"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well," said the woman, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."

—————

“Anyone can act!”

“Anyone can act.”

I cannot hope to recount how often have I heard this remark during the course of my forty-plus years of strutting and fretting my hour upon the stage.
It is, however, essentially a very true statement… and, by the same token, it must also essentially true that anybody can dance a jig, sing a ditty, draw a picture, tell a tale, or play a tune. These are all activities which we engage in from the moment we are dragged, kicking and screaming into this fine old world, and to assist us in the pursuit of which, we are all gifted with a certain amount of talent.

Yes, anyone can act, and everyone does act, all the time, as an instinctive and fundamental aspect of human behaviour.
Naturally, there will always be individuals who can instinctively perform one or more of these activities better than others, and some who are infinitely better at them than the majority of their contemporaries. On very rare occasions, there appears a particular individual who is the possessor of such prodigious amounts of natural talent that he, or she, surpasses all human expectations, elevating one or more of these activities to altogether new heights of human creativity, skill, and aesthetic appeal, e.g., Mozart, Pavarotti, Eleanor Duze, William Shakespeare, et alii.

But for most of us lesser mortals endowed with but a mere modicum of natural talent, such creative heights as these are beyond us. Aha! Beyond us they may be, but this fact does not prevent a great number of us having the desire to aspire to equal the very best… many of this group actually have the audacity to, presumptuously and unequivocally, believe themselves at the very least on par with this select few.

Such belief is a wonderful thing… though it does not tell me what to do, or how to do it, or even what I do not know, or what I actually need to know, but when it happens it is a wondrous thing. People of uninhibited, free-flowing talent can act. They may not know anything… about what they are doing or why they are doing it, but they can do it.

However, the majority of aspirants of desire but who are blocked need training to liberate and understand their talent. They need training, and training offers them their greatest hope, and like any other arts aspirant, e.g., a musician, a painter, or a writer, it must be understood that it takes years of exercises to achieve excellence.

I like to say that it takes twenty years to make a good actor; and a lifetime to make a great one.

If we sincerely want to excel in a chosen discipline, and if we want it strongly enough, and for the right reasons, then we need to learn… we need to learn HOW to learn, and how to train. To achieve this we need to also understand what talent IS and how it works; how it can be developed and manipulated to aid us in the pursuit of excellence.

Of course, if you have talent and don’t want to consciously understand or train its process, that is your choice.
No one is forced to learn. But the knowledge is there for richer and deeper than you allow.

Cracking The Egg.

After much poking, prodding, nudging, hinting, and downright demanding from the odd source or two, I finally relent and begin this journal, or 'blog' I suppose I should say. Hopefully it will evolve into a discourse between like-minded individuals rather than the tedious oozings of an elderly man's boring mentation.
I anticipate being nothing short of honest… dangerous territory in today's world… and, I'm sure, frequently wrong about many things… things that I would dearly love to have corrected.

Much, if not all, of what will be appearing within this 'Blog' will be Arts based, with a particular leaning towards the creation and presentation of theatrical performance.
So, if you believe that there exist no lines of demarkation between any of the performing arts disciplines; that the actor, the dancer, the musician, the magician, the tumbler, the clown, or indeed anyone who freely 'gives' of himself in order to educate, entertain, amuse, or excite an audience, and are seriously interested in exploring Theatre in all it's forms, then I would be immensely pleased to enter into discourse with you.
Who knows, maybe we shall fit the pieces together in exciting new ways and discover new forms. Too many these days are interested in nothing more than the perpetuation of mediocrity and in the fossilisation of the traditional… usually caused by the pursuit of cash or kudos of the performance, rather than the art and craft of the creative process.

To begin this foray I offer one small challenge, which is the name of this 'Blog'. It is but a simple clue to something else… please solve it, and award yourself the satisfaction of discovery.

I look forward, with some small measure of trepidation, to your encouragement, chastisement, approbation, even devilment, in pages to come.