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.