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.