Back in 1989, when I first got the idea of having my own acting studio, I thought a lot about what I would name it. At that time, I was deeply involved with the teachings of Jerzy Grotowski and The Polish Lab Theatre. In the earlier part of the decade, I had traveled to southern Poland, and attended life-changing workshops both at their center in the city of Wroclaw at Rynek-Ratusz, 7, and in the forest at Brzezinka.
So ‘Theatre Lab’ came directly from their name ‘Teatr Laboratorium’ in Polish - and Grotowski described all aspects of his theatre work as ‘research,’ in the same way as a scientist in his laboratory deduces principles from patient study and practice.
I added the word ‘Total’ for two reasons. I wanted to stress the importance of supplying a training that could be used in all media from ‘Commercials to Shakespeare’ as I said in one of my ads. And I was determined to provide a system that included a ‘totality of methods.’
As an acting teacher, I struggled with the same issues that I had encountered as a student; i.e. how could one method dovetail into another without crippling confusion – since they often appeared to be mutually exclusive – but all useful in one way or another. Honestly, how could two approaches appear more different than ‘Method’ and ‘Meisner.’ The first includes a lot of ‘navel gazing in order to feel stuff’ while the other devotes itself to ‘pushing other people around and screaming at them to get them to do what you want.’ Aficionados would have you ‘put acting into the body’ and of course it has to be ‘expressed in the voice.’ On top of all this there is the text, which has to be explored and broken down into objectives, beats, actions, subtext, and research has to be done on ‘the world of the play!’
Slogans abound such as: ‘Acting is other people.’ ‘Being yourself in imaginary circumstances.’ ‘Acting is doing, not thinking.’ ‘Acting is believing.’ Mamet, one of our greatest playwrights, has gone so far as to say: “There is no character. There are only lines upon a page…,” which makes some people rejoice and others wish he had stuck to playwrighting.
In spite of the difficulty involved, I continued to work at creating a workable system. And as the years passed, thirty by now since the very beginning with four students in my living room – one has dropped from memory, another disappeared, the third became an editor of books on the performing arts, and number four a Broadway producer – I have had some success linking the various methods and belief systems. I am able now to teach the four main areas - as I see them – of acting training, switching frequently from one approach to another, while easing students through the transitions. Actually, it’s not so much a question of transitioning as shifting points of view. It seems to me that at the end of one methodology appears the beginning of another. Or, you could say, all methods are constantly present supporting one another, but the awareness of the actor has only one focus at a time. In the beginning one tries to plan this out, but ultimately, with a lot of experience, the focus shifts back and forth with the ease of a major league player throwing, catching, pitching and hitting a baseball. And each actor is a team player, who excels at one part of the game, but must be highly skilled in all areas
Next time I’ll discuss how I formed the ‘Integrated Acting Process’ out of the four major elements that made up the ‘Totality’ of teaching methods at Total Theatre Lab.
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