BLOG #26 A: An Attempt to Define Talent; Paloma Finds Juliet

A couple of weeks ago, I introduced Paloma from South America, who was spending January in NYC preparing and auditioning for college acting programs.  Her Shakespeare choices – she needed one dramatic and one comic for Juilliard - were Juliet, the ‘potion’ speech, and Phoebe from As You like It. I mentioned that I had trepidations about both speeches, but Paloma, herself, had chosen Juliet for her serious piece and I came up with Phoebe because I was making an educated guess that somehow Paloma would manage to find the comedy amongst all the archaic verbiage and bizarre points of view.

There is no question that Paloma has talent, but what is ‘talent’ exactly? The dictionary describes it thus; talent implies an apparently native ability for a specific pursuit and connotes either that it is or can be cultivated by the one possessing it. Great! That’s a big help – I love the use of the words ‘implies and ‘apparently,’ which apparently implies that even the dictionary isn’t sure. But the latter half of the definition is helpful, ‘that it is or can be cultivated by the one possessing it.’  That is true, but in my experience, very rarely.  It’s like saying that someone has the talent to be president of a bank – that may be true, but it’s unlikely they would arrive at that position without a thorough business education. What I would say about talent and actors is that they have to do a lot of work on their own, but generally it helps an actor to have his/her nose pointed in the right direction.  In my case, I had help from various teachers, but only one major breakthrough occurred directly from a teacher/student – Grotowski and the Polish Lab Theatre.  Being a good actor comes from a virtually untraceable combination of outside influences, courage and the cultivation of deep awareness about oneself and others.

Most beginning actors when asked either what they think acting is or what they like about it will describe its identity and attraction as coming from ‘being able to be or play someone else.’  Actually, it’s sort of the opposite – how’s that for a definition! What I mean is; you don’t just magically flip into being someone else!  What you actually do is delve so deeply into yourself – usually a very difficult, occasionally exhilarating and frequently extremely confusing and painful process – that the character finally shows up. All along it was just a part of yourself, you were trying to engage.

Now, some lucky people I’m sure are able make that terrifying journey without any help. But they are extremely rare, and who knows whether they have help or not, since they don’t have anything to compare it to. In other words, not having the necessity to go through the tortuous process 99% of the rest of us have to, how would they really know?  It’s kind of like trying to get the 1% to empathize with us lesser mortals.  That’s why some actors can say, “Why do that ‘acting technique stuff?’” and look at you as if you’re retarded because you have to actually work at it.

Anyway, to get back to the ‘talented’ Paloma, who has the ability to relate to Juliet more easily than most of the people I know can relate to their best friend.  After only a few sessions focusing on sense memory exercises, many hours spent in her hotel room working on her own and several rambling discussions on how the problems in Romeo and Juliet reflect Shakespeare’s culture and historical context – more on that in a moment - she had grasped the ‘character.’  As Paloma’s teacher and audience, after many decades of regarding Juliet as ‘a little sappy,’ I finally recognized her immense courage and strength. I realized why this is the most recognized love story of all time, engendering several films, at least one magnificent ballet, and many couples to follow their hearts, for better or worse.

How did this change in perception come about? Partly because of Paloma’s ability to listen and incorporate the brilliance of the text. This is a particularly difficult speech to explain by quoting passages. It begins, “Come vial,” which has a whole line to itself, indicating that Juliet is examining this mysterious fluid and thinking about the magnitude of what she is about to do. For the next eight lines she considers whether Friar Lawrence may have tricked her in one way or another – either the potion may not work or might be a poison preventing him from being dishonored by marrying her to a second man when she already had a husband.  She quickly dismisses these considerations, because they don’t make sense. She is sure enough in her assessment of Friar Lawrence to go through with the act of putting her life in his hands. This decisiveness is very important in playing Juliet’s character – she believes in herself, Friar Lawrence and Romeo. But then, in the second beat of the monologue, she goes into a long build – twenty-five lines - which ends in a terrific climax of pure terror: 


Oh look! Methinks I see my cousin’s ghost
Seeking out Romeo that did spit his body
Upon a rapier’s point. Stay, Tybalt, stay!  

Here we have the heart and soul of the play. It is an insoluble problem for Juliet; how can she love her family’s enemy? And it becomes incrementally more difficult after Romeo kills her cousin, Tybalt.  However, overcome it she does by taking action. “Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, Here’s drink – I drink to thee!” is the final beat of the speech contained in one line.  Love transforms her fear into action. In this, she proves that love can conquer all, in the right hands, even when it exacts the greatest price, not only her death but even more to the point for her - sacrifice of family honor.

Paloma managed to put these parts together into a convincingly actable whole.  I looked at other speeches of Juliet’s and realized that she constantly runs the excruciatingly painful gamut between ‘love of Romeo’ and ‘love of family.’ But she consistently cleaves to Romeo, because that is the path she has chosen.

Next week, I’ll discuss Paloma’s ‘talent’ from another angle – her work on the comedic character of Phoebe in As You Like It, and say a few words about comedy, in general.