Blog #42: What’s to be gained from reading the script – apart from the obvious…

(A reading of Blogs #37-#41is a good introduction, but not necessary, to the subject matter of this entry; the series concerns Daenya’s process of personal identification with Berniece from August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.)  Today we’ll begin looking at the importance of the script. Of course, Daenya had read the play before beginning her analysis of Berniece’s character; first she had prepared a scene and later began working on the monologue in Act Two, which she has approached over and over again, but never conquered.  Constant re-reading of the script is necessary, especially when changing focus from one acting process to another. At this moment, it seems that Daenya is switching from subjective (sense memory) to objective (script analysis), but I hope to demonstrate that in the case of the actor, subjective and objective are inseparable.

Daenya is not planning to write a scholarly paper on the subject of Berniece in relation to African/American relations in the 1930’s – no, she is going to embody her. Not just her head, but surely her whole body and something indefinable, which many would call her ‘soul.’ However, to walk in Berniece’s shoes Daenya needs to know more not less, than a scholar about what it ‘feels like’ to be Berniece.  She is going to be ‘Berniece in motion.’ The scholar is helped by identifying emotionally with the character he is writing about, but he can sit hunched over his computer spinning out words, while Berniece has to get up in an audition and convince a group of strangers that she is Berniece.

The script is always very important, but in the case of The Piano Lesson, it’s about as important as a piece of dramatic writing can get.  It won a Pulitzer Prize, the second of Wilson’s plays to do so, as well as a Tony and the Outer Critics Circle Award. I haven’t seen it, and I wonder if anything could surpass Wilson’s superb, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, which I had the privilege to view during its first incarnation.

I also re-read The Piano Lesson, partly because I wanted to see it through Daenya’s eyes, which were now so much more open after all the work she had done on researching and re-experiencing her background and the troubled relationship with her mother. But nothing could have prepared me for the personal epiphany that awaited me in the final scene.

Why does a play win a Pulitzer Prize – or a film an Oscar - or a Palme D’Or at Cannes? There are many reasons, of course, but the one that is most interesting to me is how the central idea of a dramatic piece speaks to the audience through the development of its characters. This is normal, since I work with actors to embody the characters. In reading The Piano Lesson this last time what I did not expect was my own sense of identification with Berniece, which is of interest here because it relates to my own sense memory work - for acting, for teaching others to act and also for my own writing.

I’m going into a bit of a digression here, because this way of reading to act a role is very difficult to clarify, and I want to make it as accessible as possible.  In a much earlier Blog entry (labeled blog #2, August 2011) I explained in detail how I, myself, had begun to understand the workings of sense memory. I’m sorry to talk about myself so much, but this is the only way to make this particular point. I have mentioned the fact that my mother died of cancer when I was four, and I have always known that I had to find how the trauma of her death had affected me.

I had totally disassociated myself from memories related to her death, and although I could remember the placement of the furniture in the house we had back then, I was incapable of remembering her inhabiting that house. I described a memory I had as a child, looking out my bedroom window at the road that lay at the end of a lane in front of our house. After this memory kept coming up again and again, I finally realized that I was waiting for my mother to return – and that I had spent my whole life, up to the point when I became aware of this memory, unconsciously awaiting her return. I realized that I always waited instead of acting on impulses about things I wanted to do, and this was the reason: the trauma of my mother’s death had been so great that I had been unable and unwilling to actually ‘live’ my life, because I was actually living in a state of expectation that she would come back.

I’ve gone through many stages of awareness with this memory and learned various ways to harness its energy in various acting and teaching opportunities. In my next blog entry I will endeavor to explain how this memory - having spawned creative responses of different sorts, ultimately lead me to an instantaneous and profound awareness of Berniece’s state of mind in this play…

Blog #42: What’s to be gained from reading the script – apart from the obvious…

(A reading of Blog entries #37-#41 is a good introduction, but not necessary, to the subject matter of this entry; it concerns Daenya’s process of personal identification with Berniece from August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.)  Today we’ll begin looking at the importance of the script. Of course, Daenya had read the play before beginning her analysis of Berniece’s character; first she had prepared a scene and later began the monologue in Act Two, which she has approached over and over again, but never conquered.  Constant re-reading of the script is necessary, especially when changing focus from one acting process to another. At this moment, it seems that Daenya is switching from subjective (sense memory) to objective (script analysis), but I hope to demonstrate that in the case of the actor, subjective and objective are inseparable.

Daenya is not planning to write a scholarly paper on the subject of Berniece in relation to African/American relations in the 1930’s – no, she is going to embody her. Not just her head, but surely her whole body and something indefinable, which many would call her ‘soul.’ However, to walk in Berniece’s shoes Daenya needs to know more not less, than a scholar about what it ‘feels like’ to be Berniece.  She is going to be ‘Berniece in motion.’ The scholar is helped by identifying emotionally with the character he is writing about, but he can sit hunched over his computer spinning out words, while Berniece has to get up in an audition and convince a group of strangers that she is Berniece.

The script is always very important, but in the case of The Piano Lesson, it’s about as important as a piece of dramatic writing can get.  It won a Pulitzer Prize, the second of Wilson’s plays to do so, as well as a Tony and the Outer Critics Circle Award. I haven’t seen it, and I wonder if anything could surpass Wilson’s superb, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, which I had the privilege to view during its first incarnation.

I also re-read The Piano Lesson, partly because I wanted to see it through Daenya’s eyes, which were now so much more open after all the work she had done on researching and re-experiencing her background and the troubled relationship with her mother. But nothing could have prepared me for the personal epiphany that awaited me in the final scene.

Why does a play win a Pulitzer Prize – or a film an Oscar - or a Palme D’Or at Cannes? There are many reasons, of course, but the one that is most interesting to me is how the central idea of a dramatic piece speaks to the audience through the development of its characters. This is normal, since I work with actors to embody the characters. In reading The Piano Lesson this last time what I did not expect was my own sense of identification with Berniece, which is of interest here because it relates to my own sense memory work - for acting, for teaching others to act and also for my own writing.

I’m going into a bit of a digression here, because this way of reading to act a role is very difficult to clarify, and I want to make it as accessible as possible.  In a much earlier Blog entry (labeled blog #2, August 2011) I explained in detail how I, myself, had begun to understand the workings of sense memory. I’m sorry to talk about myself so much, but this is the only way to make this particular point. I have mentioned the fact that my mother died of cancer when I was four, and I have always known that I had to find how the trauma of her death had affected me.

I had totally disassociated myself from memories related to her death, and although I could remember the placement of the furniture in the house we had back then, I was incapable of remembering her inhabiting that house. I described a memory I had as a child, looking out my bedroom window at the road that lay at the end of a lane in front of our house. After this memory kept coming up again and again, I finally realized that I was waiting for my mother to return – and that I had spent my whole life, up to the point when I became aware of this memory, unconsciously awaiting her return. I realized that I always waited instead of acting on impulses about things I wanted to do, and this was the reason: the trauma of my mother’s death had been so great that I had been unable and unwilling to actually ‘live’ my life, because I was actually living in a state of expectation that she would come back.

I’ve gone through many stages of awareness with this memory and learned various ways to harness its energy in various acting and teaching opportunities. In my next blog entry I will endeavor to explain how this memory - having spawned creative responses of different sorts, ultimately lead me to an instantaneous and profound awareness of Berniece’s state of mind in this play…

BLOG #41: How Daenya begins the process of integrating the past and the present in order to ‘be in the moment’ with Berniece from August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson…

(For full comprehension of this discussion, please refer to Blogs #37-#40.) At this point, Daenya already knows a lot about interacting with other characters in scenes. She knows that any relationship in acting always begins with the actors listening and responding to each other, as themselves – before the elements of characterization are introduced. It sounds simple, but actors discover that every step of these ‘interactions’ has to be worked out.

Since Daenya is focusing on a monologue, why does she have to worry about partner acting? Because she is talking to someone - Avery, in this scene – and I would argue that even if her speech were a soliloquy that every word she says includes ‘a partner’ or ‘partners.’ The sensory objects you place in the scene are affecting you – and are, in a sense, your partners - but that is a subject I have already discussed and will discuss again on its own, at a later date. 

When Daenya was studying in my group classes, the curriculum was divided into two sessions per week: monologues in one and scenes in the other. The focus of the monologue class was ‘working through the body’- which included relaxation, breathing, vocal expression - and sense memory; the scene study part consisted of ‘working off the partner,’ figuring out objectives, playing actions and Meisner improvisations. In early blogs entries, I introduced a discussion of these methods. However, there is a lot more to be said – in fact one could go on ad infinitum, since what we are talking about here is the psychology of all human behavior.  (One of these days I’ll be ready to tackle Thomas Richard’s superb book, At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions!)

Each section of my group class included aspects of the other’s methodology. For example, we worked out beats, actions and objectives for the monologues and found sensory objects for the partner work in the scenes. But time was always short, and actors often got lost when rehearsing on their own.  Putting sense memory together with the more objective partner work is usually a huge issue for actors. A student who is stronger in ‘working off the partner’ will completely lose their bearings when attempting to ‘bring in’ sense memory – because that’s not how the process works. (Sense memory is like breathing – you don’t think about it because oxygen is embedded in your body and surrounding you at the same time. You have to train yourself to be aware of memories during times when you are not acting, per se.)

If students have previously studied only Meisner, they are innately suspicious of sensory work – even when they are aware that ‘something is missing’ – and that is the reason they are trying a new class with a different curriculum! Those who have learned sensory work (Method) incorrectly - from the point of view of ‘matching people and events in their own life directly to the text’ - have the worst time of all because they are occupied in a fruitless activity which excludes the partner! Perhaps this is the reason that Meisner has edged out Method in modern acting training. That doesn’t work because it’s like trying to win a Marathon without breathing!  There are actors who claim they never use sense memory, but perhaps they are not aware that they are doing it.

Why is it so difficult to integrate these methods? The consciousness of a good actor is unusually precise and expanded like the ear of a musician, eye of a painter and the strength and grace of a dancer’s body. The actor has to be an ‘emotional acrobat’ but emotions depend on an unusually attuned body/mind connection. Otherwise, they just disappear and you don’t feel a thing; you’re a puppet without a ‘string puller.’

When Daenya returned to Berniece’s monologue in The Piano Lesson, she disappeared into the past. She was back in Jamaica with her mother, wearing that evocative blue dress; it consumed her – just as Berniece is stuck like a fly in amber with her mother and the memories of playing her beloved piano. The effect is paralyzing; it is airless and has no movement.

But acting isn’t interesting unless the character is traveling toward a destination – which means that the actor must be ‘traveling’ also. The character mirrors the actor’s journey. If this ‘movement’ is lacking the audience starts to fidget. It’s the same thing in life; we are bored by people who are ‘going nowhere’ – unless they are desperately trying to go somewhere and failing. This is Berniece’s case.  What is Berniece trying to do? She often appears to be sitting around feeling sorry for herself, but if that were true we couldn’t watch a play about her; she would put us to sleep! No, she is fighting every step of the way, even though you need to read the play carefully to see exactly how she does this. What does she want so badly?

Next week I will begin a discussion of the script, as this is where this journey generally begins. Sometimes work is improvised, but then one must listen very carefully to the conditions that the director lays down.  If the script isn’t fully realized, and the actor is allowed to develop his/her own character – again the actor must pay attention to the ‘set-up’ that has already been put in place.

BLOG #40: How Daenya arrives at the memory that transforms her acting into a methodology she can use for Berniece’s character in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson…

(For full comprehension of this entry, please refer to Blogs, #37-39) What have we discovered so far in helping Daenya to locate within herself the ‘abyss’ inhabited by Berniece’s character in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson? We see that it can take years for someone to accept the ‘burden of their own pain.’ We have demonstrated that the negative feelings in one’s own childhood must be re-experienced so the actor can locate the character’s ‘burden of pain’ within themselves. Daenya acknowledged that the way in which she distanced herself from her mother was due to an underlying anger at what she believed was ‘desertion’ when she was a small child. By doing further research, she discovered that her mother had been a hero, not someone who had just walked out on her so she could go to America. Although that doesn’t seem logical given the circumstances of her leaving, it is how a small child experiences the absence of a mother, and that impression remains unless it is brought up from the unconscious.

I asked her to specify how she was able to finally ‘feel’ this truth – not just know it in her head.  This is how Daenya put it: “When I was back home, I did that exercise we always do - the breathing and relaxing - and then I asked myself, ‘How can I find my mom, my real mom.’ You see, we really didn’t communicate when she was alive. She worked so hard right up to the point when she died – although she’d had to retire – arthritis – then she kept the house for my dad.  And I think she couldn’t really talk to me because she felt guilty about leaving - even though she knew she had to do it to keep me and my sister safe.”

At this point, Daenya could barely continue speaking. I shoved the Kleenex box toward her and gently urged her on, “When you asked yourself ‘How can I find my mom,’ what happened? Breathe, breathe into your diaphragm, and you’ll be able to go on. This is just like acting. You’re going to feel these things when you act and you’ll have to breathe and say your lines… You won’t be able to stop and compose yourself; you’ll have to continue right in the middle of the emotion.”

Daenya struggled with her breath and found a way to continue. “I saw my mom in the kitchen back home. She was so vulnerable, so real - younger than I am now.  She had on this blue dress she used to wear all the time. A particular blue, it comes from the Island. It was nice, she always kept it clean. Looking at her from the point of view of a five-year-old she was pretty - even from the back. I could see her arms working; they looked so strong kneading the loaf – and I could smell the one that was already in the oven. She was humming, I remembered that she used to do that and she had a voice, very light and clear. When I saw her in later years she had changed so much and I don’t remember her singing at all.”

We sat there not saying anything for a while, and then I told her, “This is the beginning of all the acting you will ever do. You are inside now. Look at all the details and all the twists and turns your story has taken to get to this point. You haven’t wanted to look at a lot of this – you couldn’t until you were ready. But by going step by step, you ‘are’ Berniece and all the other characters you want to play. You can find everything in this central story of your own life. You’ve faced a lot to get here. You are brave and you have what I call a ‘fierce intelligence.’ Actors are fierce people; we fight for our characters, no matter who they are. We are great humanists. When we do our job right, people who watch us are able to feel more about issues in their own lives and gain a little insight into the people with whom they have difficulties. It’s weird how it works. People don’t understand us at all, they have no idea how we do it – maybe some psychologists - but that’s about it. I call this painstaking process, ‘the math of acting.’ There’s a particular logic to everyone’s life. We run away from pain toward what we want. Actors must mirror that journey, the difference from other people is that we do it consciously and continuously, we do it professionally.”

“How can I go through this all the time?” Daenya asked.

“Go through what?” I responded. Honestly, how do you feel right now?

“OK,” Daenya answered.

“You’re not going to go home and slit your wrists?”

“No, of course not,” she laughed. She went and had lunch with her daughter instead. Next week, we will discuss why Daenya was OK after such an emotional experience.  And the sensory objects she has so painstakingly established will become the basis for other elements of the Integrated Acting Process.