It sounds pretty grand, doesn’t it? By the
way, I’m sorry I’ve been desultory about this blog recently – well not exactly
‘desultory,’ just incredibly busy trying to get everyone and everything
together so this class will work. There are good reasons why most classes don’t
combine techniques in this fashion. Meisner and Method, in particular, seem to
be at war with each other. But I don’t see an alternative; if actors learn
different techniques separately, how can they be effectively combined in
practice – especially at a moment’s notice, for an audition? How can you be
working moment-to-moment off a partner that’s actually in the room with you
(Meisner), while you are concurrently remembering someone in your past who brings
up a deep, emotional response (Method)? Of
course, this is not actually what you should do at all – but if you take the
two techniques and attempt to simply cobble them together, it’s is a recipe for
total failure.
This can be especially daunting when
the actor opposite you – or reader, if it’s an audition – fails to make you
feel anything at all! I, for one, have
the greatest admiration for both techniques - but combining them can be a
problem that many actors wrestle with their entire creative lives. However,
with some significant alterations one can arrive at a ‘doable’ solution, in
which both schools of acting can be employed successfully. This is one of the
major issues I am endeavoring to confront through the Integrated Process. Each class is four hours long and there are
supposed to be twelve students – one dropped out so another is doubling. This
allows for six couples to work on their scene, each for a half hour, while leaving
an hour for warm-up, break and wrap-up.
For me this is the barest minimum amount of time in which to develop richly
complex material. Even simple scenes are difficult unless one has already attained
a strong technique, but, in spite of everything, we managed to accomplish quite
a lot in the first class.
These are the playwrights and plays we are
working on: Harold Pinter’s Ashes to
Ashes, David Rabe’s Hurlyburly,
Theresa Rebeck’s The Contract, John
Logan’s Red, Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, and Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class.
All the participants were
personally invited; for this particular three-month workshop I chose students with
some knowledge of acting, even if it is mostly intuitive, and a sense of humor
about the work and themselves. In
addition, I looked for two very important characteristics – which are the first
qualities I try to access in any prospective student – i.e. a heart that never
stops opening to an ever-increasing multitude of emotional discoveries and a
mind that steadfastly grapples with wildly contradictory information and
systems of logic. A tall order? No one ever offered actors a rose garden…
For
our first class, I began by asking the actors what they hoped to learn over the
next three months. Several mentioned, in various ways, the problem of
synthesizing and taking further what they already knew about acting, and the
newer ones expressed anxiety over identifying with their characters and the
situations in which these characters find themselves.
We
read through all the scenes and discussed each one in some depth. I chose
scenes with particular actors in mind, so the difficulties would be great
enough to give each actor something to reach for, without creating so much
stretch that the less experienced would be confused and fail.
For
example, I gave the Pinter scene, Ashes
to Ashes – almost indecipherable in
its complexity - to Teresa and Richard, who already have a strong grasp of ‘acting
in general’ although they are not entirely familiar with all the methods we’re
employing. Teresa is easily able to exteriorize her feelings – and the
character is clearly in deep pain about events which are not set up in logical
succession and often seem to directly contradict one another. The actress
playing Rebecca has to figure out exactly what is happening in the text at all
times and support these choices from events in her own life.
But
the value of this scene for Teresa, in particular, is related to what I call ‘the math of acting.’ This refers to working
on a scene in the way you might assess a math problem in, say, addition.
Your
‘objective’ would be the ‘answer’ to
the problem. One should know everything
that supports or, in a sense, ‘adds up’ to the objective or answer – a
combination of researching the script and then basing this knowledge in one’s
own life.
Next
you decide on the beats, or in other
words the various approaches, which the character employs in trying to reach
the objective. This could be compared to placing each number into the equation.
Each
beat has an ‘action’ that puts
pressure on the numbers moving them toward the ‘answer’ or ‘objective.’
Lastly,
you have to know the value of each digit – in other words, its exact size and
weight – and I think of that as the ‘subtext,’
which I will describe ad nauseumin
a later blog.
I
want to reiterate here, so there is no misunderstanding, that all this work
will come out dull as ditchwater or dry as, well, a math problem, unless it’s
drawn from the actor’s ‘real life experience’ – i.e. something personal the
actor believes in – which is arrived at by doing ‘sensory meditation.’ Another main factor is a precise technique for
moving the intention (action) toward
another actor or toward ‘objects’ it places on the fourth wall. This latter
part can be rehearsed and understood through the ‘Meisner’ repetition and knock-at-the-door.
Now
that all this is clear as mud, we can move on. No, seriously; the only way I can
make this material comprehensible for the actors in my class or you, gentle
reader, is by constantly moving between the particular and the general. It does
make sense, and it can be metabolized very quickly, once the actor has worked
and worked and worked to personalize all the factors that go into ‘the doing of
acting.’
A
very famous Polish director, Jerzy Grotowski, with whose group I had the
incredible good fortune to work both in NYC and Poland many years ago, called
actors ‘doers.’ Think about this word ‘doing;’ how many people actually ‘do’ -
or ‘act upon’ -as opposed to ‘talk about.’ Actors must strive to ‘do’ in every
possible way, since ‘acting upon’ is the most all around ‘act-ivity’ there is.
Stay
tuned for more in-depth coverage of my ‘Group Class in the Integrated Process…’
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