tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53098828622715926622024-02-19T17:32:09.651-08:00OUTING THE ACTORCaroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-20421472590090054942014-08-21T16:08:00.000-07:002014-08-21T16:08:12.325-07:00Blog #63: Co-Writing I Wouldn’t Open This Can of Worms If I Were You You’ll Only Be Disappointed with Ron Megason for the United Solo Festival.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_GaQlKoflqBv7NPemQq5wPQnmafSJzpbrny9WwJGM4-BhmtI6Ke1Wy5iYQ2sLQISStEgeLpuW6WYZV1B2TfMVlcQF9Ev5kyeCGP5EBG67f1tYixJ4JSKf531wti9RnSGhs3AdCUhapoW2/s1600/P7260330.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_GaQlKoflqBv7NPemQq5wPQnmafSJzpbrny9WwJGM4-BhmtI6Ke1Wy5iYQ2sLQISStEgeLpuW6WYZV1B2TfMVlcQF9Ev5kyeCGP5EBG67f1tYixJ4JSKf531wti9RnSGhs3AdCUhapoW2/s1600/P7260330.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Caroline Thomas, Ron Megason and Nick Brigadier at work on <i>I Wouldn't Open That Can of Worms If I Were You You'll Only Be Disappointed</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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I’ve been
away from this blog for the last few months. Such a lot going on! Getting two stories edited for publication on a CD, produced by the Hamm and Clov
Stage Company, and now on the shelves of the Yonkers Public Library. I was one
of the authors invited by the Artistic Director of Hamm and Clov, Holly
Villaire, to participate in a public reading at the library prior to their
inclusion in the collection. This involved many hours of preparation, as I'm
not familiar with reading non-dramatic material into a microphone. My degree
of difficulty with this technique surprised me! Then again, I’m
usually a slow learner- no doubt this contributes to my patience as an acting teacher … Speaking of teaching, I’m very
pleased to relate that my current group of students is auditioning a lot and frequently
booking jobs. Please take a look at my website for more
information on this happy subject. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The main thrust of this blog, however, is my participation with a former
student, Ron Megason – we go back thirty years – in preparing his
autobiographical play, <i>I Wouldn't Open That Can of Worms If I Were You You'll Only Be Disappointed, </i>for The United Solo Festival. A brief history of that project: last Fall, Ron and I went to
see <i>Juno and the Paycock</i>- a beautiful production of this fabulous play by Sean O'Casey at the Irish Rep- and afterwards Ron took me out to dinner. I was
soon in stitches listening to his inexhaustible supply of cruel mishaps and horrifying
tragedies that have threaded an unusually eccentric pattern through his years on this planet . Ron is brilliant at
spinning misery into delectable entertainment. He can sit across from you, dissolved in tears, while you laugh your head off- and you don’t feel guilty
because you know his greatest pleasure in life is exercising his gift as a raconteur. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Our
conversation that night centered on a theme from his life with which I was intimately
familiar. As far back as the mid-eighties when I first knew him, Ron had longed
to go to Greece and find his birth mother. But he could never quite get up the
nerve- or find the resources to make the journey. After his adoptive mother
died and left him a bit of money, he was determined to follow through. But even
then there were delays, due to the illness and imminent demise of Ron’s
landlady of twenty-eight years, with whom he bickered endlessly, but to whom he
was deeply attached- along with her adorable poodle, Mootsie, over whom Ron fretted day
and night when the poor thing’s owner was bed-ridden and barely able to breathe,
let alone take care of a dog. But finally he did succeed in making the journey- and it was quite an adventure!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I know a thing or two about Greece, since at one time I’d been married to a Greek- and Ron and I had often
talked of my strong attraction to its beauty and rich history. I
had stayed in touch with a brilliant Greek theatre director, Nikaiti Kontouri-
also a former student (as I write this, her current production of Aeschylus’ <i>The Persians</i> is being performed at
Epidaurus) and had given Ron her name as a contact. She gave him
encouragement in his two-week, whirlwind, barely believable miraculous
achievement of reaching his family and finding his birth mother, after all
these years. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Our
conversation that evening differed considerably from others of the same sort
we’d had over many decades. Due to an improvisation class for gay people, Ron
was now able to wear – no, not wear, shall we say instead ‘flaunt’ - self-doubt
on his sleeve for all to examine. As he recounted all the deaths, setbacks and
insults he had endured recently, I saw that a real actor had emerged
from the lovely boy who had wandered into my acting class so many decades ago.
The same warmth and concern for others was still present, but now he was a
velvet hand ensconced in a glove of comic steel. Ron would no doubt describe it
as ‘Bold and Salty Truth’ with a molten chocolate center. It occurred to me immediately
that his was a story ready-made for theatre. I had suggested that he should create a
one-man show for himself. </div>
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And now a few months later, Ron told me that he had been accepted into the United
Solo Festival. He had borrowed the
fee from a friend; of course, the restaurant where he had been earning a
tolerable salary chose that exact moment to close down. Simultaneously, the
relatives of his deceased landlady were peppering him with outrageously illegal
tactics, trying to strip him of his rights as a rent-controlled tenant. When
Ron told me of his acceptance into the Festival, he requested that I take on
the role of script consultant. I enthusiastically accepted- the director he had
chosen was already ‘in the bag.’ Only, of course, with Ron’s luck, he got out
of the bag as soon as the booking was definite. And this is how the script
consultant became the director- as well as co-writer. Ron’s notes from improv
class were absolutely brilliant- however a script they did not make. So here I
am, co-writer and director – and loving every minute of it. I’m doubly- maybe
triply- happy because my husband, Robert Benes, and daughter, Elissa J. Benes, are
the lighting and sound designers, as well as creating three ‘structures’ which
represent Ron’s three ‘mothers’, and serve as chairs, tables, etc. And last,
but very much not least, we have the incomparable Nick Brigadier- whom Ron
‘discovered’ at the Apple Store – who is indispensable as Assistant Director
and Stage Manager.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Come
one, come all! If we fill the house on Wednesday, September 24<sup>th</sup>,
3:30 PM, we get another show, so please reserve your ticket…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
In
my next entry, I’ll go into our writing process- and the thrill of working with
someone who has Ron Megason's originality, veracity, courage and sheer energy!</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-81420127320628658422013-07-19T13:42:00.000-07:002013-07-19T13:42:09.089-07:00BLOG #62 Reviewing Some of the Work from our 3-Month Integrated Acting Class…<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTsyegITu04yJ8tlw4FXku8T_TLxpAZwy2Yi9dNxzhMHHdv0s6AeTlK-xUp_lBrrXis8wajsGm6c5NEl8cg03vpzOOTNih_hzxczjc_t4PN4MxsaXPlCyyTKfLGPpH9c7p5OKvHzw3-TC7/s1600/Feathered+trousers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTsyegITu04yJ8tlw4FXku8T_TLxpAZwy2Yi9dNxzhMHHdv0s6AeTlK-xUp_lBrrXis8wajsGm6c5NEl8cg03vpzOOTNih_hzxczjc_t4PN4MxsaXPlCyyTKfLGPpH9c7p5OKvHzw3-TC7/s320/Feathered+trousers.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I wrote this
blog entry a few weeks ago, but as I am severely electronically challenged I
couldn’t figure out how to send it from the little town in southern Hungary
where I was vacationing with my beloved grandchildren. Hence the photograph of
fluffy chickens with feathered trousers!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> 6/29/13: On the train back to NYC
from several fascinating drama-crammed days in Williamsburg, I feel rejuvenated
and ready for a new set of frays. This is a feast for the blog, but first I
would like to revisit the final Saturday of the three month Integrated Acting
Class.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> This has been my first attempt to integrate
the major acting disciplines into one class. For the first leg of this venture,
I concentrated primarily on Meisner and Method. With the scenes that moved
along more quickly, I was able to do a little work on ‘actions’ and some rudimentary
blocking. Why did some scenes evolve toward completion faster than others? There
are a bewildering number of factors involved in this question. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The actors in this class were
unusually open and serious about their work, so it was not a question of
ability. (I avoid the word ‘talented’ like the plague; there are so many
factors that contribute to what we designate as a ‘talented actor’ in a
learning situation, and it usually comes down to whoever is quickest at
absorbing whatever the teacher is dishing out.) Some scenes were more intricately constructed
than others, although all presented complex difficulties. The line-up included
such playwrights as: Pinter, Rabe, O’Neill, Shepard, along with John Logan’s <i>Red</i> and Mary Shelley’s <i>Frankenstein</i>. Curiously, the Pinter was easier to figure out
than Rabe. Sometimes a playwright is getting at a problem that hides itself from
the viewer as well as the characters – who are usually in the dark long after
the viewer has figured out what they are battling about - if not, hopefully,
the solution to it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Rabe’s <i>Hurlyburly</i> , for instance, is almost impenetrable. The actors in
this scene worked very hard separately and with each other to find the key to
the scene. They sometimes had trouble meeting for private rehearsals and one
had other plays he was performing during this period - a frustrating situation
for both the actors and the teacher, but there is no way around it unless actors
have the means and the time to commit to a program where they are required to
attend every class and are in a position to refuse all outside acting
commitments. Personally – although I find this situation annoying – I believe
that we are all essentially on our own as actors and must learn to deal with
all kinds of legitimate problems that actors face. The profession is so
difficult that the only person one can ultimately depend on is oneself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i> </i>It
was getting close to the end of the three-month class period and we still
hadn’t cracked the big confrontation between Eddie and Mickey, which occurs
near the end of the play. The actors had done some good improvisations,
connected to some extent with the inner life of the characters, but they were
still up in the air about ‘what was actually happening in the scene.’ Why was Eddie,
the character with the objective, so violent in his attempts to get Mickey involved
in explaining the friend’s death? Why was Mickey so withholding of help and
cryptic in his replies? Why did he melt
away at the end of the scene instead of putting up a fight for his position. <i> <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i> </i>I
divided the three-month period into semi-private classes between partners and full
group classes where students could view each others’ progress and problems.
Just before the last semi-private class between the Eddie/Mickey actors, I did
what I always do when an ‘acting mystery’ persists - I go into a sensory
meditation. In this case, I did it almost unconsciously, and it started the day
before their class. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I prefer, after initial work on
scenes, to see if actors can find their own way to solving the deeper questions
– depending on their amount of experience, of course. I had
chosen the scene because of its difficulty, challenging both actors but
especially to move the actor playing Eddie to a new level. I was also
interested in finding the ‘truth’ of the scene for myself. Over and over again
I asked myself, ‘What is this whole play about?’ After the scene is over, Eddie
goes into a coked-up rant about a type of atom bomb that kills people but
leaves objects intact. That image was somehow behind everything as I meditated,
concentrating on my breathing, body, and senses… And the personal image that
finally emerged from this work was my childhood home; specifically I was
sitting in a particular chair where I was always placed by my grandmother and
made to stay until I stopped acting up. The reason I misbehaved was the
loneliness I felt always and forever after my mother died. It was the sensation
of rocking in the chair that finally brought about an understanding of the play
and revealed the significance of this penultimate, most important, scene.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i> Hurlyburly</i>
is actually about a ‘family situation’ – the last thing you would expect from a
cast of characters that includes a couple of casting directors and a fringy
group of wannabe actors and other LA hangers-on. Of course, one would get it
right away if it had the usual ‘family’ labels. On the surface this play
signals nothing but activity between a random conglomeration of disparate
entities.. The scene itself concerns the
disintegration of a friendship after the suicide of Eddie’s crazy protégé; but
playing it depends on grasping the enormity of pain that Eddie feels after he
has put all his energy into trying to save the dead guy. Mickey, for his part, is
totally invested in having a reciprocal friendship with his grief stricken
partner, who eternally ignores him in favor of the other members of the ‘family’
– currently the friend who has just killed himself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The scene – and the whole play - unraveled
before my eyes once I felt myself rocking in my childhood chair. Obviously, the
whole point is to get the actors to feel these things on their own. But it is extremely
hard to get actors to do the work necessary to grasp these painful, embedded ‘objects’
that yield the truth about our own lives, which finally we can transfer over to
the character. The actors playing Eddie and Mickey didn’t get further than
walking the scene through on its feet. Instead of ‘finishing’ a scene without
truly grasping its roots, they had begun a meaningful journey which can be completed
when the class starts up again.. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> In
my next blog, I will discuss my eventful theatrical adventure in Williamsburg,
Virginia…</span></span>Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-37584388088410898332013-06-18T20:31:00.000-07:002013-06-18T20:31:19.677-07:00Blog #61: How the Image of a Tree Can Help Meisner’s Knock-at-the-Door Exercise<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikl1LrJM8vl1F7aH0aRYaH7MjqDSX2Su5_jU0InU9zJcMWSHe4nIDxPNodFunZJzRHFlPzHh2gcDPmLXRsi7fvCTIQn3lrA9gNVmXvoRGm59bM10LBD4RyMzC5rOQn7Kdga_8GKhVC9E3H/s1600/sandy-111712-1_650x366.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikl1LrJM8vl1F7aH0aRYaH7MjqDSX2Su5_jU0InU9zJcMWSHe4nIDxPNodFunZJzRHFlPzHh2gcDPmLXRsi7fvCTIQn3lrA9gNVmXvoRGm59bM10LBD4RyMzC5rOQn7Kdga_8GKhVC9E3H/s320/sandy-111712-1_650x366.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The last few
blogs are really ‘de rigeur’ before starting an in-depth analysis of ‘activities’
and ‘naming behavior.’ We’ve spent a lot
of time demonstrating that ‘sensory meditation’ reveals our own personal ‘life
objective,’ and how this force propels us forward, for better or worse, whether
we are aware of it or not. Actors are greatly helped by being able to pinpoint
this activating principle. Trauma is always involved, like death of a parent,
fighting between parents, abandonment such as a younger child taking the
mother’s attention, abuse, incest, etc. Pain and confusion are inevitable
fallout from digging into the depths of our being – even through the delicate
and safe, and often excruciatingly slow, process of ‘sensory meditation’. But
‘true actors’ will do anything for their art and persevere. I think all real actors
go through this journey in one form or another, although the level of
difficulty varies greatly. Some boast that they don’t need it, but they may fall
into it so naturally, they aren’t even aware that they are doing anything at
all. Most of us are not this fortunate…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> One cannot wait for ‘sensory
meditation’ to kick in the desired results, hence all the other techniques
should be brought in simultaneously; conflict exercises with partners, text
analysis, research, body and voice training, etc.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Next on our list are ‘activities’
and ‘naming behavior.’ </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> What does an ‘activity’ consist of?
This is the general idea:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">(a) Accomplishing
the activity should involve a certain amount of difficulty.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">(b) It is
something which needs to be done in a certain time frame.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">(c) It is
very important</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">(d) There
are personal consequences if it is not finished.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Let us think once again of the tree
analogy, with the roots offering the original impulse to push the trunk away
from the ground <u>which we can compare to the actor’s objective</u> – and all
the branches, twigs, leaves. etc. are part of the rush toward the sun. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Where does the ‘activity’ fit into
this image. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> <u>Aren’t the roots, themselves, also
the ‘activity?’</u> They ground the tree
and keep it from being split and broken apart by an outside force, usually the
wind. This is an opposite impulse from
the original urge to grow upward, to be as high and mighty as it can be. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Suddenly, we can see how a scene is
a shared organism. People in conflict become
one tree in a storm. The upper part is pulling away in response to the effect
of the wind. But the roots are desperate to ground the organism. In a scene
both parties have a tremendous need to express themselves. There is no harmony;
one element, the roots, need to resist the negative force of the other –
branches, even the trunk in a desperate situation – which is trying to pull the
whole thing up into the air. Where there may have been harmony at one time, now
a negative situation is developing. The tree is a good symbol because it shows
that an argument is of equal importance to the two sides; if one wins the other
‘dies’. This death is often/usually only metaphoric, but at the moment of the
argument, it should feel like life and death to the actor. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> In an argument, we are two parts of
one organism, one pulls down into itself in order to be safe, or keep things as
they always have been, and the other needs to change its situation, even if it
imperils the life of the entire communication between the two parties. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Like a relationship, if the forces
pulling it apart become too ferocious, a tree will crack apart. The victory
will never be complete, therefore in a sense both sides will be destroyed.
One’s only hope is that the storm will subside before that happens – in other
words a compromise will be reached before one side totally crushes the other.
It’s important for an actor to deeply consider this analogy. Remember, you will
have to play characters with opposite points of view from very different places
and walks of life. </span></div>
Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-72714134850215970012013-05-30T16:55:00.002-07:002013-05-30T16:55:35.243-07:00Blog #60: (2) More Info on Entering Into and Staying Connected to the Knock-at-the-Door Exercise…<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh32IBB34WZeM00mVx71iJBL3M36i7OrkpcMo4EpDWEDZJD2VqZpMySjParKNNWXWmxYMAsnev6p6IMvQ0zCgzHZ24DSrnCiqFiY6abWX6kfRZvzy8JYiUNwdUnjmtv-PkLtMemzyDCMtMT/s1600/ist2_1534834-conflict.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh32IBB34WZeM00mVx71iJBL3M36i7OrkpcMo4EpDWEDZJD2VqZpMySjParKNNWXWmxYMAsnev6p6IMvQ0zCgzHZ24DSrnCiqFiY6abWX6kfRZvzy8JYiUNwdUnjmtv-PkLtMemzyDCMtMT/s320/ist2_1534834-conflict.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">There are many
ways one can use ‘Sensory Meditation’ (SM) as a basis for the Knock-at-the Door
(KatD) improvisation – with an infinite number of personal variations. Once
you’ve established enough familiarity with SM to understand how it works at
all, you can begin to concentrate on using it before and during KatD. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> It is important to state, even at
this early stage, that as you go along
you will need SM less and less during the improv, until eventually most
people drop it altogether and work only ‘in the moment off the partner.’ It is
individual to some extent and depends on what scene you are preparing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> It will become apparent that you are
getting somewhere with the SM process when you keep flashing on the same memory
or set of memories, which seem to relate to each other in some significant way
– although their collective message may not be discernible at first. You can
place your improv in the same place that your SM occurred. That place usually
isn’t very exciting, as I’ve probably mentioned before. It’s apt to be the
‘same, old,’ ‘same old’ and you realize that’s part of repeating the same
stupid mistakes over and over, which is what the exercise is all about. As you
go deeper with the exercises, you become more ingenious at placing your
partner- for whom you usually substitute a family member from your very early
years. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> As you practice this exercise more
and more, you can be less strict about using early substitutions. Eventually
your mind understands that later life is a repeat of earlier life – especially
the traumatic aspects. The conflicts we get into replicate the past, which
means that you are repeating the same old arguments over and over. Remember
that as soon as you exit the conflict you end up ‘discussing’ not ‘conflicting’
– and that just isn’t dramatically interesting. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> As I’ve said many times, conflict is
a particular ‘state of being,’ in which
one is endangered, frightened and imprisoned. The more deeply you enter this
work, the more you comprehend why you have to follow strict procedures to get
into it and why people will do anything to avoid pursuing acting in this manner
– everything from going to sleep to attacking the methodology as unnecessary
and absurd. Since the memories on which this work is based are from long ago, often
in the beginning we feel far away and totally alienated from them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Let us say that you have reached the
point where you can initially enter the KatD Exercise with some ease, but find
it very hard to keep up the necessary level of intensity. When you feel ‘out of
it,’ it means that you have stopped listening and reacting to your partner. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> In reality, when we are in an
argument, we are often overwhelmed by the other person – there is no question
of ‘not listening’ – I’m not talking about listening to the words, but rather
to ‘the entire being,’ (more on this later). It is at this point that we ‘name’ as in
‘naming behavior.’ This is the whole basis of the exercise. You are supposed to
feel all sorts of negative things like ‘out of it,’ sad, angry, disgusted, like
giving up, etc. You want to win but are unable to – that’s a very unpleasant
state to be in. Even when you reduce your partner to tears, they are ‘winning
by losing,’ because it is their duty – and yours – never to give in. (There are
exceptions to this rule, but they are rare and will be explained at a later
date.) When you finally master the technique, these feelings meet more or less with
your approval; i.e. your conscious mind grudgingly accepts their unpleasantness
as something ‘acceptable,’ if not actually ‘good.’ </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> One thing I started noticing after
I’d worked with these techniques for a long time was the difference between ‘inducing
conflict’ and being ‘actually in conflict.’ They are completely different, as
they should be. One is related to acting, based on the past which you have, at
least to some extent, resolved. The ones that occur in your present life belong
to the present, although they are always rooted in the past. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I’d like to make a slight digression
here and use a personal example. Two nights ago, my husband and I went to see
an outstandingly good movie, <i>Before
Midnight</i> – some of you may have seen it. A long argument takes place
between a husband and wife; it contains a severely knotted series of familial
and work-related issues. The wife, to whom I related deeply, is voicing a fear that
at some time in the future she may be manipulated into moving from one continent
to another. Her husband remains more or less charming and helpful throughout
this seriously fraught interchange. Many people watching this, especially men, obviously,
would find him much more
sympathetic. I related to her - not that
I have anything against men - but because I am a very difficult person who is apt
to give in ultimately out of guilt for having behaved like an absolute bitch. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The movie touched on a nerve for me,
and after we returned I went into a slow burn about an issue that has bothered
me for many years. It is initially rooted in the abandonment I felt when my
mother died, but there are many instances since then which bring up the fear
and pain of that early wound. Just seeing this movie, which had nothing
directly to do with my early problem, but which reminded me of an
abandonment-related subject connected to my husband, started a fight the next
evening - one that upset me very deeply and was unpleasant for him. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I’m still recovering, <u>but at
least I know why I reacted that way</u>. One of the things you find out during
this particular learning process for acting is ‘what actually happened in the
past.’ This gives you a measure of satisfaction – even if what you discover is
worse than your child memory could comprehend. Often it’s sadder but less
anyone’s ‘fault.’ You are learning about the human condition. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The reason for using the ‘seminal’
or original memories is that we can relate them to the ‘human condition.’ They
make us sad but are usually attributable to a collective failure and not only
the fault of one person or even one group of people. Also, we find that we have
not been singled out, individually, for a particularly horrible fate. These long-ago memories are the actors’ food
for endless chewing. This is not the same as grinding over someone’s bad
behavior – even our own. When we allow this information to arise from the
unconscious during an SM, instead of waiting for someone to randomly activate
us, the objects or images connected to the memory give us an opportunity to
study them more coolly, more scientifically, if you will. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> However,
if we are in the middle of studying a role – or trying to write a Blog about
studying a role – real life intrudes and we find ourselves getting really
upset, as I did! That sort of remembering is ‘hot’ and truly upsetting. We
cannot help but have them in ‘real life’ and when we are working on a role, but
they don’t wear well for the actual ‘act of acting.’ That’s why ‘inducing’
memories is so much more effective, and worth the trouble to learn. We want the
control that comes from ‘bringing it on’ rather than having it ‘invade from the
unconscious...’</span></span>Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-65154743677815647052013-05-14T19:59:00.003-07:002013-05-14T19:59:34.533-07:00Blog: # 59: Discussing how the Integrated Process deals with Meisner’s Knock-at-the-Door Exercise. (Referred to as KatD Exercise)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG0WxqsQPOjuz6ie2LeaF5HFkCEMVM_Gvbl-AgagyzUEhJRPYvtAaeGztn_5UCr1dupN4DwkIsgEaWPXzHvb9iqh3vqkshcCmWX_N5o4SUBf2-pbRBT2hjK_6lKSqQ9bzFO6DqQBAGBO6w/s1600/opportunity-knocks-on-door.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG0WxqsQPOjuz6ie2LeaF5HFkCEMVM_Gvbl-AgagyzUEhJRPYvtAaeGztn_5UCr1dupN4DwkIsgEaWPXzHvb9iqh3vqkshcCmWX_N5o4SUBf2-pbRBT2hjK_6lKSqQ9bzFO6DqQBAGBO6w/s320/opportunity-knocks-on-door.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">One of my
students, K.B., wrote this after the last class, where I introduced the KatD
improvisation: <i>Caroline… escalates the
process. I only wish that there was more time! She takes what folks do for
years and compresses it into a provoking index of astonishment and wonder. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I sympathize. The principal
difficulty in all this is putting all the various methods that are usually
taught separately into one improvisation - the KatD exercise. The KatD exercise
involves the efforts of one person, who is trying to change an entrenched
position of the other – irresistible force meets the immovable object - which bars
any possibility of discussion or resolution. Therefore all the essential psychological aspects
of a real argument in life have to be present in the improvisation. There’s
absolutely no way to separate the elements and they all have to work seamlessly
to create chaos! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Another student, TM, describes succinctly
what happens in a successful scene: <i>It
seems that acting is like a tug of war between two people. One person pulls and
gets a little closer to his goal and the other person gets further and further
away.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Argument is an eccentric phenomenon,
in which truth is at best a limited player. It is not to be confused with pure
discussion or debate. These other forms of disagreement may be heated, but there
are rules – except for
one side in the last Presidential debates, but we won’t go into that right now!
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The KatD Exercise is fiendishly
difficult, one that bewildered me when I was studying Meisner; I didn’t have
any systematic sensory system at that time, and relied on my ability to define
my partner’s behavior. Without a sound
psychological basis for my attitudes, however, I was really just working in a
vacuum. Later, I spent years figuring out ‘sensory meditation’ and then came
the almost insurmountable task of joining effective sensory work with ‘naming
behavior.’ (Soon, I’ll be adding more components to the KatD Exercise, but for the
time being there is already enough confusion just as it is!) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I would also like to mention in
passing that it’s easy – and in a way necessary - to mix the work with other
disciplines: therapy, religion, politics, etc., but I make absolutely no claims
to its efficacy outside acting. However, that said, observations made about
oneself and others along the way are certainly interesting, helpful to the
acting, and possibly facilitate one’s life in other areas, as well. (In other
blog entries, I may eventually go into this, but we have enough on our plate
for now.) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The success of the KatD Exercise is
obviously dependent on listening closely to the partner, but it should always
begin with oneself becoming focused through a ‘sensory meditation.’ With this
in mind, I would like to talk about the importance of finding the objective,
leaving the particulars of the ‘activity’ for our next discussion. (Those who
have the ‘activity,’ will have to be content just for now with what I have said
before: i.e. the activity includes its own objective: to either finish the
activity or receive the desired effect from doing it, which precludes
interacting with another – the partner in this case, - until this process has
run its course.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Here is what S.K. as to say about ‘objectives.’
<i>Having the objective <u>sucks</u>… When
you have the objective you really have to move the scene forward. There are so
many things to factor in and I forget and I feel stupid. I hope it’s something
that gets better as I continue to have the objective.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> S.K. is certainly not the only one
having this problem. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say something that
people will think is crazy. Through my own experiences - and from getting to
know many students personally, as I often teach one-on-one – I have come to the
conclusion that <u>each of us has one basic objective in life</u>. We are like trees:
we burst forth from a seed and all our branches come from one trunk. I’m going
to discuss my own experience of this phenomenon in a moment, but I would like
to point out that defining the objective this way makes a huge difference in
all of acting. It means that once you get the hang of it, you never have to
spend a lot of time figuring out how to ‘get into the feeling of a role.’
You’re already there; all that is required, then, is to relate the objective of
the character’s life to your own. The
character could be your polar opposite, but because you’re already ‘in feeling’
you can play that person. I know this doesn’t make any sense right now, but <u>it
does work</u>. It takes a lot of patience to get there, but it <u>can</u> <u>be
done</u>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> My whole concept of acting - and
therefore my ability to teach it – changed when I realized that everything I do
in my life is an attempt to recover my mother, whom I cannot actually remember.
She was a highly successful actress, who was also a writer, but made her living
from acting. In my case, I wasn’t good at anything when I was young. Unlike my
mother, who was a prodigy – she was starring in a play in London’s West End and
published her first novel when she was only nineteen - I was dull and stupid.
But I didn’t like being that way, and the only thing I could figure things out
was try to act, since that seemed to be the most glamorous aspect of my
mother’s life. Eventually, I accepted the fact that I was not really talented
at acting, but teaching it seemed like a good bet. It gives me an income and
frees me from the onus of doing something I would never be really good at,
while staying in the world of my mother. I have the temperament of a teacher –
I derive pleasure from seeing students succeed at what they love, but I wasn’t even
good at teaching in the beginning; most teachers take time to mature, like
everyone else. Being particularly slow, it took me years to figure out what I
was doing. Of course, I <i>thought</i> I was
good or I couldn’t have gone on at all. Ah, the hubris of youth…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> When I finally began to figure out
the ‘one life objective’ theory, I realized that the ‘sensory meditation’ lead
me to one set of early childhood memories, and finally settled on a particular event.
Most of the students who have worked with me in any depth know about this
memory, but I prefer not to go into it here. Now, I can always enter the life
of a character in a text through touching on it. Also, a side benefit is that within the first
moments of talking to anyone – especially students – I can usually sense the
situation that motivates them. I don’t ‘reach’ for it and often I forget as
soon as I sense it. The person or student has a right to their privacy and I
want to respect that, but if I get to know the person or the student chooses to
work with me, my instincts are inevitably correct. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Another very, very important benefit
of thinking along these lines is that it works for analyzing the motivation of
any well-written character. Even the most difficult material, scripts from
bygone eras - as well as the most modern material, which often provide
characters who think and speak ahead of the curve - can be ‘felt’ through this
approach.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> This way of working lead me,
eventually, to the ‘child improvisation’ theory. If your most useful memories
come from early childhood and your preparation takes your there, it stands to
reason that your nuclear family and the place(s) where you lived are the best
way to find your relationship to the scene you are playing. You don’t have to take
my word for this, if you do your sensory meditation on a regular basis and
don’t lose your focus and rush through it. In time, I am happy to tell you, it
speeds up a lot, but in the meantime patience is essential and regular practice
a must. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Always do ‘sensory meditation’ – it can
be an abridged form – before you begin the KatD Exercise with your partner.
Agree to prepare when you meet or prepare before you arrive to start rehearsing.
But always get ‘tuned-up’ before you start. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> You must never, ever try to shock or
push yourself in the ‘sensory meditation.’ The unconscious is impervious to
such tricks and will fight back by disappearing and ‘pulling its hole in after
it,’ as my grandmother used to say. And when your unconscious stops playing
ball with your conscious mind, the game is over, and you feel as if ‘nothing is,
nor will, ever happen.’ </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There’s so much more to say on this
subject – and other aspects of the KatD Exercise, but they will have to wait
until next time… </span></div>
Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-6031963730559299672013-04-30T19:54:00.000-07:002013-04-30T19:54:15.976-07:00Blog #58: Introducing Meisner: how the Rx of ‘repetition’ can immerse the actor in a maelstrom of conflict. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEVrBumP8LmauzXg2NTxOxcgAHDVLdV1L3vN0ib-y9f7ibCPslNRyt885vksw1tJtqh18twyiItKjfatYFXp7N5m0jhgwjPuez6EYeDck-0uErN4KUUFrlbW2kxAT2UfWnM3jOZjMbNeQh/s1600/screaming-woman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEVrBumP8LmauzXg2NTxOxcgAHDVLdV1L3vN0ib-y9f7ibCPslNRyt885vksw1tJtqh18twyiItKjfatYFXp7N5m0jhgwjPuez6EYeDck-0uErN4KUUFrlbW2kxAT2UfWnM3jOZjMbNeQh/s1600/screaming-woman.jpg" /></a></div>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">First, I
would like to thank everyone in my class for their kind comments about my
teaching. I am deeply touched by the originality of their perceptions and the care
that went into each contribution. Every actor in the class deserves all the individual
attention I can possibly give. Working with them makes me feel that I have one
of the best jobs in the world: i.e. imparting what I believe to be important
artistic truths to receptive people for whom I feel boundless affection. Several
responses also included references to confusion caused by the Meisner
‘repetition’ exercise, which was the focus of the second group class in a
three-month series.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Why <i>is</i> the ‘repetition’ exercise so damn difficult? ‘Repetition’ was my
introduction to Meisner – as it usually is for everyone – but it turned out to
be the last element that made complete sense! Therefore, the weight of the more
advanced exercises and my attempts to use them, first as an actor and later as
a teacher, produced a result that felt wobbly and unfinished. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There are reasons for this that
speak to the heart of the ‘problem with Meisner.’ I would like to say, however,
that I have nothing but great admiration
for the inventor of this technique. The principles that underlie all its
aspects – including ‘repetition,’ ‘naming behavior’, ‘knock at the door’ improvisations and the use
of the fabulous<i> The Spoon River Anthology</i>
- require nothing short of genius to enlist them in training actors.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> However, let us put ‘repetition’
under a microscope. Pure ‘repetition’ isolates ‘following one’s impulses,’ and
therein lies the reason why I couldn’t master it for so long – and why most
people find it so difficult. It is counter-intuitive to isolate any one element
of the human psyche. But repetition is the only acting exercise I know where it
is useful to do just that. We are all familiar with the expression to be
‘beside oneself.’ I think that in ‘pure repetition,’ one enters a state of
total reaction, which mimics being at the extreme of anger or, less likely,
hurt – with fear attaching itself to both. (Positive emotions are not discussed
here, since we are talking about feelings that relate to conflict.) And obviously, being ‘beside oneself’ is not
the same as being ‘inside oneself.’ In other words, we have separated from
ourselves as we know ourselves to be. It is a state of attack that is rarely
attained – fortunately – in normal life. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Even if one has a quick temper or a
tendency toward hurt or depression, it is unlikely that we will be flipped easily
into these states by another actor pushing us. Why not? Well, most actors
aren’t crazy – despite all evidence to the contrary. (Sorry, I couldn’t
resist…) Like most everyone else, we have our guard up against the dangers of
extreme emotion. So our deeper inhibitions keep resisting the requirements of
the ‘repetition’ exercise, speed and strength – dare I say ferocity - of
reaction. According to whichever our
tendency is in life, we will err on the side of withdrawing from the conflict
or pushing ourselves into it, instead of reacting truthfully to the negative stimulus
that is coming straight at us. There is
no way to speed up our ability to do this exercise; we can only practice it and
follow the critique given by a – hopefully – informed teacher.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> In the way that I teach the
technique, we move on very quickly into ‘naming behavior.’ This is very
confusing to the student – and from this point on, my use of Meisner’s great
discoveries would be anathema to a strict Meisnerian. What I am doing is
quickly integrating aspects of Method training with Meisner. Why drive everyone crazy by doing it so fast?
Well, an easy explanation would be a comparison with cooking a lemon filling.
The eggs have to be spun about immediately with the butter, sugar and lemon –
otherwise you get lumpy yolks, more useful for a salad than a pie.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Now for the long, boring
explanation. Sorry but I’m still figuring out how to make this really clear. In
acting techniques which do not include systematic memory recall, it is believed
that memories comes up automatically and inform everything we do. Yes, as long
as what we are doing is ‘real.’ But acting is only partly ‘real.’ That’s why
it’s called ‘acting,’ not ‘reality.’ I
suffer from both a terrible temper and depression, which caused a lot trouble
when I was learning to act. And I’ve had students who couldn’t control their
rage and who were unable to drop the anxiety and grief when they weren’t
working specifically on their acting. The former type I had to let go from my
classes and the latter usually drop out of their own accord. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> So acting isn’t just ‘natural
feeling’ and scripts have to be analyzed in order to uncover the appropriate spectrum
of emotional responses for each character. Even if scripts were completely
‘real’ and not artistic compilations of fact and imagination, we would still
have to analyze them; the difference would be that the element of conflict would
not be constantly present. Characters would not continually mislead, often
unintentionally, as people do when they are in conflict. Sometimes, characters lie on purpose, but
they only do it because they believe on some level that this is necessary for survival.
Rarely can anything that is said in a good script be taken at face value.
Characters say the opposite of what they mean, and without close analysis of
the text, an actor can become totally confused. So how does the next step in
the Meisner technique, ‘naming behavior,’ help with all this?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Our upcoming Saturday class will be
coping with this question, and I’ll be back with new information in our
continuing exploration of integrating Meisner with other acting techniques…</span></div>
Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-64906386505920693892013-04-18T19:12:00.001-07:002013-04-18T19:12:30.043-07:00Blog 57: Three Month Group Class in the TTL Integrated Process now underway…<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 30.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">These are the playwrights and plays we are
working on: Harold Pinter’s <i>Ashes to
Ashes,</i> David Rabe’s <i>Hurlyburly,</i>
Theresa Rebeck’s <i>The Contract,</i> John
Logan’s <i>Red</i>, Tennessee Williams’ <i>The Glass Menagerie</i>, and Sam Shepard’s <i>Curse of the Starving Class. <o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 30.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">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…<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> 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. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> For
example, I gave the Pinter scene, <i>Ashes
to Ashes</i> – 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. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> But
the value of this scene for Teresa, in particular, is related to what I call ‘<b>the math of acting.’</b> This refers to working
on a scene in the way you might assess a math problem in, say, addition. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Your
‘<b>objective</b>’ 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. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Next
you decide on the <b>beats</b>, 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.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Each
beat has an ‘<b>action’</b> that puts
pressure on the numbers moving them toward the ‘answer’ or ‘objective.’ <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> 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 ‘<b>subtext,’
</b>which I will describe <i>ad nauseum</i>in
a later blog.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> 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 ‘<b>sensory meditation.</b>’ Another main factor is a precise technique for
moving the <b>intention (action)</b> toward
another actor or toward ‘objects’ it places on the fourth wall. This latter
part can be rehearsed and understood through the ‘Meisner’ <b>repetition</b> and <b>knock-at-the-door.<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> 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.’ <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> 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.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Stay
tuned for more in-depth coverage of my ‘Group Class in the Integrated Process…’ </span></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-18387045081429014602013-02-16T15:24:00.001-08:002013-02-16T15:24:03.999-08:00BLOG 56: So what happened already in the Meisner/Method Seminar? (Spoon River comes to the rescue…)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0oLi7mWYEpiFmxYgcgu9rDaQYwB3T8eDtzflw6-9YAb9QG1eIDksyXP0flQUQVAFgKDHsXlIZPpTgo5fjpeKm7fPhArGLwKM6moZOmRM4j3eBMOO5jKQb3O8EcAhZ67-FsKt8A6uMmGvC/s1600/SRA_program_MEDIUM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0oLi7mWYEpiFmxYgcgu9rDaQYwB3T8eDtzflw6-9YAb9QG1eIDksyXP0flQUQVAFgKDHsXlIZPpTgo5fjpeKm7fPhArGLwKM6moZOmRM4j3eBMOO5jKQb3O8EcAhZ67-FsKt8A6uMmGvC/s320/SRA_program_MEDIUM.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Well,
I can say that I approached the whole Seminar thing with a lot of trepidation!
Through a credit card glitch I lost the space I had reserved two months before and
had to squander the time I had put aside for final preparations on a frantic
search for a new venue – one that would be both affordable and appropriate to my
needs. I was lucky when Shetler Studios came to the rescue with the Bridge Theatre
– my home for classes and productions back in the beginning of the century! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">My
biggest worry was how to fit all the work into seven hours. I kept searching
for a format that would integrate both methodologies. I was sure of one thing; starting
the seminar with what I am now calling ‘sensory meditation’ – a phrase coined
by my student, Vince Bandille (he is kindly allowing me to use it). After relaxation and sensory exercises, the
class would be ready for Meisner
improvisations; ones that deal with ‘objectives’ and ‘activities.’ [If you’re
interested in reading some background for this process, take a look at Blog
entries, #11-#13, in which Total Theatre Lab’s Integrated Acting Process is
introduced along with my views on combining Method, Meisner and other basic
acting techniques.] My concern was whether students would be able to absorb such
opposite approaches in so few hours. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">For
some time, I had been preparing for the seminar by training two students in using
both techniques to practice scenes; later we started researching monologues –
both drawn from one play - in the same fashion.
They would prepare with knock-at-the-door-exercises followed by their
characters’ monologues. [Blog entries #49-#52 are a step-by-step chronicle of how
we pursued this work.] So I thought I could do something like that in the
Seminar. But how would I be able to pick the right scenes for everyone, when I
had only briefly met – in person or on Skype - with some of the actors who
would be participating? And what if someone cancelled at the last minute – how
would I pair off the remaining partner with another appropriate scene? And then I had a Eureka
moment! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I
suddenly remembered working on the <i>Spoon
River Anthology</i> in Mordecai Lawner’s class. (Morty trained as an actor and
later as a teacher under Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse.) This
collection consists of over two hundred poems, each written from the point of
view of a different person. They all take place in Spoon River, a fictional town
in Illinois still recovering from the Civil War and deal with the social and
political changes of the nineteenth century as it moves into the twentieth. I’d
forgotten exactly which poem Morty had assigned to me, but recalled how
sincerely I’d labored over the adventures of a very discontented woman,
breaking the verses down into actions, figuring out my objective and
desperately trying to tie it into my own life. All the characters in these
poems are deceased; some were miserable when they were alive, while others
wished they’d had an opportunity to further their experience of life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">For
the life of me, I was unable to think of the author’s name! I searched my
bookshelves for the Anthology; finally discovering it under M for Edgar Lee
Masters, I grabbed the grubby paperback, blew off the dust and began feverishly
reading through all the poems. To my
delight, I discovered that I was enthralled by Master’s richly endowed
perceptions of this mid-Western small town. Although it was published around the time of
the First World War, the focus was more on social and political issues related
to the ravages of the Civil War, and the inevitable changes; a primary one
being more freedom for women. And the backlash it produced.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">It
occurred to me that I could use these monologues instead of scenes for the
Seminar! Even though they weren’t characters in a single play, they were often
obliquely or directly connected to each other. Masters’ point of view on
relationships was psychologically sophisticated and deeply human. Sarah Brown
speaks to her lover from the grave telling him to go to her husband and explain
that she loved both of them, and that <i>There
is no marriage in heaven, there is only love. </i>The writing is deft in its
depiction of human foibles and the inescapability of suffering. Mrs. Benjamin
Pantier chafes at her husband’s lack of artistic feeling and odious sexual
advances, but in another poem Benjamin is defined by the love he felt for Nig,
his dog, and how his wife’s rejection caused him unbearable grief. There is
humor too, dry as a bone. For example, Lydia Puckett states that her lover
didn’t run off to the War to avoid being arrested for stealing hogs (!) but
rather because he was told of her affair with a married man. Immediately
following is a poem from the hog stealer’s point of view that says nothing
about the Lydia affair, only that he would have preferred being arrested and
going to prison over dying on the battlefield! I stayed up all night for two
nights reading the poems and picking out three possibilities for each student. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">When
the actors arrived for the Seminar, I handed each one a packet, which included
a strongly worded suggestion to pick out neither the most difficult nor the
easiest poem, but the one that attracted them the most. Everyone spoke their
poem aloud, followed by a short discussion, after which the class was directed
to ask three questions. What is this poem about for me? What is my objective and, finally, who am I
talking to? I cautioned them not to hurry into any decisions about the
questions, although obviously ideas were beginning to form. Then I guided them
through a physical relaxation and sensory meditation during which their ideas
became more concrete. The final step of the morning session was a second
reading of the poem. It turned out quite as I had imagined from previous experience
of working in this manner; the results were subjective and mostly held inside. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">While
everyone was eating lunch, I divided the group into pairs. In the afternoon, we
put the characters ‘into motion’ through improvisations that followed the basic
‘knock-at-the-door’ exercise: one person with an objective while the other concentrated
on an ‘activity. No one in the group was new to acting although they had
varying degrees of experience with different techniques. To my great relief, however,
they all worked well together. The improvisations were lively; I won’t go into
detail at this point, but everyone threw themselves into their work. And when the seminar concluded with everyone
reciting their poems a second time, it was clear that the partner work had
helped them gain more ‘outward’ focus, while retaining their inner intensity. It seemed that the two methods had been
combined successfully into a unified approach. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Therefore, I am delighted to announce that I am
organizing a Total Theatre Lab group class in Method/Meisner scheduled to begin
in the spring… Details to follow. </span></span>Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-13333670266798942832013-01-08T20:35:00.001-08:002013-01-08T20:35:38.240-08:00Blog #55: Happy New Year! Starting off 2013 with some big THANK YOU’S and a few words about my upcoming Seminar: Integrating Method and Meisner.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In writing
this blog over the past few years – and especially the last few months of 2012
- I’ve been sneaking up on the thorny subject of teaching Meisner and Method
simultaneously. I mean, actually in the same class. I am fortunate in having a
group of students with whom I have developed a rapport – and a few new ones,
who have studied before and have some professional experience - on whom to
spring this ‘bright idea’ of mine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I think of Meisner as
‘method-in-motion.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So,
what’s so difficult about putting these two techniques together? Everything,
actually. Each is incredibly complicated all by itself, so you can only imagine
how tangled explanations can get! I’ve often tried to ‘put it all together’
before, but I, myself, have needed to develop a deeper understanding of the
psychological root system that produces both techniques.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the reasons for my eventual
clarification of the ‘Meisner/Method connection’ is the brilliance of some of
my students. Yes, good students benefit their teacher as much as the other way
around. I think there’s an absolute mathematical ratio in how the learning
curve improves on both sides for teacher and student, when there’s an enthusiastic
and positive interchange. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
I’m extremely grateful to my friend and colleague, Jenn Lederer of Dream
Management – with whom I had the incredible good fortune to hook up over the
last year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She has provided me
with a number of talented and interesting actors, the sort of students who
produce this mutually productive interaction. And since it’s the New Year, I’m
going to continue to give credit where credit is due, I would not have met Jenn
if it weren’t for Piers Mathieson, whose skills lie in marketing for the
performing arts; he happened across some of Jenn’s videos – the ones where she
gives excellent tips to actors on marketing themselves. It occurred to Pier’s
ever-fruitful brain that she might be interested in working with an acting
teacher who knew a thing or two, and he took the trouble to get us together.
Thank you, Piers!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Anyway,
getting back to my thorny subject of Method/Meisner; calling Meisner
‘method-in-motion’ helps to keep in mind the integrity of each technique. In
other words, the ‘method aspect’ remains embedded, intact, in the ‘observers’
pov’ while the ‘Meisner part’ fanatically attaches itself to ‘changing the
other person or people.’ I know this theory sounds like gobbledygook, but if
you think about it and work on it enough, it can be very useful. Making them
work together is a bit like focusing the eye of a camera. The way you seem to
just push buttons and the camera does all the work. However, it’s not simple at
all, because we have to become the camera; which means we have to first
understand and then manage a ‘mechanism’ by which we can be both one thing and
its opposite. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There’s
a play called <i>I Am a Camera</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, (which, in
turn, became the musical, </span><i>Cabaret</i><span style="font-style: normal;">).
It is based on Christopher Isherwood’s autobiographical set of short stories,
titled </span><i>Goodbye to Berlin</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. The
character, Isherwood himself, is seemingly passive in recounting the events he
watched unfold. But the power of the story - one of the most evocative
depictions by an Englishman of Berlin in the ‘30’s - is how he juxtaposes the
determination of the characters, to lead the ‘gayest’ possible life – with
double meaning of the word intact – against the hideous encroachment of
Hitler’s fascism. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One
of the reasons this story has enjoyed several dramatic incarnations is that the
‘gaiety’ and the ‘horror’ are equally real. Isherwood achieves this by writing
his own character from two points of view: the impartial ‘camera’(objective
master or cover shot) and the involved young man (subjective close-up). All his
characters were living their lives to the fullest, including Isherwood himself,
but a part of Isherwood acted as the lens of a camera; aware of the oncoming
doom,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>not experiencing it
consciously, but<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>enabling it to
record the ‘truth’ of the entire experience. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
is what a very good actor is capable of doing; going full bore toward an
objective, but at the same time reflecting the inner obstacles that are pulling
him/her back, AND fully interacting with the other characters. If all the
entire cast is engaged with equal skill in this process, you get a wonderful
result - like the production of <i>Cat on a Hot Tin Roof</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, currently in previews on Broadway. Scarlett
Johansson plays Maggie like an total steamroller, without losing any of the
aspects of the character. The first act is a tremendous challenge; Maggie’s
character has the job of setting up the show, exposition, etc. while, as a
character, establishing purpose, compassion for others and vulnerability. A
pretty tall order! I saw one of the first previews, and I’m sure Johansson will
loosen up and balance the pacing a little more, but she’s got my vote!</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
know that none of this is particularly enlightening about how I will present
the Method/ Meisner work in my seminar - but where would the surprise be if I
told you all about it ahead of time? No, seriously, it’s impossible to explain,
except in boring and wordy terms, how one is going to teach something until one
is actually doing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Afterwards,
we can discuss how it was done, including the responses of the students and
that makes it much more interesting. So the subject of integrating
Method/Meisner will definitely be covered in great detail in later blog
entries. I’ve begun a discussion of this process in earlier ones, so if you’re
interested you can scroll through some recent headings which announce the
contents of the blogs.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> By
the way, one more detail, relating to Piers Matthieson and how he came to
introduce me to Jenn Lederer. Years ago, when Piers was a teenager he was
studying acting with me. For a brief period he was homeless - I had completely
forgotten this - but he reminded me that I offered him my living room couch for
several weeks or months. So,
curmudgeonly as I may be, I must admit that there is something to ‘What goes
around comes around…’ </span></span><!--EndFragment-->
Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-52907908535480814532012-11-29T11:45:00.000-08:002012-11-29T11:45:44.589-08:00BLOG #54: MORE ON WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOLF, HARPER REGAN, AND <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’ve seen a lot of Albee’s plays; recently I was deeply moved by his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Lady from Dubuque </i>in which he so perfectly encapsulates the world that revolves around a ‘cancer victim,’ as well as the victim herself. But nothing prepared me for the latest presentation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Virginia Woolf </i>presented by The Steppenwolf Theatre Co. that recently opened on Broadway<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I’m talking about and what is so stunning about this production is the attitude of George toward Martha, and George’s reasons for his seemingly vicious attack on and betrayal of her at the end of the play. In my opinion, George not only understands Martha’s pain, nymphomania, and inability to hold her drink – as opposed to him – but his love is strong enough to include an<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>awareness that his wife’s imbalance comes from a source so deep and so connected to her past that she has no hope of survival unless desperate measures are taken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Both the acting and the directing suggest that this is a correct interpretation of this latest revival; Martha is not depicted as a tough, harridan type, as in previous Broadway incarnations of the play, but instead as a woman who is trying to force her husband to take her in hand <u>because she is incapable of doing it for herself</u>. And take her in hand he does, by forcing her at the end to face the ‘fiction’ in their lives, so, possibly they can uncover what their ‘truth’ might be. They do love each other, that much is clear. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In this interpretation, George, beautifully played by Traci Letts gains our sympathy in spite of his apparent cruelty toward his wife, because we sense the compassion beneath his mordant wit. The younger couple - a ‘driven’ husband and his wife, a ‘mouse of manipulation’ - come into focus as ‘a drawing’ of the older couple who will later become ‘the painting’ that is George and Martha.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I feel in Letts deeply intelligent performance of George, that Albee depicts not a weak, failed ‘man of letters,’ but one who actually cares for his wife at the expense of an all-out, go-ahead thrust toward a career. In his treatment of the younger professor, one can see that, yes, George is jealous and angry, but the driving force is a set of warnings, dished out with large doses of hilarious cruelty. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Ultimately, the villains are neither George nor Martha, but a society that cripples the will of intelligent women, who are hopelessly trapped in views of the wife/mother model. And when they can’t bear the pain of feeling that they have failed in this ‘crucial area of womanhood,’ - and Martha is already drowning herself in misery, as well as alcohol, before the play begins - they will damage themselves and everyone around them in an attempt to escape their rage and depression. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Take the play’s namesake, Virginia Woolf, for example; a decent husband and a successful career weren’t enough to stave off a deadly depression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are several theories about her suicide, but she wrote incessantly about the difficulties of women, and one can safely assume that she would have stood a better chance of survival had she not been confined in a man’s world and had she been allowed to express her love of women more openly.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In order to play characters of this complexity, actors must be very sure of their technique and know that the meaning of what is written on the page may demand precise and informed scrutiny. Take, for example, the brilliantly constructed British import, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Harper Regan</i>, which unfortunately is closing soon. Buy a copy, it’s worth reading. The playwright wrote the prizewinning <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bluebird</i>, also produced by the adventurous Atlantic Theatre Company. I would have given <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Harper Regan</i> a prize too, not only for its ingenious construction but because the female protagonist - the play bears her name - translates terror into actions of all sorts. She’s not noble, but she’s imaginative and consistently courageous. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This is the kind of contemporary play that really turns me on. I have a very personal reason for saying this. Harper is the kind of woman I would like to be if I had been born thirty years later. My generation shifted out of the girdles and Maidenform bras of the ‘fifties’ into the bra-burning, ‘let-it-all-hang-out’ liberalism of the ‘sixties.’ But most of us had no idea how to negotiate this ‘freedom’ we preached. We got family or husband to rescue us when we couldn’t navigate the train wreck of child care vs. career and never got either one quite right. I’m not saying that thirty years later – or even today – these problems have been solved, but it became easier to take risks. Society was much less of a problem – not everywhere, of course – but there were places to go where women could break out of whatever mold held them prisoner, particularly the one in some unconscious part of their own brain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Harper is one such woman!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>During the early part of the play, she commits herself to a series of actions, some of them bizarre and highly questionable. But the play is so intricately fashioned that only near the end, do we discover Harper’s biggest challenge. It’s like Chinese boxes, except the smallest gives us a new viewpoint that erases all our perfectly logical assumptions of Harper up to that point. We see that everything she does relates to one Big Question. She always maintains her ‘human’ if not her ‘practical’ responsibilities. Skating on the thinnest ice, she skips around looking for whatever ‘truth’ exists in her situation. Entangling herself, trying out crazy stuff, but then finding out it isn’t what she needs, she moves on. So when she ultimately returns to her family, she is not going back into the fold. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There are no answers in this play; but Harper Regan is able to see that family is the most important ‘undiscovered country’ that life can offer. Unlike so many husbands of yore, she returns not out of guilt, but because she genuinely finds family the one challenge she must face in life – in which love plays only a part. Because the darkness is so palpable in this play, the rays of light shine true and bright. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I don’t think New York is quite ready for plays like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Harper Regan</i> – although it did extend its run slightly. It was well-regarded by the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Times,</i> but panned by the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Yorker</i> in an outrageously dismissive review. It’s time will come; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cock</i> is another play that’s a little ahead of New York’s timetable. It deals with gay issues in a completely new way. Ah, those Brits!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, they’ve been around a lot longer than we Americans… They have a right to their little jump on us. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Of course, Albee isn’t contemporary or British – so much for theories and generalizations.</span></span></div>
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Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-62309334452657135652012-11-17T10:48:00.001-08:002012-11-17T10:52:03.886-08:00BLOG #53: Taking note of two terrific shows recently arrived on NYC Stages, and why acting is so demanding these days… <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you have been following this Blog you will know that I am right in the middle of a very absorbing task: integrating the spirits of Meisner and Method acting techniques into a consistent teaching system. Other great masters such as Grotowski, Adler and Michael Chekov will be discussed at a later date. But right now I’m focusing on the great schism, which developed between Meisner and Strasberg, both of whom drew on Stanislavsky for their inspiration. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Hopefully, my attempt will help students, some of whom, like me, cannot learn a discipline unless it consists of a set of principles that fit logically together. If an actor is lacking a solid method of preparation, they run the danger of being confused when faced with a really difficult role, particularly when asked to play a character they despise. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not just presenting a synthesis of the two teaching methods, but showing how each spurs the other on and their opposition is the very thing that makes them necessary to each other. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Genius went into the creation of these techniques; before Stanislavski and the various schools that grew from his groundbreaking ideas, there was no philosophical/psychological system for acting instruction. The time has come to take these building blocks of information from the past and place them in a modern perspective so they become relevant to the work that is emerging today.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It is interesting how serendipitous life is; last week I happened to view two plays, one fifty-two years old and the other brand new that exemplify the application of the most advanced analytical thinking to direction and acting. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ‘old’ one is the highly acclaimed Broadway revival of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and the contemporary is<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Harper Regan</i>, by the much-lauded British playwright, Simon Stephens, at The Atlantic Theatre Company. I was very excited to watch the way both embody everything that is energizing about the new way of viewing relationships in the second decade of the new millenium. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Great art is the embodiment of change and always contains elements that are not perceived at the time it is birthed. In the early ‘60’s when Albee wrote <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Virginia Wolf</i>, the great changes in attitudes toward women which were about to happen, hadn’t yet. Wendy Wasserstein’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Uncommon Women and Others</i>, set in a progressive women’s college in the ‘70’s makes abundantly clear how even the most ‘advanced’ women’s views about themselves were still seriously unsettled even ten years after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Virginia Wolf</i>. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the traditional well-made plays, exemplified by great writers like O’Neill, Williams, Ibsen, and Shaw, the problems of women generally arose from men attempting to dominate them or stereotyping by society pushing them to ‘break out’: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mourning Becomes Electra</i> depicts a woman bored in her marriage and driven into villainous behavior; in William’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cat on a Hot Tin Roof</i>, Maggie is married to a man who ignores her, and when she misbehaves, casts her aside, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hedda Gabler</i> commits an atrocity because she is maddened by a conventional marriage and then finds another man has stuck her in an even worse situation, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">St. Joan</i> is done in by politics, but the hook they use to get her is an accusation of ‘witchcraft.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Moving into the latter part of the 20th Century and first decade of the 21st, the role that society plays is less evident in the conflict between men and women, but women are still depicted as pitting themselves against men in an unequal battle. If you look at the work of Mamet, Rabe, Shepard, Foote, Shanley, you see women struggling to be strong – or trying to ‘bring men out of themselves’ and be more communicative. These are stories of struggle; even if the men and women end up <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>staying together, which they almost never do, it’s the ferocity of the battle that counts - and the playing field is almost always uneven, favoring the man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the moment I’m not discussing the women writers – except for the brief reference to Wendy Wasserstein. They are very important and need a discussion all unto themselves.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For a moment, I would like to return to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Virginia Wolf</i> - and later <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Harper Regan</i>. I saw the original production of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Virginia Wolf. </i>No doubt, I said to my friends that it was, ‘Really cool, man.’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill boozed it up and yelled at each other in a wonderful, crazy way, and, of course I was a mere babe in the woods in those days and hadn’t much idea what was really going on. My father took me to see it; he was in Academia, and we laughed over the idea that this kind of booze-infused activity probably went on after we’d left the hosts of the faculty parties we used to attend together. (It wasn’t unheard of in those days for a daughter to accompany her father to a party!) I wasn’t particularly interested in seeing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Virginia Wolf</i> again, but I got tickets for my husband and daughter, who had never seen it. And they were very moved by the production and insisted that I go and see it. Well…. I was amazed at the difference between the version I had viewed and this one. I thought about it a lot, and finally pinpointed exactly how the interpretation had changed.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This is getting long, and I will continue in my next blog entry…</span></span></div>
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Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-31162345850562739662012-11-02T22:22:00.000-07:002012-11-02T22:22:51.384-07:00BLOG #52: Tweaking Meisner and Method to create a workable method:<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the last Blog entry, I talked about the importance of backing the Meisner Knock-at-the-Door exercise directly with personal sensory work rather than ‘making up a story’ and then backing <u>that</u> with personal material. In this way, one has only two stories, the one in the script and one’s own, and the task is to ‘feel’ them as one. Sometimes it can feel like chasing the Minotaur, but – to mix metaphors – for the true actor there are many pots of gold throughout the labyrinth.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Working in this way – without made-up circumstances - partners are required, through sensory work, to dig deeper into themselves and find a personalization of the other actor; this process of ‘searching the self’ puts one’s<u> own</u> feet onto the trail of the character and brings one <u>directly</u> into the situation in which the relationship with the partner is embedded. As I have said before, this is a very complex idea, and I will continue to describe it from different points of view in order to make it clearer. <u>It cannot be grasped all at once</u>.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To continue on from the last entry; Actress A was beginning to show signs of feeling more comfortable with the idea of the Voices and how they translated into ‘objects’ from her own life. Actor B was going through a similar process; his question was different, of course. He had to ask himself ‘what was his most difficult memory of having to break away from someone he loved.’ Or put another way, ‘when had he felt the necessity to follow his own path, however the devastating the consequences might be for someone close to him?’ The second is better because it opens a clear way to Actor B’s/Dunois’ objective.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Both characters have very strong objectives. Although technically Joan probably has the stronger need, Dunois feels at this point that he stands to lose everything if he continues to fight for her cause, but he also knows that he is abandoning her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the scene – or in this case the two monologues can be approached through improvs, in which the actors switch between ‘pursuing an objective’ or ‘dedicating him/herself to an activity’. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So far, we have principally discussed how the actor who has the objective prepares his role. Now we must show in detail the preparation of the actor who is more ‘acted upon;’ the one who is satisfied with the situation as it is. This is an odd word to use vis-à-vis Joan the Maid, who was never ‘satisfied’ a moment in her life. However, before the moment in which this scene takes place, Dunois has lead her armies to victory , so one could certainly agree that his generalship was satisfactory. Now, however, he is shifting his position and asking Joan to accept his decision to drop out of the fight against the English. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She has no inkling of his altered stance at the beginning of the scene and continues for quite a while to be her ebullient, confident self. Even in her monologue, she doesn’t appear to have accepted his withdrawal of support – clearly she is still of the opinion that she can change his mind. (There is another monologue at the end of the scene by which time she is fully conscious of the trap into which she has fallen, and line by line she resigns herself to her fate with immense intelligence and dignity, at no point showing even an ounce of self-pity.) But at the point in the scene under discussion, her objective is to win back Dunois, so one could say we are observing one objective up against another objective.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Since this is the case, why can’t we leave out the ‘activity’ altogether? Because the ‘activity’ is not called an ‘activity’ for nothing. It’s certainly not called a ‘passivity!’ And even when I didn’t know why I was doing it - I have always required students to rehearse scenes from both points of view: first, ‘taking the objective’ and then ‘doing the activity,’ or vice-versa.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Meisner defines a good ‘activity’ - for use in an improv - as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">something difficult to execute that leads to a necessary result</i>. Example1: you have broken a dinner plate that is part of your mother’s set. She has a dinner party coming up immediately and you have to glue it back together. Example 2: your finicky boyfriend’s birthday is coming up in a few days and you’re shopping on the Internet for a present. Your girlfriend has just broken her leg and you’re trying to write a poem to cheer her up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I used to attend a very good Meisner class and knocked my head against these improvs over and over again. I spent hours and hours behind a door creating imaginary circumstances. And then I began teaching classes of my own, perpetuating what I had been taught. I have always felt that the premise was right, but that it required ‘something more’ and ‘something different’ while going along the same general path. I think it’s always like this with methodologies. They fit the time in which they are set up, and then as things change, they morph slowly. And, of course, there are actors who do better following one method more deeply as opposed to another. But that is not my subject here - another blog entry-in-the-making.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will state, categorically, that <u>most</u> actors need both Meisner and Method – and lots of other things too, but these are absolutely basic. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This is my thinking – I may have said this before, but not quite like this: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Method is me, myself and I taking in the world and being affected by it from over here where I stand, while Meisner is me being tossed around by the world and endeavoring to hang on for dear life to a piece of me, myself or I.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So, to get back to Actor A and Actress B and their improvs on St. Joan; they alternated struggling with their activities and bursting in through one another’s doors for several sessions. However hard they tried, the work kept falling into lifeless and unfocused patterns. The actors were becoming bored and almost despairing. This is not unusual, as human beings are not machines and our systems need to adjust slowly Finally, I did something I avoid when there is more than one actor present.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had a discussion about the ‘sensory objects’ they were using, Actress A for her ‘activity’ and Actor B for his ‘objective.’ </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the next entry I will take a little breather from this subject to discuss a couple of plays I just saw, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Harper Regan</i> - and their relevance to this discussion…</span></span></div>
Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-45875190479046657342012-10-20T18:57:00.001-07:002012-10-20T18:57:16.337-07:00BLOG #51: Meisner helps move St. Joan along but without losing its sensory roots…<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh7_LHChnkkL6GouHRQV79YJWIC3F71I_giQIYlROUbH7rG7hq7hFRX3btIy6dV439vmhAj6_MZ5lXV539ddjJdkF4-EP7r5uqw6flqOae_Yvg2rZajjG2kGvtI7n-snhxwM43KoMOAZmG/s1600/panorama_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" nea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh7_LHChnkkL6GouHRQV79YJWIC3F71I_giQIYlROUbH7rG7hq7hFRX3btIy6dV439vmhAj6_MZ5lXV539ddjJdkF4-EP7r5uqw6flqOae_Yvg2rZajjG2kGvtI7n-snhxwM43KoMOAZmG/s320/panorama_01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">This entry follows along from numbers 49 and 50.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The next time we met for class, Actress A (Joan the Maid) and Actor B (Dunois, the General) were prepared to engage in a Meisner Knock-at-the Door improvisation; this was to help them identify with their characters in two monologues, both of which came from the same scene, in Shaw’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">St. Joan</i>. As I mentioned in the previous Blog, I keep the set up very simple - just parent, lover, friend, etc. - so each partner can slip in their own personalization of their ‘adversary’ in the scene. Yes, the partner always becomes an ‘adversary’ in one way or another, because all drama is based on conflict. And the actors are asked to be very specific about how they personalize each other and the situation in which they find themselves - and a myriad of other details, which I will describe in a moment.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As I have mentioned before the actors had been working for some time on these two monologues. Along with extensive sense memory work, they had<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>also engaged in Meisner Knock-at-the Door exercises.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We began each two-hour session with a discussion of how their preparation had worked for them and what problems they encountered during the week when they worked by themselves on their monologues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Usually, they expressed a kind of ‘general confusion,’ which almost universally grips actors, who have the courage and stamina to grapple with their roles as if they were dealing with their own lives. I insist that they stick to their guns, no matter how much their own experience may appear to differ from the characters they are endeavoring to play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Although this process requires imagination, I believe that the <u>actual facts of our lives must be the basis for relating to the facts of the character</u>. I do not believe in ‘pretending’ that we have had the same experience as the character or that we should try to match our experiences to those of the character.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, I believe we need to identify our deepest area of trauma and how it sends each one of us on a search toward an objective, which evolves constantly from our creative work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A true actor works from the complex premise that human roots are an entity, which can be ‘felt’ - if not totally comprehended – across eras, cultures, races, gender preferences and all other divisive factors. It’s an extraordinary trip but not for people looking for quick results or an easy ride…</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In order to encourage this process of identification, I ask questions about the text that cannot be answered simply. They can only be arrived at through a series of steps, which in turn raise more questions; all of which eventually lead to a deeper understanding of the script itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It arises from the actor recognizing things in the character that are particularly relevant to their own life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I tend to harp on the negative, not because I’m a sadist, but because it is incredibly difficult for actors – or anyone else for that matter - to dredge up their primal pain. Yes, primal pain – not anything recent. After all, the seeds of our trouble lie in our early years; and for many of us we only managed to survive that period by burying the details of childhood in a deep fog of forgetting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, it is really counter-intuitive to go chasing after those memories and bringing them to the surface.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But what makes this process for acting particularly difficult is that figuring out the ‘source of tragedy’ is only the beginning.; one needs to continuously fight off the ‘flight from pain,’ as the actor must often dwell for extended periods in that ‘shadow land’ of discomfort and fear. For instance, how does one honestly ‘get down’ with St. Joan, who spent the entirety her teenage years under the stress of obeying a set of extraordinary demands from Voices that only she could hear and then faced imprisonment and trial followed by a horrifying death. The actress playing her in our society, today, has to battle against a kind of moral imperative to turn away our conscious mind from shameful or deeply painful occurrences. The need to ‘be cool,’ as well as our survival instinct, instructs us that ‘we need to stiffen our upper lip’ and go on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How many times I used to censor myself as a young actress for ‘wallowing in misery’ when attempting to get to the bottom of my character’s motivations. There is a myth that one doesn’t have to suffer for one’s art, and it’s so prevalent that it gives ‘Method Acting’ a bad name. Humph!</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Here is a series of questions I asked Actress A about St. Joan. How did the Voices start? What did the Voices sound like to her? Why did she feel that she had to do what they said?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How did she find a way to deal with the difficulty of putting into practice the imperative to do ‘impossible’ tasks? At first, she couldn’t even imagine how to go about it, so I kept encouraging her to ask herself this question, “When have I had an experience like this?” Pretty weird, eh?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“When have I had an experience like listening to ‘Voices’? Whenever I suggest that a student ask themselves this sort of question - which I am forever doing - I close my own eyes, breathe, ask myself the same question and go into a brief meditation… </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’ve just done it now, since I’d forgotten what came up for me when I asked Actress A to meditate on the Voices… Asking and meditating, however briefly on my response, turns a ‘good idea’ into real experience.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I must test myself each time to make sure that I’m in the same ball park as the student. I can teach only from a position of ‘discovering for the first time.’ It gives an edge of energy and excitement, even if the memories are upsetting – especially when they are upsetting. The process can be annoyingly slow and confusing for students, but for me nowadays, the answers pop up quickly so can encourage my students that this process actually works. After a while, these memories fit into the pattern of one’s whole life, bringing the character directly into line with oneself. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’ve discussed this process elsewhere and will refer to it again and again, attempting to make it clearer and more accessible; for the work at hand I’m endeavoring to explain how we segue from it into the Meisner improvisation, which will be the focus of my writing for the next blog entry…</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We will continue this analysis next time in Blog #52. Please stay tuned:</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
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</div>Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-77266968175611183142012-10-08T17:46:00.000-07:002012-10-08T17:46:24.298-07:00BLOG # 50: How to play Jeanne the Maid before she became St. Joan. Combining Method and Meisner helps us detect tricks of the mind…<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span><span style="font-size: large;">Reading entry #49 will facilitate an understanding of what I am writing here. In order to understand how Method and Meisner can work together, we are using as examples monologues, spoken by two characters in a scene from Shaw’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">St. Joan.</i> On the one hand, we have a nobleman and general of the French forces, Dunois (Actor B) – also known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batard, </i>because he was<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>the illegitimate son of the King’s brother – and Joan the Maid, (Actress A). In Dunois’ monologue, he tells Joan that he is no longer willing to lead his troops against the English because they have no chance of winning. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In my previous blog, I demonstrate how ‘reasons’ can also be excuses, and list possible ulterior motives for Dunois’ behavior.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suggested that Actor B do some relaxation work and ask himself questions in order to find, within his own life, a situation that would help him discover the character’s true objective. Historical research is very important for acting in a play like this one, from a former era, set in a foreign country, but the actors must still dig into their own lives to find the roots of their characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Now, we will take a look at the Maid of Orleans, as Joan was called, and see how she was shaped by her family and her very unusual personal character. My student, Actress A, found it daunting even to begin a search this complicated. Nothing about the character lends itself to easy analysis. Joan is a peasant girl, a young teenager – she was no more than nineteen when she was burned at the stake five years after she first heard her Voices tell her to save France. She never learned to read or write and, of course, had no training in sword fighting or military strategy. Her entire life after the age of thirteen was guided by the Voices of her saints that softly spoke in her ear. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For two months now, I have been working with Student Actors A and B on this medieval puzzle, with its seemingly remote characters and plot lines. In spite of concentrated sensory work, the actors are still having a lot of difficulty finding personal connections to these historical figures. So we decided to set up some Meisner Knock-at-the-Door improvisations. Since they were working on monologues within a scene and not on the scene itself, I had them trade positions each time we met. One time, Actress A would perform the activity and Actor B would come in with the objective, the next time we’d switch it around with Actor B doing the activity and Actress A coming in with the objective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I have changed some elements in the way I teach Meisner from the way I learned it; for example, carefully researched sensory objects play an important part both before and during the improvisations. (I’ll go into more about this later.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another way in which I have altered the approach is not discussing situations between the actors ahead of time. Relationships are defined only in general terms, father, daughter, friend, etc. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Over the years, I have trained myself to observe life very systematically, in order to relate it to acting. The actual way that cause creates effect is quite different from the way we think it works. (This is a broad topic which, in time, will get its own explanation.) However, there is one thing I have noticed that is particularly relevant to this discussion - relationships dissolve into chaos when conflict arises.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everybody knows this, but it happens to a much greater degree than we would like to think. Objectivity decreases as the severity of the conflict increases. Finally coherent thought disappears altogether, and only the point of view of each person remains and is manifested in his or her behavior. The worlds of the two antagonists cease to be shared in any way. This usually creates great danger for at least one character, who may be almost totally unaware of what is going on. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For example, Joan, a peasant, dreams of a France that is based, ultimately, on democratic principles. She fights to the death for this outcome in each and every scene of the play. Obviously, there are other factors that come into playing her character, but this determination is first and foremost, and the actress playing her has to relate in one way or another to it before she can get into the Joan ‘ball park’.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Dunois is an aristocrat, flawed from birth because he is a bastard son, but none-the-less a nobleman, with all the attendant qualities of concern with prestige and property. So what does he want above all else? Well, one thing, he doesn’t care about is the integrity of the entity called ‘France.’ He’s not at all sure that fighting for it is in his best interests; not if too many of his men are killed and another big landowner, the Duke of Burgundy, in this case, prove too powerful an enemy; one who would swallow up Dunois’ lands if he got in his way. Up to this point in the play, Joan and Dunois have fought side by side, now they are sharply divided by their interests. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This is the heart of the matter; the sort of thing actors can sink their teeth into. It’s very difficult to grasp, but it is right there. Often, I talk a lot with students in order to help them find something in their own lives that will move them into the very spot where the character lives. In my next blog entry, I’ll discuss how Actress A and Actor B go about preparing and executing an improvisation that will help them identify with their characters and identify the source of the energy that motivates their conflict…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-16219079359304398742012-09-28T08:30:00.002-07:002012-09-28T08:30:28.571-07:00BLOG #49: Cobbling together Method and Meisner: well not exactly…<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">That’s just the point – these two techniques are not stuck together but
rather wound around each other like strings of DNA. I’m searching for ways to
describe how actors can achieve the best results from working their way through
these, seemingly, diametrically opposed acting systems. Is it boring? Let’s
see… In
Blog entry #46, before I went off on my diatribe about the NY Times criticism
of Sam Shepard’s play, <i>Heartless</i>, I compared
the differences between Method and Meisner to the way in which Freud and Jung
approached the new field of psychology. This is what I said:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"> Freud’s
ideas created the first big break with the past when he unveiled the theory
that we have an ‘unconscious mind.’ Jung then split from Freud by postulating
the ‘collective unconscious.’ Freud constructed the first model for
psychological analysis, and Jung, rather like Meisner, discovered that the
space occupied by our psyche is a shared one – that as individuals we are part
of a collective and are interacting even though we think of ourselves as being
single.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The best way to clarify
this incredibly complex idea is with an example. Not that the example is simple
in any way, but more engaging than dry description and hopefully will make the
whole idea easier to grasp.<i> </i>Two
students, a man and a woman, have been working on one monologue apiece from a
scene in G. B. Shaw’s <i>St. Joan</i>. This
scene is the turning point of the play, just before the French literally ‘sell’
Joan to the British, although she has performed all sorts of ‘miraculous’ feats
that have allowed the French to defeat the British enemy, who still occupy French
soil. Joan, played by Actress A, does not know of the French plan and the Dunois,
played by Actor B, so far her loyal general, will refuse to fight from this
moment on. Shaw, being the great playwright that he is, has written two
monologues, where none of the ‘facts’ are discussed. Rather, he allows the
characters to speak ‘from the heart.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Joan, the ‘maid’ of
Orleans – not yet St. Joan, who will have already been burned at the stake and
thereby probably learned a thing or two about diplomacy – is still innocent of the
shrewd plotting that will soon cause her appalling death. Dunois, a few years
older, a nobleman, and wise in the ways of the Court will betray her because…
well, he would lose his position, his lands, and quite possibly his entire
family would be wiped out if he didn’t go along with the King’s decision to
throw in his lot with the British at this point. (Although Dunois is closely
related to the King, he cannot afford to go against the royal plan.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Now, this kind of
research isn’t particularly encouraged in either Meisner or Method training –
it might be considered a little ‘old fashioned’ to worry so much about nobles
and peasants and French and British history of the 15<sup>th</sup> Century. Why
not just update it to now? I’m not against that at all; however, one must know
the <i>facts</i> of the original, in order
to update anything. Some of it comes from a careful reading of the play, but
Google fills in a lot more and is very accessible. There is no getting away
from the fact that an actor must learn to do research, but that is not the
subject being discussed at this point. Suffice it to say, Dunois’ relationship
to Joan and her plight was a lot more complicated than Shaw describes in his
play, but he got the essential points So, we move on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Actor B is preparing a
monologue in which he tells Joan that he will no longer fight for her. Basically,
he says that God is unpredictable and that their side can only continue
fighting if he believes that they can win, and now that he’s stopped believing
that he has decided to quit the fight. Otherwise he will be sending his
soldiers into an unequal battle to be senselessly slaughtered. Abruptly, he
changes the subject and accuses the King, also present in the scene, of not
giving him enough credit for his role in winning the battles for France up to
this point. This suggests that he may be
a little jealous of Joan and trying to win more credit with the King. Having
been her devoted supporter, he now effectively switches his position and
undermines her determination to fight until all of France is under one King. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The first big problem that
Actor B faces in working on this monologue, whatever method he uses – since
they all agree on this point - is figuring out the character’s objective. Here
is a brave person who has fought hard for a leader he believes in – and now all
of a sudden he’s changing his position, using an excuse that doesn’t really
hold up. He never thought their side could win, he just believed in her. Why
doesn’t he believe in her now? This is the kind of situation that causes an
actor to tear his hair out. Here the character is letting down his comrade in
arms and he’s whining to his ‘commanding officer’ that his contribution isn’t
sufficiently valued. How does the actor get on track with this? First of all,
what is the character’s over-all objective? He has to be clear about that
before he can figure out the objective in the monologue. Meisner won’t help
here. Well, maybe a little, but sense-memory will be a lot more effective. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Actor B can ask himself
the question: when have I been in a situation like this? Then he can concentrate
on the breathing and relaxation process, focus on his body and his senses, and
see what comes up for him – what situation in his own life he slide into the
character’s dilemma and believe in wholeheartedly. He came up with an ‘as if’,
which we will get to very soon. And you will be surprised as it has nothing
directly to do with generals and wars. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> In
the next entry, I will discuss Joan’s position and what issues she is dealing
with in her monologue. Then we will examine how their differing objectives lock
the two characters in opposition to one another. One can use the Meisner Knock-at-the-Door
improvisation <u>along with</u> the Method work-on-self. But the whole process
has to be organized and each piece has to fit into the other. If the approaches
don’t dovetail, the whole system breaks down in confusion and hopelessness.
We’re all familiar with that! Let’s find a way out of it…</span></span>Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-83451180902135187462012-09-08T15:41:00.000-07:002012-09-08T15:41:14.252-07:00BLOG #48: In Heartless Sam Shepard digs into one of the most critical personal and political issues for our time… <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2fIV0Gon0tz28bjEOA8D41_bYR2Jkw6aUWK69mAMmZh0hPxfkxRNwD64IuyGCHBdtBP2DCdcquovSA6K4K15fhz2FXjVsfa0iBk-kD7-ek51N9zPwDMDsHXErcacRR61w2co9e8rFDYQo/s1600/another-mans-poison-1952.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2fIV0Gon0tz28bjEOA8D41_bYR2Jkw6aUWK69mAMmZh0hPxfkxRNwD64IuyGCHBdtBP2DCdcquovSA6K4K15fhz2FXjVsfa0iBk-kD7-ek51N9zPwDMDsHXErcacRR61w2co9e8rFDYQo/s320/another-mans-poison-1952.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 30.25pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">How does Sam Shepard’s play, ‘<i>Heartless,</i>’ deal with the man/woman issue, and why does it matter
so much? (For fuller comprehension, please read Blog entry #47.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> By the way, I am well
aware that this blog is aimed at actors and not meant to furnish a critical
analysis of playwriting. However, I think that actors should be constantly
researching drama through viewing films and plays - whenever possible - and
reading them, as well. It is extremely important to know how a script is
birthed by a master playwright/screenwriter. Remember that the character you
must identify with as an actor has been conceived by the writer and printed onto
the page – although many changes may occur during rehearsal and shooting. You need to know the precise relationship of
your character to the objective of the script. I’m spending all this time with <i>Heartless</i> because I think it holds
crucial insights into some of the most important personal and political issues
of our time. Actors need in-depth
knowledge of how to bring both heart and mind into their comprehension of a
script. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> So we have established
that <i>Heartless</i> principally explores
male/female relations. The battle between the sexes has always been fertile
territory for playwrights. Good
dramatic writing on this subject usually shows women doing their best to stave
off the effects of male thoughtlessness, selfishness and cruelty – whether
overt or subtle – and losing (tragedy) or winning-by-losing (comedy). The
tragic version takes center stage in <i>A
Doll’s House</i>, by Henrik Ibsen – Nora can never see her children again after
she leaves her husband, Torvald. The comic variety is present in, well… just
about everything ever written by Noel Coward – and just about every television
sitcom. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Other types of dramas
that involve internecine conflicts between husbands and wives include women who
are put upon and then do ‘evil’ things to their husbands, like Medea killing
her children or the ‘cold killer’ type like Bette Davis in the film, <i>Another Man’s</i> <i>Poison. </i>But the point is women either die or horrible things happen
to them as a result of their ‘folly’ in retaliating against negative male
behavior.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The suggestion is that
women, however bad the situation may be, are not allowed the dramatic license
of murder unless they get caught or destroy themselves. Women who walk out on
men usually pay a price, but men frequently leave women and go on to do other
things without having to account for their behavior. Shakespeare often shows us
this pattern: Brutus in Julius Ceasar emotionally abandons Portia, who ends up
killing herself, and then there’s Ophelia, whom Hamlet is contracted to marry
until he’s consumed by the need to avenge his father’s death. Ophelia kills
herself. And what about Antony leaving Cleopatra because the war takes him
away? Another suicide, by asp, this time. Do we condemn these men for their
actions? No. We are inclined to nod our heads sagely and say, “They had more
important things to do.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> There is one notable
reversal of this behavior in Shakespeare – trust the bard to ring all the
changes on human behavior – and that’s Cressida in <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>. She
abandons Troilus for Achilles and gets away with it. But, do we respect her?
Perhaps, but she didn’t do it for a noble cause – and she was absolved of her
ties to her former lover by Pandarus, who has a whole school of bad behavior
named after him on this account!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> So Shepard has a bevy of current and classical
writers raking over the same subject of man vs. woman, man always wins. What
makes his angle so fresh on this well-worn subject? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> His first major play on the
war of the sexes was <i>Fool for Love</i> in
1983. Returning Man begs Woman #1 to let him stay – after walking out on her
for Woman #2. We’ve seen it a million times. But seldom has this issue been so
wittily presented, with both protagonists apparently equally strong. Nor does it usually feel like such a slap in
the face when the man ultimately abandons her again – although the evidence of
betrayal is there from the start, and the man never logically refutes it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The fact is that we are
fooled by his charm and a sense that he, himself, believes in his ‘repentance’
– although he never really repents. We are transfixed by his <i>need to return,</i> and by the need of the
woman, although she does everything she can to appear independent of him. She
has, in fact, taken up with Guy #2, who shows up in the play, and although he
actually has a job and treats her nicely, he isn’t half as cool or good looking
as ‘Returning Man,’ who is such a charismatic loser, women in the audience
drool over him, and the men would give anything to <i>be</i> him – so they could get the women, if not for any other
reason. Shepard’s dialogue in this play
goes way beyond amusing, actually; it has the flavor of the American West and
the spirit of ‘can-do.’ We fall for Returning Man who’s actually a total louse
and loser, because he is, quite simply, the personification of the American
Dream Man – the one the American Dream is built on. Without him, we’re bored
and everything we want doesn’t exist. The play doesn’t solve anything, but it
shows us exactly the dream/nightmare in which men and women were engaged at
that moment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Twenty-seven years have
passed since the writing of <i>Fool for Love</i>
and now it’s time for the full-blown nightmare of <i>Heartless.</i> Curiously, or
purposely, the play has a feeling of Greek tragedy, although it still takes
place in Shepard country: the spacious, mountainous Far West of great views and
fresh air. One of the characters actually jumps off a mountain – and lives.
Could it be that she is already dead?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The delightful, clever
dialogue we associate with Shepard is present only fitfully, and he is still
cagey about anything too factual. Our leading man is no longer charismatic and
witty. He’s confused and aging, but one thing we know for sure is that he’s
deserted his wife and children. The
women – all four of them attack or give him the cold shoulder to begin with,
but he is persistent in his attentions to all of them. Only one sees through him, the mother, because
she’s too old to be attracted, has seen it all, and was probably married to and
deserted by a man exactly like him. Besides, she is wise enough to hold
everything together while the man is causing chaos. (I’m not going to give away
the plot, because I seriously hope anyone who reads this, will go and see the
play if they haven’t already done so!) Two of the women are horribly maimed,
and according to their scars, it isn’t just in the area of their hearts. It is
suggested in a hazy Shepardian manner that the third is in the process of
falling prey to exactly the same predator as the other two. The point of all this is that women don’t
change their position in relation to men because they have been ‘predatorized.’
They make every effort to do so, but something stops them. Again, Shepard shows
us this horrible fate without attempting to explain it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> We are the Chorus in
this heartfelt Greek Tragedy. Obviously, not all of us fall prey to this
hideous male/female machination. Some avoid it altogether, and others realize
what’s going on and their fate combined with their own characters allow them to
make choices so they can eventually escape.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> In this particular
election year - taking into consideration that half the electorate are women -
a play that addresses the subject of women passively allowing men to violate
the sacred space of the female body should be taken very seriously. By the way,
many women are not deterred from aborting unwanted children by making it
illegal. They find ways that are often extremely painful, life-threatening and frequently
leave them unable to bear children when they are ready and desire to have them.
Whether Sam Shepard had any of this in mind when he wrote the play is up for
grabs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> What is perfectly clear
is that one of our foremost playwrights feels compelled to write about the fact
that women – complicit or not - are still at the mercy of frequently unmerciful
men. There’s an unseen character in <i>Heartless</i>,
who is none-the-less ever present: the man’s dog. Is the dog ‘stupid’ because
it fails to bite the hand that betrays it? Or does it just need more time to
figure out its options…</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-82196892191335261182012-09-04T19:04:00.001-07:002012-09-04T19:04:16.189-07:00BLOG # 47: More on Sam Shepard’s Heartless NY Times Review. “The man who became to drama what the Kleenex was to the handkerchief…” <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHV-Gc7TbNqwUukOshCe7x_Zl6QBd9TZ_ecuQUtbQL7F7Vo-GM8uEx_8TrHoqy9cfACQLEA_jTIgiAJJkzlAeSYQDVhZUFtDuhxNYGo1B-fKOlwvPNr8diKw6jA4OOd3FshvcWttWf3R7v/s1600/Jasper+johns+flag+blog+47.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHV-Gc7TbNqwUukOshCe7x_Zl6QBd9TZ_ecuQUtbQL7F7Vo-GM8uEx_8TrHoqy9cfACQLEA_jTIgiAJJkzlAeSYQDVhZUFtDuhxNYGo1B-fKOlwvPNr8diKw6jA4OOd3FshvcWttWf3R7v/s1600/Jasper+johns+flag+blog+47.jpg" /></a></div>
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<br />
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I first encountered Sam
Shepard in 1970. Some guy I was mad about – probably my first husband - and I
went down to the Astor Place Theatre to see Shepard’s <i>Forensic and the Navigators</i>.
I had no idea what it was about, but its total madness drove me wild
with delight. Clive Barnes wrote of that
production:</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">Despite my worst instincts, I cannot prevent myself from mildly loving
the plays of Sam Shepard… Mr. Shepard is
perhaps the first person to write good disposable plays. He may well go down in
history as the man who became to drama what Kleenex was to the handkerchief. </span></i></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Barnes went on to recommend that’ people go and see for
themselves what this young upstart was
up to.’ But Kleenex, indeed! If we were going to make a comparison today, we
could say perhaps that Shepard is to
American drama what Jasper Johns is to the American flag. </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Whatever Shepard is trying to get at it, he intrigues us <b>with a simultaneous layering of equally
outrageous story-telling and action. Atrocities of a highly political nature
are all but concealed in an infinite repertoire of often absurdly rendered personal
crimes. And he succeeds in making this phantasmagoria seem almost natural by
embedding it in the details of everyday reality. </b></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i> </i>Of course, he
changes things around, but he always links the horrors of the past to the
brutality of the present. In <i>Fool for Love</i>, an old man – long defunct
– sits in the corner spying on and in some way controlling the vicious quarrels
and prurient antics of a young couple, both of whom may possibly be his
grandchildren. <i>Buried Child</i> makes
unacknowledged infanticide the cornerstone of daily misery for the whole
family. When, finally, the youngest living member flees into the night he sees all
of his forebears pushing up against the windshield until they become“…faces I’d
never seen before but still recognized.” <i>Lie
of the Mind</i> presents mirror families; the attempted murder of a young,
beautiful woman, fought over by two violent men who end up in a Mexican
standoff. A third, less testosterone- infused, barely manages to slither out
between them to claim the lovely lady. Directly impinging on the action of the
protagonists is a host of mothers, fathers, a sister and a dead grandfather -
who looms even more gargantuan in memory than the living - with alcohol supplying
a constant source of negative energy. And
then there’s, <i>True West, </i>an audience
favorite, which embodies all manner of fratricidal tendencies, not only the
familial variety but also the ‘brotherly hate’ that poisons the American way of
doing business and conducting all manner of public and private affairs.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> By making his points elliptically, always a little fuzzy
or absurd, he keeps us amused but also forces us to ‘figure out’ what he’s
talking about. A major example of this technique is the dead child in <i>Buried Child</i> – the play which won
Shepard a Pulitzer Prize. </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 30.25pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">When
I saw it back in 1979, I had no idea what he was actually getting at, but it
was fun to watch and I sensed there was a deep something-or-other going on. To
minds more scholarly and mature than mine was at that time, it was obvious that
the dead and hidden child was real, but it also represented a ‘collective past of
unacknowledged and helpless victims’ and the ruckus on-stage could be, with a
little shuffling of characters, any American family dealing with its poisoned
roots. How and why the child died is spelled out in a way, but it seems that
incest themes in Shepard might be a way of describing too much closeness from
one’s forebears and lovers – a closeness that is like dynamite and creates
explosions. And I’ve always had a hunch that Shepard is also making an oblique reference
in this play to the murder of the Native Americans and the stealing of their
land. In any case, he is showing how atrocities from both our personal and
collective history collide with present day reality.<b> </b> </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> All in all, Shepard’s writing encompasses the horror and
humor that many of us experience growing up and living in America. But like
Jasper Johns’ flags, Shepard’s plays ring many changes on the American dream,
because unfortunately, that’s exactly what it is – a dream. And serious plays, like serious art, at least
tweak and often turn our dreams into nightmares – because at the bottom of it
all we need someone to show us the truth, unvarnished at least, if not harsh
and ugly. </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> And on that note, in my experience, no play of Shepard’s,
has been harsher or uglier than <i>Heartless.</i>
But I find it the most truthful and dead-on, literally, in its themes. In fact,
as I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, it is like a Greek myth, only the
‘hero’, Roscoe, played by Gary Cole, is a total anti-hero. He doesn’t have the
charisma, suavity, good looks, youthfulness or humor that we associate with
Shepard’s bevy of leading gents. And this is because Shepard wanted him like
that – he’s an ‘everyman’. Not that every man is like this character, but he
represents the majority of a certain male breed, very prevalent in America,
which up to this point has promoted itself as a bastion of equality in
relations between men and women. </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> In the late ‘sixties and early ‘seventies, while America
was having its way with Vietnam, at least at home it was successfully challenging
religious beliefs and societal prejudices in order to win legislation that
allowed women to claim sovereignty over their own bodies. Steady gains have been made in the area of
women’s rights for decades, in just the same way as racism has been so diminished
that we were able to elect an African-American president. But now, suddenly, there
is a tremendous push to erase all this good work, as if these were just words
on a blackboard. </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> How is it possible that after all this time, the freedom
of women over their bodies is being called into question? How can it be, here in
the new millennium, that an American male politician –regardless of the party to
which he belongs - can get away with saying openly <i>that a fetus conceived from rape shows that the women’s body gave
consent</i>?? How can he do this without being immediately scuttled by his
party? It’s as if the fundamental human status of women’s equality to men had been
spirited away in the dark by little male gnomes.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Or are there little female gnomes, as well? </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 30.25pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Since
we’re talking about a year in which there is an election campaign, these
questions all lead to THE BIG QUESTION: how in the year 2012, in a country
where we have one vote for each person (let’s leave out the issue of poll tampering
for the moment) and women are at least half the population – how come these
politicians who hold such inhuman, atavistic, and misogynistic views aren’t afraid
of alienating the majority of the female population?? What makes them think
they can still get the votes they need in spite of their highly public obsession
with women’s private parts? (In an economy where many middle class families are
already hitting the poverty level – you’d think women would be thinking
smaller, not bigger, families.) This aim, ready, fire at women’s sovereignty
over their own bodies is the $64,000 – or is it the $1,000,000,000,000 question
- in America today. And Shepard has the guts, intelligence and <i>heart</i> to explore it in <i>Heartless</i>.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> From
where I’m sitting, this is an issue that the NY Times failed to address in its
revue – and it’s an unforgivable oversight, considering the immense danger of
America electing a government next November that will marginalize women. Could
a playwright find an issue more relevant than this one to explore right now?
Even if a critic disagreed wholeheartedly with the argument put forth in the
play – not to even mention it in a review? Really. More coming on Shepard and <i>Heartless</i> in a few days.</span></span>Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-39223986148941326312012-08-22T18:50:00.001-07:002012-08-22T18:50:22.107-07:00Blog #46: Forging the first links between Method and Meisner<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMyTW0ZEp7zUd8xFXaRcAJvjIWPxq0Gp3J02mhqW8tlHJUFpixwMi5TWtFzvMMdZPYp6R-wCqe1LezFaf-dihBvCA37kW9xHSDsHn-eAb1yR31ua4cQvcn-8-3xuEqx3HP9-cMzZSNWkXm/s1600/A-Streetcar-named-Desire-marlon-brando-30585957-1597-2000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMyTW0ZEp7zUd8xFXaRcAJvjIWPxq0Gp3J02mhqW8tlHJUFpixwMi5TWtFzvMMdZPYp6R-wCqe1LezFaf-dihBvCA37kW9xHSDsHn-eAb1yR31ua4cQvcn-8-3xuEqx3HP9-cMzZSNWkXm/s320/A-Streetcar-named-Desire-marlon-brando-30585957-1597-2000.jpg" width="255" /></a></div>
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<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I realize that I have to go slowly as I attempt to develop this
idea. I hope that you will bear with me
on this. It’s easy to generalize and toss around ideas about acting that seem
to make sense but when you try to put them into practice they fall apart. I
remember when I was first teaching, I wasn’t even aware that Method and Meisner
appeared, not only on the surface but even as you penetrate more deeply into
the whole structure of the art form, to be, well… diametrically opposed if not
downright mutually exclusive! And they were meant to be, at first, for reasons
I’m not going to discuss here because I’m not an expert on the history of
acting training. My area of knowledge,
and the focus of this writing, is to make the ‘process of learning acting’ as
clear as I can, but sometimes a little history doesn’t hurt. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Another momentary
digression – it has a purpose: my mother appeared in a play on Broadway
directed by Lee Strasberg. She couldn’t
stand his direction, although I can’t remember exactly why. Perhaps she didn’t
say, because it would have been obvious to the person, my father, to whom she
told me the story. Here’s another story
that goes along with this one – and I’ll get to the point of all this in a
minute. My mother and father attended the original production of <i>A Streetcar Named Desire</i>. As they were walking away from the Schubert
Theatre, they ran into Marlon Brando, who was sitting on a doorstep, looking
very concerned about something. My mother stopped to congratulate him and tried
to talk to him about the play. But Brando was completely immersed in showing my
parents his finger, which had been hurt – apparently not seriously, according
to my father – during the course of the show that afternoon. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Somehow the fact that my
mother didn’t like Strasberg as a director and the story about Brando’s
involvement with his hurt finger had become conflated in my father’s mind. I
think it had to do with the accusation of ‘self-involvement’ that has always
been hurled at Method Acting. My father was not an actor and had probably taken
his cue from my mother. So why didn’t she like Method Acting? She was an
established star by the time she worked with Strasberg, and I don’t think
acting methods any longer interested her. It was a job, and she was entirely wrapped
up in writing novels - and trying to have some family life in the time that
were left over. If she had lived, I imagine she would have become interested in
the ‘actual methodology’ of Method Acting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> One criticism that can
be leveled at the teachers of Method Acting is misusing the information that
one inevitably acquires about the actors, whom one is teaching. Knowing
something about someone doesn’t mean that one necessarily understands them or
can ‘help’ them in any particular way. Obviously, acting teachers find out the
sort of things therapists discover in the course of treatment, but don’t have
the same kind of training. Teachers can help students psychologically in a
human way, but not in a professional capacity – and they can be extremely harmful
if they turn the information they have been given by a student against the student.
Even with the best intentions, teachers often don’t realize how much power
students give them, and they aren’t careful enough. I was guilty of this myself
in the early years of my teaching. One must remember that back in the 1940’s
when Method Acting was in its infancy, teachers made mistakes all the time,
unwittingly. Another problem was the position of women in those days. Without
even thinking about it, male teachers often assumed they were intellectually
superior to the women in their classes; but even worse, women were apt to think
of themselves as ‘below’ men, especially a famous, or not even famous, acting
teacher. They gave them power – and they did the same thing with female
teachers, of course, but for different reasons. Female teachers are often
unconsciously viewed as ‘surrogate mothers,’ which is okay as long as the
teacher understands that a transference can take place, but knows full well
that she is neither the student’s mother nor a therapist! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Here is a third reason that
Method Acting got a bad rap; it was so new there hadn’t been time enough to begin
ironing out the bugs in the ‘methodology’ behind the ‘method’. This is a
subject I will pursue in depth as I go on with this analysis of Method and
Meisner. Please note that I do not say ‘Method vs. Meisner,’ unless I’m
referring specifically to the battle –which I consider no longer necessary -
being waged between them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Consider the fact that
Stanislavsky’s ideas backed both techniques (He introduced others also that
became identified with individual teachers, including Adler’s script analysis
and Grotowski’s physical/vocal disciplines.) This revolution in acting training
was embedded in the transition from the 1800’s to the 1900’s. Looking at the
whole picture, it becomes clear that Stanislavsky’s influence on the Art of
Acting was part of a huge wave of political and social changes we call
‘Modernism.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Again, I am not any sort
of historian, but as a child of the mini-revolution of the 1960’s, I have
experienced a lesser version of these seismic shifts in art from one era to
another. First the bliss of the surge followed by the inevitable recoil of disappointment
from the problems that such a bold movement inevitably causes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I think that the split
between Method and Meisner can be likened somewhat to the difference between
Freud’s and Jung’s psychoanalytic views. Freud’s ideas created the first big
break with the past when he unveiled the theory that we have an ‘unconscious
mind.’ Jung then split from Freud by postulating the ‘collective unconscious.’
Freud constructed the first model for psychological analysis, and Jung, rather
like Meisner, discovered that the space occupied by our psyche is a shared one –
that as individuals we are part of a collective and are interacting even though
we think of ourselves as being single. I
feel that in both cases – Method/Meisner and Freud/Jung - all elements have
value and that they are ultimately interdependent. These comparisons are far
from exact but they are worth exploring – and explore them I shall as I proceed
with my analysis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Eventually,
bridging the gap between Method and Meisner will give us a unified perspective
that will greatly enrich our knowledge of acting. Splits are necessary and
inevitable, but if we don’t heal them we descend into the chaos of perpetual
civil war.</span></span>Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-81814949953080813622012-08-16T16:25:00.001-07:002012-08-16T16:25:21.489-07:00Blog #45: Superlative Acting in Sam Shepard’s Heartless and Annie Baker’s version of Uncle Vanya at the Soho Rep.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7toQg8TZ0EZKLY5yNiCDPK7lT6FX8X8tnOxbY3ZPKK67lBBRltJrWB4JDnX2axMAjmCAYVrONaWT9lkHe-Jxk-563JUu6VG4ig6Q1wLWEmBvkrhXq53nzSwFl2tKaLjxuMu3MNfnYDqq_/s1600/Blog+45+sam-shepard-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7toQg8TZ0EZKLY5yNiCDPK7lT6FX8X8tnOxbY3ZPKK67lBBRltJrWB4JDnX2axMAjmCAYVrONaWT9lkHe-Jxk-563JUu6VG4ig6Q1wLWEmBvkrhXq53nzSwFl2tKaLjxuMu3MNfnYDqq_/s320/Blog+45+sam-shepard-2.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Before I plunge in further with my plan to discuss segues between
Method and Meisner, I need to talk about two superlative acting ensembles I had
the privilege to witness over the weekend: Sam Shepard’s <i>Heartless</i> and Annie Baker’s version of <i>Uncle Vanya</i> at the Soho Rep. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> It’s valuable to analyze
why a work of art succeeds – and what we mean by ‘success’ in this context. A
reaction to a work of art is not entirely ‘personal’; although I have often
disagreed with the critics, they have helped me over the years to understand a
‘pattern’ that makes audiences and critics alike feel a very special kind of
excitement when viewing a performance. I
strive to bring about work in my students that is able to transform an audience
from passive viewers into active participants. I mean this in the sense that
the audience actually feels what the characters are experiencing and that the
play is in some way about them and their life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> <i>Heartless </i>hasn’t opened yet and I don’t want to give away anything
about the plot. Please go and see it for your own good. It is not an easy play
to watch. We were seated almost under the stage and I had to crane my neck,
which was already sore, in order to watch the action. But after a while I felt
that my discomfort was actually contributing to my personal involvement in this
superb play. Two outstanding elements make it, in my judgment, ‘successful.’
Actually three, now that I think about it. I was going to say the writing of
the script and the sensitive acting, but then I realized that the brilliant
direction connects these two like the third leg of a triangle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Shepard has always been
able to boil down earth-shaking themes such as brotherhood, ‘familyhood’ and
corporate greed and feed them through simultaneously believable and crazy
characters - and then make the whole
stew go down easily with a liberal sprinkling of humor. But here Shepard takes on a man vs. women
theme with the intensity of a Greek tragedy and pulls it off through actors,
who literally turn themselves inside out. There’s no preaching in this play.
People talk, well… not naturally, but in the way people might actually speak
when they have a lot on their minds, and they do plenty of interesting things
and by the time they’ve reached the end of the play, they reveal that the
qualities they seemed to project at first are the polar opposite of who they really
are. The ensemble work of the actors is terrific; whether utterly attuned or
viciously dissonant they continually speak ‘from the heart or heartlessness’
that defines their core. The emotional life is so tangible that we can’t
disconnect for an instant. If we allow ourselves to listen, we are riveted –
and when it is over we know that we <i>are</i>
them and they <i>are</i> us – and in one way
or another, the terrible arc of their lives is ours. I can imagine what it must
have cost Shepard to come up with this kind of honesty, but it is hard to
imagine how the actors go on night after night shivering with emotion like
leaves in a particularly icy wind. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Annie
Baker’s <i>Uncle Vanya</i> at Soho Rep is
another wrenching treat for theatergoers. Others more qualified than I have extolled
the virtues of this particular presentation - how the stage area extends into
the audience as if we are at times transported to, and at others literally
trapped inside, a rural Russian living room of the late nineteenth century .
And what goings-on we encounter! I
thought to myself, we, the audience, are a Greek chorus of helpless bystanders,
only allowed some laughter and a hell of a lot of sadness at this so-called Chekhovian 'Tales
of Country Life.' <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Actually, I could write a dissertation
on this wonder-inducing production of a play, I know almost as well as my own
life from the amount of times I’ve worked on it with students. But in the
interest of brevity, I will concentrate on the ‘core resonance’ of this
particular performance, which, in my entirely personal view is built upon the
axis of Vanya, fueled by fury and crammed into an armor of irony – except when
he explodes like a bomb - in Reed Birney’s steely portrayal, and the sinuous,
seductive, tubercular and ultimately achingly disappointed Astrov, unveiled by
the masterful Michael Shannon. Running
courier between them is Eve Best’s adorably hopeful and equally despairing
Sonia. The other characters definitely do more than ‘swell a progress’ but they
are mired – and to some extent saved - by an ignorance of their desperate lot.
The three prime movers, however, are acutely aware – Sonia only in the final
moments – that they will never experience love and fulfillment in their lives.
In this way, they presage the ‘end of days’ horror that will descend upon
Russia in the next few decades and annihilate the landowning class. Vanya
seethes with rage at the knowledge that he wasted valuable possibilities
in his youth, Astrov is a man of action but the action leads nowhere because of
the vast ignorance and laziness around him, and Sonia girds her character with
faith in a spirit world beyond the grave to face abiding sorrow on this plane. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> Shannon’s portrayal of Astrov is
astonishing; at times he was standing only a few feet from my seat, and I could
see the curvature of his spine and the grimace of pain on his face. He was the
embodiment of a man who masters illness, commits himself to courageous action
and loves with all his heart. He is everything we admire and could wish for in
a man today. These are his words, <i>The
Russian forests are literally groaning under the axe, millions of trees are
being destroyed, the homes of animals and birds are being laid waste, the
rivers are becoming shallow and drying up, the wonderful scenery is
disappearing forever… </i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span> Does anyone hear him? No. He is a voice in the
wilderness, which will die out, as will so many millions of other Russian
voices, those of the ones murdered by dictators in the years that followed. And
the earth will be laid waste, most notably in Chernobyl. But <i>Uncle Vanya</i> will live one, interpreted
by artists who truly understand the importance of reminding us that ‘those who
ignore history are doomed to repeat it.’ Or even more frighteningly, history
will always repeat itself no matter what we do, because history is the result
of Human Nature… </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-45735405362362748152012-08-09T18:50:00.002-07:002012-08-09T18:50:43.564-07:00Blog # 44: Daenya’s life problems halt our work on Berniece’s monologue. Moving on to figure out the steps for combining Meisner with Method.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLmVFdtc9loV9ICQ8xyWOJVrKmouH-8cYPksMJkdtS01mbCnQ12suq3HwHu3Gb3vtESVUJZxiBOhL9twdHVyEIvj2RJFeafNMe0imIpa2z8rF3NDhw5mNu9bbPUwkSn33IVnwFD9Cktwjv/s1600/Kathe+Kollwitz+for+blog+%2344.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLmVFdtc9loV9ICQ8xyWOJVrKmouH-8cYPksMJkdtS01mbCnQ12suq3HwHu3Gb3vtESVUJZxiBOhL9twdHVyEIvj2RJFeafNMe0imIpa2z8rF3NDhw5mNu9bbPUwkSn33IVnwFD9Cktwjv/s1600/Kathe+Kollwitz+for+blog+%2344.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">As you may recall, in my last series of Blog entries, I have been
examining sense memory technique as applied to the work of my student, Daenya,
on the character of Berniece from August Wilson’s <i>The Piano Lesson</i>. At the end of July, Daenya abruptly lost her
long-term job, when her dentist employer was diagnosed with diabetes and had to
take an early retirement. In order to survive, Daenya took a severe cut in pay
and is spending all her spare time looking for a second job to support herself
and her daughter. I hope she eventually finds decently paid employment so she
can have a better life and we can work together again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I miss her; it was a pleasure to watch
her considerable talent unfold over the years we worked together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
since this has happened, I will now re-focus the Blog to discuss a major aspect
of acting training that I have touched on but needs to be explored in depth. I
am referring to the integration of Method and Meisner. An appropriate synthesis
of these techniques, along with other aspects of learning to act such as voice,
speech, bodywork, etc., is essential to the kind of quick preparation required
for television and film acting as well as the long-term consistency required
for theatre roles. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As
I have said in earlier blogs, both Method and Meisner – as indeed most current
training techniques – are derived essentially from Stanislavsky’s formulation
of the Art of Acting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Meisner
seems to have sprung from a schism with Method that engendered what amounted to
a civil war, engendering recriminations and bitterness on both sides. Perhaps
this opposition has quieted down recently - for years I remember trying to work
with students who had previously trained in one or the other and were incapable
of switching their allegiance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These days Meisner appears to hold sway, mainly because it is suited to
larger classes and on the surface might be easier to teach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(As students often discover to their
chagrin, many classes are based on the profit motive and employ simplistic
teaching methods which profit no one.) The fact is that, as with civil wars,
eventually compromises are reached; usually both sides are right about some
things and wrong about others. But it is an individual matter, as it is with
each actor trying to find his/her own path through the thorny do’s and don’ts
of acting techniques. Of course, there are others training methods – most
notably the Stella Adler technique - that focus on specific factors, which will
enter this discussion, but the main psychological division is Method vs.
Meisner. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Instead
of starting out with a theoretical discussion, I would like to begin the
investigation of these complicated and incredibly confusing theories by using
two examples of young people with whom I have worked recently. Let us give them
the names Sam and Robbie. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My
first session was audition coaching with Sam, an actor whom I was meeting for
the first time. His agent had told me about him, praised him to the skies – and
I was not disappointed. He was everything she had described; very photogenic in
a trendy way, smart as a whip, every line of his sides were memorized, and
polite without a trace of arrogance about his looks and talent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We talked for a bit; I asked the usual
questions, about previous training and some stuff about family background. He
had attended seminars but not received any consistent training, and the family
on his mother’s side was from Belarus, which could be a clue since experience
has shown me that often Eastern Europeans bring a lot of intensity and
intuition to their work. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
the readings of this young teenager, although solid with the text broken down
into beats, actions, and objectives, remained unimaginative and uninspired. He
took the directions I gave and adjusted quickly and professionally. The
material was suspenseful; the character was basically attempting to avenge the
death of his father with some supernatural help – a la Harry Potter. For a
moment, I thought about just tweaking the workmanlike but rather pedestrian
performance he had already achieved. Instead I found myself jumping in and
spending most of the session talking to Sam about the need for learning about
and using sense memory. He listened attentively and did his best to take in
what I was saying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In one short
hour of coaching, however, there is no way he could have even begun to
understand much beyond the fact that someone was telling him he needed to learn
a big technique he’d never heard of before and didn’t sound very appetizing.
We’ll see what happens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yesterday,
I saw Robbie, also a young teen, and one of the most outstanding actors I’ve
had the privilege to meet. He’s already a triple threat, with years of training
and performance as a singer/dancer under his belt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also likes to write – so his critical thinking is
developing quickly, a skill which is absolutely essential for good acting. It’s
amazing how this kid seems to know as much about his parents as they do about
themselves. One factor contributing to his early awareness is the fact that
both parents are in the business; one is a director and the other a screen
writer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Robbie
was preparing a monologue for a theatre program at a school<i>. </i>Unlike Sam, he had not attended a lot of TV and Film
audition classes, so he had not picked up ‘tips’ about how to change his
‘delivery to make him sound more interesting.’ I have a phrase for this kind of
haphazard approach to acting – ‘get rich quick schemes.’ Therefore, although Robbie is still
unskilled, his monologue was connected to his inner self. We’ve been delving
into sense memory for almost a year now, and as soon as he got the monologue,
he had already begun to find connections to ‘objects’ from his life about which
he felt deeply. It’s difficult with kids because everything is so present
tense, as opposed to adults who have more distance into the past. In my next
Blog entry, I’ll begin an analysis of connecting Robbie’s sense memory
‘objects, to the situation in the monologue through a Meisner exercise, which
involves, ‘working off the partner.’ I just found out that Robbie was told on the
spot that he got into the program he was auditioning for!</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-50924441903178482212012-07-03T19:31:00.003-07:002012-07-03T19:31:57.998-07:00Blog #43: Learning to identify with anyone using your own perspective.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKJOQ7Pm7IPrkHBpITeI3tKUwkaFCZVwBrNZ2IfrhCqom1nYIxsVFqXz4dqm5_i5DRrBe44zzQ0BnBpQEtbPQ3bAUF4SVJUGldLKW_ukLM783ac8oOvRVKmvtCcaNFrAj5NHxq1Ti4DIYz/s1600/darkemptyroad4_pysty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKJOQ7Pm7IPrkHBpITeI3tKUwkaFCZVwBrNZ2IfrhCqom1nYIxsVFqXz4dqm5_i5DRrBe44zzQ0BnBpQEtbPQ3bAUF4SVJUGldLKW_ukLM783ac8oOvRVKmvtCcaNFrAj5NHxq1Ti4DIYz/s320/darkemptyroad4_pysty.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">(In order to follow my line of reasoning here, it would be
helpful to read the last entry.) Previously, I discussed what it felt like when
I discovered, through sense-memory, that I was ‘waiting’ for my mother to come
back from the dead and – basically – help me decide what to do with my life. This memory is thick with details from my
childhood; i.e. the immediate sensory elements like the exact texture of the
twilit insect-saturated air, subdued chatter of birds slowing down before
nightfall, heavy fragrance of new mown grass, a burst of laughter from the next
door neighbors having a cocktail before dinner, the emptiness of the road
toward which I kept redirecting my gaze. These ‘primary’ sensory objects have
accrued over the years many ‘secondary objects’ which attach themselves to the
‘primary ones.’ A ‘secondary object’ appears in your mind either immediately or
soon after – sometimes long after – you have experienced the ‘primary object.’
It reveals why the object is important. For example, the realization that my
mother never showed up in a car that turned off the road and came down the lane
to our house was a spin-off of seeing the empty road over and over again. In
that way ‘the sight of the empty road’ is a precise icon for the deeply
repressed pain of losing her. I couldn’t possibly access it directly, my
unconscious would reject this barbaric proposition and I’d get very frustrated.
But focusing on the road with the help of the other senses works well – and it
never loses its power. When the conscious and unconscious work together in this
manner, the result creates a lasting bond, and through constant awareness and
practice one acquires an inexhaustible supply of contact points that adhere
easily to characters and scripts. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">There is some fallout from this work. On the very rare
occasions that I return to my childhood home in real life, I feel sad and
uncomfortable because the unconscious pain quickly rises to the surface. This
is one reason why I am not tempted to use recent memories for the purpose of
grounding my characters. They are too close to my everyday life and for that
reason cause confusion. Besides, recent memories don’t work for other reasons.
There <u>is</u> a place for them, just not as a source of one’s deepest response
mechanism. For me, it is important to use only memories from very early in my
life. The only others that are strong enough are related to my children, but I
feel that these early childhood ones have shaped my relationship to everything,
even my children, so they underlie even the mother bonds going forward. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">This process is closely related to a careful reading of <i>The Piano Lesson, </i>as I look for places
in the text where I can begin my congruence with Berniece. An incident occurs toward the beginning of the
play which greatly assisted my research in paralleling Wilson’s intention in
writing the play in general and the character of Berniece in particular.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">The central symbol of the play is the piano, inherited by
Berniece and her brother, Boy Willie. It holds horrific memories for Berniece
and she is neither able to play the instrument nor part with it. Boy Willie
wants to sell the piano and move on with his life. (The brother and sister represent the two principal,
equally negative, responses to slavery. Their fights about their opposite
solutions to ‘the problem of the piano’ –belligerence or passivity - escalate as
the play continues. In the first act, Berniece is heard crying out offstage;
shortly afterwards she enters but is so upset she is unable to speak. Another
character states that Berniece has seen a ghost – a man who is intimately
connected to the piano itself and everything that is most oppressive in the
legacy of slavery. In the initial battle
between the brother and sister culminating in this ghostly reincarnation of the
past, I saw my opportunity to be ‘possessed’ by Berniece. The ghost touched it off, but the piano is
the essential element</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I was immediately
there – at dusk, looking out my childhood bedroom window and down at the empty
road; in that moment Berniece and I came together. Obviously, there is no
question that Berniece, a poor black woman living in the ‘thirties, had an
infinitely more difficult life than I have experienced, as a somewhat pampered
white woman of a later era. But right then, looking at that road, I felt the
full weight of a child who cannot bear the fact that God - in whom she is being
trained to believe and who wields all the power and the glory - has taken her
mother away. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;">Both Berniece and I were brought up in religious systems
that taught us to feel that the tragedies we have suffered originated in
ourselves – that there must be something wrong with us to have been punished in
this horrible way. Berniece stares at her beloved piano and gives up her greatest
pleasure, the desire to elicit beautiful sounds from it. For me, there was the
belief that nothing could alter the deep despair I felt those many, many times when
I stared at that road and my mother didn’t turn into the lane. I have
investigated that memory tirelessly over the years and it never ceases to
inform me about my own behavior, as I vacillate between a sense of worthlessness
and incredible ambition to leave my mark on the world; the former mirroring
Berniece’s unwillingness to play the piano and the latter her refusal to give
it to her brother to sell.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"> I’ve had to work very
hard at this process, it doesn’t come easily – but it is worth the trouble for
both actors and writers, and perhaps others, as well. In the end, the sight of
‘the empty road’ pulls in a whole process combining deep emotion with critical
thinking – practically an oxymoron in the usual way of doing things in the
world. But what makes it work every time is the ‘object’ itself. I can think
about it a lot, just not when I call it up as a ‘sensory object’ for acting or
writing. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Have a wonderful Fourth of July! I will take a
vacation from writing the blog this month and will return in August - hopefully
with some fresh and interesting insights… </span></span>Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-87362654333897137752012-06-28T15:11:00.002-07:002012-06-28T15:11:29.003-07:00Blog #42: What’s to be gained from reading the script – apart from the obvious…<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHQ8Rjkb2xuap30WNZMhyphenhyphenk0Nns7BjHWpWzQnDgfPBypnzQsGE4tfO2dJS8W-ZAcM86_candhMQj574wP3-HnP2LyagSny-CHYKMJBE2NuCH0sQCJU6UoXd9dBBtKEJ9d9H5f09DdGlYLCp/s1600/Long-Days-Journey-Into-Night-200x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHQ8Rjkb2xuap30WNZMhyphenhyphenk0Nns7BjHWpWzQnDgfPBypnzQsGE4tfO2dJS8W-ZAcM86_candhMQj574wP3-HnP2LyagSny-CHYKMJBE2NuCH0sQCJU6UoXd9dBBtKEJ9d9H5f09DdGlYLCp/s1600/Long-Days-Journey-Into-Night-200x300.jpg" /></a></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: left;">
<br /><span style="font-size: large;">(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 <i>The Piano Lesson.</i>) 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. </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">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 <u>more</u> not less, than a scholar about what it <u>‘feels like’</u>
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 <i>is</i>
Berniece.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The
script is always very important, but in the case of <i>The Piano Lesson</i>, 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, <i>Joe Turner’s Come and
Gone, </i>which I had the privilege to view during its first incarnation.</span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I
also re-read <i>The Piano Lesson</i>, 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. </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">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. </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">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. </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">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 <u>living
in</u> a state of expectation that she would come back. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">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 <i>instantaneous
and profound</i> awareness of Berniece’s state of mind in this play…</span></span>Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-69494816001717356582012-06-20T06:04:00.002-07:002012-06-20T06:04:40.734-07:00Blog #42: What’s to be gained from reading the script – apart from the obvious…<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqm2hRdsLPs01K1bfma1Mb8WtHgLQEeH4WSD0YIe9jK_hPueoJfvcJaacWh3psYDww6ZF0mnmp_UwPc38M6cr9tsGVUwRZvf3qlGP4FVUPACXYQwqxtwHIv73u-fTCK_wTWSb5f98F794t/s1600/Waiting-for-Godot-in-New--001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" rca="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqm2hRdsLPs01K1bfma1Mb8WtHgLQEeH4WSD0YIe9jK_hPueoJfvcJaacWh3psYDww6ZF0mnmp_UwPc38M6cr9tsGVUwRZvf3qlGP4FVUPACXYQwqxtwHIv73u-fTCK_wTWSb5f98F794t/s320/Waiting-for-Godot-in-New--001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">(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 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Piano Lesson.</i>)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">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 <u>more</u> not less, than a scholar about what it <u>‘feels like’</u> to be Berniece.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> Berniece.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">The script is always very important, but in the case of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Piano Lesson</i>, it’s about as important as a piece of dramatic writing can get.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, </i>which I had the privilege to view during its first incarnation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">I also re-read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Piano Lesson</i>, 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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">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 <u>living in</u> a state of expectation that she would come back. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">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 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">instantaneous and profound</i> awareness of Berniece’s state of mind in this play…</span></div>Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-76700289464292989562012-06-13T09:16:00.000-07:002012-06-13T09:16:21.122-07:00BLOG #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…<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW7SNSAToFKbwqHKMKyag_xYMktqZH1395wglUlxL996ZObJfolzO61WwAyYlU4ctJjNttDJBQx3F3qYmQEPjR31RyKiTJsvNJUXS65q44bTc-DhEGPNTNfwFuOT_WADaPF-zcfoVNS4sN/s1600/August+Wilson+rehearsal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW7SNSAToFKbwqHKMKyag_xYMktqZH1395wglUlxL996ZObJfolzO61WwAyYlU4ctJjNttDJBQx3F3qYmQEPjR31RyKiTJsvNJUXS65q44bTc-DhEGPNTNfwFuOT_WADaPF-zcfoVNS4sN/s320/August+Wilson+rehearsal.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">(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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">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, <i>At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions</i>!) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">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.) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">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.’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">When Daenya returned to
Berniece’s monologue in <i>The Piano Lesson</i>,
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. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">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?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;">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.</span></div>Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5309882862271592662.post-77662693667467982722012-06-06T11:48:00.005-07:002012-06-06T11:48:39.891-07:00BLOG #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…<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">(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
<i>The Piano Lesson</i>? 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. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">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.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">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.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">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.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">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.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“How can I go through this all the time?” Daenya asked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Go through what?” I responded. Honestly, how do you feel
right now?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“OK,” Daenya answered.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“You’re not going to go home and slit your wrists?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“No, of course not,” she laughed. </span><span style="font-size: large;">She went and had lunch
with her daughter instead. Next week, we will discuss why Daenya was OK after
such an emotional experience.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">And the
sensory objects she has so painstakingly established will become the basis for
other elements of the Integrated Acting Process.</span></div>Caroline Thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09656257525212830354noreply@blogger.com0