True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor (7 page)

But is this true of music? Does the musician devote his energies to forgetting that what is in front of him is a piano, and does the dancer strive to forget that she is dancing and endeavor to believe that what she is doing is walking?

This is why the ideas of substitution, sense memory, affective, or emotion, memory, are both harmful and useless: the idea is not to trick ourselves any more than it is to trick the audience; it is to
perform
something. What? The action of the play as set down by the author. Our job is the performance of that action as we discerned it in the text.

It is the choreography that we perform: the dancer does not endeavor to create either in himself or in the audience the
feelings
the choreography might evoke; he just performs the steps the most truthful way he knows how. Just so, our task is to execute the actions called for by the author. How, you ask, can we do so without
belief
If we do not
believe
them, how can we
perform
them? Well, let’s turn the attention outward.

Your belief is not the subject of the play. What could be less interesting? And if the task is uninteresting, your concentration will fall back on yourself. It
has
to. Why limit yourself? Choose something interesting to do.

Ever wonder what it would be like if your wife, husband, or lover died? Do you
believe
it has happened? No. You
imagine
for the moment that it has happened because it is enjoyable to do so.
Not to wish their death
but to
imagine
. To experiment with the dramatic.

Anyone ever play with the idea that you have a wasting disease, and you are writing your will? You toy with what you would say, with the wisdom you would impart from your position of one removed from life.…

What fun. Your imagination may, in fact, even be piqued by reading the above suggestion. Now: what happens to you when I ask you to
believe
you are dying?

——

The mind will always rebel at a direct command: fall asleep: fall in love: stop mourning: be interested. Relax. The command to
believe
will never be accepted by the mind, and all the supposed techniques to induce the capacity to believe do nothing other than take the “believer” away from the play and away from the idea of the play, away from the
fun
of the play. All of his energy becomes taken up in the precious shepherding and guarding of the
belief.

“Can I see the flat? Can I see the audience? Are my fellow workers completely
costumed
? Can I ‘see’ the Fourth Wall?” So the believer falls into a false relation to the audience: the audience becomes an enemy capable of robbing the actor of his belief. On the other hand, play or dress-up, or imaginative fantasy, cannot be harmed by the presence of the “real.” Why? Because they have a worth of their own. And what is that worth? We enjoy them.

——

To act
means to perform an action, to
do
something.
To believe
means to hold a belief.

What are our beliefs in life? What do you believe? Basic things. Things beyond your control. What would it take to
change
one of those beliefs? To inculcate a new one? Beliefs are unreasoning. In life, our beliefs are so primordial, so basic, most times we don’t even know what they are. Let us leave belief alone. Let us deal with something which
is
susceptible to reason.

Let us learn
acceptance
. This is one of the greatest tools an actor can have. The capacity to accept: to wish things to happen as they do. It is the root of all happiness in life, and it is the root of wisdom for an actor. Acceptance. Because the capacity to
accept
derives from the
will
and the will is the source of character. Applying our intention to use only one meaning for words, character is the same onstage and off. It is habitual action.

Onstage or off, one may or may not believe that one’s father has died when faced with the facts. One can strive to
accept
that fact: and that struggle is, of course, the struggle of Hamlet. One may not believe that one’s wife has been unfaithful, but one may strive to
accept
it, and so we have Othello; or that one’s protégé has been duplicitous and so we have
American Buffalo
.

The habit of cheerful acceptance is an aide in the greater life in the theatre, too, because it induces truthful consideration: “The world is as it is, what can I do about it?” But
belief
, on the other hand, induces self-deception—e.g., I believe my teachers are bright, producers are powerful/evil/good, my director hates me/loves me, the audience is good/bad/hot/cold.

Perhaps no one in a situation demanding courage (that is, in a situation that has frightened him) can believe it—when the ramp comes down on the landing craft on D-Day, when the baby is ready to be born, when the time comes to address the court, or to plead with the spouse for a second chance, or to ask the bank for an extension—when the time comes, in short, to act, it becomes apparent to these people, as it should to you, that no one cares what you believe, and if you’ve got a goal to accomplish you’d best set about it. To deny nothing, invent nothing—accept everything, and get
on
with it.

T
he rehearsal process, as practiced in this country, is a demonstration of waste, and by extension, of the gentlemanly nature of acting. For if it is waste, it is not work, and if it is not work, then we are not workers, and, perhaps, that’s what “art” means.

We spend our three weeks gabbing about “the character,” and spend the last week screaming and hoping for divine intercession, and none of it is in the least useful, and none of it is work.

What should happen in the rehearsal process? Two things.

1. The play should be blocked.

2. The actors should become acquainted with the actions they are going to perform.

What is an action? An action is an attempt to achieve a goal. Let me say it even more simply: an action is the attempt to accomplish something. Obviously,
then, the chosen goal must be accomplishable. Here is a simple test: anything less capable of being accomplished than “open the window” is not and can’t be an action.

You’ve heard directors and teachers by the gross tell you, “Come to grips with yourself,” “Regain your self-esteem,” “Use the space,” and myriad other pretty phrases which they, and you, were surprised to find difficult to accomplish. They are not difficult. They are impossible. They don’t mean anything. They are nonsense syllables, strung together by ourselves and others, and they mean “Damned if I know, and damned if I can admit it.”

One is up there onstage
solely
to act out the play for the audience. The audience only wants to know what happens next. And what happens next is what you (the actor)
do
.

That action has always got to be simple. If it’s not simple, it can’t be accomplished. One was capable of freeing the 82nd Airborne at the Battle of the Bulge; but we could not Win the Hearts and Minds of the Vietnamese, as the direction was meaningless. Of course we lost the war. We didn’t have an objective.

We all know what it means to
truly
have an objective. To get him or her into bed, to get the job, to get out of mowing the lawn, to borrow the family car. We know what we want, and, therefore, we know whether we’re getting closer to it or not, and we alter our plans accordingly. This is what makes a person with an objective
alive
: they have to take their attention off themselves and put it on the person they want something from.

Each character in the play wants something. It is the actor’s job to reduce that something to its lowest common denominator and then act upon it. Hamlet wants to find out what is rotten in the state of Denmark. An actor might perhaps reason, “Oh,
I
get it—Hamlet is trying to
restore order.
” Scene by scene the tools necessary to restore order might be: to interrogate, to confront, to negotiate, to review … you get the idea.

All of the above are simple physical
actable
objectives. They do not require preparation, they require
commitment
—and it is this commitment which the rehearsal process is supposed to rehearse.

If the actor goes to rehearsal with a mind and spirit dedicated to discover and perform the actions simply and truthfully, she will take this spirit onstage
along with
the discoveries. If the actor whiles away the rehearsal process looking for some magic “character,” or “emotion,” he will take onstage that same unfortunate capacity for self-delusion and beg the audience to share it with him.

T
he correct unit of study is not the play; it is the scene. The action involved in the play, the through-line of the character, is always too general to admit of being healthily physical. You might say that Horatio’s through-line in the play was
to help his mentor out of a vicious trap
. That’s all very well, and not inaccurate, but it’s not going to be overly useful in the first scene with the players.

Any through-line must involve the character, and as the character exists only on the page and as we exist on the stage, his actions are not going to be helpful to us except as
guideposts
. The character wants to help his mentor out of a vicious trap. How does the character do it in
this
scene?
By awaiting instructions
. Good. Now, that is all you, the actor, have to do in the scene. And when you do that, you are fulfilling your responsibility to the play. You do not have
to await instructions
in order to
help your
mentor out of a vicious trap
. You simply have to await instructions. Carve the big tasks up into small tasks and perform these small tasks.

Your responsibility to the character is done when you’ve chosen a simple action for the scene. There
is
no arc of the play; there
is
no arc of the character. Those are terms invented by scholars. They do not exist. Choose a simple action for the scene, and
play the scene
. There will be others onstage for you to play it with, and they and your objective will take more than enough of your energy.

After you finish one scene, you will encounter another one, with its
own
task; the total of them is the play. If you play each scene, the play will be served. If you try to drag your knowledge of the play through each scene, you are ruining whatever the worth is of the playwright’s design, and you are destroying your chances to succeed scene by scene.

The boxer has to fight one round at a time; the fight will unfold as it is going to. The boxer takes a simple plan into the ring, and then has to deal with the moment. So do you. The correct unit of application is the scene.

T
he attempt to manipulate another’s feelings is blackmail. It is objectionable and creates hatred and hypocrisy. If one asked an honest worker or craftsperson, “What did you want your client to
feel
on receipt of your work,” he would most likely be dumbfounded. He had set out not to create an emotion in the recipient but to create an object—a chair, a table, a personal-injury defense, a meal.

For craftspeople in the theatre to set out to manipulate the emotions of others is misguided, abusive, and useless. In the theatre, as outside it, we resent those who smile too warmly, who act overly friendly, or overly sad, or overly happy, who, in effect,
narrate
their own supposed emotional state. Why do we resent it? Because we feel, rightly, that it is being done only to bring about or to extort something from us we would be reluctant to give in return for an uninflected presentation.

Business should be conducted in an unemotional environment. Anyone who presents herself in a business situation as a “friend,” and therefore exempt from the usual rigors and niceties of businesslike accountability, is taking and will continue to take advantage of you. The honest diner goes to the restaurant to have good food in pleasant circumstances. She does not require the waiter’s friendship, and the question “Is everything okay?” rather than being a service, is both an intrusion and the extortion of a compliment. “Yes,” we say in effect, “I will smile back at you to get you to go away.”

The addition of “emotion” to a situation which does not organically create it is a lie. First of all, it is not emotion. It is a counterfeit of emotion, and it is cheap. The respectful waiter will not demean his clients or himself by smarmy smiles and false narrations of his pleasure. And neither should the self-respecting actor.

Can we not imagine that the waiter or waitress, after fifty or so renditions of the question “Is everything all right?” might find the necessity of asking it onerous, might find his or her smile a little fixed, and might, finally, feel put-upon? If the waitress truly cares about whether or not the diners are enjoying themselves, she has ample room for operation—she might observe them and might both heed and anticipate their needs and take it upon herself to improve their enjoyment of the experience.

The addition of supposed “emotion” to a performance is an attempt to buy off the audience. In so doing, in playing the “happy” line “happy,” and the “sad” line “sad,” the actor strives, unconsciously, to put himself above criticism—to fulfill
absolutely
the requirements of the line, to “have done well.” It is another example of the academic-serfdom model of the theatre. The audience couldn’t care less. They came to see the play. If the play is good, all of that mugging going on under the name of “emotional memory” will lessen their enjoyment, and they’ll probably go along with the gag because the play works, and they will attribute much of their enjoyment of the play to the brilliant performances. Why? Because
you extorted it out of them
. Through your “hard work,” through your “emotions.”