Physical Actor Training

What Shall I Do with the Body They Gave Me?

Andrei Droznin, Natalia Fedorova

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317450436
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

If, as an actor, your body is your 'instrument' - and the only way you can express the internal impulses of the character you're playing - what happens when the body-mind, 'psychophysical' connection is lost?

Andrei Droznin, Russia's foremost teacher of physical actor training, calls this loss the 'desomatization' of the human body, and argues that these connections urgently need to be restored for full expressivity.

This is a genuinely unique book which links theory to practice by a man who has worked at the very top of Russian theatre; a movement specialist who has taught at the Moscow Art Theatre as well as drama schools all over the world. Beautifully translated by Natasha Fedorova, this volume will excite and inspire a new generation of English-language readers.

1
Introduction

In the midst of perestroika I caught a glimpse of a TV interview with someone close to the country’s top leaders. Answering the question ‘Do the former leaders believe in communism?’ he told the following story. Brezhnev was commissioning his speechwriter to prepare just another speech saying: ‘Only do not insert too many quotes from Marx – no one would believe I read him anyway!’

This farcical story very accurately reflects the destiny of many theories and beliefs: social, scientific and creative. Their creators conceive, nurture and achingly deliver great ideas, like an idea of rebuilding the world on the grounds of justice. They peruse a lot of materials left by their predecessors and notice the consisting patterns, which the former missed. They deliver passionate speeches and sermons; they write books, manifestos and declarations. Eventually they convert and enlighten a small group of followers. The next generation – the first pupils – inherit the whole system of the creators’ ideas, focusing predominantly on practical matters: tactics, methods and ways of implementing these ideas. The ardent believers preserve ideological purity (sometimes excessively) and thoroughly study and propagate their teachers’ works.

Thanks to the energy of the immediate followers, the ideas of the founding fathers grip the masses, take over the wider areas, and their supporters become trendsetters in society. The circle of devotees quickly widens, leading to the equally quick drop in quality and quantity of knowledge per person. The ownership of the ‘true knowledge’ is gradually appropriated by the narrow circle of self-appointed ‘professional guardians of ideological purity’. The rest of the followers master the idea by studying first the original texts, then summaries and then quotations. Eventually, the time comes when the initial ideas are learned from books written by those who studied them from summaries and quotations. The understanding of the initial ideas becomes more and more scholastic, dogmatic and poor; and any dissent is declared to be sedition.

Finally the moment comes when the ordinary followers do not study anything, feeling that first, the ideas of the founders are somehow embedded in the heads of every adept; and second, no one cares about them anyway. Even the ‘guardians’ of the original ideas lose understanding of what they preserve. The knowledge is put into archives and lies dormant in public and private libraries. This is the beginning of a chain reaction of ideological disintegration.

Fortunately, this situation within the arts is not life threatening. At least disintegration and downfall of ideas do not lead to mass genocide. However, there is a problem with preserving the creative legacy inherited from the founding fathers.

At the beginning of the last century, an amazingly powerful, passionate, often multidirectional and contradictory but essentially united group of directors entered the historical arena in Russia. They were pioneers, reformers, experimentalists and educators; they drew upon a thousand years of theatre tradition from all times and countries. It seemed that they irreversibly changed the face of theatre, turned it into a professional art form; they discovered (or even created?) their own language, techniques and methods of teaching acting.

After they were gone (or maybe still during their lifetime?) their discoveries were lost, distorted and bastardised, gathered clichés and speculations, were shredded into false techniques and disassociated elements and eventually turned into myths. It is understandable; in theatre, losses are particularly notable due to the short lifespan of the final product: the performance. Of course, they left behind books, diaries, director’s scripts, rehearsal records, shorthand notes of talks with actors and audiences, and memoirs of contemporaries – collaborators and witnesses. There are reviews, set designs, photographs and sometimes film images; and, in recent times video recordings. However, the live flesh of a performance is forever gone. For us, the theatregoers of the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is hard to imagine all the details and nuances of Michael Chekhov’s acting in Erik XIV, or Igor Ilyinsky in the Magnanimous Cuckold. It dramatically reduces our ability to trust the descriptions and theories that remain concerning these performances.

There are other objective and subjective reasons to forget the predecessors’ ideas: I will try to analyse some of them later. Now it is important to understand that the time has come to get back to the fundamental, I would say nuclear aspect of acting; to recall what they thought about it, to reflect upon what was right or wrong in their ideas; when they agreed or disagreed with each other; which of their discoveries were temporary and which eternal; and, most crucially – which of their insights got lost along the way. It has to be done not for diligent repetition of the past, however rich and bright, but in order to move forward mindfully and productively.

2
The actor’s external technique

The essence of the theatre tradition that most of us follow here in Russia is usually defined by Stanislavski’s formula: ‘subconscious creation through the actor’s conscious psychotechnique’.¹ It is quite natural then that according to the unspoken understanding between theatre critics and practitioners, i.e. according to the real state of affairs in our theatre, the foundation of acting is ‘psychotechnique’ or so-called ‘internal technique’. This is the umbrella term for a number of tools called upon to awaken the creative potential of man, his dormant creative forces – more quickly, more easily and in a more effective way.

One can find something similar to the actor’s internal technique in other art forms, but in none of them does either the internal technique itself or its components individually create a piece of art. Let’s take painting, for example. A painter, just as much as an actor, needs, let’s say, imagination. In order to train this element of the internal technique, Leonardo da Vinci encouraged young painters to examine naturally created stains, which would develop their imagination and trigger a flow of associations. Another element of the painter’s as well as the actor’s external technique is sense memory; for a painter it would be visual sense memory. He also needs attention: a large circle of attention would be a landscape up to the horizon, a small circle his canvas and brushes. Creative state of mind and working conditions are also important. Look at the inspired artist in the act of creation (the best demonstration of it you can find is in one of the documentaries about Picasso): this is the state that Stanislavski described as ‘I am being’ or ‘today, here and now’, or ‘the full concentration of the whole spiritual and physical nature’.²

The same rules apply to theatre. But I think that any actor would laugh out loud after hearing that a specific painter has developed to such a high extent his attention, imagination, observance, visual memory, emotional memory, sense of colour and other elements of the internal technique that now he is capable of creating grand paintings in his head, just by sitting in front of the empty easel but … cannot materialise them on the real canvas because he does not find it necessary to study drawing, perspective, chiaroscuro and the laws of composition; to learn how to mix colour on a palette or to apply paints on a canvas … In effect, he refuses to master everything that is called ‘technique’ in every form of art. But our imaginary actor would laugh even more after finding out that our imaginary painter does not study the technique of his art on purpose, because he thinks that ‘all that technique’ should come to him ‘naturally’, from the internal impulse and without any training … However, actors do not laugh at themselves and their colleagues who do the same or have similar views on their chosen art. But why? Where do these double standards come from?

As long as we talk about any other form of art but theatre, we are well aware that apart from tools to awaken natural creative forces dormant in the artist, there should also be knowledge, skills, abilities and techniques called upon to send these creative forces along a certain technical course. This will allow creative impulses to acquire a material form determined by a specific art form (its material, language and expressive means), which an external observer then can sense and by which he would be emotionally affected. This set of skills and abilities is called ‘external technique’ in all forms of art.

Therefore, an actor’s technique is divided into two interrelated parts: internal technique that has to provide a high-quality process of experiencing; and external technique for the equally high-quality process of embodiment.

This division would not have been a problem if both techniques were seen as inseparable and equivalent parts of the same technique, and the division would have only been a matter of tactics to help the practical learning of the technique. First of all, they are instead separated strategically and forever, I am afraid, and second, the role of the external technique in this dual union is clearly undervalued.

It is undervalued so much that the majority of actors grow up sincerely convinced that external technique is just a side dish to the main course of internal technique. The most radically spirited actors think that acting techniques and internal technique are synonyms. More and more the external technique plays the part of Cinderella, the humble servant of her more fortunate and prosperous sister, internal technique. In fact, it does not have a place of its own in theatre, and is not particularly in demand in drama schools.

How and why did this happen? If we would like to move away from the wave of unprofessionalism approaching theatre we need to clarify this.

Let’s begin with the fact that most art forms are homogeneous – their means of expression are strictly limited to a single material or instrument. Therefore, every artist strives to master these expressive means to the fullest extent, ideally to virtuosity. A pianist who has nothing but a piano, must know how to master the technique of piano playing, and he has to do it well, beautifully, superbly, brilliantly, and in the ideal case – with virtuosity.

An actor, however, is demoralised by the abundance of expressive means – not an actor’s own, but those of the theatre as an art form. Theatre is a heterogeneous art, which has many components and uses many different means of expression. As M. Bulgakov wrote in A Theatrical Novel: ‘There are complicated machines in the world but the theatre is the most complicated of all.’

The multicomponent nature of theatre, its collectiveness frees an actor from taking responsibility for the quality of the final product.

In theatre an actor always has a ‘cover’ (by this I am referring to costume, lighting, sound, etc.) Although every performing artist has ‘covers’ of this sort they are significantly more versatile in theatre and they are much more aggressive. For example, a pianist does not come onstage naked and does not play in the complete darkness but no one solemnly informs the audience that the maestro’s costume is made by such and such fashion designer, or that he is being lit by such and such lighting designer. Theatre, however, is an entirely different story; it is a ‘synthetic art form’… Hence, I dare to insist that an actor in theatre is always ‘covered’, securely and fundamentally.

Even the very architecture of a traditional theatre house acts as a cover with its uncommon splendour: theatre boxes, balconies and portals ornamented with golden leaves, decorated ceilings and a velvet curtain, glittering chandeliers during the intermission and the interspersed twilight of the show. Conversely, the alarming triviality of a basement studio – its gloomy interior painted in black, bare brickwork here and there, roof window tightly walled up, pipes and cables exposed – creates the thrilling anticipation of a miracle and thus provides a smokescreen for an actor.

An actor is covered by the audience, its benevolence and indulgence, its initial infatuation not only with theatre but with the actor himself. But above all of this an actor is primarily covered by the spectator’s incompetence. In no concert hall would you see as many members of the audience who do not understand music as you would find audience members in the theatre who do not understand drama.

Alexander Ostrovsky, a great expert on the theatre audience during the emergence of capitalism in Russia, gave the following explanation for spectators’ satisfaction with the low level of performing art:

The vast majority of the club’s audience are new people, not familiar with the intricacies of scenic deception. They are charmed by any spectacle; the most insignificant set design, poor scenery and costumes and some kind of acting is more than enough to create the complete illusion for such an audience. Fresh people under the impression of the new and strong feeling are not yet able to distinguish between what they really see and what they add with their imagination. Those who have not seen actors before will like any actor …. Besides, people have the universal quality … the ability to adjust, to put up with any environment, and to find in even the most miserable something relatively better to console themselves with.³

Today, when all the ethical and aesthetic criteria are falling apart, and even the most elusive boundaries of acceptability are disappearing, a very interesting kind of spectator incompetence has emerged (interesting for a researcher of social phobias). Like armour, it shields an actor and especially a director from any criticism: it is the fear of looking incompetent, especially in the sphere of new theatrical discoveries and achievements.

I cannot help but mention here a phrase dropped by one of seemingly serious theatre critics. Its foggy profundity and almost stark simplicity strongly upset me: ‘There is something in it’. It was said many years ago about an absolutely talentless show full of false significance and ‘discoveries’, actually made many years before its creator was born. The directing was hopeless, and the acting was interesting only as a convincing demonstration of what an actor should not do on stage, even in a spaghetti factory’s amateur dramatics production. Since then I have heard this phrase (with slight variations) many times, and more and more often recently. It becomes a safe thing to say for such spectators and, more dangerously, those critics, whose greatest fear is to look incompetent or not progressive enough.

First though, an actor is covered by a playwright – by the scale of his personality and his creative potential – Shakespeare is always Shakespeare, and is always interesting for the audience. He is covered ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Several words about Andrey Droznin and his book
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The actor’s external technique
• 3 The actor’s external technique (continued)
• 4 The actor’s external technique (conclusion)
• 5 The body as a material medium of acting
• 6 Desomatisation (loss of functions)
• 7 Desomatisation (self-destruction)
• 8 Body and soul (in life)
• 9 Body and soul (in art)
• 10 Stanislavski
• 11 Meyerhold
• 12 The problem (between Stanislavski and Meyerhold)
• 13 Vakhtangov
• 14 The others (time to search)
• 15 After the Titans (time to lose)
• 16 Drama school in the age of pluralism
• 17 Physical universalism
• 18 Phobia of the physical
• 19 Phobia of the physical (continued)
• 20 On the actor’s external technique again (dropout of the external technique)
• 21 Physical actor training (time to gather stones)
• 22 Instead of an epilogue
• Index