Acting, Archetype, and Neuroscience

Superscenes for Rehearsal and Performance

Jane Drake Brody

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317586227
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

"How do we move actors into the less accessible regions of themselves and release hotter, more dangerous, and less literal means of approaching a role?"

Superscenes are a revolutionary new mode of teaching and rehearsal, allowing the actor to discover and utilize the primal energies underlying dramatic texts. In Acting, Archetype, and Neuroscience Jane Drake Brody draws upon a lifetime's experience in the theatre, alongside the best insights into pedagogical practice in the field, the work of philosophers and writers who have focused on myth and archetype, and the latest insights of neuroscience.

The resulting interdisciplinary, exciting volume works to:

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• Mine the essentials of accepted acting theory while finding ways to access more primally-based human behavior in actors

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• Restore a focus on storytelling that has been lost in the rush to create complex characters with arresting physical and vocal lives

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• Uncover the mythical bones buried within every piece of dramatic writing; the skeletal framework upon which hangs the language and drama of the play itself

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• Focus on the actor's body as the only place where the conflict inherent in drama can be animated.

Acting, Archetype, and Neuroscience weaves together a wealth of seemingly disparate performance methods, exciting actors to imaginatively and playfully take risks they might otherwise avoid. A radical new mixture of theory and practice by a highly respected teacher of acting, this volume is a must-read for students and performance practitioners alike.

Part I
Origins

Chapter 1
Returning to mythic roots

Ever since there have been actors, directors, and playwrights, theatre practitioners have attempted to discover the secret formula by which to deeply affect an audience. The wrangling among the proponents of external techniques (voice, posture, and language skills) with advocates of intense inner work for the actor (psychology and emotion) has been never ending and generally circular. An actor attempting to be vocally and physically adept will inevitably be psychologically and emotionally affected. The actor who favors the pursuit of emotion and psychology as his or her means of creating a character will inevitably be physically affected. Even with the over fifty-year explorations by the greatest theoretician of them all, Konstantin Stanislavski, nothing definitive has been found. The nearest we have come is the postulation by him that in order to affect an audience in an emotional way, the actors within the play must themselves be personally involved.

He implied that the audience could somehow distinguish between actual thought/emotion and technically facile presentation. This idea, in turn, lead to a search by theatre artists for how to best accomplish this feat. Since Stanislavski’s appearance on the world stage, artists such as Sanford Meisner, Tadashi Suzuki, Lee Strasberg, Uta Hagen, Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Anne Bogart, Declan Donnellan, and thousands of other directors, actors, and theoreticians have experimented, using everything from extreme and exhausting physicality, primal scream, intensive psychotherapy, prescribed movements, and vocal explorations beyond simple vocal production. All have contributed to an advanced stage of actor training with a plethora of approaches, each of which is partially effective, and each of which speaks to different actors differently.

Regardless of the approach used, at the core of all acting theory, whether Stanislavski-based or not, is the need to tell a story that affects an audience. The narrative needn’t be linear or fully spelled out, but it must exist. Whether the actor is deeply involved psychologically or not, in order for the story to be recognizable to an audience, actors must do actions that lead to comprehensible outcomes. If the actor is personally and psychologically involved, if intentions are clear, the storytelling will be more meaningful because it attracts the audience on a deeper level. An action in this case is defined as something one character does to another character to achieve a desired end; such actions, while physically based, are expressed both physically and verbally. While I realize that many theoreticians use a much broader idea of action, my feeling is that in the final analysis it is the actions between and among people that are of true dramatic significance. It is only through others that we can succeed on any quest.

Physical beginnings of acting

In prehistory, at the beginning of theatre, playing, joking, physical jousting, miming, copying others, showing off, sexy dancing, and tricks were all probably part of the show. The tribal fireside must have elicited serious and playful reenactment of hunting stories, sad retellings of lost loved ones, and horrific recountings of mysterious natural disasters, as well as funny send-ups of known community figures. While there are many theories concerning the whys and wherefores of myth, the celebration/ritual was a way to avoid danger, to assuage the nature gods, to heal a sick member of the tribe, and to unite it for the betterment of all. As the original stories became favorites of the tribe, the forces of nature were given names and faces, heroes became demigods, and all were connected to families of their own. These magical stories became ritualized, codified, edited, and repeatable.

Even now, children left alone to play create dramas with little or no regard for realism, as naturally as they eat and sleep; making theatre appears to be an integral part of our learning and socialization. They also tend to criticize others who “don’t do it right,” or the “way we did it before,” or “according to the rule,” which implies an agreed-upon narrative with boundaries and expectations. I prefer to be an acting teacher who doesn’t mind the bossy kids and who wishes to reawaken the sense of play and inventiveness that is natural to us all.

We appear to be hard wired for spirituality, which in turn appears to be linked to our attempts to make art. We stand in awe of power and size, and the source of the artistic search seems to be related to an attempt to understand the mysteries of an alien world both internal and external. Creating gods and religions as a means of communicating and understanding the universe is a hallmark of most human civilizations. Most societies have a creation story with a Mother and/or Father Earth, a Mother and/or Father of the Sea or of the Sky or the Mountain or other natural features that are relevant to the culture. Birth, sex, death, and resurrection are universal themes. The immortal powers procreate as needed either amongst themselves or with humans to supply a family of gods, demons, demigods and heroes that represent essential human needs, interests, fears, joys, and vices. These beings differ from humans and are not held to standards of human morality. They do whatever they wish and use humans as their playthings.

Myths, the early stories of these “super beings,” became a dominant part of the aesthetic, intellectual, and religio-spiritual life of the community. As historical communities were conquered or merged with others, the local heroes and gods were often drafted into the religion of the conquerors. At times they were added to an existing god who had similar qualities, e.g. Venus and Aphrodite, or they may have been adopted fully if such a god hadn’t been a part of the conqueror’s hierarchy. These stories emphasized the magical connections to heroes, gods, demigods, half-remembered ancestors, protectors, and persecutors to their worshipers.

While theorists differ as to which came first, the myth or the ritual, once these stories transformed into performance, the legend carriers – shamans, priests, and griots – took possession of their delivery and were charged with keeping the secrets and ceremonies for their fellows. They were expected to be conveyors of powerful narrative essences for the sake of the group, even though the stories might change some of the immaterial facts by accident or for effect. These “myth-men,” as Kenneth Burke¹ labeled them, were connected to the spiritual ideas of their village or town. It is only human nature that these chosen individuals would make themselves necessary to their societies as mysterious and special creatures speaking in fanciful terms and creating new, more exciting narratives.

Whether or not the poets of the enchanting and mysterious past were charlatans, magical shamans, or something very like, they were either born into their profession and trained by their parents or were chosen as a result of some oddity of temperament or physical constitution to capture the spirits of the community to which they belonged. They needed to be connected somehow to the inef-fable, accessible only through ritual and dream states.

As communities were conquered, disintegrated, folded into others, or simply moved, it is likely that the legend carriers were forced to perform for strangers as well as their tribal relations. Many would have had to move from being semi-stable members of a fixed community to “professional” figures supported by the more powerful members of the society. As this transition occurred, I speculate that the spiritual or religious aspect of the actor/shaman’s job became less important as the need to entertain overwhelmed the formerly priestly duties. The sacred duty to protect and guide the souls of the community became the province of the priesthood, and the former holy clowns were released from that responsibility.

We know that by the time of the Greeks, even though they were still connected in a minor way to the gods, players were considered to be outside of polite society and generally needed to move from place to place to make a living. It was undoubtedly necessary for these player/bards to develop great vocal, physical, emotional, and intellectual talents in order to keep food on the table. With only their voices and their bodies, they kept the myths, heroes, and history of the people concerned alive, changing names and places where necessary.

Once playwrights emerged, actors became mouthpieces for the dramatist. Their fate may have been a bit better as a result of the new popularity of the theatre, but few were able to lead lives of comfort or stability. Their employers were governments, royalty, wealthy individuals, and the church.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, we know both male and female actors, minstrels, mimes, bards, troubadours, and others in Western civilization returned to their original duties as creators of their own texts. While it is not proven, my belief is that the com-media dell’arte evolved from Roman comedies and became a means of making a living during the Dark Ages. The form does not depend on playwrights or knowledge of a particular language or culture; it uses stereotypes and stories found in Greek and Roman comedy and requires only a few actors, some props, some masks, maybe a wagon, and a performance space. The commedia players relied first on movement, dance, song, and gestures to excite their audiences – in effect, a return to the tribal campfire.

As the Renaissance slowly progressed across Europe and Great Britain, actors once again became the deliverers of the playwright’s words and thoughts. They were generally attached to companies of other actors often composed of families and maintained their own repertoire. We know that these players retained a certain improvisational style and a great deal of audience interaction within the new theatrical forms and that their performances featured singing, dancing, and physical clowning.

It is not my purpose to deliver the history of acting in this book. My aim is to contrast the traditional apprentice/family/group way in which actors were trained with the more formal situation of training today. In our civilization, actors are rarely raised by shamanist parents, nor are they children of vagabond players. They are not expected to write their own material, nor are they forced to please the king. They frequently attempt to form companies, but the economics of today’s world make such an endeavor almost impossible. Now, people who wish to become working actors usually substitute professional training for the formerly maturational ways in which the skill was acquired. People who feel the call to perform and who render themselves up to professional training still hear the spiritual call of Dionysius, but in our practical-minded world, the voice is easily ignored.

Current actor training

“Art is that which is recognizable to the soul.”

James Joyce

As a young woman, it was my privilege to witness some of the greatest theatre of the twentieth century. These brilliant works included Peter Brook’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Dragon Trilogy by Robert LePage, The Revenger’s Tragedy at the Royal Academy in London, The Cherry Orchard directed by Mike Alfreds, A Search for Signs of Intelligence in the Universe by Jane Wagner performed by Lili Tomlin, and Hang Onto Your Head in Minneapolis performed by the Children’s Theatre Ensemble and directed by John Donahue. Luckily, a year ago, I had the same experience watching The Glass Menagerie at the Mary-Arrchie Theatre in Chicago directed by Hans Fleishmann. These performances still live in my mind as collective spiritual experiences that lifted the entire audience as a mass into realms of joy and suffering combined. The performances shook us, picked us up, and turned us around in our seats. When such a wonder is witnessed, it binds us to our fellow audience members. In Midsummer’s, we literally stood on our seats for twenty minutes screaming as the cast tossed paper plates into the house and we lofted them back. Lily Tomlin’s solo performance had the sophisticated New York audience weeping and laughing with awe, pity, and pride in the courage of humans. All of these offerings had three things in common: they were metaphoric, highly physical, and nonrealistically true. The same can be said for the recent phenomenon “Hamilton” currently on Broadway. My search to spark such greatness in my students stems from these encounters with the divine theatre.

At present, actor training, in the U.S. at any rate, has become an industry; and those of us in it seem to be at a moral and ethical crossroads. On the one hand, we want to prepare actors of depth and skill for an artistic life, however poverty-stricken, in the theatre that we know can move mountains. On the other hand, we feel morally bound to ensure that our students are ready for the more economically rewarding demands of media.

Given the current state of the profession, how can we once again touch the magic of the shamanistic performer? How can we elicit actors of power and beauty? I believe that it is necessary to find a method to once again open actors to a quality of playing that is theatrical in size as well as truth, regardless of genre. We must prepare them to create hundreds of more “Hamilton”s.

At the present time acting classes that privilege “realism” are the dominant mode of teaching, partially because actors with such skills are able to move into commercials and television easily. And, as television is the way most students first understand acting, everyone is mollified. This idea of realism has convinced a generation of actors that realism is actually truthful and that anything other than a “kitchen sink” approach to performance is somehow not real/true.

Several years ago, I directed a production of the Charles Mee play Big Love as a final project for the freshman acting class at the university where I worked. The show is nonrealistic, loud, silly, and lots of fun. After the curtain came down, a fellow acting teacher approached me to say that she had enjoyed the goings-on but was unable to decide if the students in it could act. Her paradigm for actors did not include much beyond television. Her definition of acting had been narrowed to include only performances of small size and intimacy. While most of us would agree that such moment-to-moment work is perfect for many things and must be taught, it doesn’t mean that audience interaction and illogical happenings are outside of the purview of theatre and acting.

For many such people, including directors, actors, and teachers, if a playwright doesn’t use contemporary means of expression, if the story has little to do with sociology or psychology, it is viewed as “style” and therefore not true. If the staging or the dialogue veer from the contemporary concept of realistic, it is viewed as a “style” piece and therefore not real. The prosaic belief that realism is true is not questioned. As I see it, “realism” has come to mean something to do with a material, predictable, and describable world; it includes easily comprehensible non-lyrical language and quotidian behavior from the actors, often employing a small emotional range and rarely including physical or vocal extremities. It is safe.

This “realism” in all likelihood has to do with the specific requirements of film and television. Screenwriters are e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART I Origins
• PART II The exercises and the work
• PART III Neuroscience and images
• Selected bibliography
• Index