Performer Training

Developments Across Cultures

Ian Watson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134432134
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Performer Training is an examination of how actors are trained in different cultures. Beginning with studies of mainstream training in countries such as Poland, Australia, Germany, and the United States, subsequent studies survey:
· Some of Asia's traditional training methods and recent experiments in performer training
· Eugenio Barba's training methods
· Jerzy Grotowski's most recent investigations
· The Japanese American NOHO companies attempts at integrating Kyogen into the works of Samuel Beckett
· Descriptions of the training methods developed by Tadashi Suzuki and Anne Bogart at their Saratoga International Theatre Institute
· Recent efforts to re-examine the role and scope of training, like Britain's International Workshop Festival and the European League of Institutes of Arts masterclasses
· The reformulation of the use of emotions in performer training known as Alba Emoting.

PART I

INSTITUTIONAL TRAINING

1

THEATER TRAINING IN POLAND

Kazimierz Braun

Historical Perspective on Theater Training in Poland

The origins of professional acting instruction in Poland

The origins of systematic, methodical, professional acting instruction in Poland are connected with the creation of the National Theater in Warsaw, an institutional, public, state-supported theater opened in 1765. Wojciech Boguslawski, considered “the Father of Polish National Theater,” headed the Warsaw institution beginning in 1783, and organized its Dramatic School in 1811, with the objective of preparing actors for the National. Boguslawski himself taught acting and wrote an acting manual. The Dramatic School had a three-year program. There were six teachers and twelve students (an enviable ratio according to contemporary standards), who lived together in a dormitory. Practical instruction was given in acting, singing, dance, manners, and playing musical instruments. General education subjects included the history of Poland, the history of Polish literature, and foreign languages: French, Italian, and German. The program was modeled on the various curricula of professional (for example agricultural) and military schools, which on the one hand taught the practical skills of a given profession, and on the other provided a general education, suitable for the higher social classes. Boguslawski, a member of the so called “petty nobility” himself, treated and envisaged the profession of acting as proper for a nobleman or woman (a “gentleman” or a “lady”). Thus from the very beginning of the history of professional theater education in Poland, actors and actresses enjoyed a high social status while acting was viewed as a serious profession, a civil service, which not only entertained the public, but also concerned itself with national causes. An acting career did not have to be mere self-fulfillment; it could be a vocation unselfishly contributing to the well being of one’s fellow citizens, and the nation as a whole. Actors began to enjoy public esteem and were regarded as valued members of the nation’s community.

The Dramatic School in Warsaw was headed, after Boguslawski’s retirement, by a leading National Theater actor, Bonawentura Kudlicz. In 1835, a second specially was added to the acting stream, a dance division, and in 1837 a third one, singing. Consequently, the School had three departments and prepared scores of actors, singers, and dancers for the National Theater, which had two separate companies, one for drama (straight theater), and the other for opera and ballet. Some of the school’s students ventured into other theaters in other cities or joined traveling companies. Following the uprising in 1863-1865, the School was closed in 1868, by the Russian authorities, a victim of anti-Polish repression. The Warsaw Dramatic School laid a solid and diversified foundation for professional theater training in Poland for years to come. It produced many excellent professionals — actors, dancers, and singers.

From 1868 until 1889, in Warsaw, and in some other cities, various actors offered private acting classes, while many provincial entrepreneurs conducted their own private acting instruction. More complex and formal acting and voice training was instituted by Warsaw’s Music Society in 1889, which developed into the Warsaw School of Drama in 1916, subsidized by the municipality. About forty students, men and women, participated in a two-year program, encompassing acting, singing, declamation, dance, gymnastics, and fencing; they also took classes on the history of theater and drama, the history of Poland, the history of Polish and world literature and poetry, and, finally, in foreign languages; full-scale student productions crowned the program. Warsaw’s star actors taught along with Warsaw University professors.

Creation of The National Theater Institute (State School of Drama)

In 1932, a governmental decree transformed the Warsaw School of Drama into a state subsidized academy, the National Institute of Theater Arts. The Institute consisted of four departments: acting, directing, film, and theater history and theory. The acting department opened in 1932, and the directing department followed in 1933; it was the first department of directing on the academic level in the world. The film and theater history and theory departments did not materialize before World War II.

Instruction in both the acting and directing departments in the Institute lasted three years, and graduates received the professional certificate, the right to join the Actors’ Union (ZASP-Zwiazek Artystów Scen Polskich — the Union of Artists of Polish Stages), and to work in professional theaters. The ZASP (which also had a directing division) restricted employment of actors and directors in the professional theaters to their membership; therefore, the Institute certificate was a necessary step to enter the theater. An additional avenue was opened when ZASP instituted an exam (or audition) for “externs,” that is, amateurs actors and directors, who prepared for the exam in different private studios or by working in either amateur theaters or as “apprentices” (also licensed by ZASP) in professional theaters. The “external exam” was difficult and not many people entered the profession by passing it. The Institute offered a more secure avenue for young people seeking careers in the theater.

The acting department in the Institute was led by an outstanding actor and master-teacher, Aleksander Zelwerowicz. The directing department was headed by Leon Schiller, a director considered to be the leading “theater artist” (as Gordon Craig used to say) in Poland in those days. The faculty included the “crème de la crème” of Warsaw’s stages — acting stars and directing masters. The candidates for both acting and directing had to have a high school certificate; the directing students usually were professions actors. The admission exam (audition) was very competitive.

The acting program was divided into two blocks of classes, “practice” and “theory.” A 50%–50% balance between them was sought,” but in reality “practice” occupied about two thirds of the schedule. “Practice” classes included: acting (on three different levels), improvisation, movement, dance, pantomime, voice training, declamation/diction, singing, fencing, and make-up. The three-year acting training was divided as follows: first year — general corporal, vocal, and psychological preparation, second year — building a role; and third year — playing a role in a production. The “theory” classes encompassed history of theater, history of literature, history of culture, history of costume, phonetics, and foreign languages. After the three-year program the students faced a final exam, which included a written thesis, an oral exam, the presentation of an audition piece, and, finally, acting a role in a school production.

The directing program was also broken into two parts, “practical” and “theoretical.” The “theory” was especially emphasized, in order to provide future directors with a good general liberal arts education, matching a university’s. In fact, university professors taught the “theoretical” classes which included history of theater, history of drama, history of literature, theory of drama, theory of poetry, history of music, history of opera, history of ballet, history of culture, history of stage design, aesthetics, philosophy, sociology, and psychology. The “practical” classes were divided into two groups: first, directing seminars, led by professors who were masters in the field; students participated in directing seminars through all three years of the program; and second, “technical subjects:” stage movement, choreography, acting exercises for directors, music appreciation, voice technique, and set and costume design. During the first year, students focused on theory and took some preparatory technical subjects. In the second year, they worked as assistants to the professors/directors in actual Warsaw theater productions. In the third year, the students, while still attending school, were expected to direct a production under a professor’s supervision that served as the “diploma production” and was presented as a part of the final exam, which also included a written thesis and an oral exam.

The Theater Arts Institute suspended classes during the siege of Warsaw at the beginning of World War II and was formally closed by the Germans after Warsaw fell.

The “Reduta Institute” (The Reduta Acting School)

Besides the succession of institutional and public schools of drama, there was also a strong tradition of acting studios. They were either run by individual actors, or operated in various theaters. In 1919, Juliusz Osterwa, a great actor, director and pedagogue, created the Reduta Theater in Warsaw, a laboratory-stage at the National Theater, and in 1922 he opened an acting school at the Reduta, called the Reduta Institute. The student-apprentices, carefully selected in lengthy auditions, had a very demanding training program: acting classes with various professors; movement, dance, voice, and diction; the history of drama and theater, theater ethics, and other humanistic subjects. The students also appeared in small parts in Reduta Theater productions. Osterwa believed that the work of both students and actors requires constant training. He connected the class training with rehearsals and performances. In his training methods he emphasized the psychological aspect of acting, but equally strongly stressed physical training, offering in his school classes of movement, gymnastics, corporal expression, dance, fencing, and horse riding. Above all, Osterwa sought to form an actor as a conscious and productive member of society. He tried to imprint in the minds and souls of his students the attitudes of cooperation within a creative group, reverence for selfless work, devotion to theater, and service to the nation, as well as to endow them with human virtues and an almost religious spirituality. All the students of the Institute lived as a community, sharing the same lodgings, having a common kitchen, and even communal money.

In the Outline of the Reduta Program (1922) Osterwa presented and discussed his approach to theater in general and acting in particular. The main points of the Program could be summarized as follows:

First, truth is the main objective of theater work and of acting. Truth has a theatrical aspect, but most of all, truth has a moral dimension. The ethics of the actor, and his/her moral influence upon the public, are of primary importance. The activities of all people involved in theater have moral and social functions.

Second, the truth of an actor should be his/her own, personal truth, based on his/her own morality. The personal, individual morality of each actor is the foundation for the moral impact of the theater, of an acting company, and of every performance. Thus, moral values are the core of theatrical creation.

Third, the actor is a sacrificer; he/she does not only play/perform, he/she commits an act of sacrifice, or an act of redemption for the spectators, who are the witnesses of his/her sacrifice. The being of theater should not be “a play for the public,” but “a sacerdotal sacrifice for the congregation,” offered by actors for and with the congregation. The theatrical act executed on the stage during the performance, is not merely an artistic act, it is a sacred act as well.

Fourth, theater is a deeply human art, as well as an interpersonal process of communication. Theater is an artistic communion between the actor-priests and the congregation of spectators.

In his Institute and in all his theater works Osterwa endeavored to implement these principles in practice. And, even though never fully successful, he was able to produce scores of fine and dedicated actors, directors, and teachers of acting who have carried on his ideals.

During the interwar years, Warsaw, with the Theater Arts Institute, the Reduta Institute, and several private acting studios, was the national center of both theater and theater education. Drama schools or acting studios were active in eight other major cities (Cracow, Lwów, Wilno, Poznan, Lódz, Bydgoszcz, Torun, and Katowice); they functioned on a permanent or temporary basis.

The majority of teachers used a variety of psychological methods. Stanislawa Wysocka, a great actress, associated with Stanislavsky in the teens of the century, taught her own version of the Russian master’s method in her studios. Other towering stage personalities taught the students their own techniques; teachers of lesser stature followed the masters. Together, they made acting instruction in prewar Poland flourish.

Acting instruction during World War II

In 1939 two totalitarian states, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, attacked, divided, and occupied Poland; one third of the country was immediately incorporated into Germany, the other into the Soviet Union, while another part fell under German occupation. In the part incorporated into Germany, Polish theater was prohibited outright and made virtually impossible. In the occupied territories, public drama & opera were closed (if they had not already been destroyed during the fighting) and professional, artistic Polish theater was prohibited. With rare exceptions, only low, entertainment-oriented genres, such as cabarets, reviews, and vulgar comedies were permitted and had to serve Nazi propaganda purposes. Drama schools and acting studios were closed, sharing their fate with the whole education system, which was abolished. The aim of Nazi policy was to degrade Polish culture and to deprive the Poles of education; no schooling above the fourth grade was allowed!

The Polish theater milieu formally (yet clandestinely, of course) declared a boycott on the German-controlled theaters, and, at the same time, developed an underground (illegal) theater life, which included productions, playwrighting, criticism, and theater scholarship. Acting training was also resumed clandestinely, which meant that classes were held in professors’ private homes or apartments, and productions were prepared in living rooms, using the simplest means. The public was invited by word of mouth, and both actors and spectators observed strict precautions. Of course, these classes and productions, like all other underground activities, were prohibited; the penalties were imprisonment, deportation to a concentration camp, or death.

Although the campaign of 1939 dispersed both Theater Arts Institute’s faculty and students, many of them were able to return to Warsaw and the classes were continued underground, with new students accepted each year. Clandestine acting studios also operated in Cracow. Additionally, some theater groups created underground studios which conducted their own acting training.

The situation of theater was different in the Polish territories occupied in 1939 by the Soviets and incorporated into the Soviet Union soon thereafter. Polish theaters on these lands remained open and provided a safe haven for many artists. But they were subject to Soviet control, as well as political and ideological indoctrination and manipulation. During the year and half of Soviet rule (from September 1939, until the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941), Polish theater people put up a gradually weakening resistance and tried to defend their old ideals, but they were forced to dance as their new masters demanded: to neglect their best national dramas, to produce unwelcome and inferior Soviet plays, and to follow the tenets of social realism (so called “socrealism”). The prewar acting studios in Lwów and Wilno, two major cities incorporated into the Soviet Union, were shut down by the fighting and did not reopen under Soviet rule. A clandestine acting studio was established in Wilno in the Fall of 1941 (under German occupation) with a very fine group of faculty, consisting of both theater artists and university professors. Immediately after the German retreat in August 1944, a public production of scenes worked on by the studio’s students was presented.

Reconstruction and expansion of acting and directing education after the War

In 1945, after World War II, a communist totalitarian regime was installed by the Soviets in Poland and lasted until 1989, when it was peacefully overthrown by the rising tide of Solidarity.

In spite of the country’s captivity, the theater milieu energetically threw itself into rebuilding theatrical life, joining the whole nation’s effort at reconstruction. The shortage of professional, well-trained actors was one of the most important problems facing theater after the war, a situation created by the death and emigration of hundreds of artists, along with the post-war increase in the number of professional theaters with permanent companies.

This deficiency was remedied by establishing professional schools of drama with experienced teams of educators, first in Lódz and Cracow, and later in Warsaw, where the Theater Arts Institute was recreated under the name of the State Higher School of Theater (Panstwowa Wyzsza Szkola Teatralna; we are going to call it the School of Drama ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction to the Series
• List of Plates
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Institutional Training
• Part II: The East And Experiments
• Part III: Some recent trends
• Notes on Contributors
• Index