European Theatre Performance Practice, 1900 to the Present

Geoff Willcocks, Nadine Holdsworth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781351938266
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

This volume captures the rich diversity of European performance practice evident in the twentieth and early part of the twenty-first century. Written by leading directors, actors, dancers, scenographers and academics from across Europe, the collection spans a broad range of subject areas including dance, theatre, live art, multimedia performance and street protest. The essays are divided into three sections on: performers and performing; staging performance; representation and reception, and document innovations in acting, performance and stagecraft by key practitioners. Articles also explore the ways that performance has been used to stage debates around major preoccupations of the age such as war, the human condition, globalization, the impact of new technologies and identity politics. This volume, which features previously published performance manifestoes, articles, and book chapters on the most frequently discussed and debated topics in the field, is an indispensable reference work for both academics and students.

Part I
Acting and Performance

[1]
When Acting is an Art

Constantin Stanislavski

Today we were called together to hear the Director's criticism of our performance. He said:

'Above all look for what is fine in art and try to understand it. Therefore, we shall begin by discussing the constructive elements of the test. There are only two moments worth noting; the first, when Maria threw herself down the staircase with the despairing cry of 'Oh, help me!' and the second, more extended in time, when Kostya Nazvanov said 'Blood, Iago, blood!' In both instances, you who were playing, and we who were watching, gave ourselves up completely to what was happening on the stage. Such successful moments, by themselves, we can recognize as belonging to the art of living a part.'

'And what is this art?' I asked.

'You experienced it yourself. Suppose you state what you felt.'

'I neither know nor remember,' said I, embarrassed by Tortsov's praise.

'What! You do not remember your own inner excitement? You do not remember that your hands, your eyes and your whole body tried to throw themselves forward to grasp something; you do not remember how you bit your lips and barely restrained your tears?'

Now that you tell me about what happened, I seem to remember my actions,' I confessed.

'But without me you could not have understood the ways in which your feelings found expression?'

'No, I admit I couldn't.'

'You were acting with your subconscious, intuitively?^' he concluded.

'Perhaps. I do not know. But is that good or bad?'

'Very good, if your intuition carries you along the right path, and very bad if it makes a mistake,' explained Tortsov. 'During the exhibition performance it did not mislead you, and what you gave us in those few successful moments was excellent.^'

'Is that really true?' I asked.

'Yes, because the very best that can happen is to have the actor completely carried away by the play. Then regardless of his own will he lives the part, not noticing how he feels, not thinking about what he does, and it all moves of its own accord, subconsciously and intuitively. Salvini said: "The great actor should be full of feeling, and especially he should feel the thing he is portraying. He must feel an emotion not only once or twice while he is studying his part, but to a greater or lesser degree every time he plays it, no matter whether it is the first or the thousandth time." Unfortunately this is not within our control. Our subconscious is inaccessible to our consciousness. We cannot enter into that realm. If for any reason we do penetrate into it, then the subconscious becomes conscious and dies.

'The result is a predicament; we are supposed to create under inspiration; only our subconscious gives us inspiration; yet we apparently can use this subconscious only through our consciousness, which kills it.

'Fortunately there is a way out. We find the solution in an oblique instead of a direct approach. In the soul of a human being there are certain elements which are subject to consciousness and will. These accessible parts are capable in turn of acting on psychic processes that are involuntary.

'To be sure, this calls for extremely complicated creative work. It is carried on in part under the control of our consciousness, but a much more significant proportion is subconscious and involuntary.

'To rouse your subconscious to creative work there is a special technique. We must leave all that is in the fullest sense subconscious to nature, and address ourselves to what is within our reach. When the subconscious, when intuition, enters into our work we must know how not to interfere.

'One cannot always create subconsciously and with inspiration. No such genius exists in the world. Therefore our art teaches us first of all to create consciously and rightly, because that will best prepare the way for the blossoming of the subconscious, which is inspiration. The more you have of conscious creative moments in your role the more chance you will have of a flow of inspiration.

'"You may play well or you may play badly; the important thing is that you should play truly," wrote Shchepkin to his pupil Shumski.

'To play truly means to be right, logical, coherent, to think, strive, feel and act in unison with your role.

'If you take all these internal processes, and adapt them to the spiritual and physical life of the person you are representing, we call that living the part. This is of supreme significance in creative work. Aside from the fact that it opens up avenues for inspiration, living the part helps the artist to carry out one of his main objectives. His job is not to present merely the external life of his character. He must fit his own human qualities to the life of this other person, and pour into it all of his own soul. The fundamental aim of our art is the creation of this inner life of a human spirit, and its expression in an artistic form.

'That is why we begin by thinking about the inner side of a role, and how to create its spiritual life through the help of the internal process of living the part. You must live it by actually experiencing feelings that are analogous to it, each and every time you repeat the process of creating it.'

'Why is the subconscious so dependent on the conscious? said I.

'It seems entirely normal to me,' was the reply. 'The use of steam, electricity, wind, water and other involuntary forces in nature is dependent on the intelligence of an engineer. Our subconscious power cannot function without its own engineer— our conscious technique. It is only when an actor feels that his inner and outer life on the stage is flowing naturally and normally, in the circumstances that surround him, that the deeper sources of his subconscious gently open, and from them come feelings we cannot always analyse. For a shorter or longer space of time they take possession of us whenever some inner instinct bids them. Since we do not understand this governing power, and cannot study it, we actors call it simply nature.

'But if you break the laws of normal organic life, and cease to function rightly, then this highly sensitive subconscious becomes alarmed, and withdraws. To avoid this, plan your role consciously at first, then play it truthfully. At this point realism and even naturalism in the inner preparation of a part is essential, because it causes your subconscious to work and induces outbursts of inspiration.'

From what you have said I gather that to study our art we must assimilate a psychological technique of living a part, and that this will help us to accomplish our main object, which is to create the life of a human spirit,' Paul Shustov said.

'That is correct but not complete,' said Tortsov. 'Our aim is not only to create the life of a human spirit, but also to "express it in a beautiful, artistic form." An actor is under the obligation to live his part inwardly, and then to give to his experience an external embodiment. I ask you to note especially that the dependence of the body on the soul is particularly important in our school of art. In order to express a most delicate and largely subconscious life it is necessary to have control of an unusually responsive, excellently prepared vocal and physical apparatus. This apparatus must be ready instantly and exactly to reproduce most delicate and all but intangible feelings with great sensitiveness and directness. That is why an actor of our type is obliged to work so much more than others, both on his inner equipment, which creates the life of the part, and also on his outer physical apparatus, which should reproduce the results of the creative work of his emotions with precision.

'Even the externalizing of a role is greatly influenced by the subconscious. In fact no artificial, theatrical technique can even compare with the marvels that nature brings forth.

'I have pointed out to you today, in general outlines, what we consider essential. Our experience has led to a firm belief that only our kind of art, soaked as it is in the living experiences of human beings, can artistically reproduce the impalpable shadings and depths of life. Only such art can completely absorb the spectator and make both understand and also inwardly experience the happenings on the stage, enriching his inner life, and leaving impressions which will not fade with time.

'Moreover, and this is of primary importance, the organic bases of the laws of nature on which our art is founded will protect you in the future from going down the wrong path. Who knows under what directors, or in what theatres, you will work? Not everywhere, not with everyone, will you find creative work based on nature, In the vast majority of theatres the actors and producers are constantly violating nature in the most shameless manner. But if you are sure of the limits of true art, and of the organic laws of nature, you will not go astray, you will be able to understand your mistakes and correct them. That is why a study of the foundations of our art is the beginning of the work of every student actor.'

'Yes, yes,' I exclaimed, 'I am so happy that I was able to take a step, if only a small one, in that direction.'

Not so fast," said Tortsov, otherwise you will suffer the bitterest disillusion. Do not mix up living your part with what you showed us on the stage.'

'Why, what did I show?'

'I have told you that in all that big scene from Othello there were only a few minutes in which you succeeded in living the part. I used them to illustrate to you, and to the other students, the foundations of our type of art. However, if we speak of the whole scene between Othello and Iago, we certainly cannot call it our type of art.'

'What is it, then?'

'That is what we call forced acting,' defined the Director.

'And what, really, is that?' said I, puzzled.

"When one acts as you did,' he explained, 'there are individual moments when you suddenly and unexpectedly rise to great artistic heights and thrill your audience. In such moments you are creating according to your inspiration, improvising, as it were; but would you feel yourself capable enough, or strong enough spiritually or physically, to play the five great acts of Othello with the same lift with which you accidentally played part of that one short scene?'

'I do not know,' I said, conscientiously.

'I know, unquestionably, that such an undertaking would be far beyond the strength not only of a genius with an extraordinary temperament, but even of a very Hercules,' answered Tortsov. 'For our purposes you must have, in addition to the help of nature, a well worked-out psychological technique, an enormous talent, and great physical and nervous reserves. You have not all these things, any more than do the personality actors who do not admit technique. They, as you did, rely entirely on inspiration. If this inspiration does not turn up then neither you nor they have anything with which to fill in the blank spaces. You have long stretches of nervous let-down in playing your part, complete artistic impotence, and a naïve amateurish sort of acting. At such times your playing is lifeless, stilted. Consequently high moments alternate with over-acting.'

2

Today we heard some more from Tortsov about our acting. When he came to the classroom he turned to Paul and said to him:

'You too gave us some interesting moments, but they were rather typical of the "art of representation".

'Now since you successfully demonstrated this other way of acting, Paul, why not recall for us how you created the role of lago?' suggested the Director.

'I went right at the role for its inner content, and studied that for a long time,' said Paul. 'At home it seemed to me that I really did live the part, and at some of the rehearsals there were certain places in the role that I seemed to feel. Therefore I do not know what the art of "representation" has to do with it.'

'In it the actor also lives his part,' said Tortsov. 'This partial identity with our method is what makes it possible to consider this other type also true art.

'Yet his objective is different. He lives his part as a preparation for perfecting an external form. Once that is determined to his satisfaction he reproduces that form through the aid of mechanically trained muscles. Therefore, in this other school, living your role is not the chief moment of creation as it is with us, but one of the preparatory stages for further artistic work.'

'But Paul did use his own feelings at the exhibition performance!' I maintained.

Someone else agreed with me, and insisted that in Paul's acting, just as in mine, there had been a few scattered moments of truly living the part, mixed with a lot of incorrect acting.

'No,' insisted Tortsov, 'in our art you must live the part every moment that you are playing it, and every time. Each time it is recreated it must be lived afresh and incarnated afresh. This describes the few successful moments in Kostya's acting. But I did not notice freshness in improvisation, or in feeling his part, in Paul's playing. On the contrary, I was astonished in a number of places by the accuracy and artistic finish of a form and method of acting which is permanently fixed, and which is produced with a certain inner coldness. However, I did feel in those moments that the original, of which this was only the artificial copy, had been good and true. This echo of a former process of living the part made his acting, in certain moments, a true example of the art of representation.'

'How could I have got hold of the art of mere reproduction?' Paul could not understand.

'Let us find out by your telling us more about how you prepared your Iago,' suggested the Director.

'To be sure that my feelings were externally reflected I used a mirror.'

'That is dangerous,' re...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• PART I ACTING AND PERFORMANCE
• PART II STAGING PERFORMANCE
• PART III REPRESENTATION AND RECEPTION
• Name Index