Stepping Stones

Ingemar Lindh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000673005
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Stepping Stones is the book of a practitioner. It documents the work of a laboratory-based practice that investigated the principles of collective improvisation as a performance practice.

1 In Search of Research

DOI: 10.4324/9780429333538-1

Introduction: A Hypothesis

Everything starts as a ‘protest’. A dissatisfaction with what is.

This is where the great and the small meet.

I use the word ‘protest’ in a very down to earth way: everything that means change, which in its turn nearly always provokes some sort of displacement (for example, moving one leg after the other). This interpretation guarantees the perpetuation of the protest, that our greatest wish shall be included in the smallest of our actions.

Sometimes these wishes can be quite clear and the steps to be taken are obvious: one knows what one wants and what the protest is. This is applicable to situations of the utmost importance as well as to simple every day actions. Our daily life is necessarily made up of an infinite number of such protests, like when I see a potato on my plate, I want to eat it and I will not be satisfied until it has gone down into my stomach.

Most of the time, in the context of creation, our wishes are not so well defined. We do not know what we want but we know what we do not want. This is how Stanislavski started, how Brecht and Meyerhold started: by eliminating that which they did not want.

This kind of procedure teaches us that in order to make progress and discover new pathways, it is always necessary to start by going back.

We know that up to recent times (that is to say until about a century ago or since art became Art), theatre has not evolved at the same pace as other artistic disciplines. There is an explanation for this.

To begin with, theatre has always channelled its practitioners into one form or another of collective creation, whether with or without a director. This has happened for the simple reason that theatre is ‘something’ which is created in a group. Apart from all the social problems that come with this, such a state of affairs has given rise to a cumbersome and costly economic apparatus. And where money is involved, it is easier to invest in what is certain than in what is uncertain.

Even the purest artistic experiment and the most innovative creation fall victim to inertia once the grand adventure - risk itself - leaves the visionary isolated.

However, the ephemeral character of theatre itself and, above all, of the art of the actor, was of decisive importance. When a performance ends, it disappears and when an actor dies, his art and knowledge die with him.

The first and most significant change undertaken in the field of modem theatre has been the transformation of the ‘frame’ of the work. Studios, workshops, laboratories, research centres are the new names for theatres, which indicate clearly how theatre has declared war on the ephemeral to transform experience into something tangible.

Research requires points of reference.

On the one hand there was the traditional theatre with its schools and its teachings based on almost pathological notions such as feelings, identification, presence, charisma, and interpretation; indeed, an inventory of all that is vague and with which it is impossible to construct a daily work practice. In other words, this represents all that we did not want.

On the other hand there was Literature with its plays, which could not be of much help to the actor.

Luckily, there were also people who had tried to describe their own practical experiences by writing down reports of their work, and also more personal observations and impressions of their own creative process.

The Actor: Poetry and Technique

In many ways the actor resembles the musician, in that he has in front of him, as a starting point, a sheet of paper containing little signs which he has to transform into sound.

However, the musician has two advantages over the actor. First of all, the signs which the musician reads in his score are much more precise. The notes he has to play, the pitch required, the approximate velocity, rhythm, and in most cases even the strength of execution are all written down. All that the musician is required to do is to create a ‘dynamo-rhythmical’ logic.

For the actor, these points are much more arbitrary. Moreover, the actor is expected to create and to follow not only a rhythmic and dynamic logic but also an anecdotal one. In the latter case he is always guided by realism - art’s guide to hell.

The second and decisive advantage of the musician is that he always works with a partner with whom he maintains a permanent dialogue, who does not make any mistakes and is equipped with perfect pitch. This partner is his instrument.

The actor possesses an instrument too: his own body with which it is, however, difficult to start a dialogue. Even if the actor manages to distance himself objectively from his own instrument (his body), the relationship dangerously resembles incest.

How about the dancer? He too has only his body. However, in dance there is a clear codified language through which everything must be channelled; established rules which the dancer has to follow. As in the case of the musician, the dancer too can abstract an element from codified language, from the expression itself, which is almost mechanical: a ‘manipulation. An example of this are the certain movements of the fingers, or of the legs or the arms, that have to be executed in a precise and pre-established manner with the aim of getting a particular result, but which is not yet a creation.

Could there be, here, something which might be useful for the actor? Something which would permit the actor to bring together creation and daily practice? Something which, perhaps, could prepare the ground for growth, some hint of a fertile territory?

What must the actor do to enable himself to perform his task? And what is this task? Does it simply require the recitation of a text which somebody else has written? Surely this is not difficult to achieve. All it takes is to memorise the text and articulate it well so that everybody can hear it.

However, the actor is also visible. When what is heard is important and meaningful, it is also necessary for what is seen to either signify’ or ‘be significant’, or else to remain completely neutral. So, what does one see? Well, the actor himself. Nobody wrote him. He has expressly chosen to present himself to the spectator. And why does one go to the theatre to see an actor? Obviously one goes only if the actor has something to offer, only if the actor can accomplish something which those who come to see him cannot. The actor acts as a representative. He meets an author’s text through and with himself, equipped with something which a non-actor does not possess.

We have still not yet arrived at the point of defining what an actor must, in fact, do to achieve this capacity. But we do have a starting point. The actor is physically present and it is not enough for him to be present as if he were a statue equipped with a loudspeaker. He has to be a living creature and thus on a universal level. Consequently, he has to be present not only physically but also psychically.

The matter has complicated itself once again. And what must the actor do?

Let us go back to the practice. Let us go back to simple things.

We had declared war on the vague, on the intangible. Unfortunately, we also learnt from musicians and dancers something which was not too pleasant: the danger of a technique becoming too autonomous; in other words, the danger of virtuosity. We could see how this could easily become an end in itself, an alibi instead of a challenge, an everyday refuge instead of a daily discipline.

We had to take the risk. It was the only way out. We had to start training our instrument, our body, exploring its laws and possibilities.

But is it possible to avoid the danger of becoming gymnasts or acrobats instead of actors? When a musician and a dancer lose contact with their own creative force, they always retain a foothold. For the actor there is nothing left but an abyss. Paradoxically, it is in this abyss that the creative source can be found. This source is like an open artery through which the fiindamental acts of the actor are linked with that which is universal.

We had two clear but intangible tasks. Firstly, to transform the body of the actor by means of a daily practice into that instrument which he needed both vocally and physically. We had to make the actor eloquent, intelligible when seen and heard, so that he would be at the service of the message (which is not just that of the text). We had already heard about this. It was what the ancient Greeks called téchne (craft, trade, art, capability) or technikós (rules of the art). In other words, technique. The second task was more delicate. We wanted to make it possible for the actor/re-creator (in other words, the poet) to meet and confront the message or the text through his own actions. This we also knew from the Greeks: poiesis, to make, manufacture, produce.

How can an actor find, through exercise, a possible opening for his sources of universality? How can the actor transform private behaviour into a personal one, one that is subjective but of universal interest? Once again, it was necessary to consult written works and get help from the experience of others.

It is possible to re-establish a link with the ‘spiritual’ through the practice of‘exercises’ (as indicated by Ignatius of Loyola), but this would lead us back to the immaterial which cannot be useful as a starting point. We were looking for something physical which would change literature into flesh and not flesh into literature. How about India? In India, there has always been the culture of searching for knowledge through Yoga, a very physical reality which opens the way to spiritual sources. It seemed as if this new course would make sense. But Yoga practitioners look for a physical and spiritual nonexistence (Nirvana) and not for that ‘being’, that ‘existence’, for which we were searching.

Still, both these sources revealed something else to us, something which is common to these and other fields of searching: namely, not to construct through doing and technique a fortress of abilities but rather to break down resistances, to destroy by means of the tangible the barrier surrounding that which cannot be grasped. In this way, our innermost being is re-linked with ‘the others’ and with ‘the other’ on a level where this is possible, where actions are universal, becoming transparent.

But is it possible to achieve this and in what way?

It was obvious that we should deal with a liberation (by means of exercise) of what we already have, rather than with an accumulation of an arsenal of tricks. It was also clear that the paradox of learning at the same time as one is tearing down is with us through the whole process. The paradox assures that we keep a dialectic attitude in our work.

I have said that there is ‘dissatisfaction at the root of action, that there is something to be modified or moved. This presents a task, a difficulty, to the actor. Even if this is what he desires, it is still something which has to be overcome. For example, when speaking of physical actions, Stanislavski notes that in order to jump on a table, it is first necessary to overcome a fear, a resistance. He says that this fear is both physical and psychic and that, fundamentally, it is the same fear that grips anyone who has to speak in public. It is the fear of exposing oneself beyond privacy, of being subjective in public. This should not be confused with intimacy, which cannot be of any interest or value except to oneself and to those nearest to one.

The most logical step for us would have been to follow the model of music and artistic dance and try to formulate an equivalent language for theatre. However, it was impossible to realise this because it was unclear what form such a language should take. Moreover, the realisation would imply predetermining an organic process, growth itself.

What the actor should ‘know how to do’ was, therefore, an unknown. The only certainty and tangible point of reference was the necessity to find a psychophysical process that had to start in the physical.

If there had been a clinical’ hypothesis it would - more or less - have been this: to create a physical way of proceeding, which would influence the mental structure of the actor in such a way as to liberate it and to enable it to guide the actor’s physical acts, which in their turn would become legible signs of his reactions and mental acts.

The more one returns to the point of departure and tries to find the smallest components of what needs to be done, the more one finds that it is impossible to determine with certainty between cause and effect. The two can, sometimes, be inverted. What seems to be the effect is, in reality, the cause. One realises that there is no ‘beginning’ unless one creates it artificially. Moreover, what one decides to be a ‘beginning’ only has temporary validity.

All this sounds so complicated that it must necessarily be simple. Or else it would be better to make it so.

Since we did not know what had to be done with the body, we began by examining what the body could do. We studied all the possibilities, the articulations, and the physical laws governing its movements. It could then be noted that there was a ‘gap’ between the actor’s intention to perform a certain action and its actual execution. A gap’, that is a space, in which singular things happened: a tiny hesitation or changes in posture, caused by an intellectual evaluation of what should be done and how to do it. This ‘gap’ occurred before the action was executed or, to be clearer, before any attempt at execution had been made, indicating a lack of confidence in the body’s capability to accomplish the assigned task.

The adjustment arises out of another aspect of fear: that of showing oneself as one really is, of ‘not making it’ or of being judged, of being unmasked. But in reality, as Stanislavski emphasises, physical and mental fear are actually the same thing.

And that is how we got into this ‘coming and going’ between the mental and the physical, because it is only after overcoming this self-censoring gap, after destroying the psychophysical barrier erected between the impulse to act and the accomplished act, that the actor can perform the ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents Page
• Preface to the Italian edition Page
• Acknowledgements Page
• INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH EDITION Page
• 1. In Search of Research
• 2. Catching the Moment of Eternity
• 3. ‘Dear Friend...’
• 4. The Transparent Man
• 5. Institutet för Scenkonst A Chronology by Magdalena Pietruska
• INDEX OF PERFORMANCES
• INDEX OF PHOTOGRAPHS
• GLOSSARY OF TERMS
• INDEX