Reading through the blog comments while working on my teaching and directing projects for next year, I am really interested to think about how we might teach the fruits of our seminar discussions.
When I teach my theatre history class, I focus the class on how modes of performance, performance technique, and performance training shift across historical periods and geographic contexts, contrasting Noh actors with Hippolyte Clairon's writings on acting, setting up 1950s Naturalism (in Williams et al) in opposition to Beckett's focus on physical action, etc. It's really teachable, and I think many of us find such structures useful as we teach theatre history or acting styles. But I've always known that it's more complicated than that, and it seems like the work we're doing here is to bring that complication to light.
And, student actors know it's more complicated than that. One might be directed to work in a Brechtian style, but might also look for moments of psychological connection, either surreptitiously or with the guidance of one's director. The difficulty actors and directors and teachers often have articulating their process, and the desire (especially strong among students, I think) to mystify the work of acting means that many develop their own practice by merging multiple techniques -- EW clearly developed a style that used her physical body as well as her own value system about the kinds of stories she wanted to tell as well as the studio training she'd received.
Another example: I took class with Phil Zarrilli and Billie Whitelaw (I did my grad work at Madison in the 1990s), and we focused on the physical body and the voice as we prepared monologues and scenes. Whitelaw kept saying "very little color, no color," and refused to address questions of what something meant or might mean, insisting that the fast, monotone delivery of the language and the precise execution of the stage directions provided the meaning to the audience. And then she performed some monologues, and it was clear that there were "psychological" underpinnings to her performance as we watched her prepare and then come down after the performance.
So, I'm wondering how important it is/will be to rethink the teaching narratives we've deployed as we continue to trouble the boundaries of realism. I'll want to talk about this in July.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
On the physical body in realism (from Kim)
Hi all,
Further to Roberta's really helpful post, I wanted to add a couple of source notes.
Discussion of the relationship between Stanislavski practice and the physical body (via a nuanced understanding of his late "method of physical action") has been heating up, albeit often somewhat indirectly, for a little while now; I've just read two things that I suspect will be helpful for anyone wanting to think this through further.
First is Grotowski's "Reply to Stanislavsky" in the current issue of TDR, edited by Kris Salata and Lisa Wolford-Wylam. Salata translates this piece of writing (the issue contains several original pieces by Grotowski and others never before published in English), which includes Grotowski's comments on Stanislavski's very important influence on his own work. In the middle of the piece Grotowski makes a substantial commentary (nearly a page) on Stanislavski's method of physical actions, what many practitioners (especially in the US) think it means, and what he perceives it to mean. I found this commentary really illuminating. Later in the issue is an article by Salata on Grotowski's shift "from acting to doing," which makes an intriguing companion read.
Second is the Routledge collection titled _Performance and Cognition_, edited by Bruce McConachie and Elizabeth Hart and published a couple of years ago. In it, Rhonda Blair offers a smart, concise, and really useful article on using methods derived from cognitive science in the rehearsal hall. She explores the relationship between image schemas, the acting body in the moment of performance, imagination, and emotion, and argues that emotional recall, as we have previously understood it, is not at all the key to strong (realist) performance. Rather, thinking "cognitively", we need to explore ways to use the text of a play to generate emotional reactions in the present, and then to use our imaginations to transform those emotions into different kinds of feeling states within performative representation. Blair ultimately argues that this kind of an approach understands emotion as a mind-body process, and resists the actor-training commonplace that performers "get out of their heads" and disavow any kind of conscious, critical thought in the process of generating their characters. In other words, in the process Blair outlines, Stanislavski and Brecht very much collide.
Kim
Further to Roberta's really helpful post, I wanted to add a couple of source notes.
Discussion of the relationship between Stanislavski practice and the physical body (via a nuanced understanding of his late "method of physical action") has been heating up, albeit often somewhat indirectly, for a little while now; I've just read two things that I suspect will be helpful for anyone wanting to think this through further.
First is Grotowski's "Reply to Stanislavsky" in the current issue of TDR, edited by Kris Salata and Lisa Wolford-Wylam. Salata translates this piece of writing (the issue contains several original pieces by Grotowski and others never before published in English), which includes Grotowski's comments on Stanislavski's very important influence on his own work. In the middle of the piece Grotowski makes a substantial commentary (nearly a page) on Stanislavski's method of physical actions, what many practitioners (especially in the US) think it means, and what he perceives it to mean. I found this commentary really illuminating. Later in the issue is an article by Salata on Grotowski's shift "from acting to doing," which makes an intriguing companion read.
Second is the Routledge collection titled _Performance and Cognition_, edited by Bruce McConachie and Elizabeth Hart and published a couple of years ago. In it, Rhonda Blair offers a smart, concise, and really useful article on using methods derived from cognitive science in the rehearsal hall. She explores the relationship between image schemas, the acting body in the moment of performance, imagination, and emotion, and argues that emotional recall, as we have previously understood it, is not at all the key to strong (realist) performance. Rather, thinking "cognitively", we need to explore ways to use the text of a play to generate emotional reactions in the present, and then to use our imaginations to transform those emotions into different kinds of feeling states within performative representation. Blair ultimately argues that this kind of an approach understands emotion as a mind-body process, and resists the actor-training commonplace that performers "get out of their heads" and disavow any kind of conscious, critical thought in the process of generating their characters. In other words, in the process Blair outlines, Stanislavski and Brecht very much collide.
Kim
On the physical body in realism (from Roberta)
First of all, everyone, sorry for my silence on this blog!! It’s been a bit of a rocky month due to illnesses in my family; I’ve also been traveling in England and had less e-mail access than I’d expected. I’m hoping that this week will be better and that I’ll be able to make a few postings here…
I’d like to start today with just a few thoughts on the first of our questions, that of the relationship between realist acting and the body of the actor. Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a ‘Stanislavski colloquium’ organized by the Barbican Centre in London, where we heard from Jean Benedetti, Bella Merlin (who was particularly illuminating), Philip Zarilli, Declan Donnellan and a number of other practitioners, students and teachers of Stanislavski. The event was inspired by the publication of the new Stanislavski edition/translation by Routledge (which sounds like a must-read!!). The one thing everyone kept coming back to was the idea that the popular notion of Stanislavski as all about psychology and internal process, as opposed to the body and physical process (as with, say, Meyerhold) was a very incomplete one and largely due to the West’s ignorance of his later writings. In different ways, pretty much everyone stressed Stanislavski’s obsession with psychophysical process and argued that we must understand the interdependence between body and psyche in Stanislavski’s System before we either use or critique it.
This seems to be an interesting avenue for us to pursue in our seminar. The idea of an absolute dichotomy between realism and ‘physical theatre’ has become something of a norm, not only in academia but in actor training (actors trained at the Lecoq School and those trained in the tradition of the Actors’ Studio may view one another with hostility, as I discovered when I directed just such a pair of actors in Love’s Labours Lost a few years ago). As Kim says, recent theory often sees the body as the “disavowed underbelly” of realism (“realism’s hysteria”). But the scholars and practitioners at the Barbican colloquium, like Leigh and Kirsten in their papers, argued that CONSCIOUS and detailed exploration of the physical body and its actions is in fact a cornerstone of realist acting and a primary source of its affective power. As one Russian practitioner and teacher emphasized, not only Stanislavski and Brecht but Stanislavski and Grotowski can be seen as part of a continuum of thought about the body rather than as adversaries.
Do we buy this argument? And if so, how could it change our understanding and practice of realist acting? How ‘natural’ is the body we’re talking about here, since it is managed by the psyche and impacted upon by social forces (as the naturalists and Brecht would, I think, have agreed)? I’m not yet sure how to answer these questions, but I do feel that they offer us one way out of the overly easy oppositions that have tended to dominate discussions of performance styles in recent years. Any thoughts?
More soon, I hope…
Very best,
Roberta
I’d like to start today with just a few thoughts on the first of our questions, that of the relationship between realist acting and the body of the actor. Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a ‘Stanislavski colloquium’ organized by the Barbican Centre in London, where we heard from Jean Benedetti, Bella Merlin (who was particularly illuminating), Philip Zarilli, Declan Donnellan and a number of other practitioners, students and teachers of Stanislavski. The event was inspired by the publication of the new Stanislavski edition/translation by Routledge (which sounds like a must-read!!). The one thing everyone kept coming back to was the idea that the popular notion of Stanislavski as all about psychology and internal process, as opposed to the body and physical process (as with, say, Meyerhold) was a very incomplete one and largely due to the West’s ignorance of his later writings. In different ways, pretty much everyone stressed Stanislavski’s obsession with psychophysical process and argued that we must understand the interdependence between body and psyche in Stanislavski’s System before we either use or critique it.
This seems to be an interesting avenue for us to pursue in our seminar. The idea of an absolute dichotomy between realism and ‘physical theatre’ has become something of a norm, not only in academia but in actor training (actors trained at the Lecoq School and those trained in the tradition of the Actors’ Studio may view one another with hostility, as I discovered when I directed just such a pair of actors in Love’s Labours Lost a few years ago). As Kim says, recent theory often sees the body as the “disavowed underbelly” of realism (“realism’s hysteria”). But the scholars and practitioners at the Barbican colloquium, like Leigh and Kirsten in their papers, argued that CONSCIOUS and detailed exploration of the physical body and its actions is in fact a cornerstone of realist acting and a primary source of its affective power. As one Russian practitioner and teacher emphasized, not only Stanislavski and Brecht but Stanislavski and Grotowski can be seen as part of a continuum of thought about the body rather than as adversaries.
Do we buy this argument? And if so, how could it change our understanding and practice of realist acting? How ‘natural’ is the body we’re talking about here, since it is managed by the psyche and impacted upon by social forces (as the naturalists and Brecht would, I think, have agreed)? I’m not yet sure how to answer these questions, but I do feel that they offer us one way out of the overly easy oppositions that have tended to dominate discussions of performance styles in recent years. Any thoughts?
More soon, I hope…
Very best,
Roberta
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
the therapeutic value of realism...
A recent New Yorker article describes the use of a virtual reality video game to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in returning Iraqi vets. The therapist controls the game and gradually adds in more and more details of the traumatic event so that its recall becomes less traumatic. Not sure yet how this ties in, but it's an interesting tangent....
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Mari Gorman Thinks About Synthesis
I'm freshly emancipated from toil and will add information on my discoveries soon. Right now, I'm reading an enlightening book entitled, "Strokes of Existence" by Mari Gorman, wherein she describes the collision of Brecht's with Stanislavski's style of acting as "a combination of a perception and a response." Her aim, however, is to create an even more "lifelike" reproduction in order to communicate with an audience. I have yet to read her conclusions, but her experimentation is exciting.
---Leigh
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