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Let's End the Specious Argument of Beloved Dead Masters

In particular, let's end the "argument" between Adler and Strasberg.  There is no substance to their false reasoning upon whi...

Monday, December 31, 2018

Thought Without Language

  

Once again, regarding my 10/2/17 post, "Don't Open Your Mouth Until You Know What Image is Driving the Thought".  All humans constantly, consciously, think about something while awake.  When actors are living their life or performing an improvisation, they're also always thinking.  For some reason, they seem to omit thought when performing text.  Conclusion:  The only humans who omit thought from language are actors.

Friday, July 20, 2018

"Dramas are Too Quiet" AKA Where's the Actor's Technique?


If the actor chooses an action/objective for each and every sentence, comprehends that it's necessary to make one's partner see the image/thought in one's eye, regardless of where the mike is, regardless of the director's talent or lack thereof, the sound engineer's talent or lack thereof, that sentence, the idea of that sentence will be heard. 

If the actor has been trained to do that, and doesn't do it, or doesn't recognize that it's necessary to do it, but relies merely on their talent, then we will hear words, some comprehensible, some not, but we won't know the idea of the sentence.  Many talented actors fall into this bad habit.  I'm singling out Eliza Scanlen, who plays Amma Crellin in HBO's Sharp Objects, because at least one of her scenes in that series is mentioned in Ms. VanArendonk's review in Vulture (see link below) and I saw the scene.  Ms. Scanlen's performance, so far, suffers from her innate talent which relies on instinct and the decision, made in advance, of how she wants to say the sentence, of the resulting mood or feeling of the sentence.  The  performance delivers indicated acting, and a lot of elbow-jabbing in the audience with audible "what did she say?"

Ms. VanArendonk mentioned a telephone exchange that Amy Adams performed.  I didn't go back to watch it, but am certain that Ms. Adams did not examine carefully, for that scene, what made her say each thought.  It's my opinion that Ms. Adams understands her characters very well in many of her performances.  Her work in Doubt, for example, was luminous.  What a pleasure it was to be taken for a secure ride with the lead actors of that film!  However, in Sharp Objects, I think she hasn't sharpened the actions of each sentence; she has worked on the inner life of the character and is showing it.  But the character utters ideas/needs in order to survive, to get a grip on her relationship to her environment, and each sentence she utters is progressive toward the journey of discovery she has undertaken. "What need is making me say this sentence?"   We would hear the ideas of each sentence with clarity if Ms. Adams had done this preparatory work.




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/04/bbc-should-face-investigation-incoherent-mumbling-prime-time/

https://spectator.com.au/2017/03/no-mumbling-allowed/

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Dianne Wiest and Judy Garland: Talent and Technique





I've randomly chosen Dianne Wiest and Judy Garland to exemplify what I mean when I say that talent is a variable whereas technique is not.

What is talent?  It's been defined as having a dramatic instinct, depth of imagination, and other generalizations.  I agree, but more precisely, I think that a talented actor is one who's extremely empathic, and even more precisely, it's an actor who, with every sentence they utter has a thought, image, that forces that utterance from an intention.

 I recently saw Judy Garland's performance in A Star is Born.  I was impressed by the scene I've chosen, unaware that it's considered a famous scene from that performance.  I think that Judy Garland was one of those natural (genius?) actors who, by instinct, perform correctly.  It didn't matter whether she was singing or acting; she always uttered a sentence that emanated from a thought.

Dianne Wiest is a talented actor.  It's my impression that she doesn't use technique, but relies on her instincts, which are often reliable.  From In Treatment, the 2008 HBO series, she performed a clear need (aka action/objective).  In particular, when she described standing over the grave of her husband, she definitely saw an image in her mind's eye.  I'd like to point out that neither Adler nor Strasberg would have been able to discern whether she used an image from her own life experience or if she imagined it, but that she saw it is indisputable and her cognition of the image and describing it is what produced an honest emotion.

However, in the 2006 autobiographical film written and directed by Dito Monteil, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, she apparently didn't decide upon an action, which, according to her lines, seemed to be the need to convince her son that his father loves him.  It's the end of the story.  Her character barely expressed herself throughout the film.  She had called her son, who had left home some 20 years prior, to come home for his father's sake, and as soon as her son arrived, his father kicked him out of the house.  Why didn't she decide what her action (verb) needed to be for the overall arc of the scene? And then what thought/image would drive each sentence?  The first sentence she uttered about Antonio doesn't seem related to her overall action.  So, why does her character need to say it?  Why does she continue to talk about Antonio in the beginning of the scene?  She then says, "Look how nice it is now." Both actions  seem to be a need to find a way to begin, don't they?  She must really take in that apartment building behind her that floods her memory of Antonio when he was a boy and she must take in the environment, especially if her character comments on it.  Is it too warm for wearing her sweater?  When she does summon the courage related to the reason she came outside in the first place, everything she talks about is related to past memories.  What are those?  Images, anecdotes from the past; each of which the actor needed to create and summon in order to convince her son that his father loves him. What are those images from so long ago, on this hill -- her husband running after Dito with a forgotten lunch?  A jacket?  Dito says one word: "Sorry."  Didn't she hear him say it?  Is it because he said "sorry," that she summons the courage to admonish him with, "You can't come back with hatred for your father?" If not, then what is the need that drove that sentence?  Then:  New Thought:  "How could you love him in that book and not see him for so long," scolding her grown son took a lot of courage from this quiet woman.  Then, "I know you have your reasons," exposes another new thought, an empathic awareness of her son's POV, memory of her husband's behavior from her son's perspective.  What prompts that new thought?  It could be many things, but surely an obvious one, a memory of a hurt expression on his face when he was a boy.  Now he's a man.  How has he aged?  Has he put on weight, lost weight?  He wears a beard; what does she think of the beard?  "....look at you...you're a man now...good to look at you."  Her son put his hand on hers; Ms. Wiest had no reaction to that physical gesture.  That gesture, coming from her son, whom she hadn't seen in 20 years, communicating that he understood what she was trying to convey, was the climax of the scene!  It's possible that Robert Downey, Jr. didn't make that gesture in other takes.  Nevertheless, if Ms. Wiest had been thinking the thoughts of the character, she would have reacted to the gesture.  The cumulative result of the error of not using technique renders a descriptive rather than a dramatic performance.  Here's the scene:



I've written elsewhere on this blog about Marlon Brando and the anecdote about Stella Adler.  Brando was a good example of someone, who once he learned, analyzed, what he instinctively knew, always applied the technique to his work.  Technique can never get in the way of talent, it can only enhance it.

Sunday, June 24, 2018

Imagination/Affective Memory



Stella Adler discussed somewhere, in great detail, the front door of the house in which Nora (A Doll's House) lived with her family.  I think you can find it on YouTube.  Imagine if you were creating a character who lived in New York City or other major cities during 1911 or 1929, and what the sounds of the street were like and how they would impact your character's behavior.  We live in a particular environment in relation to the objects in that environment.

The Adler/Strasberg disagreement, discussed elsewhere on this blog, consisted of the isolation between the actor's personal, lived experience and what the actor has learned, but not directly experienced.  However, isn't the imagination derived from the actor's total lived experience?  That is, once you've studied the above clip, that environment is etched forever in your mind, and you can go back to it whenever you wish.  What you learn becomes part of your total lived experience.  Everything we think about is derived from something we already know.

Monday, February 26, 2018

Dramatic Progression and Exposition/Bradley Cooper/Silver Linings...



Reminder:  Talent is a variable; technique is not.  Bradley Cooper is a talented actor, but in this scene he didn't use what I would assume was his training at The Actors Studio.  That is, that every drama is a series of progressive actions and therefore, that in each succeeding scene, the actor must choose an action/need/objective; using a simple sentence with a verb, in order to avoid a narrative performance.  As well, the actor must understand dramatic structure well enough to know that when exposition (backstory) is part of the forward action of a scene, the actor must avoid the trap of narrative, and choose an action in order to dramatically perform the scene.

The character's need/objective in this scene is to convince his psychiatrist that he doesn't need to take meds.  Consider the previous circumstances: (1) His mother insisted he go with her to therapy and threatened him: "You have to go.  It's part of the deal.  You can't live with us and not go." (2) When he entered his psychiatrist's waiting room, his dreaded song was playing, which made him aggressive in a way he knew was harmful to staying off meds, and now, in the above scene, he must convince Dr. Patel, regardless of his behavior in the waiting room, that he doesn't need meds.  This scene is pure exposition and as written, is information that has already been discussed (probably many times) between Dr. Patel and the character.  Unfortunately, Mr. Cooper described the backstory, which is narration, not drama, and although he read the scene intelligently, it was still, nevertheless, a reading of the scene, and not dramatic.

For example, "...I'm not the explosion guy, okay?  My father is the explosion guy," is a reminder to the doctor, it's not new information for the doctor, and is said now again in support of not needing meds.  "He got kicked out of that stadium he beat up so many people at Eagles games, he's on the exclusion list," is again, old information for Dr. Patel, and is also progression (more information) of the argument against needing meds.  Since this is old information, a necessary reminder in support of his argument, it needed to be emphatic; it could even have been delivered ironically, considering the primary need to convince the doctor.  From then on, as he says, "Let's go back to the incident," he is going over details in order to try to justify his prior behavior, and with the aid of the doctor, recalling for himself the pattern of his prior behavior, the specific history that doesn't justify not taking meds.  The actor needs to realize that he's joining the character in a journey of discovery through a series of rising actions; he is not telling a story.

When technique isn't practiced throughout, the talented actor will present an uneven performance.  There will be scenes in which he seems to work correctly, because, accidentally, he has been able to connect with the actions -- something about the scene resonated deeply for him, but, in scenes where this was not the case, he'll revert to indicated acting -- to showing us the character.


Saturday, January 20, 2018

Cognition/Emotion - AGAIN

 PLEASE NOTE, in particular, how composed he is when he begins speaking his thoughts, and incrementally, as he connects to his successive thoughts, his emotion links to them.  Access this video on YouTube, and read the wide variety of reactions to what he said.  Theatre is a collaborative art; the final collaborator is the audience, and each member of the audience brings their own life experience to the performance.  Imagine those people as a theatre audience if this were performed by an actor.  Even if they all remained silent, the actor would feel their reaction(s) from the stage.  Each member of the audience is in no way hypnotized or passive, and just as the actor (if performing correctly) accesses emotion, so does each individual member of the audience, through their cognitive understanding access their emotional reaction to the text; they either loved the performance, hated it, liked the story but didn't believe the actor, didn't like the story, loved it, and argued about it over drinks at some cozy bar before heading home.

Surely everyone who has studied technique is familiar with the exercise that will produce emotion regarding an event from one's own life.   The 2002 documentary Broken Silence presented by Steven Spielberg is an excellent example, over and over again, of its validity.  The trailer to the film is linked below. The actor's challenge is to find a way to connect to the thoughts of the character.  "If I can think the thoughts of the character, I can play the character," I heard Simon Callow say.

https://youtu.be/r9gNaBm8gQA