A JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY - JEREMY OR REX?

Since written drama begins when a specific central conflict confronts its characters and a progression of greater tension of that conflict ensues, we realize that the central characters are on a journey of discovery.   I think that in order to keep that journey of discovery alive, the characters’ actions need to remain fluid, indeterminate, throughout the rising action. Therefore, if, either through interpretation, whim, or a misguided desire to express emotion, the actor chooses instead to conclusively state the character’s point of view, the actor has blocked the rising action.  I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that whenever that occurs, the story awkwardly begins again.

Consider the performances of the same material by two very talented actors:  In one, Jeremy Irons expressed the character's ideas unequivocally, whereas Rex Harrison allowed himself to be frustrated, agitated, curious.

After all, Liza had already intruded in Professor Higgins' life, made an impression, and now Professor Higgins must deal with his confusion, not his certainty -- or the story must end there -- just boot her out; but he doesn't do that, does he? 

                                                                                                                                       

LEWIS - STREEP - STANISLAVSKI - LINKS

In my 9/22/19 post titled Meryl Streep - Technique I discussed her performance in the scene from It's Complicated where she visited her shrink and I discussed, among other things, the way she breaks up a sentence.

I also commented on Robert "Bobby" Lewis's contribution to the American acting tradition.  Since then, I've been re-reading the series of lectures he gave in 1957, Method - or Madness?  In the fifth lecture, "Truth" in Acting, he discussed line readings, and quoted from Stanislavski's book, Building a Character, as follows:

 "Logical pauses unite words into groups (or speech measures) and they divide the groups from one another.  Do you realize that a man's fate, and even his very life may depend on the position of that pause?  Take the words: 'Pardon impossible send to Siberia.'  How can we understand the meaning of this order until we know where the logical pause is placed?  Put them in and the sense of the words will become clear.  Either you say: 'Pardon - impossible send to Siberia,' or 'Pardon impossible - send to Siberia!'  In the first it is a case for mercy, in the second, exile."

MERYL STREEP - TECHNIQUE

From time to time I've heard Meryl Streep say that she doesn't use a particular technique in her performances; accepted, of course.  However, in the many performances of hers I've seen through the years, I see almost everything I ever learned from the teachers and actors of the Group Theatre, and in an earlier post on my blog I quoted her remark, "When a director asks for a result." Without using the jargon of the technique, she pointed out that she needed to find an action (attempt to sing as well as she could as Florence Foster Jenkins) in order to achieve the director's requested "result."  I saw a scene that she performed when she was a student at Yale; it was clear from that scene that she had a natural talent, yet, I think it's necessary to point out that Robert "Bobby" Lewis was Chair of the Yale acting and directing departments when Ms. Streep studied there.  Why, despite his body of work, do Mr. Lewis's contributions to the American acting tradition seem to go unnoticed?

In the film It's Complicated, Meryl Streep performed throughout (from training or instinct or both) the basic, fundamental aspects of the technique that the Group Theatre adapted from the work of Stanislavski; that is, she always performed an action for each sentence she uttered that emanated from a thought.  In an early scene, her arrival in New York, please note that she counted her luggage on the rack amidst the turmoil of greeting her family. TECHNIQUE:  What is the physical behavior of the character?  And, what am I doing while...?

In the scene below, before entering the kitchen, she had been jogging.  The entire scene consists of attention to previous circumstances and physical behavior of the character.  Note that the text of the scene had nothing to do with the physical behavior of the character: She didn't ask Jake what he wanted to drink; she knew.  During the entire scene her physical behavior was focused on previous circumstances; she had been jogging and was thirsty.  Note the way she finally drank the water; she didn't ignore the through action of needing to quench her thirst.  Again: What is the physical behavior of the character?  And, what am I doing while...

 

In the scene below she needed to convince her shrink that she needed an unscheduled few minutes in order to have him directly tell her what to do.  That was the arc of the action for the scene.  After she said, "I've made a list of everything this could possibly be about," she reached for her list in the bag before asking, "Can I read it to you?"  This is not a minor tidbit, this is the difference between narrative description and dramatic action.  Most actors would have said the two sentences consecutively.  Further, note how she breaks up the ideas in a sentence, which she does in all her performances, not for its own sake, but because she works from the thought/image and trusts, either by instinct or technique that an emotion will emanate from that idea. Nor does Meryl Streep act from the neck up, as so many actors are permitted to do.  Note that even from a sitting position, her entire body is involved in expressing the idea.

There's nothing mysterious about the art of acting; what's mysterious is how we know what we know and how we remember or don't remember it.

Tully, The Climax - My Mistake!

In my previous post, "Theme or Why Are You Telling Me This Story," I mistakenly presented the resolution of Tully, not its climax.  The above clips, beginning with the first one are one continuous sequence in the film and are the fullest, most profound expression of the theme that I extrapolated from the film and stated in the previous post, that is, "... the marriage, as it's lived, and caring for children, none of which is undesirable, must nevertheless abandon that self prior to marriage, that free spirit she once was, because if she would pursue that self she was before becoming a wife and mother, she could die from it."  Note that there's nothing static about the progression of the climax.  So why did I make this error?  My own prejudices got in the way of my critical thinking.  I resented that the character had resigned herself to her conflict, so much so that I mistook the resolution for the climax.

Consider the dialogue in the climax:  to be dull and constant is necessary to raise her kids in a "circle of safety."  "I'm not safe," she says.  "I dared," as she rides the bike to where she once lived, but her free spirit self points out that "there's no there anymore."  And that the "sameness you despise is your gift to them," that "...waking up every day doing the same things for them over and over, you are boring, your marriage is boring, your house is boring, but that's fucking incredible..."  l

Tully was exquisitely executed.  I just didn't like the theme.  For me, the theme and its resolution (in the previous post), her resignation, rather than an open-ended awareness of a so far insoluble conflict, seemed static to me, and it still does.

THEME, or Why Are You Telling Me This Story?

A director may or may not provide the theme of the film or play in which actors have been cast.  The theme is a sentence that states the idea of the story.  It can be as simple as "crime doesn't pay" or "love conquers all" and is most profoundly expressed in the climax of the drama.  The climax isn't necessarily contained only in one scene, it can be part of the rising action over the course of several scenes.  I think it helps actors to extrapolate the theme through the progression of the rising action of the drama in which they've been cast even if the director hasn't provided it.  When you know the theme, you can then determine the actions of your character as they relate to the theme.  Actors shouldn't fall into the trap of forgetting that they're telling a story; their task doesn't stop at merely creating a character - "...the play's the thing..." still holds.

I've chosen climactic scenes from two films, "Capturing Mary," 2007, written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff, and "Tully," 2018, written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman.  I think each film in its unique execution brought together very imaginative, innovative artists who created compelling stories.  Yet, in Capturing Mary the climax contained, for the main character, a profound recognition of discovery from the conflicting rising action, whereas, in Tully, the climax stated the conflict that was already known to the main character, and therefore, instead of a dynamic climax, a static climax ignored that non-repetitive forward movement is the essence of dramatic action.

The climax in Capturing Mary takes place over several scenes.  The clip below is the apex of the climax where the main character, performed by Maggie Smith, through recounting and reliving her experience, comes to the realization that although throughout her adult life she was certain that a particular man had power, control, had manipulated how she conducted her life --  in fact, she had given him, permitted him, that power.    



In the clip from Tully (below), the main character, performed by Charlize Theron, comes to terms with her subconscious self: a good mother practices self-care, showers every day, gets a pedicure once in a while, and concludes that she'll "do what you have to do and then you'll do it again."  That is, the marriage, as it's lived, and caring for children, none of which is undesirable, must nevertheless abandon that self prior to marriage, that free spirit she once was, because if she would pursue that self she was before becoming a wife and mother, she could die from it.

I think it's useful for actors to articulate the idea of the story they're telling in collaboration with the writer.  I don't think drama must find solutions to conflicts, but I do think that whatever the theme, drama requires movement in a series of non-repetitive, dynamic, rising actions. 

Jon Stewart/Behavior/Images/Emotion

      

When you watched him today, did you also remind yourself that you were watching another example of the action/need to make your listener(s) see what you see in your mind's eye and that it comes from your body?  Did you notice that each sentence conveyed an idea and that emotion was produced from that idea?  As well, here was another example of what happens when the clarity of the images/ideas profoundly affects its listener(s) -- the quality of their silence -- the stillness of their collective attention.

I think that the actor's task is to reach for this kind of concentrated reality, regardless of the genre of the drama.

Michelle Williams - Active Listening/Processing - Examples

  In a previous post, Character's Need, Listening Processing, dated 1/26/19, I discussed two scenes from True Detective in which the same sentence, "I'm sorry," was performed correctly by one actor and incorrectly by another actor.  Here, in two scenes from Take This Waltz, Michelle Williams and Luke Kirby accomplish correct playing of the action/need and the processing of active listening.

  

And in the hospital scene from Fosse/Verdon, Ms. Williams again accomplished detailed progression of thought processes that were evoked by the images created by her partner.  I purposely allowed the clip to bleed into the following scene because I wanted to draw attention to how the progression of the impact the idea of her partner's words deepened as she thought about what was said to her.

The Theatre of the Mind - Oliver Sacks: The Bonnet Syndrome

AHHH, affective memory, substitution, imagination, Stanislavski, Vakhtangov, Adler, Hagen, Lewis, Meisner, Strasberg.  From Stella Adler's remark that we never forget anything that has happened to us, to contemporary psychologists whose data and experiments corroborate that remark, suggesting that in order to function in the present, we suppress unrelated memories, to Uta Hagen's anecdote in Uta Hagen's Acting Class, that although she never knew why, how, while rehearsing Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, her memory from childhood of a vine on a wall, and a singular leaf on that vine worked for an action for the role of Martha, here's Oliver Sacks' discussion of The Bonnet Syndrome.

The Audition Handicap -- Continued

Please read "Should You Bring Props to an Audition?" from the Backstage article of May 9 and 10, 2019 linked below.

I think, per the drawing, that if the CD assigned that particular scene for the audition, the bigger the dead fish the actor brings, the better, and if the fish is still alive, better still.

The CD must know, as well as the director, the actor's challenge in an audition and assign an appropriate scene that will not require props or at most, a hand prop.  Further, a demo reel or any scene that has a dramatic build should suffice for the CD to be able to assess the actor's ability, at the very least, to determine the need for a callback.


https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/should-you-bring-props-to-an-audition-10-cds-weigh-in-68062/?utm_campaign=backstage-daily&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=72633215&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--N4SUecqbcZqhCFqU6AC46dkDDemgydNHdMMamteZtRkZ6Oc-xlY85DPd6m_ViJKF2Ni1yV2aoyGVBuM7ERWCMCXp21w&_hsmi=72633215

The Handicap of the Taped Audition

When did the disembodied talking heads that pervade TV acting performances become a description of human behavior?  It's so pervasive that it has crept into film performances as well.  Is this inaccurate interpretation of human behavior what has influenced the handicap of the taped audition?

Taped audition "rules" are ridiculous and casting directors should know better.  Instead of asking actors to present an unfinished rehearsal from three-page sides, casting directors would find out more about actors if they asked them to just face the camera and extemporaneously relate something about themselves. 

Actors must be able to use their body in performance.  The best taped audition I've seen that confined itself to some of those arbitrary rules was Rachel McAdams' audition for The Notebook.  Notice that aside from articulately playing her action, she worked from her body and listened/processed the ideas of her partner.

If you're called upon to present a taped audition, follow her example as the criterion that defines ground zero.  

Diversity, Talent, Technique, Opportunity and Samuel L. Jackson-6/16/17 Redux

 STANISLAVSKI'S MAKEUP TABLE AT THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE

Photo by Lola Cohen

Regarding Educational Theatre's statistic below, I now offer free one-on-one audition preparation and scene study to anyone who is not enrolled in a college or university Performing Arts program or a studio because they can't afford the tuition.  All sessions will be conducted and recorded on Skype and then viewed on my YouTube channel.  The only requirement will be a willingness to practice and be egoless enough to let viewers observe their progress as they master the technique that's derived from Constantin Stanislavski and the Group Theatre.

Dramatic Progression / Exposition - All My Sons

On 2/26/18 I wrote about dramatic progression and exposition and the challenge the actor faces when expository dialogue is sometimes narratively written as it was in Silver Linings Playbook.  I've sometimes told actors that the best example I could think of where the writer wrote exposition dramatically is Arthur Miller's 1947 play, All My Sons.

I'm so pleased that now, in 2019, the play will be performed in New York and that when it closes, it will be able to be viewed at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts.

John Barrymore, Maurice Schwartz, Stella Adler - Tradition

 

There's an anecdote that when John Barrymore was asked where he learned to act, he said all he had to do was go down to Second Avenue and attend the plays at the Yiddish Art Theater.  Maurice Schwartz was the director and leading actor of that theater in the 1930s when Barrymore and Lombard starred in Twentieth Century.  When I saw the film, I recognized the style before I heard the anecdote.  Barrymore strongly reminded me of Schwartz when I performed with Schwartz 20 years later in the English version of the classic Yoshe Kalb.  Schwartz knew nothing (maybe he knew, but he didn't practice it) of Stanislavsky or the Group Theatre.  His direction was very mechanical, down to telling me to count, literally, "1, 2, 3, drop the handkerchief, then say the next line".  I remember telling Uta that her teaching was by then so ingrained, that I was able to perform as she taught me and still give Schwartz the result he needed.  Schwartz had an incredibly good dramatic instinct.  Although his approach was very different from mine, our communication in performance was harmonious.  

Stella Adler joined Schwartz's company at the Yiddish Art Theater when she left her father's (Jacob Adler) acting company.

Twentieth Century is a comedy, Tevye is a drama, and Stella's teaching style reflected her passion for the "art of acting."  In this clip she was responding to a scene from The Dresser performed in class by Milton Justice and Bill Lithgow.  Milton told me, "It was Stella's last class and we decided to do a scene with a theatre theme, thinking Stella would talk about a life in the theatre. She certainly did!"

Aside from gesture, note the style that a particular tradition of performance influences.   

Tim Sweeney: A Student's Memory of Uta Hagen

Tim Sweeney, an HB Studio alumnus, recently told his friends that he had "dusted off his acting chops after what seems like centuries...", and had already gone before the cameras on HBO's Crashing, and Netflix's Orange is the New Black, 7th season, the final episode. "It's never too late to do what you love doing," he said.

On a wonderfully freezing (red nose cold) winter night about six years ago we'd gone to the White Horse Tavern where Tim told me an anecdote about Uta that very few HB alumni or even her students would've had the privilege to experience.  I'd meant to share it here long ago, considering the deep positive influence she had on so many of us, whether or not we pursued the work, so that exactly what she'd said or demonstrated in our presence remains imprinted in us and can be summoned, brought sharply into focus, at a moment's notice.

Here's an excerpt, edited by me, of the message Tim sent me when I asked him to please write what he told me he'd experienced of Uta's work:

"Back in the early 80s, I believe it was 1984, I had the opportunity to work on The Silver Fox by Donna DeMateo, produced at the HB Playwrights Foundation starring Uta Hagen and Kelly Wolf.  I was in charge of running the sound effect equipment.  In my lifetime being both a working actor or a backstage tech, I have never seen so much organic behind the scenes preparation with which Uta Hagen encircled herself.

Ms. Hagen was very particular about place.  What is my relationship to where I am?  Is it an unknown place?  Is it my home?  Is it someone else's home?  What does the rest of the place that is offstage look like in relation to what is onstage?  If it's a living room, where is the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom?  Is it raining outside or is it sunny?  What time of day is it?  Is it hot, cold; snowing?

Watching her offstage preparations was like watching a performance in itself.  The Silver Fox took place in a living room, and I witnessed her making several entrances from various areas of the set during the play, and she would literally walk in place before she entered the set.  She knew how many steps it took to get from the offstage bedroom to the onstage living room.  Just looking at her, you could see what she saw."

Break a leg, Tim!

Visual Syntax: The Role of the Director

The HBO series, My Brilliant Friend was an admirable production for many reasons; the script adaptation, the casting, the acting, the direction, the music, the work of art that results when the contributions of all the collaborators creates a compelling production from beginning to end.

I have many thoughts to share about My Brilliant Friend, and I might write more than one post about it, but would like to begin with the work of the director, Saverio Costanzo.  The actors I coach whose performances are affected by the abilities of their directors will recognize my observations about scenes that were either shot well or poorly; that there are directors who do or don't understand visual syntax and how important it is, not only for the best use of the actor's performance, but also for the dramatic telling of the story.  As much as I caution actors against performing a scene narratively, I think actors should be aware that the director's use of visual syntax is the narrative aspect of the drama.

In that regard, please view the first scene above from episode 7.  Note the director's narrative:  Elena leaves the shop.  As she walks toward the town square, she sees, in the distance, a portion of Donato's figure (the man who sexually molested her) behind a building as he watches her.  She stares at him, frozen, when, suddenly, the full face and figure of her teacher, Oliviero takes up the frame and obliterates Donato, and as she and the teacher stroll through town, the teacher focuses her on her life and its future.  There were many individual scenes in this series that could be singled out for excellent visual syntax.  I chose this one now because I thought it was breathtaking.

The scene below it from episode 8, Lila's wedding invitation to Oliviero, is progression from the previous scene.  It speaks for itself, but, speaking of resonance, all you followers of Stella Adler -- remember her remark regarding all the very talented young women in her classes, who, for some unfathomable reason married, had children, and moved to Scarsdale?!  Remember how she pronounced Scarsdale?

The third clip, from episode 8, the end of the wedding scene, is total visual syntax without dialogue; the heartbreak of betrayal told with increasing magnitude with each succeeding frame.

Character's Need / Listening / Processing

   *see footnote

In the first season of True Detective there were two scenes (one in the first episode, one in the second episode) in which each actor had to say the same sentence:  "I'm sorry," in response to the same information.  I think Michelle Monaghan performed it incorrectly in the first episode, whereas Woody Harrelson performed it correctly in the second episode.

Character's Need/Action:  We've established that the actor's task is to play the action/need of the character with each sentence uttered, and that a thought/image is driving the idea of the sentence (Don't Open Your Mouth Until You Know...10/2/17 post).

Listening:  I don't agree with Sandy Meisner's repetition exercise because although its purpose is to teach the actor to listen to their partner, being able to repeat what one has just heard is not what we do when we listen.  Listening is active participation, processing, trying to perceive the thought/image that our partner is trying to convey.  Accurate hearing is not the same thing as active listening.

Processing:  I think that it's necessary for the actor to be aware that we process our thoughts/images when we speak as well as when we listen.

Working just from some highlights of the plot in the first episode from the POV of Ms. Monaghan's character, Maggie, we know that she's been trying to get her husband's new partner over for dinner for three months, that lately, she's been insisting on having him over, because Marty (Harrelson) delivers a line to Rust (McConaughey), "We can't put Maggie off anymore," and we know that she woke Marty in the morning after a night he didn't come home, as he slept in his clothes on a chair in the living room, and although she didn't play her action(s) strongly enough once she woke him, making it difficult to hear her, we know that Maggie has a, so far, unspecified POV about her husband's job.  Of course, Ms. Monaghan needed to know specifically what that POV was (previous circumstances, backstory!).  Rust was drunk when he arrived for dinner.  Ms. Monaghan didn't respond to that in any specific way, and although the questions she put to him about himself when Marty left the table were incorrect non-specific actions, I'll not discuss each one here.  Let's just consider her response when she learned that his daughter died.  His daughter died, his marriage died -- her little girls were sitting there -- she saw him looking at her daughters -- I think that it was necessary for her to process his experience as she responded with "I'm sorry."

Harrelson had a very similar action in the scene in the car during the second episode, and he had to say the same two words, "I'm sorry."  He performed correctly; he processed the concept, the idea, of the dead child.

*Jeff Solema now downloads selected footage. Thanks!

Glenn Close - Not a "Method" Actor?

It was a pleasure to watch Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce perform such an articulate duet in The Wife; exquisite counterpoint and harmony; musical terms, yes, but that's what their work reminded me of.

In her January 21, 2019 interview in The Guardian, Ms. Close discussed that film and some of her other performances.  In her remarks about the character Joan in The Wife, she mentioned her mother:  “I didn’t channel her. Although of course I had seen her taking the back seat to my father my whole life, so it was in my DNA. I had a well of subliminal experience to draw on.” Regarding the character's ideas, POV:  "It's not that they hadn’t been expressed before, but I guess they resonate in this moment. For that whole generation, pre-feminism, that’s the way it was. That was the norm. It’s caused me to look back at my two grandmothers, who were basically unfulfilled women. One had this beautiful singing voice and she wasn’t allowed to pursue that. My other grandmother, whose wedding ring I’m wearing throughout this awards season, dreamed of being an actress.”  She then revealed that it was this latter grandmother who inspired her 1982 performance of Jenny Fields in The World According to Garp.

Further in the interview, Ms. Close remarked, "I'm so glad to do what I do because even though I’m not a method actor and I don’t use my life in my acting, my work is still a progression."

I hope that my students and readers can easily recognize the continuing confusion that Adler and Strasberg initiated and that is dogmatically followed by their disciples so that even a seasoned, talented actor will contradict herself, in one conversation!

Reminder:  The word "Method" was coined by Strasberg.  Stanislavsky referred to it as a "System."  To conflate Strasberg's POV with Stanislavsky's POV is incorrect.  And to differentiate between substitution/affective memory and imagination?  Still?  Ms. Close didn't live the life of her mother or her grandmothers, but weren't their lives carved into her lived experience?  Her grandma's wedding ring answers that question.

BTW, in this interview Ms. Close addressed an aspect of my discussion regarding Amy Adams's error in Sharp Objects when she discussed her role in Fatal Attraction.  She said, “I had so many secrets as Alex.  The woman I was playing was not the same one who was perceived by the public. But I didn’t have the dialogue or the scenes to illuminate her backstory (my italics).  If you did Fatal Attraction from Alex’s point of view, she would be a tragic person, not a dangerous, evil one.” Ms. Close, in her performance in Fatal Attraction correctly played the actions/needs of the character, cognizant of the character's inner life, which she referred to here as Alex's secrets.

"Do You Use Substitution or Imagination,"

Emma Stone asked Timothée Chalamet during a recent discussion on Variety Studio: Actors on Actors.  To the best of my recollection, his answer was vague and I don't recall what he said.  If someone remembers his answer, please tell me.  Regardless, the odd separation between substitution and imagination that has been carried forward all these years by the students of Adler and Strasberg, and then by their students' students has become some sort of meaningless mantra, and should indeed lead to vague answers when asked if one uses one or the other.

We are the sum total of our life experience, which includes incidents we've personally experienced and those we've read or heard about, all of which become memory.  Some incidents, either directly experienced or learned indirectly will resonate for us when we encounter analogous circumstances  while others will not.  I vividly recall a remark from Uta Hagen when she told my class that there are many characters each of us can play.  She reached her arm behind her and dangled her hand up and down from her wrist, and I could see the lineup she was indicating of all those characters behind her.  Then she said that as well, there were characters we couldn't perform either yet or ever, depending on our life experience.

I think that if the actor plunges directly into the actions of the character, that actor will very soon discover the extent to which the character's needs resonate.  It will either be conscious or subconscious, but the analogy will be there.  Remember Robert Lewis's observation that it isn't necessary to consciously know what specific incident from one's own experience resonates.  I've personally experienced that he was correct, and have worked with many actors who, in the beginning of rehearsal are clueless why they understand the need of the character, and then, as we work, they remember incidents sometimes uncannily similar or strongly analogous to what they already know about their character's needs.

We don't know what we don't know, and we can't imagine what we don't know, but we do know what we know!  Our imagination is derived from our life experience.  You don't ever forget anything that has happened to you, Stella Adler said -- I just can't remember if I read it, or heard her say it in one of her lectures on YouTube.

The Amy Adams Approach to Sharp Objects

In my 7/20/18 post, "'Dramas are Too Quiet'" AKA Where's the Actor's Technique?" I had responded to Kathryn VanArendonk's discussion of Sharp Objects in the 7/18 edition of Vulture magazine.  Ms. VanArendonk had complained that she couldn't hear all of the dialogue.  She went on to say, "I'll admit that this is a cranky, cantankerous objection, and it's also a massive self-own.  ("I love this show but I can't hear anything they say!" the ancient, belligerent woman yelled online.)  It's an even bigger self-own for someone who may have, perhaps, complained about TV being (literally) too dark.  But the dialogue on Sharp Objects is occasionally so inaudible that it's a very real distraction from an otherwise gorgeous show.  It's time to talk about this problem!"

Further in the article she commented on a particular scene in the show that I chose to address in my 7/20/18 post.  I wrote, "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."

Recently, Backstage published a 12/5/18 article, The Amy Adams Approach written by Jenna Marotta, in which Ms. Adams discussed her performance in Sharp Objects and clarified for me why, in my opinion, she performed incorrectly.  In her discussion of her preparations for the role, Ms. Adams stated that the director, Jean-Marc Vallée was against the use of voiceover, “so it was really important to me to be able to communicate her inner monologue just through acting.  There’s a sadness and an intensity about her, but she’s also very raw and very vulnerable, and also very compassionate, like strangely compassionate.”  This is the error I perceived when I watched her performance.

Although many actors might be able to define the inner monologue correctly, its use in English is a translation from Russian, and, I've heard, is still used in acting classes at MAT.  But what Vakhtangov meant by inner monologue was thought/images. (The story I learned was that Vakhtangov insisted to Stanislavsky that that this must be practiced; it doesn't matter to me whose realization it was - some of us might think it's very important, I don't.)  Inner monologue suggests complete, clear, consecutive sentences.  But thought isn't like that. It's kaleidoscopic, isn't it?  How can an actor perform the kaleidoscopic inner thoughts/images of a character? 

Well, one can't act a thought; one can't "communicate" the inner life of the character except through action.  It's the action, the objective, the "what do I want to do?", the need (I like Kim Stanley's idea to use need; it's stronger), in short, one can only act a verb; not a noun or adjective, and certainly not a feeling or emotion.  I realize I'm going over familiar ground, but look how easily very talented actors can fall into the trap of trying to compensate for the decision of a director.

I