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.