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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...

Saturday, March 28, 2020

THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICAN ACTORS - SEASON 1 EPISODE 1 - Winona Ryder

The slow dilution of the technique rigorously taught by the members of the Group Theatre has sadly most permeated, of all things, the work of many American actors so that only a few are either so talented that they practice it by instinct, or they have been correctly taught, and use the technique habitually, or a combination of both.  Yes, I'm repeating myself.

With the exception of the children, and through the second episode of The Plot Against America, the performance of John Turturro, the entire cast demonstrated that it doesn't know the difference between narrative and dramatic expression of a sentence.  None of them, through the second episode seemed to comprehend action, the choice of a verb for each sentence, the idea of which must begin with a thought.  The result of this error produced, for all of the occasional histrionics, indicated acting.

Ms. Ryder's performance was of particular interest to me because I've seen her perform excellently, especially approximately thirty years ago when she exhibited the innate talent we marvel at in children such as Azhy Robertson.  I recently discussed Scarlett Johansson's work as well in this regard.  Regardless of the measure of a child's talent, once they reach adulthood, I think it's imperative that they learn technique in order to understand what they intuited when they were children.  If Azhy Robertson will still want to be an actor past the age of eighteen (not before!), his work will only improve, deepen, if he learns how to read the notes and not rely on his ability to play by ear.

For a discussion of the following scene, let's go along with the series' apparent interpretation of the character, Evelyn Finkel, as a romantically needy spinster who is taken advantage of by a married man.  It's late afternoon in a hotel room, and they've just made love.  Once Evelyn realizes that Angelo didn't make the reservation for a steak dinner at _______(I didn't get the name of the restaurant), Ms. Ryder said, "I gave you the number," as if it were a statement of fact.  It's never a statement of fact!  The actor is free to choose an action, but an action it must be!  Accusatory?  Part of the rising action after this is the accusation that she "brought a suitcase."  Instinctively, Ms. Ryder was somewhat accusatory when she said this, but it wasn't specifically related to the progression/rising action of the scene, therefore nowhere near the importance it needed.  Ah, and then, Ms. Ryder was given sentences to say that were indeed a mouthful, and if the writers' attempt at those sentences was to channel Clifford Odets, I sympathize with Ms. Ryder, they fell vastly short:

                        "You see me, and all the blood leaves your head.
                          You get a taste of fruit and everything changes."

Then, "Angelo, I thought you knew the_______."  Sorry, I didn't understand the last word of that sentence, but whatever it was, it needed an action related to the rising action that began with the restaurant's phone number. 

Again, those first two sentences should not be said as statements of fact, and they are separate thoughts, neither of which Evelyn knew she was going to say, correct?  The first sentence/idea is that when he sees her, all the blood leaves his head and goes to his penis, right?  What verb would best convey the thought/action Evelyn might need to make him see what she sees?  "You get a taste of fruit and everything changes," needed to be the result of myriad images.

Then, the last beat after Angelo leaves; if the director encouraged a cliche action, please try to talk him out of it.  Do seek actions that aren't cliches such as looking down, hand to mouth as if about to cry; how about a simple direct gaze at the closed door, trying to understand the circumstances you find yourself in?  The actor needs to be cognizant of the character's journey of discovery that takes place in the arc of this scene.


The plot against American actors that encourages them to perform by instinct or to study absurd versions of technique none of which they know they can rely on, reduces them to manipulated ciphers who gaze with amazement at actors who defy such behavior and perform, risking all, in order to be able to marvel at human behavior.  In that vein, did Ms. Ryder ask the director/writer about a seeming contradiction that in the first episode Evelyn joins the family's Orthodox Sabbath observance, and in the second episode she tells Rabbi Bengelsdorf that her family isn't "particularly observant" when he asks her to be his assistant?  How is the actor supposed to develop the character, and play that scene with the rabbi?  Is Evelyn lying him?  A subject for future episodes of The Plot Against American Actors.

Wednesday, March 11, 2020

BLACK ENGLISH ACTORS - WHITE PERIOD DRAMAS


Josh Toussaint-Strauss of The Guardian made the following observation the other day about English dramas and today The Guardian commented on the absence of Afro-American characters in Westerns when history contradicts it.





Wednesday, March 4, 2020

WHY ARE BLACK ENGLISH ACTORS CAST AS ICONIC AFRO-AMERICANS IF TOM STOPPARD IS JEWISH?

"Leopoldstadt deserves a Broadway transfer, but New York audiences will hardly need Gretl to deliver her straight-to-auditorium explanation of what a bris is.  -- For all its Viennese setting, Leopoldstadt is thus a profoundly English play," wrote Kate Maltby in The New York Review of Books in her review, Tom Stoppard's Theatre of Memory.      
                           Link to the review in NYR Daily:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/02/14/tom-stoppards-theatre-of-memory/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR Tyranny

These two Jewish 21st-century English-speaking politicians have a very similar ancestral history,  superficially, they have similar characteristics, but I think that the deep-rooted dissimilar cultures that raised them made them recognizably, insurmountably, steeped in those very specific different cultural experiences.












House passes historic legislation to make lynching a federal hate crime
The Emmett Till Antilynching Act, a federal hate crime, was passed and signed into law in 2020 -- so recently that the word antilynching is considered a misspelled word on the internet.  The expressive  historical connection to this one tip of the iceberg fact is so brutal, bloody, anxiety-ridden with fear, rage, that if it doesn't appear in our cultural expression, if it is suppressed in any way when it is lived every day to the moment you're reading these words, I think that that in itself is a crime.

Americans and the English speak the same language and understand each other's culture, but understanding isn't synonymous with being steeped in it, having it carved, literally and figuratively, into one's DNA.  There are English cultural behaviors that are foreign to Americans and would be confusingly out of place in our Congress or if performed in a "profoundly English" play on Broadway.  The talented performances of Chiwetel Ejiofor, David Oyelowo, Daniel Kaluuya and Cynthia Erivo were, for me, also confusingly foreign and out of place.  Missing or erased from their performances, not  because they haven't experienced racism, but because they only understand American racism intellectually -- that specific rage born of a specific relentless exclusion from safety to a specific everyday expectation of harm -- finds expression on the faces of all African-Americans, from toddlers to the elderly, and we Americans, all of us, are familiar with that expression, that behavior, and when it's absent from a Black face, we recognize that as well.  Nevertheless, on a personal note, even though I recognized what I thought was misguided if not worse, cynical, casting of the English actors mentioned above, about a year ago, during an audition rehearsal, an African-American actor pointed out to me that my criticisms, my clamping the lid on his manner, on his expression of the text and his physical behavior was whitewashing (my word) his concept of the character.  I'm indebted to him.  Consider how often my error makes its way into performances.

The following two scenes from the film of August Wilson's play, Fences, directed by Denzel Washington are examples of how profoundly American that drama is, and how expressively American its characters are.


 The talent exhibited here is not a rarity of the talent, both active and dormant of African-American writers, directors, actors.  I wrote, perhaps obliquely, on 6/16/17 and 3/17/19, Diversity, Talent, Technique, Opportunity and Samuel L. Jackson about this topic.  I'll be more direct now:  It is pure ignorance of acting technique for any director, producer or actor to describe the traditional training of actors in England as classical, and by comparison or inference to describe actor training in the U.S. as anything other than classical; notwithstanding the divergent distortions of Stanislavski sometimes taught here.   Further, whether in England or the U.S., institutions like RADA or Juilliard, universities or studios, charge exorbitant tuition fees that exclude the majority of both our populations.  Is elitist too harsh a word?  Naaa, I don't think so.  A lot of talent has crossed my threshold only to quit in despair because they couldn't afford to continue even with the discount of my already lower than average fees.  Add to that the bottleneck of scarce opportunity to audition, let alone perform.

Once more, as I've already offered, if space will be provided, I'll teach anywhere at Uta's rate as described by Charles Nelson Reilly in my 12/10/13 post, The Life of Reilly.  I welcome discussion and I plan to visit this topic in future posts.