Discussion and critique of acting technique, theory and practice of the members of the Group Theatre as derived from the work of Constantin Stanislavski. All critique and point of view is written by June Barfield. All videos and print material on this blog are intended only for educational purposes and therefore fall within the purview of Fair Use under copyright laws. Contact: junebarfield@gmail.com
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.
The Group Theatre producedClifford Odets' play Golden Boy on Broadway in 1937. The film version, not written by Odets, was produced in 1939. Earlier this year Avi Steinberg's cartoon appeared in The New Yorker. For a moment I thought Mr. Steinberg might be referring to the play, and captured the essence of what I had always thought was false in it with just one image and one sentence; perhaps he was referring to it. Golden Boy was produced at Lincoln Center as recently as the 2012/2013 season. Perhaps not. Regardless, thinking about the play again now reminded me of my years of study and how often scenes were used from Odets' plays by student actors because he was such a good dramatic scene writer; his dialogue crackled with passionate imagery.
For example, here's the end of Act III, Scene 2 from Golden Boy:
LORNA: And now, tonight, here, this minute - finding yourself again - that's what makes you a
champ. Don't you see that?
JOE: Yes, Lorna - yes!
LORNA: It isn't too late to tell the world good evening again!
JOE: With what? These fists?
LORNA: Give up the fighting business!
JOE: Tonight!
LORNA: Yes, and go back to your music --
JOE: But my hands are ruined. I'll never play again! What's left, Lorna? Half a man, nothing,
useless....
LORNA: No, we're left! Two together! We have each other! Somewhere there must be happy boys
and girls who can teach us the way of life! We'll find some city where poverty's no shame -
where music is no crime! - where there's no war in the streets - where a man is glad to be
himself, to live and make his woman herself!
JOE: No more fighting, but where do we go?
LORNA: Tonight? Joe, we ride in your car. We speed through the night, across the park, over the
Triboro Bridge --
JOE; (taking LORNA's arms in his trembling hands): Ride! That's it, clear my head. We'll drive
through the night. When you mow down the night with headlights, nobody gets you! You're
on top of the world then - nobody laughs! That's it - speed! We're off the earth - unconnected!
We don't have to think!! That's what speed's for, an easy way to live! Lorna darling, we'll burn
up the night! (He turns and as he begins to throw his street clothes out of his locker)
Medium Fadeout
In the final short Scene 3 that follows, his family learns that they were both killed in the car; it crashed on Long Island; and the last line of the play is:
MR. BONAPARTE (standing, his head high): Joe...Come, we bring-a him home...where he belong...
Slow Fadeout
In the final scene of the film, Joe and Lorna come home, alive, to embrace Mr. Bonaparte. "I'm home," says Joe, and in the scene just prior, none of the ideas in the scene from the play were used.
Clifford Odets described this play as "symbolic", and, as he expressed, and as has been written about him, once he was lured to Hollywood, his guilt about compromising his ideas and his talent never left him. Clearly, Golden Boy was intended to be symbolic of that conflict, but, as is so graphic in Steinberg's cartoon, one can't wear boxing gloves and play a musical instrument simultaneously; it's either one or the other. However, the compromises Odets had to make were not so clear-cut; they were ambiguous. How much more difficult it would have been to get closer to the central conflict, the actual ethical dilemma with which Odets was grappling!
Actors who study with me are frequently reminded to try to get close to the bone of the action, closer still, to the marrow of the bone of the action.
In the Barbara Cook treasure trove of videos on YouTube, one can hear her say, "If you can get to the point where you are ready to use every joy, every death, every lover who has left you...If you are willing to explore that within the song, you cannot be wrong." And especially when her disjointed sentence told a student, "The very place where safety lies for us is the same that seems most dangerous, and the sharing - the courage to let people really, really get into what life is into -- and sets it free."
I encourage you, during these difficult times, when our central conflict is camouflaged, to not permit yourself to fear, but rather, in your life and work, to explore ever more deeply what you truly think and feel and share it courageously, remembering that it is indeed where safety lies -- where you are most safe and free.
not Joyce DiDonato, me! I don't know if she nags, but I definitely do. Ms. DiDonato says "process"-- "don't go for the result". Our technique uses different words: action, objective, or need (per Kim Stanley). I've been using the word need because I think it's more powerful, and every action should be as powerful as possible.
Going for the result results in listening to yourself. Once you do that, you're not present, you've left your action, and you've effectively ruined the necessary progression of the series of actions provided by the writer that tell the story. You are responsible for the dramatic actions of the story, not a narrative version of it.
Learning and practicing technique avoids the accident of a good moment or scene performance. Technique frees the performer; it doesn't constrain the performer as so many actors I meet seem to think.
Just to review: anecdotal, memories, dreams, yes, and definitely not the whole story, but please also review my article in Backstage (link provided below) in comparison, noting in particular the brief remarks by Strasberg, Adler, Lewis, and the influence of Stanislavski, on their study.
Rep. Velazquez reminds the actor in this speech of the importance, the necessity, of finding the right words to convey the images/thoughts that are driving those words to make the person who listens to her see what she sees in her mind's eye. Note the clarity of the words and her emphasis on words like troops, fight, kick, blood. When the actor understands and is determined that her partner perceives her ideas, she won't smudge or contract the words of a sentence as do so many actors who are performing today. Note as well the lesson here that emotion is derived from cognition - always! The actor who reaches for an emotion or a "mood" is bound to deliver an indicated performance.
is what I've said many times to actors. I think it's very difficult to learn to practice this when the actor begins studying the text, mainly because the actor hasn't been taught that this is fundamental in order to prevent representational or indicated acting.
It's interesting that Stanislavski and his colleagues, as well as the members of the Group Theatre intuited that thought precedes speech; not that other actors hadn't done so before them, but they addressed it in their practice and wrote about it.
Interestingly, in 2013, on YouTube, during the Q&A of a lecture by Professor of Linguistics, Noam Chomsky, titled "Grammar, Mind and Body - A Personal View," I heard him respond to a query as follows: "Language is not communication. Language is meaning with some kind of a thought system. Language does not give us the full capacity, anywhere near the capacity, to express what we're thinking, feeling, hoping for. There's an awful lot of thought that goes on that doesn't come out the mouth and probably can't. You know you get it right by the effect it has." I hope Professor Chomsky has been made aware that actors have much to learn from him. He has said that among linguists he has his critics regarding how he defines language, but, whenever I read that quote to actors, a smiling recognition is communicated by their facial expression.
Consider Al Pacino's reminisce about Jobn Cazale in my December 20, 2016 post regarding Cazale's question to Lumet: "Why do I say I'm not a homosexual?" Or consider Simon Callow's remark to Charlie Rose in an interview a few years ago - that if he can think the thoughts of the character, he can play the character. Yet, consistently, in numerous productions, I've observed many excellent experienced actors rely on some sort of instinct rather than technique and then deliver lines rather than thoughts, which causes not only indicated acting, but an abandonment of rising action, of progression.
One of my earliest posts discussed the need to be heard. There are a few links below; if you google the subject, you'll find numerous articles about it. Apparently, actors who mumble the words of a drama are now prevalent throughout English-speaking countries.
One of the article links below faults "Method" acting, a meaningless term, and goes on to fault Marlon Brando in particular for being a "proponent" of this trend. The writer had apparently not viewed Brando's performance as Mark Antony in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and referred toGuys and Dolls and The Godfather. Even with cotton in his mouth as Don Corleone, Brando can be heard and understood. To suggest that he did this to make himself less intelligible is uninformed and misleading. He once credited Stella Adler with having taught him everything he knew about acting, and she taught that "...there are no throwaway lines."
As I wrote in my original post on this subject, not being heard or understood is related to the actor's not understanding the importance of playing the action. In addition, I'd say the importance of needing to make one's partner understand, see what one sees in their mind's eye; of the actor understanding the importance of the progression of each succeeding sentence that the character utters.
I think the mumbling (as well as not pronouncing consonants*, or contracting and connecting individual words and sentences) is due to the actor not having learned the basic technique, and is related to my other post and article in Backstage regarding the error of isolating the individual exercises of Strasberg, Adler, Meisner or Hagen, incorrectly naming them techniques, concentrating on mainly those exercises, and giving them precedence over the fundamentals of the technique the Group Theatre adapted from Stanislavski.
I've had enough foreign students to know that the Group Theatre teachers' exercises are taught in many countries. If the bad habit of perpetuating dogma in place of curiosity and inquiry continues, acting students will continue to be deprived of the opportunity to fully realize the nurturing of their talent.
*Robert Lewis pointed out that if the actor says, "I killed him" without pronouncing the d, he changes the plot.
