DOI: 10.4324/9781315059792-16
Remember how an airplane takes off: it has a long runway on which to gain momentum. Currents of air are developed which lift its wings and raise it up off the ground.
An actor too has as you might say his runway, he travels along the line of physical actions to gain momentum. Meantime, with the aid of the circumstances set up by the playwright, magic “ifs,” the actor opens out his wings of faith which carry him up into the realm of imagination he so sincerely believes in.
But if the airplane had no solid runway could it get off the ground? Of course not. That is why our first concern is with the building of a solid runway, compounded of physical actions made concrete by their own truthfulness.
Actually there are no physical actions divorced from some desire, some effort in some direction, some objective, without one feeling inwardly a justification for them; there is no imagined situation which does not contain some degree of action of thought: there should be no physical actions created without faith in their reality, consequently a sense of truthfulness. All this bears witness to the close bond between physical action and all the so-called “elements” of the inner creative state.
One of the important elements in the process of achieving an inner creative state is logic, consistency. Consistency of what? Of thought, feeling, action (inner and external), desires, objectives, aspirations, imagination, etc., etc.
Except in certain instances everything in life has a logical sequence, hence it should also obtain on the stage. Yet how can we instill the sense of the need for this logic and consistency in a student actor?
We do it through the means of physical action. Why physical and not psychological or other inner “elements”?
Have you not noticed that it is more difficult for us to define what we feel than what we do in exactly the same set of circumstances? Why is this?
Because it is easier to lay hold of physical than psychological action, it is more accessible than elusive inner feelings. Also physical action is easier to fix, it is material, visible. Actually there is no physical action which does not involve desires, aspirations, objectives, or feelings which justify the action; there is no act of imagination which does not contain some imagined action. In the generation of physical actions there must be a faith in their actuality, a sense of truth in them.
All this bears witness to the intimate tie between physical action and all the inner “elements” of a creative state.
We are more at home in the area of physical actions…. We can better orient ourselves, we are more inventive, confident, than in the area of the inner “elements” which are so difficult to seize and hold.
It is this accessibility of physical action which prompts us to have recourse to it now in developing in our students a sense of the necessity of logic and consistency.
—from Othello production notes (1929–30)