HAMLET.… My lord, you play’d once i’ th’ university, you say?
POLONIUS. That I did, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.
Hamlet (3.2)
A FEW YEARS AGO I GOT A JOB DIRECTING SECOND-YEAR acting students at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. I had to direct a play and teach the students how to be actors at the same time. The play I chose was The Vortex by Noël Coward. It was written in 1924 when Coward was a young man, and it concerns the problems of taking drugs and how your relationship with your parents changes when you leave home. All in all I thought it was a subject that acting students could easily relate to.
At the time I was living in Chiswick, which is in West London. Mountview is in North London, so each day I drove round the North Circular Road on my motorbike to get to work. In his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig describes a journey he made both physically, on his motorbike, and philosophically – into his consciousness. He uses a Native American word to describe this journey. He calls it a Chautauqua. There appear to be many definitions of the word ‘Chautauqua’ but I’ve taken it to mean: ‘Philosophical thoughts you have while travelling’. It’s a great word.
So anyway, as I was travelling round the North Circular Road I was puzzling over how I could teach these Mountview students to become actors, and I came up with these two thoughts:
‘Work like a Trojan.
Play like a child.’
The words kept ringing in my ears.
And as I travelled on between the lanes of crawling cars, other ideas came into my head, so when I got to Mountview I quickly wrote everything down. Later I refined it and reworked it, but essentially the thoughts I had on that journey – my Chautauqua – eventually became what I now call ‘The Ego Paradox’. It looks like a poem, but it’s not. It’s just a set of instructions on how to be an actor.
The Ego Paradox
Work like a Trojan
Play like a child
Have the imagination of a poet
The gusto of an abstract expressionist
And the courage of a gambler
Research like a detective
Experiment like a mad scientist
Think like a philosopher
And practise like a magician
Focus your concentration like an athlete in the Olympic Games
Believe in yourself as completely as the President of the United States
And always perform with the passionate commitment of a sanctified mystic.
First of all the title. ‘The Ego Paradox’. What’s that all about?
It describes the paradox that an actor faces. In order to be able to stand up in front of hundreds of people and have them watch you pretend to be someone else, you have to have a pretty strong sense of who you are. You have to have a strong ego. But on the other hand, when you are playing a role, you have to suppress your own ego and take on the ego of the character you are playing. Therein lies the paradox.
Work like a Trojan
Play like a child
Being an actor is hard work, both physically and mentally, but actors should never lose sight of how childish it is and how much fun it can be. Children take their play very seriously, and so should actors. Work like Trojans? Well, I’d heard the expression before and assumed it meant to work very hard indeed. Anyway, that’s what I meant it to mean.
Have the imagination of a poet
Poets let their imaginations float above the common toil of everyday life. Nothing is barred. They keep their minds open so that all sorts of ideas and thoughts can drift in and be enjoyed. They are not afraid to examine their imaginative fantasies and write them down. They daydream creatively and that’s something that actors should do. Actors should open their imaginations just like poets.
The gusto of an abstract expressionist
One of the most famous abstract expressionists was the American painter Jackson Pollock. Sometimes they called his pictures ‘action paintings’, and I’m not surprised. I once saw a film of him working, using all these big tins of liquid paint, which looked like brightly coloured house paint. He laid his canvas flat on the floor and ran around splashing different colours on the canvas straight from the tin. It was like a sort of ballet. His physical movements were part of the action. He dipped and dribbled and swooped and spun with tremendous gusto. The picture sprang into life. Actors should splash their ideas around just like Jackson Pollock splashed his paint around. A bit of red here! Splash! Spin! How about some yellow? Splatter! Swirl! Take big chances. Try out ideas and see what happens. Create with gusto.
The courage of a gambler
Courage comes in many guises. We think of courage being needed in life-or-death situations. Going into battle. Skydiving off a mountain. Confronting an armed criminal. That sort of thing. But although acting is important, I don’t think anyone should risk their lives for it. But money? That’s different. I read this story in the papers about a man who sold everything he owned – his house, his car, his furniture, his clothes probably – gathered up all his money and took it to Las Vegas. One evening he went down to the roulette table and put all his cash on the black. This would mean he would either lose everything or he would double it. Whatever happened, it would change his life. As I read about this guy I thought about the moment he put his money down. What courage he must have had. He didn’t have to do it. The money was his. He could take it back to England and buy another house. But no! Here goes nothing. Put the money on the black and sweat. Watch the ball whizz around the edge of the roulette wheel. Spin. Whizz. Bounce. Circle. Bounce and bounce. And… Time must have stood still… Where will it rest…? Plop! What a great story, but what courage. To risk everything. That is the sort of courage that an actor needs in rehearsal. The courage to lose everything. The courage to fail. (I know you want to know what happened at that roulette wheel. Well… he won!)
Look for clues. In the script, on the internet, in conversations with other people; they can be anywhere and everywhere. Detectives love to collect clues. They know that the tiniest thing could be important. A strand of hair. A bus ticket to Ruislip. Anything and everything is worth considering. Actors should collect together all the clues they can find, just like a detective. Examine them. Evaluate them. And draw conclusions. Every detail is another part of the jigsaw. The script is full of clues. Look carefully. Some are easy to miss.
Experiment like a mad scientist
‘A little of zis blue liquid mixed over a flame viz some phosphorus and a dash of charcoal.’ Pop and fizz. It starts to bubble. ‘I’ll add zis mysterious concoction I made yesterday.’ Bubble, bubble, bubble. ‘How about putting in some more…?’ BANG!!!***!!! Explosion. Hair on end. Blackened face. Insane laughter. ‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Zat vas interestink!’ The mad scientist creates the elixir of life and drinks it, even though it might turn him into a monster. But at least he tried to make something happen. And his next concoction could make him live for ever, with X-ray eyes and superhuman strength. The mad scientist takes a chance, tries something new and comes up with unexpected results. That’s what actors need to do. Experiment.
Think like a philosopher
Philosophers calmly weigh all the facts and theories. They look for connections. They balance one idea against another and come up with innovative conclusions. They attempt to answer impossible questions about existence, truth and art. In their search to bring the bigger picture into focus they ponder every detail. Philosophy is a love of knowledge. A love of wisdom. Philosophers use their intellect in a systematic and reasoned manner, collating and comparing the wisdom of others. That’s what actors should do.
Magicians will practise a trick over and over again so the audience won’t see how it’s done. They put a lot of effort into making things look effortless. Like ballet dancers or jugglers, they spend hours and hours in preparation in order to perfect their art and create a few minutes of unforced, confident entertainment. And, let’s face it, actors themselves are magicians. They play tricks with the audience’s imagination. They make fictitious characters come to life. They conjure up other eras. Other worlds. The audience sits comfortably in a darkened room while the actors take them on exciting journeys. But in order to do all this successfully, actors have to rehearse. They have to practise so the audience doesn’t see the mechanics of their conjuring tricks.
Focus your concentration like an athlete in the Olympic Games
Wholehearted concentration produces better results. Athletes focus on the job in hand. They stand at the start of the hundred-metre dash with every ounce of their concentration focused on the finishing line. In their mind’s eye they have already won the race. All the surrounding distractions are eliminated in their desire to be at their best for approximately ten seconds. In some events, like the high jump, when every muscle must work perfectly the minute they leave the ground, you often see the athlete physically acting through their movements before they make an attempt. They are imagining success. They are focused. They are concentrating. That’s the sort of concentration that actors need when they are rehearsing or performing a scene. It can’t be half-hearted. It has to be total. And they need to get into that zone before they start to work.
Believe in yourself as completely as the President of the United States
It doesn’t matter who the President is, or in what decade, every single President during my lifetime has had a massively positive sense of self-belief. I suppose they have to or they would never get any votes. The funny thing is, self-belief works. ‘To thine own self be true,’ says Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. And he wasn’t wrong. If you believe in yourself and your way of doing things, then other people will often believe in you and admire what you do. We know about creative artists who defied the existing rules and broke new ground with their art. They are the ones who resolutely swam against the tide with a total belief in themselves. And they are the people we remember today. Van Gogh. Bob Dylan. Stravinsky. Ernest Hemingway. Marlon Brando. Innovators all. The people that changed things. Created a new version of their art. If actors can learn to believe in themselves and what they are doing, then everyone else will believe in them too.
Always perform with the passionate commitment of a sanctified mystic
Hah! What does that mean? What’s a sanctified mystic when it’s at home? Well, I don’t know – I made it up. A friend of mine once described himself as an ‘astral dervish’ and I loved that. Someone whirling through the cosmos, happy and out of control. So during my Chautauqua I was searching for a phrase that was something like an ‘astral dervish’ and I came up with a ‘sanctified mystic’. Sanctified means to make holy, and a mystic is a person who seeks the truth of life. All I know is that people who are involved in these things always speak with a passionate gleam in their eyes. They love their own version of the truth and want to share it with the rest of us. They are committed to their beliefs in such a way that they seem to have a steel-blue electric aura. That’s the sort of commitment an actor needs. The passionate commitment of a sanctified mystic! What can I say? Go for it!
A bunch of actors get together to rehearse a play. Several weeks later the fruits of their collaboration are presented to an audience without a safety net. That’s scary.
Often the actors don’t know each other before they start rehearsals, and yet they have to explore their own emotional life as part of the creative process. Sometimes during rehearsals an actor will need to be emotionally naked in front of the rest of the cast. Nothing hidden. No privacy. Most people would be unable to do that, but actors do it because they have learned to trust each other.
The way most people learn to trust others is by talking about themselves, listening to each other and trying to find some common ground. As someone begins to reveal details about their life to another person, then the other person feels confident to disclose details of their own life. It becomes a game of mutual acceptance. If you know that your companion cries at emotional stories, then you don’t feel embarrassed when your own tears start to flow. Sharing personal experiences leads to a deeper mutual understanding, and that eventually develops into a reciprocal trust. We’ve all done it. We all want it. But for actors, trust is an essential commodity. It’s part of their job.
Right at the start of our training at ArtsEd we embark on a storytelling project. This culminates in a devised performance piece created from stories that the actors have told each other about their own lives. Each actor has the opportunity to tell one or more stories. When several actors have had similar experiences they work together on a collaborative section within the presentation. Stories that have a more sensitive or emotional content are sometimes presented in a more abstract manner through movement, sound or poetry. The results are always fascinating. Often artistic. Sometimes incomprehensible. And, for the actors involved, deeply moving.
But the purpose is not to put on a show. The true purpose lies in what’s revealed during the process. The exploration of emotions and the ‘self’ is a vital part of an actor’s resources. As each student tells the others about incidents in their lives, the group begins to understand the variety of human experience. They all have a common ambition. They want to be actors. But that doesn’t mean they are all the same by any means. They come from vastly different backgrounds, and their life experiences are varied and diverse. Some of the stories are really unexpected, leaving the other students gobsmacked. At first there is a reluctance to share the personal details of their lives, but once the floodgates start to open, the stories pour out and the group trust begins to build.
But, of course, you can’t just ask people to talk about themselves without giving them the right sort of supportive environment; otherwise many of them will just clam up.
Storytelling
There are several storytelling games that can ease the actors into this process, and help them to start talking and recognising shared experiences. The first is an adaptation of an Augusto Boal game.
Conform or Die
Several actors walk around the room together, and as they walk they march in step. Military fashion. At the same time, another actor dances around the room, expressing happiness and freedom. As the exercise progresses the marchers become more aggressive in the way they move, even to the extent of making it hard for the dancer to move freely. They can corner the dancer, push her aside or even surround her in a hostile, antagonistic manner. They can then force her to the ground with apparent aggression (no one must get hurt). The dancer can try to get up and dance again, and the same thing happens. Her freedom is restricted. Again she is forced to the ground. And again. Until the dancer stops trying to dance and has no option but to join in with the marchers. At this point another actor gets up and starts to dance, and the whole exercise is repeated.
When this exercise has finished, the actors discuss what has happened. What did they think it meant? What would they do if it happened to them? Does gender make any difference? What did the participants feel like?
This discussion is wide-ranging, and as it progresses the actors are encouraged to talk about their own personal experiences of individualism, oppression and isolation.
The Drama Triangle – Part One
The actors get into groups of three and cast themselves as members of a family. This can be any combination they like. Father, mother and teenager. Teenage boy, teenage girl and grandparent. Husband, wife and brother-in-law. The permutations are endless but there must be family connections within each group, and each person must have a specific position in the family. Having cast themselves in these roles, each actor has to decide on a particular mode of behaviour. One has to be a persecutor, another the victim and the third a rescuer. When they have done this, they improvise a family scene.
In many family situations there is a triangular relationship, where one person persecutes another and a third tries to come to the rescue. For instance, an older brother could persecute a younger brother, and their mother could try to come to the rescue. Or in another situation, the father could be persecuting the mother and it’s the child who could try to intervene. There are many variations. Some of which will already be familiar to the actors.
When they do the improvisation it is important that the actors stay true to their designated mode of behaviour. The victim should never try to retaliate, however much they may feel inclined. The victim should remain a victim. The rescuer must try to rescue the situation and not start to persecute the persecutor. And, of course, the persecutor should persecute at all times.
This exercise feels amazingly true to life, and it helps the actors understand that this drama triangle is at the heart of many family situations.
Part Two
After they have done the first improvisation, the actors stay as the same family member, but swap around their modes of behaviour. For instance, it could have been that an older brother was the persecutor, but he now becomes the victim. The mother was the rescuer, but she is now the persecutor, and the younger brother who was the victim the first time round now becomes the rescuer. They then improvise another version of the scene.
When they do this they find that this second improvisation also rings true. The modes of behaviour in a family group are not determined by the specific relationships in the family.
Part Three
The actors still stay as the same family member but they take on the mode of behaviour that they haven’t yet tried. This would mean that the mother now becomes the victim, the older brother is the rescuer, and the younger brother has to persecute his mother. Then they improvise another version of the scene.
This third improvisation will demonstrate that this drama triangle is a recognisable scenario whatever the permutation of modes of behaviour.
Discussion
The actors discuss family relationships and the things that were revealed during the improvisations.
The discussion is often quite lively, as the actors recognise aspects of their own lives. This exercise is invaluable in helping the actors start to share their personal experiences of family life with each other. Gradually the walls of inhibition start to crumble.
Working as a whole group, the actors tell each other stories about their own life experiences.
This can take five or six sessions, depending on the size of the group, and it’s important that everybody tells a story. Some of the stories will resonate with other members of the group who have shared similar experiences, while other stories will reveal the unique and varied journeys that each person has made through life up until this point. Of course, it’s not easy to open up to relative strangers, but there are a number of support mechanisms to help the actors talk about themselves. Here are some suggestions:
Music
The actors play a piece of music that has a particular significance in their lives. As it plays in the background, they tell the rest of the group why it is important to them.
Music will often stimulate an emotional response and bring half-forgotten memories to the surface. But not only that, music is a great way to bring a group together and create a specific mood.
As you can imagine, this music often becomes part of the final devised piece.
Crossroads
The actors talk about a time when they were at a crossroads in their lives.
This is a time of change. A time when they had to make a decision or a time when a decision was made for them. Often this is as simple as moving house or starting at a new school, but there are other changes that can be more difficult to talk about. Like the change that happens when their parents split up or a close relative dies. Other actors in the group have often had to deal with similar problems, and when these stories are told, people realise that their own experiences and emotional responses are not uncommon.
The actors bring in an object that means something to them or has a particular significance in their lives. Then they tell the other actors why the object is important to them.
The reason that the object is so helpful is that the actors don’t feel pressured to talk about themselves. They feel that they are talking about the object. It becomes the focus of their concentration and helps to remove their inhibitions. Talking about objects can often reveal difficult emotional life experiences.
Devising
The group creates a devised piece of theatre based on the things they have talked about.
The actors’ stories have been told without any pressure whatsoever. Sometimes the stories have been quite funny. Sometimes the actors have talked about their best friend or a favourite teacher. Sometimes they have talked about their family life or growing up in a small village or their gap year. They have often talked about bullying or rites of passage. But once life-changing stories are shared, fears and anxieties are made public, or the experience of grief and loss is brought out into the open, then the atmosphere changes. The actors feel as if they are in a safe environment, and they can start to trust each other.
The important part of this whole project lies in telling the stories, because it is vital for actors to have the ability to tap in to their own emotional experiences. The actors can then learn how emotional experiences can be a source of power for them as creative artists.
Wallpaper
A roll of wallpaper is stretched out on the floor and the actors use coloured felt-tip pens to write or draw anything they like about themselves or what they have heard during the storytelling process.
It is important that the actors feel they can express themselves freely on the roll of wallpaper. They can respond to things that other people have written, and they can move around and write anywhere there is a blank space. This process goes on until the roll of wallpaper is full up. It then becomes a reference point for devising a piece of theatre, as certain themes and ideas emerge that are important to people in the group.
Themed Sections
The actors get into several small groups and each group chooses a theme they feel connected with in order to devise three or four minutes of theatre.
After having shared some very powerful stories during the previous sessions, the creative part of the project can now flourish, as the actors use their instincts to make innovative and entertaining theatre.
Working without supervision, the groups have to make their own decisions on how to present their particular chosen theme. For instance, they may choose to work on the theme of bullying at school, so perhaps they decide to act out short bullying scenarios. Or they may decide to use bullying phrases in a more abstract manner, or use physical movement to express their emotional reaction to bullying. The actors should be encouraged to find unexpected and interesting ways to present their theme.
All the small groups should work at the same time, and have about twenty to thirty minutes on a particular theme before they present their work to everyone else. These are like sketches. Half-formed ideas that may or may not be used later on. After each presentation there is a short group discussion about it.
The actors then divide themselves into different small groups and work on some more themes or ideas inspired by the roll of wallpaper. Sometimes the whole group can take a shared theme, like playground games or sexism, and at other times only a couple of people can work on a story that is particularly important to them. Sometimes a sensitive story can be expressed as a piece of abstract movement. Music can be used. Sometimes poetry. Dialogue can be written and performed. Dance. Moments of silence. Images. The actors create different sections that will each become part of the final presentation.
The group discuss each section and make notes about what they have seen, and gradually a complete piece of theatre begins to emerge in the group consciousness. This part of the process will take several sessions, depending on the size of the group.
Creating the Piece
The actors create a devised piece of theatre based on the stories that have been shared with the group.
Working as a whole group, the actors choose which of the devised sections will become part of the final presentation. They examine the work they have done so far and decide how to refine and improve the chosen sections and put them together in a coherent order. There are no rules for this kind of work. The group have to make their own decisions. The final piece can be themed or it can be a loosely connected series of incidents. It can be amusing at times, and poignant at others. It can be dramatic, artistic and entertaining.
This is the rehearsal part of the process and will usually take three or four sessions.
Presenting the Piece
The actors perform a piece of theatre based on their work.
Comprised of actors, the group is perfectly placed to use these stories as a piece of effective theatre. They can create a performance that will not only be entertaining, but will make members of the audience reflect on their own lives. It can be an emotional experience for both actors and audience alike.
It’s usually best to do this work with a new group of actors who don’t know each other very well. No cliques will have been formed and, generally speaking, it will be a level playing field. The actors will often come from very different backgrounds so the stories will broaden everyone’s perception of what it is to be a human being. It is essential that actors learn to express themselves, and this whole process will help them feel free to do that, as the barriers of inhibition are gradually eroded away.
It’s important that actors learn to work together, understand each other’s lives and share true emotional experiences.