5

THE STAKES

The stakes open to offer the best escape from block. The actor must first see a target, and before it vanishes, that target must be split into two.

As we have just seen, every living moment has an element of quest. Every living creature at every moment of its life has to deal with a situation which will either get better or worse. This better or worse might be infinitesimally small, but there will always be some degree of better or worse. All we can be sure of is change.

Similarly, Juliet faces a situation that cannot remain the same. Even if Juliet were to abandon Romeo to stay with her parents and remain for ever dreaming from that balcony she would still find her universe changing. For one thing, she will get old. Even if she wants to kill hope and remain for ever a little girl, she can never defy the great flux of things.

For you, for me, for the tiniest amoeba and for Juliet, there will always be something to be lost and something to be won. And whatever we say or do will be in order to make the situation better and to prevent it from getting worse. This quest motors the actor.

The more closely we examine the target, the more we will see that it splits. And it splits into two halves of equal size. The target always divides into a better outcome and a worse. Romeo splits into the Romeo that Juliet wants to see, and the Romeo that Juliet doesn’t want to see. His words split into the words she wants to hear, and the words she doesn’t want to hear. Juliet, like all of us, lives in a double universe: she has double vision. Juliet sees a Romeo who understands her, and also a Romeo who cannot understand her, a Romeo who is strong and a Romeo who is weak.

The stakes are so important they have their own double rule. The unbreakable double rule is as follows:

1. At every living moment there is something to be lost and something to be won.

2. The thing to be won is precisely the same size as the thing to be lost.

Two and one

It is not enough for Irina to say that the situation is important for Juliet. It is not enough to say that Juliet’s life depends on what she does. Irina needs to see what is at stake. And that is something very different. The stakes are not woolly or vague; the stakes are specific and they must come in perfectly paired twos. Remembering this shape of ‘two’ rather than ‘one’ is crucial for the actor in difficulty. For example, if Irina asks: ‘What is at stake here?’, and she replies: ‘I want to run away with Romeo’, that is an example of expressing herself in ‘one’. Irina has unknowingly removed the negative. This may seem like nit-picking. But the simplified answer in ‘one’ may confuse Irina in the long run. It may tease and frustrate the actor to dig for this double, both the positive and the negative, but the positive in friction with the negative is precisely what sparks the actor.

What is at stake cannot be simply:

‘that I will run away with Romeo.’

What is at stake is:

‘that I will run away with Romeo

and that I will not run away with Romeo.’

Both the positive and the negative are present at the same time, both the hope and the fear, both the plus and the minus.

Indeed a better question than ‘What is at stake here?’ is ‘What do I stand to gain and what do I stand to lose?’

‘My Nurse will protect me

and my Nurse will betray me.’

‘All will be well

and all will be a disaster.’

‘If I show how keen I am, Romeo will be attracted to me

and my forwardness will repel Romeo.’

It is even more constructive for Irina to try to see through Juliet’s eyes:

‘I see a Romeo who wants to run away with me

and I see a Romeo who doesn’t want to run away with me.’

‘I see a Romeo I want to run away with

and I see a Romeo I don’t want to run away with.’

‘I see a tomorrow with Romeo

and I see a tomorrow without Romeo.’

Actors often experience paralysis because they have been looking for a ‘one’. The search for ‘one’ is a wild goose chase; there is no magic ‘one’ that will solve everything. Life comes in opposed ‘twos’. Trying to simplify, cut corners and get things done in ‘one’ blocks the actor. This rule of ‘two’ is as easy as riding a bicycle and equally difficult to explain in words.

It is better felt through example. There is no night without day. There is no honour without shame. And a declaration of love is terrifying because the joy of being loved back must exactly mirror the terror of being rejected. To some this idea will appear straightforward and elementary, to others perverse and Byzantine. But we are not dealing with spiritual revelation or the truth. All that matters here is that such an idea may help the actor move forward.

Pain

Why do we have an inbuilt resistance to seeing the world in these twos? One answer is very simple. We don’t like pain. We don’t like pain in our bodies. And we don’t like pain in our heads. And these ‘twos’ make pain. For example, we tend to see the good in people we like and we tend to see the bad in people we dislike. It makes for a more comfortable world view. It isn’t an accurate world view. But it is less painful. And we are prepared to pay a lot for our comfort.

To see that people we love can do bad things and that people we hate can do good things is painful. But to be near Juliet, we need to be near not only her joy, but also her pain.

It is a sad irony that a lot of blocked acting results from the actor being all too aware that the stakes are low. So the actor tries to ‘play higher stakes’. If Irina feels that what she is doing isn’t sufficiently exciting, compelling, fascinating, important, then she may try to make her words, her actions seem more exciting, compelling, fascinating, important. And an actor may feel that the best way to do this is to disconnect from the outside world and press harder on the pedal.

The result is that ‘push’ when the audience thinks that the actors are shouting. But this shout only sounds like a shout. This ‘push’ may not be loud, but it is just as meaningless as shouting for no reason – and just as grating on the ear. The actor becomes progressively more forced and generalised, the actor feels the stakes are dropping, and the actor pushes even more. Misery.

So really the actor cannot play the stakes, in the sense that the stakes are one thing that can be created. Instead the actor needs to see the big two, both what may be lost and also what may be won. So remember that whenever the expression ‘the stakes’ is used, it never describes a state. The stakes are always two directions in conflict. There is always something to be lost and always something to be won.

Even the title of this chapter is potentially misleading. Even the expression ‘the stakes’ is a false friend, if it implies that the stakes are one thing.

The glass of water

Say we could magically serve the same glass of water both to a millionaire in a restaurant and also to a Legionnaire crawling through the desert. Simply to say the glass of water is ‘less important’ for one than for the other, however true, is useless for the actor. For the double stakes have been blurred into a ‘one’.

How can the actor cleave the paralysing ‘one’ into a dynamic ‘two’? Well, what might be at stake for the Legionnaire could be: ‘Will this glass of water spill, or not?’ ‘Will someone steal the water, or not?’ What this character does will depend upon the stakes that he sees. Who the character is will also depend upon the stakes he sees.

For the millionaire, there may be very little at stake in the glass of water. He may notice the glass because he is mildly thirsty or to better savour the Chateau Margaux: ‘Will the water clear my palate or not?’ There may be very little at stake, but if the millionaire notices the water at all there must be a tiny amount for him to win or to lose.

Logic may insist and the scientist will agree that the molecular structure of the water does not change. But as far as the actor is concerned, the glass of water actually does change its substance. The Legionnaire and the millionaire do see different glasses of water.

Acting is not a question of how we see things; acting is a question of what we see. For the actor, we are what we see.

A rehearsal story

Imagine we are rehearsing Macbeth, and after desperate days of uninspiring work, all at once life breaks out, the scene explodes with power and danger, and everyone in the rehearsal room is riveted: Macbeth has glimpsed something horrible, and the hairs stand up on our necks as he cries: ‘ . . . Line, please!’

The stakes soar; for a brief moment there is a glimpse of real life and danger and all because the actor has forgotten a line. The bathos makes us ask: how can the stakes be higher in a rehearsal, than in plotting the assassination of the Head of State? The moment is absurd and we laugh – not only are the stakes in rehearsal ludicrously out of proportion, so are the stakes in the assassination, each in different directions. Such a moment is useful for it shows how much further we are from where we need to be. We fool ourselves that we are playing high stakes when we are not even remotely near where the situation demands.

Passing on the problem

As Irina will know too well, when panic strikes, the stakes soar for her. But as we will see, Irina can actually reduce the stakes for herself by increasing the stakes for Juliet. So she can win both ways. But how can the actor shift the soaring stakes onto the character? Let us think about three people in turn: Romeo, Juliet . . . and Irina: two fictitious people and one real. What is at stake for each? For Juliet the stakes are located mostly in Romeo, whereas for Romeo most of what is at stake is in Juliet. Will the strange beauty return his love, or doom him to a life of despair?

Now for Irina, the stakes are also high, but quite different! If Irina feels blocked, the stakes will seem to lie in her very performance. In other words, instead of seeing what Juliet stands to win or lose, Irina will be overwhelmed by what Irina stands to win or lose. For example, will Irina act well or badly, will Irina make a fool of herself or not? Once again, the obvious differences between actor and character only seem obvious. These differences are all too easily blurred. The stakes for Irina and for Juliet must be distinguished and carefully separated. The stakes for Irina and Juliet are quite different. How can Irina make the stakes low for Irina and high for Juliet?

The journey through

First, the actor needs to transfer all that is at stake from what the actor sees, into what the character sees.

Because the stakes for Juliet do not live inside Juliet. Instead, the stakes for Juliet are in what Juliet sees. So Irina needs to travel through Juliet to see what Juliet sees in the outside world. Irina must not stop in the character. Instead Irina must see through a transparent Juliet to see on the other side what matters to Juliet.

What matters to Juliet is Romeo. So Irina needs to see through Juliet and see what is at stake for Juliet in Romeo. Irina must stop looking into Juliet, for all that Irina will find in Juliet is what is at stake for Irina! The actor must not see into the character but instead sees through the character. The actor’s sight must pass through the character as if the character were transparent. As if the character were a mask.

The actor sees through the character’s eyes. Only if the actor sees what is at stake for the character will the character live.

A digression: unequal stakes?

The double rule states that at every living moment there must be something to be lost and something to be won. Fear can do nothing about this. It is an unbreakable rule.

It is not provable that the thing we stand to lose has the same dimensions as the thing we stand to gain. But the notion is valuable. Such symmetry underpins the actor’s universe for all practical purposes. We need not be discouraged that we can never find the exact antonym, the precise opposite word. The idea of symmetry is powerful, even if the ideal cannot be achieved. Experiments have shown that symmetry underpins even a baby’s notion of facial beauty, yet no face is perfectly symmetrical.

Sometimes the stakes do appear to be unequal. Dermot is invited by Kevin to the Curragh. Will he have a bet? Dermot takes a shine to a bored-looking horse called ‘Unlikely’, at a hundred to one. He puts on ten punts, so he could possibly win a thousand. When Kevin asks: ‘How do you feel?’ the novice gambler replies: ‘Well, I would love to win a thousand, but I don’t mind so much losing ten.’ Does this mean that what Dermot stands to win is far bigger than what he stands to lose?

No, it doesn’t. In fact the symmetry is still present, because the positive outcome, the joy at winning a thousand, is watered down by its unlikelihood, and the misery of losing is watered down by the smallness of the amount. They both even out.

Irina needs to assume that this precise symmetry exists as a given, and then undertake the task of finding it. It may be a crucial prerequisite of research that the scientist never begins from the conclusion. But we are not scientists. The splitting of the one into two can release energy in the actor as it does in nuclear fission.

A digression: the moving stakes

We might also notice that the attention may wander to wherever there is more at stake. What is at stake involves anxiety and hope, and to exactly equal degrees. ‘Will the girl in the library look at me today? Or won’t she? Or do I care?’

And, if not, I will tend to shift my attention to where it is more stimulated. But there is an exception to this rule. Sometimes the reverse happens, and we retreat from the real world because the stakes are intolerably high. When the stakes soar painfully, we can turn our gaze from reality to an imaginary world where imaginary stakes replace the real ones, and we can live more comfortably. In this delusory world we can exercise our powers of prediction and control. Take the case of a father who washes the dishes rather than deal with his son’s drug addiction. He has convinced himself that the most important thing for him to do is to make sure that the saucepan is really clean, while his son stares vacantly at the coffee. The father can only replace one set of stakes with another. That last bit of gravy, will it scrape off, or not? Even the father in denial of the real stakes must create in his parallel universe yet another set of stakes.

However, one of the principal reasons we go to the theatre is to see people face situations where the stakes are toweringly high. Theatre helps us explore extreme feelings in a controlled situation. We may not like the stakes so painfully high in our private worlds, but we go out of our way to see other people experience these polarised intensities. We can witness what we dare not live in the security of a group and the reassurance of make-believe.

The target is not how we see things. The target is what we see. The split target is the stakes. At every living moment there must be something to be lost and something to be won.