Who I am depends on the targets I see. We each see different targets. Our experience of life alters the targets that we see. Juliet sees one Romeo, and Tybalt another. The Legionnaire and the millionaire see different glasses of water. How does the actor prepare to see different targets? How can Irina make sure that the moon she sees is Juliet’s moon and not Irina’s? The specific target is prepared and refined in the invisible work.
The visible and invisible mind
The visible mind is that part of the character that an actor can play; and the invisible mind is that part that the actor cannot play. I can divide myself into two different people. I am the ‘me’ I see, and also the ‘me’ that I do not see. Both of these ‘mes’ are essential; one cannot exist without the other. How can the actor create this invisible part? The answer is that the actor cannot directly create the invisible mind of the character. All Irina can do is to prepare herself for performance.
The rugby team cannot create the match. The players cannot predict the outcome, or dictate how the match will go. But the coach and team can prepare themselves. There is no set period for training, but the match is strictly timed. There are no rules for the training, but there are several rules for the match. The team cannot make sure that they will play a good game, but the team can put themselves in the way of playing a good game.
Strictly speaking, of course, there is no cast-iron rule that the team must train. After a month stretched on a beach with fags and booze, the team might just send the ball flying elegantly down the line of backs. On the other hand, the team might spend morning, noon and night practising scrums and tackling and free kicks and line outs, and still play an abysmal game. All we can say is that the team that is trained well stands a far higher chance of playing well.
In a similar way, Irina cannot ensure a good performance. Irina cannot guarantee that she will act well. Indeed we all deal with the fact that we have no right to do good work. Irina can prepare and rehearse for months and still give a constipated performance. On the other hand, Irina could just read the words cold and shatter the audience with her insight and vitality. But such a fluke would be impossible to sustain. More sensibly, Irina will rely on her general training and specific rehearsal, which are far more likely to help her act with truth and vitality. Irina cannot demand to act well, but with careful preparation she can make it a lot more likely that her brief stage time will brim with life.
Irina needs to work on Juliet. Irina will discover more about Juliet’s path than Juliet herself knows. Irina will certainly be able to see Juliet’s future far more clearly. But this knowledge is only for the invisible work. When it comes to the visible work, for the short duration of her performance time as Juliet, then Irina must know no more than Juliet. Irina must never be conscious of her invisible work during the minutes that she actually plays Juliet.
The actor must forget the invisible during the visible work, and trust that the invisible will remember itself.
Forgetting the obvious
Before we consider the invisible work further, it would be sensible to remember some basics. There are fundamental differences between the visible and invisible work, and between Irina and Juliet.
These are principles so obvious that they are easily ignored. Common sense can be the first casualty of exhausting rehearsal. However much Irina explores the balcony scene, she must not forget that:
Juliet has never played the balcony scene before,
although Irina will have several times.
Juliet has never heard what Romeo has to say,
although Irina will have heard it several times.
Juliet has never heard what Juliet has to say,
although Irina will have heard it several times.
Juliet has never seen what Juliet sees now.
Juliet has never felt what Juliet feels now.
Juliet does not know how the scene will end.
The invisible work
All actors do the invisible work, however peremptory their preparation may seem. The invisible work may take many forms. Some actors follow methods and systems where they write a biography of the character or where they connect that character’s feelings and experiences to their own personal lives. Others may work in companies where large sections of rehearsal are devoted to finding collectively the world of the piece. Some will joke that they never do any preparation, but even they will make some sort of generalisation about the characters they are playing. For example, you may hear them remark: ‘He’s very clever’ or ‘She gets what she wants’. Some film actors labour to keep their heads entirely empty between takes to preserve spontaneity. But even that emptying is a form of the invisible work.
There are as many methods as there are actors. Most actors would agree that acting is not a science. There is no fail-proof system. Most actors feel grateful for any imaginative spark that ignites life and confidence.
Examples of invisible work
The rules for the invisible work barely exist apart from the rule that there must be some invisible work in some form.
The invisible work includes not only the rehearsal, but also the actor’s training and, indeed, experience of life. There is not only one way to make theatre. There is not only one way to rehearse a play. There is not only one way to prepare a role. So some of the following suggestions for the invisible work take the form of practical exercises; some take the form of thoughts on the way we consider individuals. They are not meant to add to the actor’s burden. On the contrary, they are intended to ease the load. All examples are arbitrary and personal, and there are many more. Although each of these suggestions may help enrich and specify the target, ultimately the actor’s invisible work is synthesised by the actor.
Preparation takes many forms; whatever ignites the imagination is useful. Whatever deadens the imagination is to be avoided. Certain rules will stifle Irina and certain rules will set her free; only Irina can feel the difference.
Research
It will help Irina to find out as much as she can about Juliet’s world, her given circumstances. The big proviso is this: research is useful only until the actor starts to fret that ‘something has to be got right’. We will never know the pressures on a young Italian aristocrat in the fourteenth century. This is not just a historical problem. Even if we lived round the corner in medieval Verona we would still never know for sure; we can only ever imagine.
Irina can research how Juliet was brought up – how she is expected to move, laugh, eat, sing, fight, dress, talk, pray, make love, think. Reading, discussing in rehearsal, group and individual exercises, experimenting with dance, dress, breathing and silence, may release Irina and increase her curiosity and vitality.
Other people
Irina will read all that is said about Juliet by other characters. This is important work but it needs one proviso. What other characters say about Juliet says far more about them than about Juliet. Whenever we talk about other people, we give ourselves away. We cannot necessarily assume that Juliet is beautiful just because Paris and Romeo say so. Indeed what these men say about her counts far less than what they actually do for her. Besides, all description is unreliable.
The Nurse has quite a lot to say on the subject of Juliet.
NURSE
Even or odd, of all days in the year,
Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she – God rest all Christian souls –
Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God;
She was too good for me. But as I said,
On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.
That shall she; marry, I remember it well.
’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years,
And she was wean’d – I never shall forget it –
Of all the days of the year upon that day.
For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall.
My lord and you were then at Mantua –
Nay I do bear a brain. But as I said,
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,
To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug.
Shake! quoth the dovehouse. ’Twas no need, I trow,
To bid me trudge.
And since that time it is eleven years,
For then she could stand high-lone, nay, by th’ rood,
She could have run and waddled all about;
For even the day before she broke her brow,
And then my husband – God be with his soul,
A was a merry man – took up the child,
‘Yea,’ quoth he, ‘dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit,
Wilt thou not, Jule?’ And, by my holidame,
The pretty wretch left crying and said, ‘Ay’.
To see now how a jest shall come about.
I warrant, and I should live a thousand years
I never should forget it. ‘Wilt thou not, Jule?’ quoth he,
And, pretty fool, it stinted, and said ‘Ay’.
LADY CAPULET
Enough of this, I pray thee, hold thy peace.
Is this only good-natured fussing? The Nurse exudes warm, homely comfort. Indeed, so consummate is the Nurse’s performance of the Nurse that it is hard to hear the events she describes.
The Nurse says that she was given Juliet to suckle following the death of her own daughter, Susan. We learn that Juliet was left by her parents on at least one occasion while they undertook a substantial journey. We hear that during their absence the Nurse was left alone with Juliet and attempted to wean her tiny charge by smearing her nipple with evil-tasting oil. The child’s surprise and revulsion at the contaminated milk made the Nurse laugh. We learn that the baby asserted her independence by learning to walk very early. We hear the little Juliet was sufficiently unattended to be left to fall and crack her head. And we learn the crying baby was laughed at by the Nurse and her wise-cracking husband, who made sexual jokes at the little girl’s expense. The baby’s ‘Ay’ even implies that she has learnt to control her feelings, and to deal with adults by agreeing with them.
Despite her apparent cheerfulness the Nurse is full of destruction with her talk of deaths and earthquakes. Her dead daughter was ‘too good’ for her, and yet, for someone with such a low opinion of herself she takes up a lot of space. Probably none of the three women is conscious that the Nurse may hate Juliet and want to destroy her. Yet destroy Juliet is precisely what the Nurse does; in Verona men have no monopoly in violence. Perhaps the Nurse reminds Juliet of her dead daughter every day, and undermines the rich young survivor with guilt. Certainly Juliet’s mother takes no interest in this weird and appalling story. Indeed earlier in the scene she seems nervous to be left alone with her own daughter. Lady Capulet and the Nurse discuss Juliet’s age over her head as if she were not there. The daughter barely speaks to her mother, who talks back to Juliet with more mannerism than warmth in rather creepy rhyming couplets. We hear that Juliet was born at night to a mother who was herself a child. That makes Lady Capulet still in her twenties and easily young enough to be her daughter’s rival.
Of course, this is only one version of Juliet’s childhood. There are more, but of course none of these stories are for Irina to ‘play’. However, these alternative narratives ask unsettling questions that may enrich Irina’s invisible work.
Work like this can open huge vistas for Irina. However, with an excess of research, Irina may feel her head saturate and her imagination congeal. Then she must stop. This can be a good sign as it may show her instinctive side in healthy rebellion.
The world is never good enough
We live in one real world that we know but slenderly, and a whole host of fantasy universes we know rather better. But Juliet will also have a rich fantasy world. And Irina will empower herself not only by investigating what actually happened to Juliet in reality, but also by imagining Juliet’s own world of make-believe. Rather than trying in vain to change herself into Juliet, let Irina instead imagine how Juliet would like to change things. Would Juliet have preferred a cosy mother smelling of lavender, to the sophisticate that strives to marry her off to the County? Perhaps Juliet wants to change not only her environment, including her mother, but also herself.
I am not good enough
However hard a hermit may try to escape all relationships, even an atheist hermit sealed in an isolation tank, he still has one overwhelming relationship: with himself. This principle is crucial for the actor. Juliet’s first relationship is with Juliet. This turbulent love/hate affair is in a state of flux, and tends to be less about accepting herself than trying to change herself.
One of the best ways for Irina to learn about Juliet is to see how Juliet sees herself. Juliet will see things that she would wish were different. Is she too tall? Too bright? Too dependent? How would she prefer to be? Would she prefer to be less controlled? More spontaneous? Less impetuous? It is useful for Irina to imagine Juliet looking in a mirror. The two big questions for Irina are first, ‘Who would Juliet prefer to see staring back at her?’ and second, ‘Who is Juliet afraid to see?’ What Juliet actually looks like in the mirror is of comparatively less interest.
Irina may well ask: ‘Yes, but how could I make all that clear?’ The reply is that nothing should ever be ‘made clear’ and particularly nothing in the invisible work. So Irina comes up with an idea, and then is told: ‘But don’t play it!’ Exactly. The invisible work manifests itself by grace, where it will, and when it will. Any attempt to control it by showing its workings, any attempt to expose it in public, and the invisible vanishes. The invisible never abandons us permanently, but returns when we stop trying to control it.
Exercises of extremity
There are several exercises that can develop and strengthen the invisible mind. In the exercises of extremity, the rehearsal room abandons all good sense, and an actor plays the scene with a given extreme purpose. So Juliet can play a scene with her mother, once as if she were trying to amuse her (extremely), again as if she were trying to frighten her (extremely), again as if she were trying to humiliate/seduce/teach/heal, etc. Sometimes the effect is merely strange, but occasionally a line or a look or a move can ring out with undeniable life.
In that moment, something living passes into the invisible work. Irina must then forget the exercise, but it is remarkable how traces persist. When Irina comes to play the scene, this invisible work will have affected what she sees. There will be more history and depth in the mother she eventually sees. There will be a greater quality of specificness in the image of her mother. The target develops itself without our conscious control.
Opposites
Another exercise for the invisible work is to consider who Juliet’s exact opposite might be. She can use sources from real life or film or literature. And then having found the perfect opposite, to ask again if there is anything in common. Irina may well feel that Lady Macbeth is Juliet’s extreme opposite. And then she might ask if there are any similarities. Well, these are both women who want their lovers to hurry home, they both plead for night to hide their actions lest they repent before they commit, they both see the strange connection between sex and death, and they both have a complex relationship with Time: Lady Macbeth feels ‘the future in the instant’. Both women conspire with their men to break a taboo, and both commit suicide. It is confusing to compare these two women. And confusion is useful if it shakes off the dust of cliché.
The more Irina experiments with these and other exercises to feed her invisible work, the more the target refines itself. This rich and specific target is always ready when Irina needs its energy in her precious moments of stage time.
The way the invisible mind influences what the visible mind sees is mysterious. We have to trust this process and tolerate our ignorance. It would be unwise to stop breathing because we don’t understand the minutiae of respiration.
Only attention will develop the targets that the actor sees. The actor cannot make the invisible work visible. The invisible work manifests itself without our permission. How this process works we do not know. Sometimes we have to relax and let ourselves not know.
A digression: the terracotta sage
A collector of ancient Chinese terracotta was furious that he had bought another expensive fake. He searched the world for the greatest expert on terracotta to teach him how to avoid another con. This ancient sage lived a simple existence but charged a great deal of money to the collector for his teachings. His teachings were to last six weeks during which time the collector had to do precisely what he was told. The collector travelled to the remote cell where the ascetic lived. He came with cameras and computers. The sage asked him to leave all these outside. He did so, but they were stolen by other ascetic sages. The collector was furious but he had to do what he was told if he wanted to be able to tell for himself the difference between real and fake terracotta.
On the first day he was blindfolded, the sage left him in a yak shed, and placed in his hand a piece of terracotta. The collector hoped for instruction, but the sage said nothing. He sat there for twelve hours, with only some hot yak milk for tea. The next day the same thing happened, the blindfold, the terracotta, and silence. This went on and on for weeks. Exactly the same ritual was repeated every day. The collector was furious, but had to bite his tongue, as he was determined to learn the sage’s secret.
After six weeks, on the last day, the sage tottered into the shed and again tied on the blindfold. Once again the terracotta was placed in the collector’s hand, who suddenly exploded, smashing it on a nearby yak. He tore off his blindfold and roared at the ascetic:
‘This is the last straw! You have lured me here to a remote monastery, you have let your friends steal my computers, you have poisoned me with filthy yak milk, you have kept me blindfolded in utter darkness, and the final insult is that today, instead of giving me a real terracotta statue to hold, you give me a fake!’