If ‘character’ is monumental and misleading what other terms or tools can Irina use? Irina can sharpen some humbler but more practical tools. Specifically Irina can think in terms of three devices. These are Identity, Persona and the Mask. These three are no more real than character; they are only invented expressions, but they may prove more useful.
The identity
We have seen that trying to find things in ‘one’ can paralyse the actor. Rather than find a ‘one’, it is better to find two opposing elements that are in conflict.
If ‘who am I?’ is not a helpful question, ‘who would I rather be?’ and ‘who am I afraid I am?’ are more practical. Clearly these questions run in opposition to each other. ‘What is my character?’ is not a helpful question because it seems to want an answer in ‘one’. So Irina would be better off considering words, or ideas, that although similar to character, are more dynamic. She needs questions which glory in contradiction, rather than fear conflict. It is better for her to think of all characteristics as coming in ‘twos’. For example, the more we want to be rich, the more we must fear being poor, and the more we want to be strong, the more we must fear being weak.
Let us imagine, as before, that who I truly am I will never perfectly know. ‘Who I am’ is unknowable. But what is knowable, so that it might be of use to Irina? The identity is knowable. The identity looks like who I am, it seems like who I am, it smells like who I am, but it isn’t who I am. Being fully describable the identity is fully dead. But it may help the actor to consider its workings.
Basically our identity is how we want to see ourselves. In order to convince ourselves of who we are, we have to convince other people as well. Although of questionable benefit in real life, the identity can be a useful tool when acting.
The identity is a construction that helps me define who the ‘I’ is when I talk. But in fact it is an invention or a coating that we start to accrete at an early stage in our lives. It is the whole raft of ways I have of presenting myself and seeing myself. It is our very own private and personal institution. The workings of the identity are far clearer in others than in myself.
I am
If I tell you ‘what I am’, it will not tell you very much about what I really am. But it will tell you a lot about my identity. If you really want to know ‘what I am’ then looking at what I do gives sharper clues.
Before this becomes too abstruse, let’s take some practical examples. If asked to define the character of Othello, you might well say that he is:
Brave
Noble
Generous
Exotic
Loved
Patriotic
Proud
Big-hearted
Loving
Innocent
Loyal
Trusting
Manly
Assimilated
Straightforward
Othello himself might feel this list is reasonable and accurate. But there are no verbs in this list. This is not a list of things that Othello has done or will do. The list is composed entirely of adjectives, words that don’t shift – enemy words.
Othello himself spends quite a few words on self-description. And much of what he says promotes this image of himself. However, if Othello believes that he embodies all of these qualities, there must also exist an alternative potential Othello. And this Othello will embody quite the opposite characteristics. Therefore Othello is hiding a very different identity, a kind of un-Othello who is kept firmly under wraps. If that is so, then this un-Othello must be:
Cowardly
Ignoble
Mean-spirited
Commonplace
Despised
Subversive
Snivelling
Small-minded
Hating
Guilty
Treacherous
Suspicious
Childish
Outcast
Perverse
Iago manages to sniff out this hidden un-Othello. He infers the existence of this monster by simply reversing the description of Othello that is trumpeted through the earlier part of the play. Furthermore, Iago senses that Othello may actually derive his immense energy precisely from suppressing this phantom. But we must remember that of course this un-Othello does not exist, any more than the official Othello exists. They are both spectres of Othello’s imagination. All that matters to Iago is that somewhere Othello will fear that this un-Othello might exist. Like many of us, Othello squanders unknown energy in making sure that his ‘bad’ side, his Mr Hyde, doesn’t slip out. Iago flicks the switch to make Othello flip into reverse and behave like the un-Othello.
The first list of attributes constitutes part of Othello’s identity. The second list is also part of Othello’s identity, or rather his un-identity. Iago, with some of the intuition of the psychotic, knows precisely which nerves to tweak to make Othello self-destruct. In a way, Iago blackmails Othello by threatening to expose to clean, public Othello the dirty, secret un-Othello. The plan backfires. When we play with the identity we play with fire. However, had Othello possessed a more accurate picture of his un-Othello, had Othello perhaps some sense of proportion, of humour, about himself, had he more insight into who he wanted to be and who he feared he was, then perhaps he would have been impervious to Iago’s manipulations. Who knows? That is a question for the audience to answer.
Arkadina
Another example is Arkadina in The Seagull, who, when asked for money, exclaims: ‘I’m an actress, not a banker!’ That gives us a clue to the un-Arkadina, who is indeed a banker, and not an actress. Her son, Constantin, frequently implies what a poor actress she is, and at one point remarks that she has an account in Odessa with 20,000 roubles. Constantin’s sharp insights confirm what we might have guessed as the un-Arkadina. Again this is not ‘who Arkadina really is’, it is only the Arkadina that Arkadina fears she might be, the Arkadina who, tipping her servants, produces a single rouble and asks them to share it. But there is yet another Arkadina, unpretentious and kind who forgets that she ever helped some destitute neighbours, when she herself was poor.
To recap: my identity is not who I am. But neither is my un-identity who I am. All we can say is that both of these taken together offer a strong clue to a person’s fears and hopes, both conscious and unconscious.
A useful dynamo
We can go much further and suggest that most of a human being’s energy might be spent in promoting the identity and suppressing the un-identity. For the human being, the war between these two is bloody and exhausting; for the actor, considering this permanent suppression of one and promotion of the other releases vast hoards of imaginative energy.
It may help Irina, in her invisible work, to consider not only Juliet, but also an un-Juliet. We all have an identity, and for each identity there is an equal and opposite un-identity. Neither is the truth, but both, as long as they are considered jointly, can dynamise the actor.
Juliet and the identity
Intriguingly, Juliet is obsessed with the identity. Her first shattering question is so well known that we can hardly hear it any more. She suddenly grasps that identity is arbitrary.
JULIET
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name.
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
ROMEO
Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
JULIET
’Tis but thy name that is my enemy:
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand nor foot
Nor arm nor face nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O be some other name.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.
ROMEO
I take thee at thy word.
Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptised:
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
JULIET
What man art thou . . .
This whole passage is obsessed with the identity, as Juliet and Romeo struggle to break its chains. Juliet offers to change her identity, entreats Romeo to change his, and Romeo offers to be ‘new baptised’.
Does Juliet see a Romeo who is the slave of his father? Certainly ‘Deny thy father’ echoes with Christ’s enduringly subversive decree that unless we leave our parents we will never come into life. So do we have to destroy the identities we have been given? If Romeo is too weak then she will renounce her family and redeem them both. With ‘What’s in a name?’ she shares with Romeo the great secret of the universe she has stumbled on this sacred night.
The structure of the identity
How we see ourselves is made up of perfectly paired opposites. It is one thing to do something that is kind. But it is quite another to say that therefore I am kind. For the moment I declare myself to be kind, somewhere there must also exist the equal conviction that I may be cruel. To say: ‘I act’ is one thing. However, to say ‘I am an actor’ is quite different, as I cannot say ‘I am an actor’ without opening the possibility that ‘I am not an actor’.
Just as night cannot exist without day, honour cannot exist without shame, and life cannot exist without death, so we cannot describe ourselves or others without implying the existence, whether actual or potential, of the exact opposite qualities.
It helps the actor to imagine that the cynic and the idealist are the same person, the saint and the sinner, the successful and the failed, the clever and the stupid, the angel and the devil, etc.
This suppression of one identity and the promotion of another may exhaust us in real life, but considering this dynamic can release immense and useful energy.
Sentimentality
It is an old and useful theatrical maxim that you must never play the character, only the situation. So if you are playing a bully, you cannot actually play the bully, only the situation in which he finds himself. Nor can you only play the un-identity, the fact that somewhere this person is a coward.
So how then can the actor capture the essence of this person, this bully? The answer is that we cannot ‘capture the essence’ of anyone.
When we try to capture the essence of someone we are being sentimental. Sentimentality is the refusal to accept ambivalence. Certainty is sentimental. We are sentimental not only when we say someone is nice. It is equally sentimental to assert that someone is nasty. To say that a race is good or that a people is bad is also sentimental. Such judgements may have terrible consequences; but then, sentimentality is terrifying.
We are being sentimental when we judge a character to be sweet, as we may Anfisa in The Three Sisters, but we are equally sentimental if we judge a character to be evil, as perhaps Richard the Third. What these characters actually do, of course, may well be good or evil or both.
Pronouncing a character to be either good or evil will block the actor. Only what we do can be good or evil. A character can be neither in essence. To hold that a human being can be good or evil as part of their intrinsic nature is the very depth of sentimentality. Moralising about what we do is one thing; moralising about what people are is quite another; such judgementalism is beneath the dignity of the actor.
We can never describe somebody truthfully, because we can never fully know. We mislead ourselves by asking what we are, which we can never know. We can never know, control or contain the essence of anyone, including ourselves. We can always, however, observe what we are doing. Even the physicist, when trying to analyse the nature of matter, ends up describing less what the particle is, and more how the particle behaves.
Institutions
The identity is our very own personal institution. An institution is merely an abstraction invented by humans. But institutions have a creepy characteristic. They are jealous of their inventors and they would all secretly prefer to live independently of their human masters. They would like to take flesh and ‘incorporate’. Some institutions almost succeed. All institutions have one thing in common: their number one imperative is preservation of self. And like any other institution, the identity fights like a cornered tiger if ever it feels it may be exposed to its host as merely an illusion. Indeed to preserve itself the identity may order its human host to commit suicide. But the identity doesn’t survive, for like many a parasite the identity is more clever than wise and never learns that it is dependent on its host.
The persona
If thinking about the identity and the un-identity fails to help Irina, then she might try to think of ‘who I am’ in terms of the ‘persona’. If my identity is both how I wish to see myself and how I wish to be seen, then the persona is the means I use to interact with the outside world.
In literature, the word persona refers to the person who tells the story. Maybe the author, maybe not – Jane Eyre was not Charlotte Brontë. With film stars we can say that Humphrey Bogart had one screen persona, while James Dean had another. Jung used the word ‘persona’ to describe the part of the person that is used to interact with the outside world. This persona was separate from the ‘self’, which he used to describe who we really are. ‘Who we really are’ may be a matter for psychoanalysis, but it is a quagmire for the actor.
In theatre the persona works mysteriously. As the physicist can only describe the particle by how it behaves, so it is easier to describe the persona by what it does. The persona can merely introduce us to the outline of a character, but how much we already know about this person can astonish us. It is almost as if we have knowledge from a previous life. Sometimes we complain that we don’t have enough information about the world of the character; but occasionally we are alarmed to discover how much we do know of a world about which, strictly speaking, we ought to know nothing.
A practical example of persona occurs in Commedia dell’Arte, where different archetypal characters are available to be adopted, inhabited and played by the performer. The actor need not necessarily have done a wealth of specific research on the character of Pantalone. The actor who recognises the persona of the foolish old man will be able to adopt the persona of this well-known character. Incidentally, the actor adopts a persona; the actor does not adapt a persona. In fact, the more the performer is able to surrender to the persona, the more the persona will adopt and even adapt the actor. It is as if the persona itself has done the background research and lends its findings to the actor.
How is this possible? Only a few coordinates can make a new world breathe. Picasso could suggest a powerful and complex universe with a few slashes of the pen. A young man once asked the painter how long it took him to produce those few lines. Picasso answered: ‘Oh, about forty years.’ Those forty years are like the actor’s invisible work. They are not explicit in a drawing that took forty seconds to complete; but those forty years breathe invisibly. We can be sure that Picasso did not consciously use those forty years while scribbling those lines; perhaps in some strange way those forty years used him.
The persona works similarly. With apparently scanty information the actor can give a performance rooted in a make-believe world of great complexity.
The mask
The difference between the persona and mask is elusive. Phersu was the Etruscan for a masked man, the word was developed by the Romans into persona, which means mask. Finally, in modern English, the word becomes person. It is rather unsettling that ‘mask’, ‘actor’ and ‘person’ could be the same word; however, theatre demands that we dismantle all prejudices and certainties about who we are.
The mask is remarkably widespread amongst diverse cultures. The major difference between the persona and the mask is that the second must have a concrete element, normally a partial covering of the face. Types of performance or religious service that use the mask may seem very different but, in all instances, roughly the following is part of the process:
The performer sees the mask.
The performer puts on the mask.
The performer sees the world only through the mask’s eyes.
The performer is released into performance by the mask’s permission.
The mask enables the performer to see another world.
The audience sees what the performer sees.
The mask enables performer and audience to see something they would otherwise not have been able to see.
The mask of Juliet
What practical use is the mask for Irina? No director has asked her or the company to don masks. However, basic mask work can help actors even in the most realistic texts.
If Juliet has a costume, that might work as a mask. If Juliet wears make-up, that might also serve as a mask. Essentially, any concrete object, worn by the performer can be a mask as long as the performer only wears it when playing. In other words, Irina may have a special pair of shoes, which redistributes her weight, and so helps her to discover how Juliet moves. If Irina continues to wear the same shoes after rehearsal, then the shoes will be merely an accessory or a prop. But if Irina only wears the shoes when she is trying to see and move as Juliet, then the shoes have started to function as a mask.
If the shoes start to behave as a mask, each time Irina puts them on she will feel that she moves differently. The shoes become a kind of switch to turn on her performance. If Irina feels uncomfortable wearing the shoes during her lunch break, it is a strong sign that the shoes have started to acquire the power of a mask.
The mask has to be treated properly, and not because the mask will mind! For the mask will lose its fragile power for us if we use it indiscriminately. We abdicate power to the mask so that we can feed off it. If we deny the mask its power by disrespect then we cannot feed off it.
The mask and movement
The mask not only alters the actor’s appearance – the actor’s limbs start to respond differently to stimuli. The mask actor studies the mask in his hands as part of the invisible work. Greek vases depict this same preparation 2,500 years ago. The actor will then practise in the mask and continue to discover who the mask is by seeing how others react to this new identity. Sooner or later the actor will move as the mask.
The mask’s eyes
However, there is one part of the face that the mask does not obliterate. It does not obliterate the eyes. Indeed the mask changes what the eyes see. The target transforms.
Mask work is excellent for the blocked actor because the mask can destroy the actor’s self-consciousness. The mask silences the actor’s personal identity. The mask gives the actor permission to do forbidden things – it’s not the actor’s fault, the mask did it.
Recognition
The mask’s power is only proportionate to the actor’s ability to recognise it. If the actor doesn’t recognise the mask, the mask will remain inert. To this extent the mask is parasitic. However, this recognition need not be conscious. What probably happens is that the mask acts as a trigger to a partially hidden or entirely unknown part of the actor. As long as recognition happens, putting on the mask appears to transform the actor. But this transformation is in fact a release of something that was already there. It is only an apparent metamorphosis, as the mask has activated a latent persona in the actor.
We can recognise things without realising. We may love or loathe strangers on sight because we unconsciously recognise in them a buried piece of ourselves. A similar process is at work when we are surprised at what the mask can make us do. A hidden persona recognises itself in the mask, perhaps in a split second, and the actor permits the mask to unlock the cupboard in which that persona is locked.
When acting a role, actors choose not to act themselves for a while.
When I see me
Self-consciousness can be the actor’s deadliest enemy. Self-consciousness describes the moment when the fig-leaf of character shrivels. As usual, at times of Fear, it is worth remembering two things: first your problems can normally be shifted onto the character, and second that you can normally defeat Fear by copying his armaments.
So another shovel Irina might use to dig herself out of ‘I don’t know who I am’ is self-consciousness itself! Irina should consider Juliet’s own self-consciousness. How can Irina perform this particular judo-throw?
Let us go back to the first two rules: one, there must always be a target and two, that target exists outside. So what happens when I talk to myself? Well, then myself must be a target. For example, if I yell at myself when the shower doesn’t work, the ‘me’ I am shouting at is another idiot ‘me’ who forgot to phone the plumber. There is a difference between the ‘I’ who rebukes and the ‘me’ who is guilty. Between the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ there opens an enabling distance.
We need to spend some time considering this distance and dynamic, and feel comfortable with this idea. I may see me as many different things. Perhaps I see me as someone who is weak, I may see me as someone who is brave, I may see me as someone who is bright or I may see me as someone who is stupid. In a sense the ‘I’ does not change, but the ‘me’ does. The ‘I’ who speaks is always the same, but the ‘me’ who I see is always different. I remain the same, but I see me changing. The ‘me’ is a target and will obey all the rules.
In the last twenty years I have stayed exactly the same, it’s just that these days my legs feel stiffer if I run for a bus, my belt is tighter, hangovers are worse, a funny middle-aged guy stares back at me from the mirror, people seem different, different things irritate me, different things amuse me, different things make me sad, different things make me happy; but I assure you, I haven’t changed at all!
Humans spend a lot of time seeing ‘me’. Sadly the ‘mes’ we see are rarely accurate. As mentioned before, the ‘me’ that Juliet sees in the mirror is a fluctuation between the ‘me’ she wants to see and the ‘me’ she fears to see. So Irina will do well to shift her self-consciousness onto Juliet. Juliet’s self-consciousness is a nightmare for Juliet, but a boon for Irina. Juliet does not want to see herself blushing. The maiden blush that bepaints Juliet’s cheek embarrasses Juliet and therefore provides a spring of release for Irina.
Irina can see what Juliet sees when Juliet sees herself. Irina cannot transform herself and become Juliet, but Irina can see the different Juliets that Juliet sees.
We should avoid spending time on the ‘I’, but the mutations of the ‘me’ are extremely useful for the actor.
Examples of ‘me’
Crises force us to see ourselves anew, and drama tends to deal with crises, so actors often play people who learn to see themselves anew. When Juliet meets Romeo she wittily refers to her hands as the hands of a saint; later, on her betrothal to Paris, she refers to her tear-stained face as if it were not part of her.
‘And what I spake, I spake it to my face.’
and she continues, before she drugs herself, to see wildly different Juliets. Juliet foresees a crazed Juliet careering in the tomb, with images worthy of Edgar Allan Poe:
‘O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears,
And madly play with my forefathers’ joints,
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud,
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman’s bone
As with a club dash out my desperate brains?’
This is a bizarre Juliet for Juliet to see. Undoubtedly this Juliet surprises Juliet. The final Juliet ‘me’ is a sheath for Romeo’s dagger:
‘This is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die.’
To make such a grim joke, Juliet must have changed. Yes? But from whose point of view? The modest girl on the balcony would never knowingly mix sex, violence and decay, picturing herself as a dead receptacle for Romeo’s rotting weapon. For us, looking at Juliet from the outside, of course she has changed. But for Juliet, the ‘I’ who speaks is the same person. The same person at a different address, that is, for now she has moved and lives in a world full of dark laughter and hideous irony.
If the actor feels blocked in searching for character, then it may be because he or she is looking in the wrong place; the actor may be looking for the ‘I’. We have to face the fact that the ‘I’ will never be found. But the ‘me’ can be.