No one has a perfectly responsive body, but this is not so much because we are unfit and inflexible. The body is fettered by unconscious control. Control is a sensitive issue. Some control is crucial; some control is destructive. It all depends.
Basically there are two aspects of control: the control that we see, and the control that we don’t see. It is this second invisible control that hobbles the actor. We walk like wardrobes not because we are genetically wooden, but because we are afraid. Fear normally produces two physical symptoms:
1. We can’t move, and
2. We can’t breathe.
Like fire, Control is a good servant and a bad master. Control can be a curse to the actor, yet it looks so helpful and friendly. Control whispers: ‘If you use me I can help you escape from the clutches of Fear.’ But this is merely a brilliant set-up, a ‘sting’. When we try to escape from Fear by using Control, we end up more and more ensnared with Fear: ‘They pretended they were enemies but they were in it together all along!’
Fear threatens, Control conspires. And we get deeper and deeper embroiled. Fear runs its own KGB where you no longer know who your real friends are. Control is a double agent: ‘I am your tool. You can use me to do whatever you like, even to conquer Fear and any other unpleasant feelings.’ But this is Control’s biggest lie. It is Control that exclaims: ‘I don’t know what I should feel!’
Control hates to be controlled.
The Boeing 747
Fear prefers us to be in a state of unthinking control. Fear does not like us to think sensibly. When the 747 bucks up and down in the turbulence perhaps catastrophe will be forestalled if only I manage to keep very still and not breathe. Or I can chat frantically to the puzzled stranger in the next seat. Either method tries to control and censor the reception of outside stimulus: ‘If I study my in-flight magazine, perhaps I won’t notice the wing dropping off.’
These are conscious decisions. But more frightening are those invisible controls that tirelessly edit not only our physical reactions, but also the very stimuli that we are allowed to receive. Sometimes they behave like a gaoler who locks up our bodies. Sometimes they behave like a wartime censor who cuts out bits from letters. We may be unable to remove these controls, but we can see how they work. So instead of asking ‘Why can’t I move?’ let Irina ask instead: ‘What is blocking my body?’ or, more helpfully: ‘Why am I blocking my body?’
Life is in permanent flow; something else slams on the brakes. This ‘something else’ needs to be exposed. The principle is simple: we stop ourselves moving because Fear maintains us in a state of control.
The blocked body
The first step in liberating the body is to acknowledge the degree to which we keep it caged. Accepting the seriousness of a problem is the first step in changing it. Fear maintains his status quo by encouraging us to deny that the problem exists. Refusing to accept our limitations may seem defiant. In fact it is an act of slavery. Fear is brilliant.
Irina can use the following exercise. She stands by a table and picks up a glass of water. She repeats this simple act over and over again while paying attention to what her body actually does. The glass is in easy reach. Perhaps she only has to move her arm. Precisely which muscles does she use? Her finger muscles? Which exactly? Her neck muscles? Which exactly? Irina becomes aware of those parts of her body that she is using to pick up the glass.
So far so good. But now Irina pays attention to the muscles that she is not using. There will be many. Her foot muscles, for example. Now she might ask why should she use her foot muscles? The table is not so low that she has to bend. But a better question is: ‘Would the movement be even slightly easier if I slightly used my feet?’ Let Irina see if those foot muscles might help. Irina’s reach might be a fraction easier if she slightly inclines her ankles.
Using your toes to help pick up a glass of water seems strange, but whenever a muscle feels another one moving, it wants to join in. Like a child locked indoors on a sunny afternoon who sees the children next door kicking a football.
The more muscles that are used to perform a single act the less strain there is on any individual muscle, but this is only a utilitarian explanation. The simple truth is that muscles just want to move; that is in their essence. Just as it is in our essence to want to live.
We control our muscles far more than we know. This invisible brake needs serious examination and dismantling as it is one of the greatest blocks on vital performance. We prefer to think we stop our muscles working because we are lazy. The truth is less cavalier; we stop our muscles working because somewhere we are afraid of what they might do.
So if Irina goes back to the glass of water, let her not ask ‘Why should I move all my muscles, when my arm alone can pick up the glass?’ Let her ask rather why she is denying her other muscles the pleasure of participating. Why does she lock them out of the party?
Irina can devise many movement exercises for herself and perhaps many more will be organised for the group. The exercises can examine reaching, touching, walking, every possible activity. The exercises are repeated so that greater attention is paid to each movement. This is very different from concentrating on each movement. For if we analysed how we managed to stay standing, we might well fall over. You can’t ride a bike by thinking.
The exercises draw Irina’s attention not so much to how her muscles are working, but to what Irina is doing to stop her muscles working. The exercise is not to wake her sleeping muscles, but to help her to recognise that she is secretly injecting them with anaesthetic, like a crazed nurse.
We squander masses of energy braking, suppressing, curbing, limiting, deadening and confining the muscles. We need every scrap of this wasted energy to pay attention to the developing situation. These exercises draw the attention to secret inner locks. The only key we can use is attention, but attention fits all locks like a miracle skeleton key.
Ground energy
‘Ground energy’ can also help. Imagine that all energy wells up from the ground. The actor lies down and senses the floor supporting the back and gradually pays attention to each of the points of contact between the floor and the back. As the actor becomes more relaxed, more parts of the body come in contact with the floor. The spine relaxes and lengthens. Soon, he or she can speak the text as if it is coming up from the floor and up through the diaphragm, the lungs, then through the thorax and finally resonating through the entire body. Slowly the actor can build up to standing, when the only route for the ground energy will be to rise through the soles of the feet, via the ankles and so upwards.
It is important that as the actor stands, the knees remain flexible. We have many pressure points in the body where we can lock off the flow of energy. The knees and the neck are only two of the busier junctions. The neck needs to be kept free of tension and the knees need to be kept unlocked.
This exercise cannot be performed in the head. Like all exercises it can only be experienced sensually, like the wiser presidential candidate who needed to feel the space. Particularly if the rehearsal has started with the actors hunched around a table, then ground energy exercises can help to correct the resulting imbalance in energy.
It helps to imagine that the energy wells up from the ground because far too often the actor unconsciously believes that all useful energy trickles down from the brain. This invisible assumption limits the actor’s freedom. But sadly, it is all too easy for civilised us to imagine that energy radiates down from the head; it has been drilled into us. Even if we attended schools that taught nothing but dance and sport, it is still buried deep in our culture to perceive control as a) always a good thing and b) as physically radiating downwards within the body. Of course this is unconscious, but it helps explain why so many of us, even athletes and dancers, do not move as well as we might.
Breathing
Like movement, respiration is one of the seven characteristics of all living things. Breathing is crucial for life. We breathe naturally – otherwise we would all be dead. We breathe naturally according to the thought. That is simple. What is not so simple is why we interfere with this process. Why do we force ourselves to breathe at odd times? If you want to know when to breathe, the answer is simple: ‘When you want to.’
How then does Irina decide when Juliet wants to breathe? She cannot; nor should she ever attempt such a hair-raising venture. But then even Juliet herself doesn’t decide when Juliet breathes. Because Juliet breathes when the target tells her to. The target always decides when we breathe, how deep our breath should be, at what speed and how completely the breath should be exhaled. For example:
A painful meeting
Say you have something painful to say to a friend. The moment comes for your carefully prepared speech. You look at the said friend and take in a deep breath. But when the time comes, it is not you who decides when and how to breathe. It is the sight of your friend plus the thought of what words you must use that decide. Is he happy, anxious, relaxed? You see him, collect your thoughts and then inhale accordingly without thinking of the breath. Because the target tells you precisely how much breath you need. And the target seems to communicate this more or less straight to your lungs. To take another example, imagine that quite unexpectedly, a stranger in a pub staggers to his feet, looks menacingly around, smashes a bottle, lurches in your direction, waves the bottle in your face and then . . . slams out of the door and onto the street. You breathe out automatically and probably in unison with everyone else. Although the other customers are still shaken, they no longer need the uncomfortable reserves of breath retained lest they had to intervene. For we retain breath when the situation is dangerous. Flight and fight may empty our bowels but they force us to reserve oxygen. This is a reflex; it is not a conscious decision. So we breathe according to the danger we perceive in the situation, in other words, according to the stakes we see in the target.
A secret murder
When actors do not take in enough breath, they savage their text and butcher the longer thoughts. Rather than run out of breath, an actor may cut the long thought into little segments. The words are all accounted for, as the text has been chopped up into easily disposable morsels. The problem is that before it could be dismembered the long thought had first to be murdered.
A thought is a target, it needs to be recognised before it can be acted upon. A thought must be seen before it can be uttered. And like any target, a thought must obey all the rules. In particular the thought is always transforming itself. A thought never remains fixed; a single thought will modulate itself, will continue to change, as a variation on a theme. A verse play like Romeo and Juliet has plenty of prolonged thoughts expressed in extended sequences of words.
Breathing and the imagination
If Irina begins a passionate speech with her lungs only half-full it is dangerous for her to say ‘Next time I must take more breath’, although that is perfectly true. Irina needs to see why she had not taken enough breath originally. The paucity of breath is only a symptom; its cause starts earlier. Irina runs out of breath because she has not properly seen the specific stakes in the target. Lungs half-full are alright to remonstrate with a boyfriend that has turned up late for a date. Lungs half-full are not alright to confront a lover who may destroy her.
But this is not a decision for either Irina or Juliet. This decision is taken by the target. The decision is taken by the sight of Romeo. Neither Juliet nor Irina communicate directly to the lungs. Consciously deciding when to breathe can scupper the actor and sink the imagination. It is only what we see that makes us breathe appropriately.
Irina, then, needs to be doubly equipped. First, her imagination needs to be acute enough to see the target that will make her react with that many words. Like the body, the imagination needs patience, training and endurance. As we have seen, we train the imagination only by letting ourselves see. Attention is our best coach.
But second, she needs to train her breathing technically to support any long thought. Her breathing muscles need to be fit.
Part of Irina’s invisible work needs to be the training of her body. She needs the physical capacity to meet any of these demands on her breathing whenever they might occur. Irina needs to be free of the worry that her body is not ready to do what she wants it to do. This work has to be done early in her invisible work and as part of her general training as an actor. Sadly there is no pill to keep us fit, so Irina’s training can never be completed. The actor needs discipline in order to be free.
The fourth uncomfortable choice:
certainty or faith
Before we continue, let’s consider another uncomfortable choice. Like the other choices it needs to be considered in the invisible work. The choices work in parallel. Of course they cannot be directly used, but they help us realign in a more useful direction. An addiction to certainty will paralyse the actor. For example, Irina wants to be certain that she will not dry. But we can be certain of nothing. Going over and over lines in the wings is a fairly reliable way to forget them on stage. All the actor can do is to have faith that, when needed, the lines will be there. An obsession with certainty destroys faith. We cannot have certainty and faith; we can have either one or the other. Nor can Irina be certain that her feelings will be ready on cue. But she can have faith.