IT WAS EXACTLY 9 o’clock when Paul and I reached Tortsov’s home.
I explained to him how crushed I had been to find that inspiration had been replaced by theatrical calculation.
“Yes . . . by that too,” admitted Tortsov. “One half of an actor’s soul is absorbed by his super-objective, by the through line of action, the subtext, his inner images, the elements which go to make up his inner creative state. But the other half of it continues to operate on a psycho-technique more or less in the way I demonstrated it to you.
“An actor is split into two parts when he is acting. You recall how Tommaso Salvini put it: ‘An actor lives, weeps, laughs on the stage, but as he weeps and laughs he observes his own tears and mirth. It is this double existence, this balance between life and acting that makes for art.’
“As you see, this division does no harm to inspiration. On the contrary the one encourages the other. Moreover we lead a double existence in our actual lives. But this does not prevent our living and having strong emotions.
“Do you remember what I told you back in the beginning, when we were working on objectives and the through line of action, about the two parallel lines of perspective?
“The one is the perspective of the role.
“The other is the perspective of the actor, his life on the stage, his psycho-technique while he is acting.
“The stream of psycho-technique which I illustrated for you with the Othello speech is the line of the perspective of the actor. It is close to the perspective of the role because it runs parallel with it, the way a foot-path may stretch along beside a highway. But at certain moments they may move farther apart when, for one reason or another, an actor is drawn away from the main course of his part by something extraneous and irrelevant to it. Then he loses the perspective of his role. Fortunately our psycho-technique exists for the very purpose of giving ways constantly to attract us back to the true path, just as the foot-path will always lead the pedestrian back to the highway.”
Paul and I asked Tortsov to go into more detail on the subject of the two types of perspective. He was rather reluctant to upset our whole plan of study and repeated that this was part of our future work. But we finally succeeded in drawing him out and soon he was so carried away by his subject that he did not notice how far ahead he went in his explanations.
“I went to the theatre recently to see a five-act play,” he began. “After the first act I was delighted with the production as well as the acting. The actors gave vivid characterizations, showed much fire and temperament, acted in a special manner which interested me very much. I was curious to see how the play and the acting would develop.
“But after the second act I found they had shown the same thing as in the first. Because of this fact the interest of the audience, as well as my own, suffered a definite decline. After the third act the same thing was repeated to an even more marked degree because the actors plumbed no new depths, their characters were transfixed, there was still the same fiery spirit to which the public was by now accustomed. The same manner of acting by this time had become so routine that it was boring, dull, and at times annoying. By the middle of the fifth act I was unable to take in any more. My eyes were no longer on the stage, my ears were deaf to the lines, my mind was preoccupied with the thought: How can I get out of here unnoticed?
“What is the explanation of this descending scale of impressions gathered from a good play, well acted and produced?
“Monotony,” I ventured.
“A week ago I went to a concert,” Tortsov went on. “The same ‘monotony’ was evident in the music. A good orchestra performed a good symphony. They ended it as they began it, they scarcely altered the tempo or the volume of the sound, there was no shading. It was most boring for the listeners.
“Why did they have no success, this well acted play and this good symphony performed by a good orchestra? Was it not because in both cases they were playing without perspective?
“Let us agree that the word ‘perspective’ means: the calculated, harmonious inter-relationship and distribution of the parts in a whole play or role.
“This means further that there can be no acting, no movement, no gestures, thoughts, speech, no word, feeling, etc., etc., without its appropriate perspective. The simplest entrance or exit on the stage, any action taken to carry out a scene, to pronounce a phrase, words, soliloquy and so on, must have a perspective and an ultimate purpose (the super-objective). Without those an actor may not so much as say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Even a tiny phrase taken by itself, has its own brief perspective. A whole thought expressed in a number of clauses is even less able to do without it. A single speech, a scene, an act, a play all need perspective.
“It is customary, in referring to speech, to have in mind the so-called logical perspective. But our practice in the theatre leads us to a broader terminology. We use the descriptions:
1. The perspective of the thought conveyed. This that same logical perspective.
2. The perspective in conveying complex feelings.
3. Artistic perspective, used to add colour, vivid illustration to a story or a speech.
“In the first, the perspective used in conveying a thought, logic and coherence play an important part in the unfolding of the thought and the establishing of the relation of the various parts to the whole expression.
“This perspective is achieved with the aid of a long series of key words and their accents which give sense to the phrase.
“Just as we underline this or that syllable of a word, this or that word in a phrase, we have to throw into relief the most important phrase carrying a whole thought, and do the same in a long story, a dialogue, a soliloquy. We follow the same principle of choosing the significant component parts in one large scene, a whole act and so on, the important episodes. Out of it all we evolve a chain of outstanding points which vary among themselves as to their volume and fullness.
“The lines of perspective which are used to convey complex feelings move on the subtextual, inner plane of a role. These are the lines of inner objectives, desires, ambitions, efforts, actions which are grouped, inserted, separated, combined, accented, toned down. Some represent important fundamental objectives and appear in the foreground. Others of medium or minimum value are grouped on a secondary plane, or sink quite into the background, according to the peculiar factors causing the development of the emotions throughout the play.
“These objectives, which go to make up the lines of an inner perspective, are to a large and important degree expressed in words.
“When we come to the laying on of colour along the lines of artistic perspectives we again are obliged to adhere to qualities of consecutiveness, tone and harmony. As in paintings, artistic colouring does a very great deal to make it possible to distinguish planes of speech.
“The important parts, which must be filled out most, are most highly coloured, whereas those relegated to the background are less vivid in tonal shades.
“It is only when we study a play as a whole and can appreciate its overall perspective that we are able to fit the various planes correctly together, make a beautiful arrangement of the component parts, mould them into harmonious and well rounded forms in terms of words.
“Only after an actor has thought through, analyzed and felt himself to be a living person inside his whole part there opens up to him the long, beautiful, beckoning perspective. His speech becomes, as it were, far-sighted, no longer the myopic vision it was at the start. Against this depth of background he can play out whole actions, speak whole thoughts, rather than be held to limited objectives, separate phrases and words.
“When we read an unfamiliar book aloud for the first time we lack perspective. Moment by moment we have only the immediate action, words, phrases in mind. Can such a reading be artistic and true? Of course not.
“Broad physical actions, the conveying of great thoughts, the experience of wide emotions and passions are made up of a multiplicity of component parts, and in the end a scene, an act, a play cannot escape the necessity of a perspective and an ultimate aim.
“Actors who play a role they have not studied well and thoroughly analyzed are like readers of a complicated, unfamiliar text.
“Such actors have only a dim perspective of the play. They do not understand where they must lead the characters they portray. Often when they play a scene they are familiar with they either do not distinguish or they do not know what lies still unrevealed in the obscure depths of the rest of the play. This obliges them to keep their minds constantly fixed on only the nearest action, the immediate thought expressed, utterly without regard for the whole perspective of the play.
“Take as an illustration of this the fact that some actors who play the part of Luka in Gorki’s The Lower Depths do not even read the last act because they do not appear in it. As a result they cannot possibly have a true perspective and are unable to play their role correctly. The end hinges on the beginning. The last act is the outcome of the old man’s preaching. Therefore one must have one’s eyes always trained on the climax and lead all the characters whom Luka affects towards that end.
“In a different way the tragedian who plays the title role of Othello knowing the end but without a careful study of the whole play begins to roll his eyes and gnash his teeth in the first act, gloating over the prospect of the murder.
“But Tommaso Salvini was much more calculating than that in working out the plan for his roles. Take Othello again. He was always aware of the whole perspective of the play from the moment of his fiery outburst of young passionate love in his first entrance to his supreme hatred as a jealous killer at the end of the tragedy. With mathematical precision and unrelenting consistency, from point to point, he plotted out the evolution of the emotions as they matured in his soul.
“To express this in more understandable terms let me give you another example.
“Let us suppose you are playing Hamlet, the most complex role of all in its spiritual colouring. It contains a son’s bewilderment over his mother’s suddenly transferred love—‘or ere those shoes were old’ she had already forgotten her beloved husband. In it, too, is the mystic experience of a man who has been afforded a brief glimpse into the world beyond where his father languishes. After Hamlet learns the secret of that other life this one loses its former meaning for him. The role embraces the agonizing recognition of man’s existence and the realization of a mission above his strength, on which depends the liberation of his father from his sufferings beyond the grave. For the part you must have the feelings resultant from filial devotion to your mother, love for a young girl, renunciation of that love, her death, the emotions of revenge, horror over your mother’s death, of murder, and the expectation of your death after you have fulfilled your duty. Try jumbling up all these emotions on one dish and you can imagine what a hash will result.
“But if you apportion all these experiences along the perspective of the part in logical, systematic and consecutive order, as required by the psychology of such a complex character, and the life of his spirit which unfolds and develops throughout the whole course of the play, you will have a well-built structure, a harmonious line, in which the inter-relation of its component elements is an important factor in the gradually growing and deepening tragedy of a great soul.
“Can one project any single part of such a role without bearing in mind the perspective of the whole? If, for example, you do not convey in the beginning of the play Hamlet’s deep pain and consternation caused by his mother’s frivolity, the famous scene with her later will not be properly prepared.
“If you do not feel the whole impact of the shock Hamlet receives from what the ghost tells him of life beyond the grave, there will be no understanding his doubts, his painful efforts to uncover the meaning of life, his break with his beloved, and all the strange conduct which makes him appear abnormal in the eyes of others.
“Does all this not suggest to you that it is the more incumbent on the actor who plays Hamlet to take care how he plays his first scenes, because so much will be required of him in expanded passion as his part unrolls?
“The result of that kind of preparation is what we call ‘acting with perspective’.
“As a part moves along we have, as you might say, two perspectives in mind. The one is related to the character portrayed, the other to the actor. Actually Hamlet, as a figure in a play, has no idea of perspective, he knows nothing of what the future has in store for him, whereas the actor who plays the part must bear this constantly in mind, he is obliged to keep in perspective.”
“How is it possible to forget about what is coming when you play a part for the hundredth time?” I asked.
“You cannot and need not do it,” explained Tortsov. “Although the character being played should not know what lies ahead, still perspective is necessary for the part so that he can appreciate more fully each present moment and more fully give himself up to it.
“The future in a part is its super-objective. Let the character keep moving towards it. It will do no harm if the actor meanwhile remembers for a second the whole line of his role. This will only reinforce the meaning of each segment as he lives it and it will pull his attention with increased power.
“Let us suppose that you and Paul are playing a scene between Othello and Iago. Is it not important that you should remember that you, the Moor, only yesterday arrived in Cyprus, were forever united with Desdemona, that you are experiencing the best days of your life—your honeymoon?
“Where else would you get the joyousness necessary to the opening of the scene? It is all the more important because there are so few gay colours in the play. Moreover is it any less important for you to recall for a brief moment that from this scene forward the lucky star of your life will begin to set and that this decline must only gradually become apparent and distinct? There must be a powerful contrast between the present and the future. The brighter the first the darker the second.
“You need that rapid glance into the past and the future in order to make a proper estimate of the present action, and the better you sense its relationship to the whole play the easier it will be for you to focus the full extent of your attention on it.
“Now you have the necessary basis for the perspective of a part,” concluded Tortsov.
But I was not satisfied and pressed him further with the question:
“Why does the actor himself have to have that other perspective?”
“His own perspective, as the person playing the role, is necessary to him so that at every given moment while he is on the stage he will be in a position to assess his inner creative powers and ability to express them in external terms, to apportion them and make reasonable use of the material he has amassed for his part. Take that same scene between Othello and Iago. Doubt steals into the former’s jealous soul and gradually grows. The actor who plays Othello must remember that he will have to play many more scenes of mounting passion between that point and the end of the play. It would be dangerous for him to break loose in this first scene, to show all his temperament without holding it in reserve for the gradual reinforcement of his unfolding jealousy. To squander his inner powers here would throw the whole role out of proportion. He must be prudent, calculating and always have his eyes on the final, culminating point of the play. ‘Artistic emotion is weighed not in pounds but in ounces.’
“We must not forget one extremely important quality inherent in perspective. It lends a breadth, a sweep, a momentum to our inner experiences and external actions, all of which is of extreme value to our creative achievement.
“Imagine yourself running a race for a prize, but instead of pressing on over a long distance you stopped every twenty paces. If you did this you would never get into your stride or acquire any momentum, and that is enormously important in a race.
“We actors face the same problem. If we stop short at the end of every bit in a role and then start over again with the next we never get up momentum in our efforts, our desires, our actions. Yet we must have it because it prods, stirs, inflames our feelings, our will, thoughts, imagination and soon. You should never spend yourself on a short sprint. You must have the depth, the perspective, the far away beckoning goal in mind.
“What I have said here is equally applicable to the sound of the voice, to speech, gestures, movements, actions, facial expression, temperament and tempo-rhythm. In all these fields it is dangerous to break loose, to squander your all. You must be economical and make a just estimate of your physical powers and means of transposing the character you play into terms of flesh and blood.
“To regulate them you will need not only your inner powers but also the perspective of a dramatic artist.
“Now that you have made the acquaintance of perspective in a play and in a part, think it over and tell me if it does not bear a close resemblance to your old friend the through line of action?
“Of course they are not identical, but there is a kinship between them. The one is the other’s closest aid. Perspective is the path through the entire extent of a play, along which the through line of action constantly progresses.
“Everything happens for the sake of these two elements, perspective and the through line of action. They contain the principal significance of creativeness, of art, of our approach to acting.”