“OUR STUDY OF this thing we call ‘tempo-rhythm’ has progressed considerably, ”Tortsov remarked. “First of all we tried to discover what it was in its most obvious manifestations. Like kindergarten children we clapped in time to the metronomes. Then we progressed to more complicated tempi; we even tried to send messages by beating out the rhythm of a series of actions seen by our inner eyes. And we discovered that the beats conveyed a feeling however nebulous to our hearers but which had an even stronger effect on ourselves. It actually aided in the process of our inner creation.
“We went on to subtler evidences of tempo-rhythm, found that our tempo-rhythm could be in seeming conflict with that of others on the stage, in life; we discovered that within ourselves we could experience an inner tempo-rhythm and a different outer one at the same time and that the conflict of the two was evident from small hints in our actions. It gave power and reality to the character we were building. We discussed the tempo-rhythm of a whole play, of its through line of action, its subtle shiftings and yet its oneness of effect when successfully discovered and performed.
“All this was the tempo-rhythm of movement and action. Now we are going to apply the same discoveries to speech. I start with the fact that the voice sounds of syllables and words provide an excellent means of conveying the tempo-rhythm of the inner import of any play. As I said before, in the process of speech the line of words proceeds in time, and that time is broken up by the sounds of letters, syllables, words. This division of time makes rhythmic parts and groups.
“The nature of certain sounds, syllables and words requires a clipped pronunciation comparable to eighth and sixteenth notes in music: others must be produced in a more weighty, longer form, more ponderously, like whole or half notes. Along with this some sounds and syllables receive a stronger or a weaker rhythmic accentuation; a third group may be entirely without any accent.
“These spoken sounds, in turn, are interlarded with pauses, rests for breathing, of most variable lengths. All these are phonetic possibilities out of which to fashion an endless variety of the tempo-rhythms of speech. In making use of them an actor works out for himself a finely proportioned speech style. He needs this when he is on the stage and using words to convey both the exalted emotions of tragedy and the gay mood of comedy.
“To create a tempo-rhythm of speech it does not suffice to divide time into particles of sound; one must also have a beat to form speech measures.
“In the domain of action we produced this by means of the metronome and bell. What can we use for this problem? How shall we synchronize individual rhythmic stresses, the particular letters and syllables of the words in our text? Instead of a metronome we shall be obliged to make use of a mental count. We must constantly, intuitively keep ourselves attuned to it and its tempo-rhythm.
“A measured, resonant, well blended speech possesses many qualities akin to those of music and singing.
“Letters, syllables, words—these are the musical notes of speech, out of which to fashion measures, arias, whole symphonies. There is good reason to describe beautiful speech as musical.
“Words spoken with resonance and sweep are more affecting. In speech as in music there is a great difference between a phrase enunciated in whole, quarter or sixteenth notes, or with triplets or quintuplets thrown in. In one case the phrase can be solemn, in another the tripping chatter of a school girl.
“In the first instance there is calm, in the second nervousness, agitation.
“Talented singers know all about this. They stand in fear of sinning against rhythm. If the music calls for three quarter notes a true artist will produce three tones of exactly that length. If the composer has put a whole note, the true singer will hold it to the end of the bar. If the music calls for triplets or syncopations, he will sing them with the mathematical rhythm required. This precision has an irresistible effect. Art requires order, discipline, precision and finish. Even in cases where one is called upon to convey a rhythmic effect musically, one must do it with clear cut finish. Even chaos and disorder have their tempo-rhythm.
“What I have just said in regard to music and singers is equally applicable to us dramatic artists. There exists, however, a vast number of singers who are not real artists but just people who sing, with or without voices. They have an astonishing facility for jumbling eighth with sixteenth notes, quarter with half notes, three eighth notes of equal length into one and so on.
“Consequently their singing lacks all necessary precision, discipline, organization, finish. It turns into a disorderly, chaotic mess. It ceases to be music and becomes some sort of sheer vocal exhibitionism.
“The same thing can and does happen to speech. Take an actor, for instance, of the type of Vasya with an uneven rhythm in his speech. He switches it not only from clause to clause but in the middle even of a single phrase. Often one half of a sentence will be spoken in a slow tempo and the second half in a markedly rapid one. Let us take the phrase ‘Most potent, grave and reverend signiors.’ That would be spoken slowly, solemnly, but the next words ‘my very noble and approved good masters,’ would be, after a long pause, suddenly delivered with extreme rapidity.
“Many actors who are careless of speech, inattentive to words, pronounce them with such thoughtless slipshod speed, without putting any endings on them, that they end up with completely mutilated, half spoken phrases.
“Shifting rhythms are even more obvious in actors of certain national origins.
“In proper and beautiful speech there should not be any of these manifestations, except where a change of tempo-rhythm is called for on purpose for the characterization of a part. Obviously the splitting up of words must correspond to the rapidity or slowness of speech and must preserve the given tempo-rhythm. In quick conversation or reading the pauses are shorter and, conversely, longer in slow conversation or reading.
“Our difficulty lies in the fact that many actors lack a well-rounded training in two important elements of speech; on the one side there is smoothness, slowness, resonance, fluency, and on the other, rapidity, lightness, clarity, crispness in the pronunciation of words. We rarely hear in the Russian theatre speech which is slow, resonant, legato, or really rapid and light. In the vast majority of cases all we are aware of is long pauses and the words between them hurriedly rushed out.
“To achieve stately, slow speech we need first of all to replace silent pauses with sonorous cadences, the sustained singing tone of the words.
“It will help you to read aloud very slowly to the timing of a metronome, if you are careful to preserve the smooth flow of words in rhythmic measures and also if you provide yourselves with the right inner basis for your exercise. In this way you should be able to achieve slow, fluent speech.
“It is even more rare to hear good rapid speech on our stage, well sustained as to tempo, clear cut in rhythm, enunciated so as to be intelligible. We do not know how to rival the French and the Italian actors in their brilliant quick speech. Most of us cannot do real patter, we babble, spatter and spew out words. Real patter has to be learned and it begins with the mastery of very slow, exaggeratedly precise speech. By long and frequent repetition our speech apparatus becomes so trained that it learns how to execute the same words at the quickest possible rate of speed. This requires constant practice because dramatic speech at times requires this speed. So do not take the bad singers with their broken rhythms of speech as your models. Take the true artists, learn their ways of speech with all their clarity, right proportions and discipline.
“In speaking give the proper length to sounds, syllables, words, use a clean cut rhythm in combining their tonal particles; form your phrases into measures of speech, regulate the rhythmic relationship among whole phrases; learn to love correct and clear accentuation, appropriate to remembered emotions and also to the creation of a character image.
“A clear cut rhythm of speech facilitates rhythmic sensibility and the opposite is also true: the rhythm of sensations experienced helps to produce clear speech. Of course, all this occurs in the cases where precision of speech is thoroughly based on inner, suggested circumstances and the magic if.”
Today’s lesson began when Tortsov ordered the large metronome to be set going at a slow tempo. As usual Rakhmanov indicated the measures by the ringing of a bell.
Then another small metronome was started to indicate the rhythm of speech. Tortsov then asked me to speak to their accompaniment.
“What shall I say?” I asked, puzzled.
“Whatever you like,” he replied. “Tell me about some episode in your life, what you did yesterday, what you are thinking about today.”
I racked my brains and then told about what I had seen the previous evening in the movies. Meantime the metronome beat the accents, the bell rang, but they bore no relation to what I was saying. They worked along in their mechanical way, and I talked along in mine.
Tortsov laughed and remarked:
“The band is playing and the flag just flaps.”
“It’s not surprising because I don’t understand how I am supposed to speak in cadence with a metronome,” I retorted nervously in an effort to defend myself. “One can sing, or recite verses in time and in measures, and try to make the stress and scansion coincide with certain beats of the machine. But how can this be done with prose? Where should the stresses coincide—I don’t understand,” I said in a plaintive tone. But Tortsov would only tell me to continue.
Actually I was ahead or behind the accent, I dragged or I rushed the tempo unreasonably. In either case I missed the beat of the metronome.
Then suddenly and quite by accident I happened to coincide with the beat over and over again and this gave me an extraordinarily agreeable feeling.
But my joy was shortlived. The tempo-rhythm which I had accidentally hit on lasted only for several seconds, then it quickly vanished to be replaced once more by the previous disjunction.
I forced myself to achieve a new accord with the metronome. But the greater my effort the more confused I became in my rhythm and the more I was put out by the beat of the machine. I was no longer conscious of what I was saying and finally I stopped altogether.
“I can’t go on! I have no sense of tempo or of rhythm,” I concluded and I was almost on the verge of tears.
“That’s not so! Don’t you confuse yourself,” was Tortsov’s rejoinder. “It is only that you are too demanding in your tempo-rhythm in prose, consequently it cannot give you what you expect. Don’t forget that prose cannot be scanned, any more than ordinary motions of the body can be danced. Rhythmic coincidence cannot be rigidly regular, whereas in verses and in dances this is carefully prepared in advance.
“People who possess a greater sense of rhythm will achieve more frequent coincidence of accents. Those in whom this sense is not so well developed will do this less often. That’s all. What I am trying to discover is who among you belong in the first and who in the second category.
“You personally may be reassured,” he said, “because I count you among the rhythmically endowed students. It is only that you are as yet not cognizant of one method which would help you to a control of tempo-rhythm. So listen attentively and I shall explain an important secret of speech technique to you.
“There is tempo-rhythm in prose as well as in poetry and music. But in ordinary speech it is accidental. In prose the tempo-rhythm is mixed: one phrase will be spoken in one rhythm, the next in an entirely different one. One phrase will be long, another short, and each will have its own peculiar rhythm.
“In the beginning one may be inclined to the sad conclusion that prose is not given to rhythm. But I would suggest this question: Have you ever had occasion to hear an opera, an aria, or a song, not written in verse but in prose? If so you heard a composition in which the notes, pauses, measures, accompaniment, melody, tempo-rhythm were integrated with the letters, syllables, words and phrases of the text. The whole combined to produce harmonious, rhythmic musical sounds with the underlying text of words. In that realm of mathematically proportioned rhythm simple prose appeared almost to be verse, it had gained all the harmony of music. Now let us try to follow this same path in our own prosaic speech.
“Let us recall first what takes place in music. The voice sings a melody with words; the spaces, where there are no notes with words, are filled out by the accompaniment, or rests are inserted to round out the rhythmic beats in each measure.
“We have the same thing in prose. Letters, syllables, words take the place for us of notes, and stops, pauses for breath are counts which fill the rhythm when there is no verbal text to round out the measure of speech.
“The sound of letters, syllables and words with pauses in between are excellent material, as you already know, for the creation of all sorts of different rhythms.
On the stage our prose speech can to a certain extent approach music and verse when the stresses on words fall constantly on the same beat as the accent in a given rhythm.
“We see something of this sort in ‘poems in prose’, and also in the work of some modern poets which might be called ‘prose in verse’ and which is so close to ordinary colloquial talk.
“The tempo-rhythm of our prose, then, is made up of alternating groups of stressed and unstressed syllables, interlarded with pauses, which naturally have a flow pleasing to the ear and which follow infinite patterns of rhythm. At the same time we must speak and be silent, move or be still in tempo-rhythm.
“Ordinary pauses and pauses for breath in spoken poetry or prose have an extreme importance not only because they are a component part of the rhythmic line but also because they play a significant and active role in the very technique of creating and controlling rhythm. Both types of pauses make possible the coincidence of the stresses in the rhythms of speech, actions, emotions with the accents of an actor’s inner beat.
“This process of rounding out the blanks in a measure with rests and pauses for breath is called by some ‘Ta-ta-ti-ra-reering!’
“The origin of the expression, incidentally, is drawn from the fact that when we are singing a melody and do not know the words we replace the beats with nonsensical syllables such as: ta-ta-ti-ra-ra.
“You were upset because the agreement of your stresses with the tick of metronome was accidental. Now I hope you will be less concerned about it, since you know that there are means to overcome this, and one which will render your prose speech rhythmic.”
“The crux of the matter is, of course, in knowing how to combine phrases of varying rhythms into one whole. It almost plays a part similar to that of a conductor and a chorus who are called upon to carry all the crowd of people listening to them from one part of a symphony written in 3/4 time to another in 5/4 time. This cannot be done immediately. People in general, and especially the mass of an audience, when accustomed in one part of a symphony to be attuned to a given rate of speed and measure, cannot easily shift to and accept an entirely different tempo and rhythm in another part of a symphony.
“A conductor is occasionally obliged to help both his performers and his audience over the obstacle of this transition. He does not accomplish his goal at once, he carries his performers and listeners through a series of transitional, rhythmic steps which lead in logical progression to the new rhythm.
“We must do the same in turning from one measure of speech with its tempo-rhythm to another of a different beat, of differing tempo and length of measure. The difference between the conductor and us lies in the fact that he accomplishes what he is after quite openly with his baton in hand, but we have to do it secretly, inwardly, with the help of a mental beat or ‘tatatirareering’.
“The first purpose for which we actors need these transitional devices is to make a clear cut, definite entry into the new tempo-rhythm and be confident that we carry with us the person with whom we are engaged at the time and, along with that person, carry the whole audience.
“This ‘ta-ta-ti-ra-reering’ in prose is the bridge which links the most heterogeneous phrases or measures of most heterogeneous rhythms.”
The rest of the lesson was spent in our talking to the tick of the metronome in a very much simplified way. We chatted normally, but now we tried to have our key words and syllables coincide wherever possible with the beat of the metronome.
Into the intervals between the beats we arranged a series of words and phrases so grouped that, without changing the sense of what we were saying, it was logically right to have the stresses coincide with the beats. We even succeeded in filling out the blanks in the verbal contents of our phrases with counts and pauses. Of course that kind of speaking is very arbitrary and haphazard. Neverthless it did produce a certain harmony and I derived some inner encouragement from the experiment.
It is to this effect of tempo-rhythm on the inner sensibilities that Tortsov ascribed great importance.
Tortsov opened with this small scene from Griboyedov’s verse classic, Woe From Too Much Wit.
Famusov: What’s this? . . . Molchalin, you?
Molchalin: I?...
Famusov: Here and at this hour? Why? . . .
After a brief pause Tortsov rephrased the speeches thus:
“‘Well, what is the occasion for your being here? Is that you, my friend Molchalin?’ ‘Yes, it’s I.’ ‘How do you happen to be here at this hour?’”
He now spoke the phrases without rhyme or rhythm.
“The sense remains the same, but what a difference! In the prosy form the words spill all over, they lose their tautness, their clean cut, emphatic quality, their edge,” explained Tortsov. “In verse every word is necessary, there are no superfluous ones. What we use a whole phrase to express in prose may often be said in a word or two in poetry. And with what finish, what control!
“You may say that the essential difference between the two contrasting versions I have used as examples of poetry versus prose lies in the fact that the former was written by the great Griboyedov and the second was unsuccessfully composed by me.
“That is, of course, true. Nevertheless I maintain that even if the great poet had written the very same thing in prose he would not have been able to convey the same exquisite quality as he did in his verse, the clean cut rhythm, the sharpness of the rhymes. For instance when Molchalin meets Famusov in the first act, in order to express the state of panic he is in, he is given only the one word to say: ‘I’.
“The actor who plays Molchalin must have the same finish, edge, sharpness to his inner feelings as to his external conveying of all that lies behind the words: the terror, the embarrassment, the apologetic servility—everything that Molchalin is experiencing.
“Poetry arouses different emotions because of its different form from prose. But the converse is also true. Poetry has another form because we sense its subtext in a different way.
“One of the main differences between spoken prose and verse forms lies in their having different tempo-rhythms, in the fact that their measures differ in their influence on our sensations, memories, our emotions.
“On this basis we may reason as follows: The more rhythmic verse or prose is in speech, the more clearly defined should be our experience of the thoughts and emotions which underlie the words of the text. And conversely: The more clear, defined and rhythmic the thoughts and emotions we experience the more they call for rhythmic verbal expression.
“Here we have a new aspect of the effect of tempo-rhythm on emotion and of emotion on tempo-rhythm.
“Do you remember how you beat out and ‘conducted’ the tempi and rhythms of various moods, actions, even images suggested to your imaginations? Then the sheer beating of tempo-rhythm was sufficient to stimulate your emotion memories, your feelings and experiences.
“If that much could be brought about by ordinary tapping, how much more easily can you achieve the effect by means of the living sounds of a human voice, the tempo-rhythm of letters, syllables, words and their underlying implications.
“Yet even if we do not understand the meaning of words their sounds affect us through their tempo-rhythms. I recall, for instance, the soliloquy of Corado in the melodrama Family of a Criminal as played by Tommaso Salvini. This soliloquy described a criminal’s escape from prison.
“I was ignorant of the Italian language, I had no idea what the actor was narrating, but I was deeply involved in all the detailed emotions he was experiencing. I was helped to this largely not only by the magnificent intonations of Salvini, but also by the remarkably clear cut, expressive tempo-rhythm of his speech.
“Think too of verses in which tempo-rhythm paints sound pictures, such as the ringing of bells or the clatter of horses” hooves. For example:
Hear the tolling of the bells—
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris and he:
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; . . .”
“You know that speech consists not only of sounds but also of pauses,” Tortsov explained today. “Both of these must be equally impregnated with tempo-rhythm.
“Rhythm is inherent in an actor and manifests itself when he is on the stage, whether in his actions or when he is inactive, when he speaks or is silent. It is interesting now to trace the interrelationship of these moments of tempi and rhythms in action and inaction, speech and silence. This is an especially difficult question when we are dealing with verse forms in speech. I shall begin with that.
“The difficulty lies in the fact that in verse there is a limit to the extent of any break or pause. One cannot with impunity prolong a pause because it breaks the tempo-rhythm of the spoken words. This causes both the speaker and the listener to lose track of the previous tempo and metre of the verse, they get out of control and must be re-established.
“That in turn causes a rift in the verse. Nevertheless there are circumstances when prolonged pauses are inevitable because of necessary actions. Take as an example that part of the first scene of Griboyedov’s play Woe From Too Much Wit. Lisa knocks at Sophia’s bedroom door, to put an end to an amorous interview between her mistress and Molchalin which has been prolonged to the early morning hours. The scene runs thus:
They hear but they refuse to listen. (A pause. She sees the clock, an idea strikes her.)
I’ll set the clock ahead, although it means a scolding, I’ll make the hour strike . . .
(Pause. Lisa crosses the stage, opens the clock case, turns the hands, causes them to play their chimes. She dances. Enter Famusov)
Oh, master!
Famusov: Your master, yes.
(Pause. Famusov goes over to the clock, opens the case, stops the chimes)
How frivolous,
You naughty girl. I know
I could not have imagined such a creature!
“As you see there are lengthy intervals imposed here between the lines by the nature of the action. It must be added that the difficulty of carrying over the verse is further complicated where there is the necessity of making the point of the rhymes. An excessively long interval between the rhymed lines makes one forget them, it kills them, and an all too short interval between them, which hurries and scamps the action called for, destroys one’s belief in the credibility and truth of those actions. It is necessary to reckon a combination of timing, intervals between rhymed words and the feeling of truth in the action. In all these alternations of spoken words, pauses, wordless actions, ‘ta-ta-ti-ra-reering’ will support the inner rhythm.
“Many actors who play the parts of Lisa and Famusov are afraid of extended breaks in the spoken text, they rush too fast through the necessary business in order to get back as quickly as possible the words and the tempo-rhythm which has been interrupted. A choppiness results, it kills the audience’s belief in the truthfulness of what is happening. Such undermining of the action and speech turns what is done on the stage into simple nonsense. It takes all life out of acting, and anything that is lifeless and has no underlying basis is unconvincing. From every point of view it is boring, it cannot hold, it cannot even attract the attention of the public. This state of affairs not only does not shorten the pauses, on the contrary it makes them seem even longer. That is why the kind of actors I am describing defeat their own purposes by fussy movements, winding the clock, stopping the chimes. They betray their own powerlessness, their fear of pauses, their senseless fidgets and their lack of all the underpinnings to their lines. They should proceed quite differently: they should quietly, without undue pauses between lines, carry out the needed movements in accordance with the inner beat. And they should at all times be motivated by a sense of truthfulness and rhythm.
“When an actor begins to speak again after a long pause, he needs for a second or two to emphasize the accent of verse rhythm. This will help both him and the audience get back into the rhythm that has been interrupted and perhaps even lost track of.
“As you see an actor should know how to be rhythmic not only in speech but also in silence. He must reckon the words together with the pauses and not take them as separate entities.
“It is because the measure of spoken words and the rhythmic quality of the intervals is most evident in verse that I have used that as the first demonstration.
“It is not my job to teach you versification or even how to read verse. That will be done by an expert. I am merely acquainting you with various discoveries of my own experience. They will help you in your work.
“From all I have said you can easily judge the all-important part tempo-rhythm plays in an actor’s work. Together with the through line of action and the subtext it runs like a thread through all movements, words, pauses, the emotional experience of a part and its physical interpretation.”
The next step was a review of tempo-rhythm. Leo was the first called up to be examined. He read the Salieri soliloquy (from Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri) and he acquitted himself very well. In recalling how unsuccessful Leo had been demonstrating tempo-rhythm in the exercise with the tray, Tortsov made the remark:
“Here is an example of the co-existence in one person of arhythmic physical action with rhythmic speech, even when this latter is rather dry and somewhat lacking in inner content.”
Vasya was next, and in contrast to Leo he executed the old tray exercise excellently, although he did not come off so well with his spoken rhythms.
“There is the opposite state of affairs, a person who is rhythmic in his movements and at the same time arhythmic in speech,” said Tortsov.
Grisha read next. Tortsov’s comment on him was to class him with the actors who make use of one fixed tempo-rhythm in everything they do, their movements, words, silences, all in a monotonous pace and measure.
These actors suit their permanent tempo-rhythm to their type: the “noble father” has his fixed and always “noble” rhythm; the ingenue always warbles in a youthful restless, rapid rhythm, the comédienne, the hero, the heroine—each has his permanently established tempo-rhythm.
Although Grisha aspires to be a leading man, he has adopted the tempo and rhythm of a character actor, or what the French call a raisonneur.
“That is too bad,” explained Tortsov, “because it has a dampening effect. It would be better for him to stick to his off-stage tempo-rhythm. That, at least, would not have frozen in one kind of pace, it would reflect the alternating rhythms of life.”
For various reasons Tortsov did not have the others go through a demonstration. Instead he turned to the explanation of another aspect of this same problem of tempo-rhythm:
“There are many actors,” he said, “who allow themselves to be carried away by the external form of poetry, its metre, and completely ignore the subtext and all the inner rhythm of living and feeling.
“They may be meticulous, even to the point of pedantry, in their rendering of the metre. They may stress, with careful articulation, each rhyme, and scan a poem with mechanical precision. They are extremely fearful of any divergence from the mathematically exact rhythm. They are also afraid of pauses because they sense the vacuum of subtext. Actually the subtext is non-existent with them, they cannot really love a poem without knowing that which illumines it from within. All that is left is an empirical interest in rhythms and rhymes produced for their own sake, and hence a mechanical reading.
“These same actors have a similar attitude towards tempo. Having fixed this or that rate of speed they stick to it throughout a whole reading, never realizing that the tempo must go on living, vibrating, to a certain degree changing, but not remain frozen at the one rate of speed.
“There is little to choose between this attitude towards tempo, this lack of sensitiveness, and the soulless grinding out of a melody on a hand organ, or the tick of a metronome. Just compare this conception with that of a gifted conductor.
“For musicians of that sort an andante is not an inflexible andante, an allegro is not an absolute allegro. The first may at any time impinge on the second, or the second on the first. This life-giving oscillation does not exist in the mechanical tick of a metronome. In a good orchestra the tempi are constantly, almost imperceptibly, shifting and blending like the colours in a rainbow.
“All this applies to the theatre. We have directors and actors who are just mechanical craftsmen, and others who are splendid artists. The tempo of speech of the first is boring, monotonous, formal, whereas that of the second is infinitely varied, lively and expressive. Need I stress the fact that actors who take a cut and dried attitude towards tempo-rhythm never can really handle verse forms?
“We are familiar with the other extreme of reading on the stage in which the verse is all but turned into prose.
“This often is the result of excessive, exaggerated, over-intensified attention to the subtextual content, out of all proportion to the verse. It becomes burdened down by psycho-technique in the pauses, involved and muddled psychology.
“All this produces a heavy-footed inner tempo-rhythm and a psychologically over complex subtext which because of its involutions seeps into the verbal verse.
“A dramatic Wagnerian soprano with her rich, powerful voice is not chosen to sing the light, ethereal coloratura arias.
“In the same way one cannot weigh down the lightly rhyming verse of Griboyedov’s play with an unnecessarily deep emotional subtext.
“This does not mean, of course, that verse cannot have deep emotional content. On the contrary. We all know that writers use the verse form when they want to convey edifying experiences or tragic emotions. Yet actors who overburden it with unduly ponderous subtextual content never really know how to handle poetry.
“There is a third type of actors who stand midway between the first two. They have an equal interest in the subtext with its inner tempo-rhythm and with the verbal verse text with its external tempo-rhythm, its sound forms, its measures and its definite outline. Actors of this type handle verse in quite a different way. Before they begin to recite they immerse themselves in waves of tempo-rhythm, and they remain soaked in it. In this way, not only their reading, but also their movements, their gait, their emanations and even the springs of their emotional experiences are constantly being flooded by these same waves of tempo-rhythm. They do not cut themselves off from them while they are speaking, nor when they are silent, in either logical or psychological pauses, when they are in action or when they are motionless.
“Actors of this type, who are inwardly permeated with tempo-rhythm, are perfectly at ease in pauses because these are not blank, dead places in the role, but lively intervals full of meaning; they have an inner glow of feeling and of imagination.
“These actors are never without an inner metronome; it provides an ever-present mental accompaniment to each word, act, reflexion, emotion.
“It is only under such circumstances that the verse form not only presents no embarrassments to the actor and his emotions, but even helps him to a full freedom of inner and outer action. It is only under such circumstances, when the inner process of an actor who is living his part is fused with its external incarnation, that a common tempo-rhythm is created and there is a complete union of the text and the subtext.
“When actors have an innately right comprehension of what they are conveying to the public they instantly fall into a more or less rhythmic pattern of verbal and physical expression. This happens because the bond between rhythm and feeling is so very close. Yet these same people, if their feelings do not respond spontaneously and they have to resort to rhythm to arouse them, are utterly helpless.
“So it is a great advantage to have a natural sense of tempo and rhythm. In any case it is something one should work to develop from one’s earliest youth. Unfortunately there are many actors in whom it is scarcely developed at all.”
Our class today was devoted to a summing up by Tortsov:
“The time has come to look at the results of our prolonged efforts. Let us check rapidly over what we have accomplished. Do you remember how we clapped hands to stimulate a mood in which feelings would correspond to the rhythm? Do you remember how we clapped out anything that came to mind, a march, a train’s noise, various conversations? This clapping evoked a mood and feelings, if not in the listeners, at least in the person who was doing it. Do you remember the various tempi suggested by the departure of a train and all the real excitement felt by the passenger? And how we amused ourselves by evoking all kinds of feelings with a make-believe metronome? Then there was the exercise with the tray and all your outward and inward metamorphoses from the president of a sporting club into a drunken waiter in a small town railroad café. And do you recall acting to music?
“In all these sketches and exercises in action it was the tempo-rhythm in each case which created the mood and stimulated the corresponding emotional experiences.
“We made analogous experiments with words. You remember the influence on your feelings of the words recited in quarter notes, eighth notes, etc.
“Then we tried out ways of combining verse with rhythmic intervals of silent action. Here you discovered the help to be derived from ‘ta-ta-ti-ra-reering’. It served to keep the general rhythm of the verse form and the proportions of clear cut action, thereby effecting the union of words and acts.
“In all these exercises which I have enumerated there is one result which emerges, in greater or lesser degree. A state of inner experience, of inner sensation is created.
“This makes it possible for us to accept the fact that tempo-rhythm, whether mechanically, intuitively or consciously created, does act on our inner life, on our feelings, on our inner experiences. The same is true when we are in the very process of creative action on the stage.
“For what I have to say now I shall ask your most serious attention because I shall speak about something of deepest import not only in the field of tempo-rhythm, in which we have just been working, but in the wider field of our whole creative effort.”
Tortsov made a significant pause here before he disclosed what was on his mind.
“Everything we have discovered about tempo-rhythm leads us to the conviction that it is the closest ally and adjunct of feeling because it often appears as a direct, immediate or else sometimes even an almost mechanical stimulus to emotion memory and consequently to innermost experience.
“From this it follows that we cannot truly feel in the presence of the wrong or inappropriate tempo-rhythm. And further that we cannot find the true tempo-rhythm unless we simultaneously are moved by the feelings that are appropriate to it.
“There is an indissoluble interdependence, interaction and bond between tempo-rhythm and feeling and, conversely, between feeling and tempo-rhythm.
“If you will examine closely what I am saying you will realize the full extent of what we have discovered. It is extraordinarily important. We are considering the effect, direct or often only mechanical, of external tempo-rhythm on our capricious, arbitrary, intractable, shy feelings; on those feelings subject to no commands, frightened off by the least exhibition of force into the inaccessible well springs of our beings, those same feelings which up to now we have succeeded in affecting only by indirect, magnetic means. Here suddenly we find a direct, an immediate approach!
“This is indeed a great discovery! And if it really is the case then the correctly established tempo-rhythm of a play or a role, can of itself, intuitively (on occasion automatically) take hold of the feelings of an actor and arouse in him a true sense of living his part.
“Ask any singer what it means to him to sing under the direction of a talented musician who knows how to gauge the right tempo-rhythm, the one which is true, exact and characteristic of a given piece of music. He will tell you he scarcely recognizes himself.
“Imagine by contrast what happens to the singer who has prepared his role the right way and then comes out on the stage to be met with a wrong tempo-rhythm which clashes with his own. It is bound to undermine completely his feelings, his part, his inner creative state which is essential to his work.
“Exactly the same thing happens to actors when there is a clash of tempo-rhythm between their feelings and their physical interpretation of them in words and acts.
“Where does this lead us in the end? To the inescapable conclusion offered us by the wide possibility inherent in our psycho-technique, namely that we possess a direct, immediate means to stimulate every one of our inner motive forces.
“The direct effect on our mind is achieved by the words, the text, the thought, which arouse consideration. Our will is directly affected by the super-objective, by other objectives, by a through line of action. Our feelings are directly worked upon by tempo-rhythm.
“This is an all important acquisition for our psycho-technique.”