To fail in spectacular ways

Thoughts on training from Chris Jacobs on the Facebook group Shakespeare Unleashed. Based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Chris is one of the most experienced, and perhaps the only, teacher of Meyerhold’s biomechanics training for actors in South East Asia. Thanks Chris!

Exercise Protocol for Actors:

An acting exercise is a repeatable action which is designed with very specific objectives in mind, with each intrinsic element of that exercise existing in such a form as to allow the actor to progressively work towards the successful attainment of those objectives.

Therefore the manner in which an exercise is approached and carried out, both physically and mentally, is critical to the success of  that exercise, and the further development of the actor.

Actors who think they are exercising or training only the muscles of their physical bodies, are cheating themselves.

Actors who modify each exercise in order to make it easier or more comfortable to execute, are cheating themselves.

Actors who approach each exercise as a ‘Starting Point’ for an improvisation performance, are cheating themselves.

Actors who exploit each exercise in order to illustrate their superiority or ‘Stage Cred’, are cheating themselves.

Actors who exploit each exercise in order to evaluate the abilities of others, are cheating themselves.

Training exercises are acting disciplines: in every moment of every exercise the actor must be, at one and the same time, exercising and training the muscles of his mind, i.e., Will, Focus, Concentration, Courage, Tenacity and Stamina, in addition to those of his physical being.

Training exercises are not treasure troves of knowledge: they build doorways that lead towards  knowledge.

Training exercises are not secret methods for showing one how to be expressive or to “reveal” oneself: they are work, and their true benefits are released through the time and the fatigue of long, monotonous work.

Training exercises are not pursuits of hedonism: they coax actors outside what is comfortable, deny them what is easy, dare them to risk what is frightening, and actively encourage them to fail in spectacular ways.

Chris Jacobs 2012

The world is made of verbs

This from James Hillman in The Soul’s Code. An apt a description for what the process of practicing presence feels like.

The world is made less of nouns than of verbs. It doesn’t consist merely in objects and things; it is filled with useful, playful, and intriguing opportunities. The oriole doesn’t see a branch, but an occasion for perching; the cat doesn’t see a thing we call an empty box, it sees safe hiding for peering. The bear doesn’t smell honeycomb, but the opportunity for delicious feeding. The world is buzzing and blooming with information, which is always available and never absent.

Listening

“ … to listen, to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinions.”

Herman Hesse, Siddhartha, 1922.

Musicality in Speaking

“The pure sound and texture of the words carry an enormous weight of meaning. … The actor must be sensitive to words and appreciate the taste and sound and imagery of a word, even a simple word. Many modern actors … tend to speak the way that they do in everyday life.

What the actor needs to work on all the time is finding the thought behind each word. When you do that you find there is a music in thought.

When King Lear says, ‘Never, never, never, never’ – if you try to analyze this in metric terms, you can never say it truly. Paul Scofield said it differently every single night. Every single time, it had different music. The music was the thought and feeling, so the beat was not regular. The beat is the human beat that can only be found by the actor discovering more and more deeply the true thought and feeling that comes not just from his own thinking but from the actual texture of the words themselves.

In Shakespeare there is such compact thought in each line that if you take the line as a whole it would actually be beyond the human being to think so elaborately. If you listen to the texture of the work, you can discover the sense of music and link it to meaning. It is the difference between Western music, which is all based on a predictable structure given by bars that the composer has set down, and Eastern music, which is based on an awareness of irregular rhythms: There is no regularity.

When the thought and the feeling are right, the music returns; but it isn’t a music that comes from starting with the external structure.”

Peter Brook, interview in American Theatre, May/June 2001.

[YT]: This is what we try to do in mime. To be able to move with the musicality and texture of words and of thought.

Actor-Shaman

The actor as shaman embodies the hopes, dreams, doubts, and weaknesses of the audience – becomes a screen on which all of these are projected. But the screen must BE. It must not be blank and must be PRESENT and visible and OPEN TO THE GAZE OF THE “OTHER.”

Our instinct is to hide, either by getting small (physically or in spirit) or by putting up a front, by “acting” – impersonating or declaring.

To do neither is an act of courage that has nothing to do with fearlessness or with arrogance. It’s just to know and be exactly where one is in the present moment.

[updated March 1, 2009]