What it means to perform

John Emigh:

“What the audience wants from the actor is an example of how to live this life.”

Notes from Theater East and West: Revisited, 2002, a conference in honour of Leonard Pronko’s work and the 35th anniversary of his book, Theater East and West.

Attack!

Every kind of live performance has its own natural rhythm – whether this rhythm is generated by music or text, or the unique rhythm of the show itself. The audience perceives these rhythms. Sometimes the audience becomes part of it unconsciously. Perception of the rhythm may be unconscious but the audience is no less sensitive to it.

As a performer I must therefore find this rhythm and attack it, be right on top of it, use it. Like musicians playing a piece of music jump right into, or on, a chord or a note. I remember going to a concert of the Academy of St-Martin-in-the-Fields. The way they ‘exploded’ into the first note of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and kept going. It was the most exhilarating musical ride I’ve ever experienced!

True – the rhythm is often created or decided upon by the performer but once it’s found or, as often happens, reveals itself in performance, it must be leapt into with no doubt. Full commitment, even abandon. This is what makes an audience hold its breath and engages its attention for a long journey together with the performer.

Improvising

Paris, May 2003.

The improvs come alive when we let go, stop wanting to show or be something and are simply as we are, here and now. Étre – the ‘to be’ that we all struggle to find in these improv exercises.

If we reject ‘story’ (narrative?) and the need for things to ‘happen’ in corporeal mime AND our expressions are neutral and an-emotional (not un-emotional) – What are we giving the audience?

When it works it seems like we are giving the audience ourselves, our real selves – frail, weak, stupid, afraid, and alone. But we are not giving by baring our souls for all to see, or by showing and indulging in every weakness we have. We give it clothed in struggle. We do what we do in spite of ourselves. The improvs teach us how to let the weakness show through. This is how we can connect, because we reflect the audience, because the audience recognize themselves.

The connection must be clean and clear. The moment we interject, even the tiniest nuance, the pathway is lost, the audience wakes up to where they are and fall back into their habitual skins and thoughts and attitudes. Then it’s as if a glass wall were thrown up between us.

It almost doesn’t matter what the subject matter is as long as it can be arranged to form a solid stage for the struggle:

• It must have space, be ‘poor’ enough to allow the audience in.
• It must satisfy the audience’s intellectual curiosity in order to put their minds at ease and draw them on.
• It must have strong limitations for the actor to struggle against otherwise the struggle is fake.

People find corporeal mime difficult to take. It takes a long time and a great deal of patience for the connection to be made, like meeting someone for the first time. It isn’t common anymore to look for great strength in weakness, emotion in restraint. Usually we get signs showing us where to look or how to look for these qualities. How much richer would it be if we could uncover and discover this light for ourselves, looking out from behind our own eyes.

Our work is about frailty, mortality and fear – our own.

Going all the way

“I’d rather an audience like me than dislike me, but I’d rather they disliked me than be apathetic, because that is the kiss of death.”

Martha Graham, Blood Memory: an autobiography, 1991.

Love

Paris, May 2003.

Love is important. Both the giving and receiving of it. An audience gathers not just to be loved but also to give love. Not romantic love and not to the actor on the stage although it’s often confused with that.

We want to give love to the whatever-it-is embodied on stage. The actor opens the door to this giving by opening him or herself, and then must step out of the way.