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

Jerzy Grotowski, 1989

“Art is deeply rebellious. Bad artists talk about rebellion, but true artists do the rebellion. They respond to the consecrated order by an act.

Here there is a most dangerous and most important point. One can, in following this route, end up in a sort of rebellion that is not even exclusively verbal but anarchic, which is the refusal of our responsibilities. In the realm of art, this appears under the form of dilettantism: one is not credible in one’s craft; one has no mastery; one has no capacities; one is truly a dilettante in the worst sense of the word – so one is rebelling.

No, none of that. Art as rebellion is to create the fait accompli, which pushes back the limits imposed by society or, in tyrannical systems, imposed by power. But you can’t push back these limits if you are not credible. Your fait accompli is nothing but humbug if it is not fait competent.

Yes! It is blasphemous! But it’s precise.

You know what you are doing, you have worked out your weapons, you have credibility, you have created a fait accompli, which is of such mastery that even your adversaries cannot deny it. If you don’t have this attitude of competence at your disposal in your rebellion, you will lose everything in the battle. Even if you are sincere.

… Real rebellion in art is persistent, mastered, never dilettante. Art has always been the effort to confront oneself with the insufficiency, and by this very fact, art has always been complementary to social reality.

Don’t focus on just one thing as limited as theatre. The theatre is all the phenomena around theatre, the whole culture. We can use the word theatre as much as we can abolish it.”

Jerzy Grotowski, Tu es les fils de quelqu’un (You are somebody’s son), 1989, from The Grotowski Sourcebook.