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

Working definition

An artist is someone who has chosen to pay extraordinary attention to a particular thing, isolating it from the whole experience of existence and then presenting it back to other people in the form of a particular experience.

Human, too human

Following Decroux’s words, in technique training and sometimes in the making of a piece we strive to avoid falling into being “human, too human”. In practice it frequently amounts to talking exclusively about, and making corrections only to: geometry, getting lines straight enough, making curves curvy enough, placing your foot here, not there.

This meticulous precision is part of the technique, part of the form, but I’m beginning to think that this is not the whole story.

The struggle to do something absolute and beyond human and yet failing because of being human – I believe this is what an audience gathers to share and experience. Our common struggle against limitation, decay and inevitable death.

It couldn’t be more human.

So what is “human, too human”?

Is it maybe the opposite? To stay in the safe place, to hide weakness or make a virtue of it so as to protect our illusions about ourselves, to be concerned about looking good instead of giving all?

‘Pooping out’, taking the easier position or stance, taking only the familiar perfect stance, posing instead of finding true form. That’s being “human, too human.”

Because the form is so difficult we forget easily that we need to allow our human struggle to show, while simultaneously striving for, and holding true, to the form.

When the members of the SITI Company train and take each other’s Suzuki technique classes, which are physically challenging, rigorous and formal, they work to high and exacting standards. It shows. They are much better than the less experienced students in class. But they also work to challenge themselves at the very edge and limit of their abilities. So they don’t just show perfect form; they do crash and burn. More importantly they allow their struggle and vulnerability to show through. Not because they are trying to show off to younger students that they are working hard but because THEY ARE WORKING ON THEIR OWN WORK AND TEMPTING FAILURE.

I suspect they are also working on their ability as actors to be open and vulnerable to the audience. Being on the Suzuki training floor is to them a microcosm of being on a stage, performing.

Similarly, Beckett’s demands in his plays for “no colour, no colour,” in the text and absolute precision is tight Form. It’s in the very human struggle to hew to the form that makes his drama an experience between actor and audience. The container for his words (the form) bears out the truth of them. As Beckett himself said, “I do give a fuck about people!”

The theatre inside

Eugenio Barba:

“The actor’s concern is simply not to bore his audience”
– to this end the actor’s technique, the theatre inside, is transmitted:

ACTORS > ACTORS
BODIES > BODIES

The actor embodies theatre, so theatre is whatever is in the actor.

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.

Why we improvise

Improvisation and technique are two ends of the same continuum. We work on technique to find the fictive body, the decided body, the pre-expressive body. We improvise to find the light to fill that body. Each is empty without the other and we work to bring the two ends of the continuum together.

Thomas Leabhart, (conversation in class, paraphrased), Paris, March 2003.