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Part II The Vertical of the Role

1. Meeting in private

The first meeting with the role is a quite crucial moment to which, usually, actors and directors do not pay too much attention. However, it is here that the road to understanding the essence of the play really starts – and the beginning of any path is always important. I often see how actors read the play in the underground or on the bus, occasionally distracted by a friendly chat or a tasty sandwich. I used to do the same myself. But now I understand that if the first meeting with a role happens in this way, then, right from the outset, the actor inevitably acquires a somewhat consumerist attitude towards it. He mainly thinks about the ways of “getting“ the role, of “using“ or “swallowing“ it, of “eating it up“. Or, to quote Stanislavsky “… the process of tasting a role is definitely worth much more attention than it is usually paid. Unfortunately most artists are unaware of this gospel-truth …”.6

For me the real moment should be more hidden and magical; it is both lighter and more ritualistic because ultimately it will give birth to a new life. An attitude that is too prosaic or pragmatic, carelessness, prejudice, or too much juvenile passion during this moment of the first meeting with the role usually lead to very poor results. Later on the actor will find it extremely difficult to change his first opinion concerning the role, to change that fixed and rigid knowledge about it. It is much better to start with a light and rather vague sensation, even if this proves subsequently to be imprecise; this sensation is still capable of setting the actor free. Every experienced actor knows that a good part might never reveal itself immediately. On the contrary, it almost plays hide-and-seek with the actor; it suggests some powerful and brilliant possibilities, phrases, and passages where the actor can demonstrate his gift, his inner charm and temperament, where he can make use of funny or tragic situations. It is a game like any other but being a game it demands from the player the ability to be light, sincere, open and free; at the same time, the player should be attentive enough not to fall into the traps presented by the text. Everything should start with these first sensations, with a little game. If you are able to start playing with your role right from the very first meeting, you will find it much easier to go deeper into its meaning afterwards and you will find it easier to start looking for its spirit, for its inner fire, and the source of its energy.

Where and how should an actor get acquainted with his role? I think that the so-called “readings“ of the play in the theatre, usually organised for the whole team of actors, are quite futile because they lead actors away from their personal perceptions of the material. This inevitably happens even if the “readings“ are quite “artistic“ – even if, for example, they are arranged in a quite spectacular and theatrical way, accompanied by music, poems, and paintings. And even if the “reading“ is quite neutral, if it resembles the minutes of a meeting, if it is aimed only at transmitting the author’s text, then still to some extent it burdens actors with the inner position, ideas, and attitudes of whoever does the reading and with the intonations and colouring of his voice. I could go even further: to my mind, the actor is better off without even listening to the voice of the author because that very voice might prevent him from hearing something of the utmost importance. What exactly? We’ll come back to that issue later.

Sometimes in the theatre “readings“ take place after casting has been completed; and the actors, even though they listen to the whole of the play, actually hear only the texts of their respective roles being articulated by someone else. This is probably the worst way of getting acquainted with your role. For quite some time after I started working as a theatre director I made it a point never to cast my actors in advance. I thought that during that kind of “secretive reading“ the actor might stand a better chance of feeling the play as a whole. However, later on, I realised that the actor is then more concerned about trying to guess which role he is about to land and which one would go to his partner, which role is worth fighting for – and which one should better be left alone; basically, he gives them all a try in his mind, more or less going through the lot as if they were clothes in a shop. This does not happen because actors are so hard, selfish, and calculating – anyway, creativity is always highly self-centred; it happens almost involuntarily, at a subconscious level, and no-one is capable of changing the nature of actors. I came to the conclusion that whatever the version of that collective “reading“ in the theatre, the actor is unable to retain any special magical sensation from his first meeting with the role.

Indeed I became convinced that the actor must invariably meet the role and the play on his own, in the solitude of his home, or wherever he wants; the main thing is to do it himself, without any intermediaries involved. It is quite an intimate moment that does not belong to the rest of the world. Later on, as soon as the actor has worked out his own attitude towards his part, one can organise any amount of discussions – but in the beginning it should be a strictly one-to-one meeting. I would like to quote another remark of K. Stanislavsky: “… I count upon the situation when an artist will feel, even guess a play according to his own taste, according to his own personality. I count upon the natural, unaffected but necessarily independent, intuitional perception.”7

Personally I prefer reading the play either early in the morning, while the mind is still fresh and free from everyday cares, then switching off my phone and asking not to be disturbed. Or I read it late at night when my family is already asleep; then, having read it, I set it aside, shelving it away in my subconscious mind, in order to go on analysing it in my sleep; in the morning it seems to be completely different, and so I have to start anew.

Judging by my own mistakes, I can assure you that it is not worth your time rushing to the library for the relevant references; you do not really need all those lengthy discussions and lectures from specialists on literature, history, and social customs of the time. Before the actor determines his own attitude towards his part, he is unable to critically evaluate the opinions of the theatre director, of experienced partners, or renowned specialists. He will certainly need all that later on in the process of his work but at the beginning there is no room for anyone else; there should be only the actor and his role present. It is their affair, their shared secret, their own secretive dialogue. Whatever one might have heard before about the play and about the role in the form of opinions or discussions is of no importance now; one should invariably start with a blank page.

Obviously, it is pretty difficult to start with a blank page when you are dealing with a classical play. The actor must read it with his own eyes, liberating himself from the burden of someone else’s theatre clichés and traditions. Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, a very close collaborator of Stanislavsky, co-founder of Moscow Art Theatre, and an outstanding theatre director, used to say: “I have the text of the play right in front of me, I do not want to know anything about its previous history – whether a literary or a theatre one. I only know the author who wrote that play. I have absolutely no wish to find out what exactly they tell you about that author in world literature, and I have no wish either to go through layers of information concerning previous theatre productions of that play. (Later on I will try to find it out anyway, because I will have to correct my own work.) What is important for me now is the genuine text. Being a contemporary of some particular theatre aesthetics, the author belonged to the theatre culture of his epoch ( … ) with its specific stage demands, tasks and theatre effects, with this or that specific design, with this or that predominant feeling or passion, with specific ways of translating the actors’ charm to the audience, etc.. I try to get rid of all that. ( … ) The theatre has changed; the theatricality itself is different now, as well as the emotional response of the public; therefore all the ways and means of affecting the audience are no longer the same … To approach the classical text without all these pre-conceived opinions; that task is truly difficult to accomplish, but it is the one that gives us most satisfaction.“8

Confronted by a classical play, the actor should ask himself where the source of all the power lies, all the energy that sustains its inner life right through to the present day. One must read it in such a way as if a present-day playwright were writing it for the present-day theatre, as if he were composing it especially for actors with their present-day mentality. Conversely, when you are working on a contemporary play, you should approach it in exactly the opposite way; in other words, you should be able to perceive it as a well-known classical work that has been alive for centuries, as a text that has been already turned into a myth, with words and sayings that have already become famous quotations and proverbs. One could conduct a kind of experiment: imagine how a particular contemporary play, its characters, its text might be perceived in a hundred or two hundred years. What will remain forever? What will be forgotten the next day? What will always be meaningful and what is nothing more than the reflection of a current fashion? The actor will then have to decide whether to drop the role altogether or try and find answers to all these questions. Each and every new role presents new challenges and no-one but the actor himself can ever respond to them. It is important to define these challenges; it is essential to determine where they all belong. This would eventually mean that we have managed to find the right way towards comprehending the role.