Re: RAT Moron Words

[gaby <gaby@ratconference.com>]

At 02:30 PM 6/10/99 -0400, MMA wrote:
>
>Never respond to a writer. They won't let anybody else have the last word.
>

Dear Diogenes (of Sinope or Oenoanda, which domain?),

Foolhardy as it is to spar on someone else's home turf, I'm gonna take a
stab at some stuff that interests and has always confused me...  (For one
thing, I'm more comfortable in bra and tie performing Jeff Jones' words for
of a bunch of people than I am privately stringing together my own words
and sending them into this black hole of the rat-list-- go figure!)

... Like the concept of the 'self'...

<<Actually, it occurred to me that this old idea of staged feeling as
feigned feeling is really inaccurate. It would be more accurate to say that
theatre involves the manipulation of that very strange artifact known as
the "Self." Now, Self is clearly in some deep way abstract--that is, it is
a thought-product and deeply culture-bound--but when an actor manipulates
the Self, it is possible for the virtual "selves" to have "real"
feelings--Hamlet's player who famously weeps for Hecuba, etc. So, isn't it
more accurate to say that the Self is the interface we create for our
experience? It keeps the inside in and the outside out. Who experiences if
not our "self", who knows except our Self, and through the mediation of
self, we convert our raw experience into knowledge. >>

Interestingly, when you go to the American Heritage dic, the first of 5
definitions of 'self' is, 1. The total, essential, or particular being of a
person; the individual: 

 "An actor's instrument is the self" (Joan Juliet Buck.). 

[The second, less relevant, definition is, 2. The essential qualities
distinguishing one person from another; individuality:  "He would walk a
little first along the southern walls, shed his European self, fully enter
this world"  (Howard Kaplan).]  And then the third definition is, 3.  One's
consciousness of one's own being or identity; the ego:  "For some of us,
the self's natural doubts are given in mesmerizing amplification by way of
critics' negative assessments of our writing "  (Joyce Carol Oates)"

I think consciousness or lack of is an important element when discussing
the experience of theater.  What are we after when going to or making theater?

And that's where the idea of "self" gets confusing and where it helps to
make distinctions.  The first is a non-conscious and objective (external)
entity -- one living thing in space being referred to.  [The second is also
from the outside but already is a thought-product and
opinionated/comparative].  And the third is a complete person-internal,
subjective, conscious construct which can have an infinite number of
manifestations at any given moment and is completely elusive.

So roughly, the first definition is the body (unmediated) and the third
definition is mind, or mediated image.  The third is the thing you're
talking about that we experience with and gain knowledge through, to
greater or lesser extents, depending on how many of these 'selves', and how
much of them, we make available for such pursuits.  But I think the 'soul',
the 'I' -- that most elusive and 'Cynical' construct -- runs through both
those definitions and that there is no Cartesian split.  The soul may be
that 'place' where we create and experience "real" feelings, regardless of
whether it is in our"selves" or through the character we create as actors
(there is no real and virtual self, only many different selves that, when
evoked, experience things differently).  

And the soul resides everywhere, in the mind's and body's memory (if you
believe in the quantum physical self, it resides even way beyond 'I' in
time/space).  Certainly the 3rd definition of self alone (the images we
create of who we are) is not our soul and is therefore not the soul of the
character actors create, just like our physicality alone is not our soul.
So it's all 3 definitions that an actor uses to build a character: We start
with our own being/entity, study and draw conclusions about the characters
individuality and then put it all together with our various selves and what
we know about them (hopefully) and see what comes out.  And it's at that
point where we're often surprised <<because it seems there is always
something just beyond the reach of our knowledge that didn't quite make it
in, and that liminal space is one of the borderlands where art flourishes.>>

So...

<<Would it really be such a mistake to include a heavy dose of literature,
critical theory, history, philosophy and scientific thought in actor
training? Does anyone know whether this would be better or worse than
sense-memory exercises?  I'm only asking....>>

no, I don't think it would be a mistake at all.  More is always more when
it comes to the amassing of experience/knowledge that results in the
mature, trustworthy interpreter (actor) that I prefer to see on stage.  But
I don't think it's a question of better or worse.  What Stanislavski, then
Strassberg and especially now most derivative "American actor training"
tries to do is keep those two definitions of self separated and work with
the actor only through definition 1:  self as instrument, body as sounding
board -- one thing.  The advantage to that is a) sheer simplicity; one
thing is easy to break down and examine and b) it's THE one thing the
average Joe is least in touch with but that an actor needs to learn about
and manipulate in order to be maximally effective on stage.  The problem I
have with most mainstream acting training is that the third definition of
self never gets dealt with.  You're on your own as far as "who am I?" goes.
 And yet while you're attending classes, going on auditions, trying to
decide what your headshot should be, in rehearsal, at your day job, with
your spouse, kids, parents... -- while you're maturing and living your life
-- that is the question that can most confound and cripple you, achieving
exactly the opposite of expressive freedom. Who am I when, where?  It has a
million answers.   And it's at that point, when you're immobile and
confused, that literature, history, philosophy, science, etc. can help you
figure things out.  There's more than one way to learn about human
behavior, including your own.  Sense memory is good, as is t'ai chi,
meditation, relaxation techniques, Alexander, Linklater etc., but it ain't
enough if it's in a vacuum.  Senses are stimulated in your soul, not your
body or your mind, and memories are created everywhere too.  I was told in
an acting class once, "forget everything you learned before."  Ah, I don't
think so.  That was hard won and is part of the well that I draw from.
This focus on def. 1 to the exclusion of def. 3 is where the cliché of the
stupid actor came from.  The human experience, and thus an actor's task, is
a holistic one.

<<Americans of many artistic stripes all want their theatre to be authentic
("sincere"?) and use feeling as the litmus test for this complicated
reaction; the idea seems to be that unless the feeling is authentic, the
theatre must be inauthentic. This of course is a very paradoxical position,
and one of the ways to understand the Method might be to see it as a
peculiarly American solution to the problem--suggesting that the actor must
create 'authentic' feelings in order to create an authentic character. >>

I'm not sure what you mean by authentic or sincere. And are you saying it's
good or bad to dwell on feelings?  Isn't it also a function of the script
first and then the approach to it?  (Is a standard naturalistic approach to
Arthur Miller's The Crucible more sincere than Wooster Group's LSD, Just
the High Points?)  Some theater demands to be understood intellectually
more than emotionally, and while it's true that generally speaking I prefer
the latter more Aristotelian experience, I'll take a well-executed Bob
Wilson over a badly executed Chekov.

<<....artists must refresh their knowledge with experience, and that the
theatrical event must also create a true experience for the audience, which
is only possible if it exists, albeit partly and temporarily, outside their
knowledge. This is saying both that a valid theatrical experience must
contain elements which the audience does not already know (does not merely
recycle the recieved wisdom) and that it must resist complete knowledge
(i.e., remain in some sense the memory of an actual experience.).>>

Why is that true.  What about Shakespeare, the Greeks, the passion plays?
Unless you're talking generally, but then we never have 'complete
knowledge' of anything.  

<<Why this aversion to language in specific still baffles me, as I will
claim (surely not without controversy) that a theatre performance without
words has to WORK HARDER at fulfilling the potential of theatre than one
which uses words. >>

That's a real complex statement and I think demands some definition of
terms first, like what are we saying qualifies as a theatre performance;
what is the potential of theatre.  My first reaction was, what about music?
 You have to work infinitely harder with words than with music to achieve,
what, catharsis? - here we come back to feelings as the measure of a valid
theatrical experience and what we're saying the potential of theater is.

<<And at the risk of inciting the wrath of Gaul, there is something in the
French cultural tradition having to do with "Terror"--or if you prefer M.
Artaud, "Cruelty" (and as I recall, "Blood"???)--which I'm just gonna go
right out on a limb and say has no damn business in any kinda theatre I
want to be involved with, at all.  >>

This Cruelty is a matter of neither sadism nor bloodshed, at least not in
any exclusive way.

I do not systematically cultivate horror.  The word "cruelty" must be taken
in a broad sense, and not in the rapacious physical sense that it is
customarily given.  And I claim, in doing this, the right to break with the
usual sense of language, to crack the armature once and for all, to get the
iron collar off its neck, in short to return to the etymological origins of
speech which, in the midst of abstract concepts, always evoke a concrete
element.

One can very well imagine a pure cruelty, without bodily laceration.  And
philosophically speaking what indeed is cruelty?  From the point of view of
the mind, cruelty signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision,
irreversible and absolute determination.

The most current philosophical determinism is, from the point of view of
our existence, an image of cruelty.

It is a mistake to give the word 'cruelty' a meaning of merciless bloodshed
and disinterested, gratuitous pursuit of physical suffering…  Cruelty is
not synonymous with bloodshed, martyred flesh, crucified enemies. …
Cruelty is above all lucid, a kind of rigid control and submission to
necessity.  There is no cruelty without consciousness and without the
application of consciousness.  It is consciousness that gives to the
exercise of every act of life its blood-red color, its cruel nuance, since
it is understood that life is always someone's death.

-- Antonin Artaud  (Theatre and its Double)

Don't we attribute meaning to words (filter them through our'selves') and
isn't that often the problem with language as communication?

Gaby
AKA gaby@ratconference.com 
Fellow Brooklynite
(defining domains)