Aldo Leopold, conservationist and environmental scholar is the author of the classic book A Sand County Almanac, and sketches here and there. He is renowned for his precedent setting ideas in land ethics and ecological consciousness. A Sand County Almanac is a collection of essays, many set in or about his Wisconsin farm, and some concerned with other locations, such as Arizona and the Colorado River Delta. As a young man, Leopold set out for himself some questions, some challenges - to fight mediocrity and hypocrisy, to increase enthusiasm and wisdom, to listen to others opinions, and to protect the natural world. The question that Leopold ultimately posed to himself and others over and over was a simple one. "How do we live on the land without spoiling it?"
Here today I borrow Aldo Leopold's question and pose it thusly; "How do we act on the stage without spoiling it? It presupposes there is something to possibly be spoiled. Yet we only have to recall Peter Brook's notion of the empy space or Jean Louis Barrault's silence of the stage to imagine it pristine. There is something special or captivating about a well layed stage, the potential in its stillness, crisp and ready. Shined and polished, clean and healthy looking, the bare stage gives us hope, offering a place where something special could take place, that fight perhaps against medicrity and hyporcrisy as Leopold suggested, that way to increase our enthusiasm and wisdom, listening to others and to protecting our hearts, eventually leaving with the desire to be a better person. That stage, that empty space is indeed pristine and full of hope.
How do we act on the stage then without spoiling it?
Before taking on that simple but mammoth question I have another one. Should or does that stage, the physical space, in fact have to be considered this sacred or meditative kind of place? I say yes. To me it should be invoking like that to the artists and the spectators. Find yourself in a Japanese Garden and chances are you won't be shouting. Japanese gardens are meant to provoke all of your senses, as the stage (and acting) should. A Japanese garden makes you look at things diffently, changes your perspective. It presents and compares logics. More than likely you will be thinking while in the Japanese Garden, or just relaxing. To me the physical space where the actors will perform must embody certain principles and ethics, and have an aesthetic that makes it in a sense sacred, pristine, meditative.
When an actor is taken with a physical space, understands it's ethics, is able to meditate in or on the space, see potential for interactive life with, then he or she is able to imagine those first moments of behavior there and takes essentially the first step towards knowing how to act on the stage without spoiling it. for Aldo Leopold with the land, it meant observation, patience, closeness, the asking of questions, comptemplation - just the sort of mind that is simply trying to put two and two together - no need for seeking brilliance. For actors is should be the same. If you ever have the chance to see the video of Physical Training at the Odin Teatret please do. Those actors, as young men and women, spent long, long hours training in ways that brought them close to their space, mentally, physically, spiritually. Watching it the first time I didn't get it. I just grimaced. Some of the exercises where they just fell on the floor over and over and over, rolling, summersaulting around. For about an hour. And they would do this daily. Then I gradually begin to understand what this and other exercises did for them. Hearing them talk and seeing them perform many years removed from those actual exercises, seeing in practice how they related to this space, how they understood it, what it had come to mean to them, was eye opening. Odin is just one example. There are many from around the world in various cultures and time and place where performance space is considered in this way. In the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre the space was sacred and as an actor to perform there you could not "violate" that sacredness with behavior that would cheapen or lessen it. No chit chat or idle conversation there, no complaining or slovenly behavior. A few years ago I was in a local production. Early on the director was going through the process of laying out some of the movement for the actors, blocking the play as they call it. I was on stage with some other actors. Another actor arrived a couple of minutes late, took his designated place on stage, and then begin to eat a hamburger and chit chat about where he had been. Its an example of the cavalier and casual behavior that never would have been allowed for a second in the First Studio or on the floors of Odin Teatret.
How do we act on the stage without spoiling it? Hamlet had some general advice in the form of discription for the players that many try and take to heart. And there are other generalities out there, descriptions likes Hamlet's of how an actor should be. "A warm heart and a cool head" as I believe Joseph Jefferson advocated for himself is another example.
But how do we really do it? How do we act on the stage without spoiling it?
No comments:
Post a Comment