I love books about acting. From Stanislavski to Boleslavsky, from Brecht to Brook, I never get tired of reading about how other actors do their work. I don't mean to imply that you can learn acting from a book. Quite the contrary, I believe the only way to learn acting is by doing it - alot - for a very long time. But, fresh ideas about working can truly spark our imaginations and inspire us to find a new approach to our work. How To Stop Acting by Harold Guskin
is one of my favorites. I find it liberating and reassuring, and his methods are so simple they might seem easy to dismiss. Except that they work! "Taking it off the page" is really the backbone of Guskin's method, and it is a sure-fire way to get to the truth on stage. I've been using Guskin's ideas for a few years now. In a nutshell it is the same as "dropping in" text, "personalizing", or any other number of terms. But Guskin's explanations are so clear and compelling it makes you want to run right out and try them, and that is really the best thing to do.
Guskin says his work is about "being free to let the phrase or line take me wherever it goes at that moment." It's breathing the line in, breathing the line out, then saying it and allowing whatever associations come up to be present. Simple. Not easy.
Harold Guskin is an actor, director, teacher, and acting coach to the stars including Kevin Kline, Peter Fonda, Glenn Close, and James Gandolfini - just to mention a few. So he must know something about what makes actors tick. But I find working with the ideas he sets forth in his book to be so liberating. The breath is never wrong. If we follow our impulses we will always be interesting. Others may not "get it", but we'll at least be making choices that aren't stuck in the pedestrian.
Get this book now. His advice on auditioning is particularly helpful. Where else do you find somebody saying "Don't memorize!" Of course the brilliance of that is it allows you to be free to memorize more easily. But acting is not memorizing as many of us have been taught. Guskin reminds us what true acting is really all about. The answer lies in the imagination given flight by the breath in each moment.
I had How To Stop Acting sitting out on my desk yesterday when some friends came for a visit. One guest picked up the book and said, "Are you quitting acting?" She thought it was a book about how to exit the industry. Now that's the book I want to look at next!
Work continued this week with Eva Burgess at Dixon Place. Eva is truly inspired and inspiring. She may be the most innovative director I've had the privilege of working with. It's so completely different from what I do most of the time. No pre-existing script, no prescribed method, no anticipated results at this point. So refreshing! What we are discovering is a great sense of play. As Eva said, "We'll trick ourselves into writing it!" I love that. Because access to that other part of the mind doesn't come about by thinking. Here's a little recap of the last two rehearsals.Dixon Place #2 - Monday, June 11, 2007
We did a good physical and vocal warm up first. Then Eva suggested as a jumping off point we choose some word groups at random. We tore up squares of paper, and on each piece we wrote words or phrases connected to the idea of themes, proverbs, and text. We mixed them all up and then randomly pulled the following: "stardom", "one good turn deserves another", and "what will the neighbors think". We played with the obvious notions around stardom for a minute, and then it occurred to us that maybe "stardom" suggested a floor pattern. So we laid out a star pattern on the floor with points numbered 1 thru 5. I walked the pattern several times, then we decided to explore the idea of creating an event that would occur at each point in the star. So at each stop-over in this star-pattern on the floor there would be1. an event, 2. a task that had to be completed in order to move on, and then a particular way or challenge in 3. the actual movement from one point on the floor to another. Our homework for the next rehearsal would be to come up with ideas to try around these three concepts.
Dixon Place #3 - Wednesday June 13, 2007
I got there a little ahead of Eva and began playing once more with the star pattern on the floor. First I walked it, then tried moving in all sorts of ways from one point to another. Then I added 3 more points, numbers 6 thru 8, so I had an octave if I wanted to create a kind of "keyboard" on the floor. The I thought it might be fun to try getting from point to point in a given number of steps. For example, from point 1 to point 2 in two steps, from 2 to 3 in three steps, etc. This became a very interesting way of moving because it is so specific and it requires some degree of concentration. It's also very fun.
When Eva arrived she brought with her (in addition to her beautiful 3-yr. old baby Sabina) - a game! It's a children's game with cards, and each card has on it a task: make a funny face, find something blue, pile it up and spill it, etc. She also added in the requirement to use the words we had chosen at the previous rehearsal, so at each point in the pattern I had to do a task, use the words "one good turn deserves another", say the number of the next point to travel to, and then go to the next point and repeat the process. The results were - well, alot of fun! I don't know exactly what it all means, but it suggested to me innocence. Play. Spontaneity. It also brought an interactivity with the audience that we hadn't previously thought about.
If you've had the patience to read all of this, then you're interested in process and process is what we're all about in this work. This is surprising work. I'm excited about the possibilities. Its a way of making theater we don't often allow ourselves the time to do. Thank you, Eva!
Back in the 80's I had a friend who worked at Ticket Master. You may remember Ticket Master. They were the guys you called for tickets to Broadway shows. Now everything is done online. But back then you could dial a number and speak to a real human being. My friend would field calls and take orders for shows, working all hours of the night. He had some particularly funny requests along the way. Once he had a customer ask for tickets to "Sunday In The Park With George Burns".
The one Ticket Master story that sticks most in my head, however, is the call he fielded for front row seats to that "new play by David Mamet" called "Glengarry Glenn Close". Picture Glenn Close dressed in a cheap suit, smoking a cigarette, saying something like "Fuck you. Eighty-two grand for the whole eight units. Cocksuckers want to fuck with me?" My friend said he dropped the phone.
Tomorrow I have an audition for Glengarry Glen Ross which is being produced at the Dallas Theater Center this fall. I'm happy to have the audition, but honestly I have to say - what is the meaning of this? Do we really care about the machinations of a couple of sleazy real estate agents with no morals or scruples whatsoever? Where is the poetry? Where is the language? And how, I ask you, how do we draw the line from Beckett to Pinter to...Mamet?? When did cynicism become the order of the day?
Glengarry Glen Ross won the Pulitzer Prize when it was first produced back in 1984. Maybe it was groundbreaking at the time, but somehow to me it seems that there's no there there. I've practiced the scene I have to prepare - between Williamson (my character, the manager of the office), and Shelly Levene (played with astonishing detail by Jack Lemmon in the movie version) - every which way from Sunday, and somehow it doesn't really make any difference! And I understand how to prepare Mamet, having studied with his protegees William H. Macy, Stephen Schachter and Gregory Mosher back in the day.
Mamet himself suggested that the lines of any play are "gibberish" and what matters is the moments that occur between the actors. If only that were really the case.
David Mamet, in addition to being a playwright, is a great theorist on the methods of acting. He is rooted in the technique of Sanford Meisner, particularly Meisner's exercise of "repetition". It's a fascinating method and has great validity as part of an actor's training. But Mamet seems to have created Glengarry Glen Ross as a 65-page repetition exercise. Attach any action to the scenes such as "show an inferior who's boss" or "get him to rue the day" or "win an adversary to my side" and while it changes the moment to moment playing, it doesn't really change the play. It all seems a bit too arbitrary. Great plays enter the subconscious, awakening us to language, and allowing the words to illicit a new response in the speaker and audience alike. Glengarry Glen Ross leaves me feeling cold at the very least and gives me a headache when I think about it for any length of time. Still, it's my job to get behind it, at least for tomorrow, and see if I can make it play.
I remember one day when I was a student at Lincoln Center Theater. We walked into class and Gregory Mosher announced that Lincoln Center would be premiering a new play by "America's greatest living playwright." Without skipping a beat I said "What happened? Did Sam Shepard die?" Mosher was not amused. That play was Speed The Plow. Quick...what do you remember
about Speed The Plow?
I
t's Monday morning. In a few hours I'll be walking down to the Bowery to meet my friend, the director Eva Burgess. I've gotten some space at Dixon Place, a little performance art venue downtown, and Eva and I are continuing work on a piece I first started almost ten years ago.The idea is based upon the novel Peyton Place, written 50 years ago by Grace Metalious. Peyton Place was scandalous when it was released because of its frank portrayal of teen sexuality, and small town vices. It was also one of the earliest American novels to deal with the issue of incest, and because the character of Selena Cross was empowered not to be just a victim, but to act in her own defense, one could argue that Peyton Place was also a precursor to the feminist movement.
We have some resources to begin working with: the novel, a biography of Grace Metalious, several LP's, magazine articles. But I have no idea where we will go in our exploration or what this performance piece will become. I trust Eva implicitly, but it doesn't make it any less scary. Last week, before Eva came on board, I went down to Dixon Place by myself. I was completely self-conscious, aware that the person in the office could hear what I was doing. I felt ashamed to be there somehow, to not know what I was doing, to be completely in the dark with myself. So I just laid on the floor, listened to some music, and scribbled some notes. I have a feeling today will be better. It's so much easier to be foolish in a pair than all alone.
But in a sense, that sense of shame is exactly what this work is about for me. The themes of incest, misuse of power, abuse, and injustice have been the reason I've wanted to embark on this particular exploration. Shame is a very dicey emotion to work with. It's uncomfortable for everyone. It's antithetical to acting.
Grace Metalious died in 1964 (the year I was born) of cirrhosis of the liver. She drank herself to death. At age 39. What shame had taken over her life that led her to such success, and then to such a dismal end? She was hoodwinked by nearly everyone. She never made a dime off either the Hollywood movie or the television series that ran for a decade. And yet, she created a story that entered the American vernacular. I remember my own mother saying things like "It's Peyton Place over there, the way those people live." I didn't know what she meant at the time. Just that Peyton Place was bad, dirty, shameful.
I read on the internet this morning that Sandra Bullock is now starring in a film about Grace Metalious. My first thought was "Figures. Seems every time I embrace an idea, somebody else beats me to it!" But I don't think that's it. I think it has something to do with the vibration of the universe, the great unconscious that speaks to us in whispers, reminding us of the stories that we need to tell. At least that's a more positive spin. Anyway, Sandra Bullock or no Sandra Bullock, I'm moving ahead. It's me and Eva Burgess doing Peyton Place at Dixon Place!
I'll keep you posted as things progress. Happy Monday!
Wayne
If you haven't seen or read a new play by Bill C. Davis lately, you're missing out. Here is a writer with craft, intelligence, and style. But more than that, Bill C. Davis is a writer with a passion. He burns with the fire of possibility. You see, Bill still believes in the theater as an agent of change.
Yes, he wrote Mass Appeal. Yes, Mass Appeal was a huge hit and a great play. And yes, he has written other things. Screenplays. Fiction. Political commentary. And plays. Lots of plays. Really wonderful plays.
I met Bill last year when director Jerry Less invited me to do a reading of Avow for New York City's Algonquin Project. Like Mass Appeal, Avow has as its backdrop the Catholic Church. But the topic this time is gay marriage. Through an intimate portrayal of one couple and their relationship to their faith, we are given an insight into the hypocrisy of the church's standing.
I then did another reading with Jerry Less of Bill's play All Hallowed. This play is absolute genius. Three generations of a family deal with the loss of the patriarch. But who was he? An honored war veteran, an unfaithful husband, an angry father, a loving Granfather? His body is lowered into the ground as the rest of the village prepares to go trick or treating. What ghosts await for us all as we say good-bye to the past? Coming this October? Let's hope so.
Then in March, I was fortunate enough to work with Bill again. This time it was his new play called Expatriate. Bill directed actors Rosemary Murphy, Bill Fairbairn, and me, and the play was presented at the Studio Theater at Theater Row. The play is at once political and personal. What do you do when you've been betrayed by your country and by your family? This is the central question of the play. Again Bill finds a metaphor for big issues through intimate relationships, this time a Grandmother, a son, and a grandson torn between the need to be true to themselves and the need they have for each other.
Now Bill is at work once again. This time its a new musical called Austin's Bridge. The show is currently running at Virginia's Firehouse Theatre Project. If you're anywhere in the vicinity of Richmond, run to see this show. Otherwise you're going to have to wait until it moves to Broadway.
I look forward to catching up with Bill C. Davis again very soon. Expect great things from this man. They're already written.
Happy Sunday
Wayne
