Judging Your Character

I've heard acting teachers say this: Don't judge your character. I get their point. They want us to embody our roles as living, breathing human beings, not devils with painted mustaches. But this advice flies in the face of what we learned from legendary theater director Bertolt Brecht. Brecht created a whole acting technique based upon seeing a character objectively. "Alienation Technique" (which is really a mis-translation - "distancing" is more accurate) is all about the actor embodying the character without losing himself. It's the difference between writing fiction in the first person versus the third. What's to be gained by this? Truth. We can never really be somebody else, and to fool ourselves into thinking we can or should be is self-defeating.

What Brecht was getting at was the ability of the artist to allow their work to be consciously political. He came of age in a time when fascism was on the rise in Germany. People were inclined to "escape" to the theater, and the whole world, it seemed, had developed a kind of myopia. No one was seeing what was really there in front of them. Acting styles were no different. Actors "pretended" to be someone else, and in their pretending there was no claim on them personally to take responsibility for the content of their material or the ideas being conveyed.

I think sometimes as contemporary American actors we forget the usefulness of Brecht's lessons. The Stanislavsky Method, and especially the Strasberg spin on it, have convinced us that we must "be" the character somehow. And in order to be the character we must see things from the character's point of view rather than looking at character objectively and saying "he's a liar" or "she's a madwoman". This I believe is a mistake, especially in the theater and especially with large and epic roles.

I say this only because I have recently made this error. In my playing of Alfred Kinsey in Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story (now playing at the Michael Weller Theater) I was attempting to force the character into my own world view and personality, rather than expanding to play in his. Simply reminding myself of Brecht's techniques opened up a wide range of possibilities. I can judge Alfred Kinsey and still play him with truthfulness. To deny the complexity of the character shrinks the scale and limits me to the "immediate truth".

There's no doubt Kinsey is controversial, which makes him a great character to play. I received this email from my brother Randy yesterday, after I sent him some of our notices. His response was strong, negative, and articulate:

Wayne-
My visceral response to such a work as "Kinsey: A Love Story" was, as you may imagine, one of revulsion. Your role made it even more so. I am pleased that you sent me the NY Times article, more so that I could read your post on "Theatre Arts":

Kinsey does some terrible things in this play, and goes on quite an emotional journey. I was growing more and more depressed as we got closer to "opening" night. I thought it was my work. I kept thinking..."I don't understand the role." In fact, I was beginning to experience the role physically, experientially. And my conscious mind didn't like it. I was trying to protect myself. Hence the conflict. Hence the confusion. Hence the weak performance and dropped lines.

While you may presume my initial negativity was moral aversion (which it was, based on the very title title alone, which may be the grandest oxymoron ever rendered), it also stems from deeply held philosophical beliefs about cultural inversions and historical revisionism. Then I thought about "the Producers" (the 1968 movie) ---and "Springtime For Hitler"---and how an inversion can portray monstrosities via theatrical devices (humor in the case of Brooks' work) to portray a humane gestalt.

That is all I can take away from what you wrote, aside the understanding that art does have a sanction to deal in the unsavory to a higher effect. I personally lived in the milieu generated by Kinsey and have an undeniable bias based solely on the corrosive effect it had on so many lives particularly in that era. As cannot see the play, I reserve my judgments in favor of your artistic license and congratulate you on the review.

"Moral aversion!" Yes. Well, that is certainly a useful perspective to own as an actor creating a role. If I allow myself awareness of Kinsey's darkness, it fuels the playing, sparks the imagination, and turns the light of truth up a notch. At least I hope so. Otherwise, what's the point?

Until next time....
Wayne

Up and Running with Alfred Kinsey

Last night I opened in the title role of Mike Foley's play Alfred Kinsey: A Love Story (playing now through September 23rd). There's always something jittery about an "opening night". It's a strange psychological phenomenon. It's really no different from any other night. We'd already done the show in several previews. But calling one performance the official "opening" ramps up the energy for some reason. Not necessarily a bad thing. Energy can be good. It's knowing how to channel it that's the trick.

I'm always curious about this process of creating a character. We began previews last Thursday, and by Saturday night I felt completely lost. I began to mistrust all the good work we'd done in rehearsals. I felt tentative about the story. I didn't feel like I was breathing the role. My focus was off. I began to drop lines. It seemed like a total disaster.

It wasn't, of course. People who saw that particular preview liked the play a lot and didn't notice anything wrong on stage. I call that "the level below which you cannot fall" (meaning - no matter how bad you think you are, your technique should kick in and carry you). But still I was sure I was missing something vital. I had to go back to the proverbial drawing board and rethink my playing of Kinsey.

What I realized was that I was blocking my merging with the character. Kinsey does some terrible things in this play, and goes on quite an emotional journey. I was growing more and more depressed as we got closer to "opening" night. I thought it was my work. I kept thinking..."I don't understand the role." In fact, I was beginning to experience the role physically, experientially. And my conscious mind didn't like it. I was trying to protect myself. Hence the conflict. Hence the confusion. Hence the weak performance and dropped lines.

You can feel it when your acting really lands. Something shifts inside you. It's literally a physical sensation. The work moves from intellectual to cellular, and there's a period of adjustment as your body re-negotiates the change. It may take a few shows. It may take many. Sometimes it never happens at all. There's no integration of character and the performance remains trapped in "thinking". That is a worst-case scenario. And that is what was happening to me as of this past Saturday night.

I went home and did some thinking. It finally dawned on me...Kinsey is a villain!! How delicious!!
I don't often get to play bad guys. Here's my crack at a contemporary Iago. This is going to be fun.

Fun. Oh, that's right. This is supposed to be fun.

By Sunday the character landed. I began to let go and just trust myself. I stopped worrying about the lines and started just really watching my fellow actors - all of whom are amazingly present. I remembered those words of Sanford Meisner: "Get the attention off yourself and onto the other person." My body relaxed. My voice dropped down nice and deep. My hands were no longer flying about. The play flowed along, and I started to lean into the nastiness of Kinsey rather than trying to bend him to some version more acceptable to my own personality. I didn't miss a beat. And it was fun.

Now, with opening night jitters in the past, the exploration of character can really start.