“The struggle to the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart” Albert Camus, from the Myth of Sisyphus

I wrote this as a letter to someone after Round One. Hopefully I don’t come across as too much of an arse and hopefully some of it may serve as another reminder of the work Tim, Louis and the company did and continue to do.

The truth, whatever it is, can never be directly pointed at. Why should an actor or director attempt to dictate answers from a play to an audience? The audience don’t need to be patronised or controlled they can think, feel, and create for themselves and if the moment is allowed to be live, if theatre happens in the now, then they will see far more than any artist could ‘show’ them.

It’s the unexpected that excites and intrigues us. We can see the expected coming. Heavy interpretation casts a shadow over the play so much so, even if the audience don’t know exactly what happens next, nothing that does happen will come as a surprise because they can see the shadow looming.

I saw the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last night and the only moment that something unexpected happened was when Julia Ormond lit a cigarette in a hospital. The rest of the narrative, and all the performances which were so faithful to it, told me nothing I didn’t already know. They played the past, the mood, and the style and nothing therefore beside the cigarette came as a surprise.

As Actors we are constantly pulled towards safety one aspect of what is often our default position. Protecting ourselves from judgement. The shielding of the ego means that the actor isn’t really present because they must spend energy controlling what is revealed. The actor becomes an interpreter translating what they believe to be the truth of the scene, what they have decided their character wants and feels. This distance between what is thought and said is a separation that robs the audience of a deeper truth. The truth we see when shields are down, when Actors face each other with vulnerability and together explore the ever-changing landscape of possibility.

Too often it seems the Artists in Theatre ‘know’. Both Directors and Actors and for that matter Writers think they know the truth. I know what the scenes about, I know this play, I know these moments and I’m going to work out a way to make you know them like I do. But it can’t be about that. We’re all staggering about in the dark picking up bits and pieces and shouting we’ve found it, we’ve found it! The truth can’t be found, captured and bottled and spoon-fed to an audience. We may want it to, oh, fuck, how we want it to, but it’s impossible. The truth isn’t static. It’s not fixed or concrete and so it cannot be found. It’s always changing.

Perhaps it is time for the roles of Actor and Director to be re-examined. Strike that they continuously need to be re-examined or else they become defined and fixed.

The default position is particular to each of us. During Round One we often witnessed actors discovering an honesty in their performance. Less artificial more natural. At other times of course we chose to settle in different comfort zones reluctant to explore far from our own front door, or having found something, having ventured out, dragging it back to the house to put on the mantelpiece. Owning the truth makes it much easier to whip out and show on command, when the audience or director demands it the actor shows the truth they found last time they went exploring, but once owned can it still be truthful?

The default position is always with us. All the our tricks and tactics employed in order to have control over the text/truth whilst similar are unique to each individual. It’s about us maintaining a strong sense of control over our interpretation of character and we see it in posture, expression, movement and we hear it in breath and in voice. We discovered in Round One it doesn’t go away easily which means we needn’t have fear of losing it. But we must explore further than our own front door if we are to escape the default, the answers aren’t on the doorstep, we must venture out. How exciting when we are allowed to witness on occasion Actors who go exploring into the wild.

The Cosmic Yes seems one very effective way to encourage us out of the default, out of the house, and ultimately out of our knowledge of our selves.

It’s about not knowing. Knowledge is an ending. It prescribes a result and so it is future, and it presumes based on experience so it is past, but knowledge is not present. It is an ending because when an Actor ‘knows’ they prescribe for their audience ready-made, freeze-dried, ‘here’s one I made earlier’ answers. The only constant is change, the actors task is to be that change. That’s what the audience have come to see.

They do not simply want to hear the one-third spoken text, what they want and deserve is the two-thirds unspoken communication.

This is not to indulge in random choices devoid of any connection to the reality of the play. The point is the text should, hopefully, keep you from straying into the realms of chaotic artistic masturbation…

I had no audience when I wrote this down so I apologise if I’ve strayed there.
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Questions…


Should directors disappear after the show is up? Or considering that this seems to be the time when all those magical moments of presence that were discovered in the rehearsal room fall away should they not always be on call? If the rehearsal process can be called a journey of discovery then does a rehearsal process ever finish? We need to be reminded never to go back home but to keep exploring.

Can an actor who plays the moment really create an open, positive, active scene alongside one or ones that don’t? If it’s all in the other actor, and you make it about the other person, but they play for themselves or negatively then what do you do? Where do you go if all you’re given is the cue and not the impulse?

“The better for my enemies the worse for my foes” don’t we need constructive critics in order to keep us from our default positions, our comfort zones, our known safe homes? If we try to remove ego and politeness shouldn’t we as honest actors within a company be able to police ourselves from playing the default. If we have license to praise one another may we not also have permission to remind each other of the bear-traps we fall into?

Politeness, which is really fear, and ego seem to me two of the deadliest things in theatre. Fear and ego - aren’t they really the same thing? So looks like it’s just ego that needs to be got rid of, doesn’t it? Isn’t this at the heart of much of the problems in theatre both for actors and directors?

Can a Play ever be played truthfully by all, all of the time?