Articulate, Inquire, Inform, Involve . . .

Well the term hasn't started yet but let's see who will be in 117 2004

Hi Raymon,
which board should we use ? You said you wanted to have only one page for 117. Well now we have three. This one and then each section has its own page in Paws with a message board and lost of other stuff.
Please help, what should be the home for our souls ?

well, i finally signed up for this chat room! hello all 117ers! hows life in your worlds?

(bede, Monday, 16. February 2004, 12:13 AM)

Sarah Hampson Interview:Larry Moss
Read an article in the Globe and Mail about drama teacher teacher Larry Moss. He explains that the actor's desire to perform is "the raw need to feel and be witnessed. It's the desire not to be invisible...The deepest part of a true actor is the desire to be absolutely truthful in imaginary circumstances."
Any thoughts?

notes:
bede moved your query to this talkback page to stimulate open discussion
link to Globe&Mail article: Growing with Moss
or when linkrot occurs check Growing with Moss

I sincerely hope that I in the right place. Before I post comments, can I get some of the Powers That Be (Raymon, Kat) to confirm that this discussion will start here?

(I've taken this thread from Paws (MorningClass) and transplanted it here)

I've been pondering something for some time now--how do we, as actors, portray realistic emotion onstage? There was some pretty strong stuff dished out over the last week, and my question is pretty basic--how? It's basically the old internal/external technique debate.

Do you bring things from your own personal life into the role? For example, if you had to break down and cry, do you try to recall the saddest thing that ever happened to you, or a similar sad event, or something along those lines? Do you produce an image for yourself? I used my own relationships with my brother and my father to try and mirror the emotional quality in my scene.

Do you alter your movements, your tone of voice, and so forth, so that you’re imitating physical sadness, and thereby cause the emotion to spring from that? Austin, for me, meant I was very tense, my lips were held clenched a lot, and his voice was slightly higher and crisper than mine.

Do you take a certain attitude or stance or state of mind to your work? I watched Serpico on DVD recently (I live for DVD commentary) and apparently, every time Al Pacino, as Serpico, had to be in a sad scene, he would mope about the entire day. When his had to be happy, he himself was happy. He seems to steep himself in emotion, and then bring that to bear upon the scene. Other than just trying to enjoy my scene as much as possible, I didn’t do much of this, although I definitely tried to channel my onstage-adrenaline into the tension and repressions within Austin.

I know Yoshi Oida (Invisible Actor) talks about balance and harmony between both internal and external technique. I know that they are by no means unrelated. But where does the feeling originate?

I did a series of summaries of famous essays on drama and acting for my English 112 class, and one of them was by our ol’ pal Stanislavski:

“A fundamental axiom, therefore, for the actor who wishes to be a real artist on the stage, may be stated thus: he must not play to produce emotions, and he must not involuntarily evoke them in himself.” (Direction and Acting, 1947)

He says that both imitations of outward responses and deliberately trying to conjure up emotion from oneself are wrong. I guess it brings a consciousness to the work (be really angry . . . now!) which the audience might detect, but it seems to me, in some instances, that what is pretend can seem very real on the stage; there is nothing an actor can do but pretend. Stanislavski says that the emotion must come from the actor’s portrayal character’s needs, or motivations, and the actor’s supreme concentration and belief in the “artistic ‘suppose.’” From there, emotion should arise organically.

My scene was comical and slightly absurdist, with only a sort of façade of realism (the full-length play develops the absurdism much more), so I didn’t have really huge and serious emotional moments, at least not to the same extent that some of you did. Austin went and repressed them all, anyway.

At any rate, I guess I’ve been wrestling with this basic problem ad nauseam in my drama journal: Stanislavski seems to be calling me a phony. And I want to tell him he’s crazy, that he’s full of it.

Onstage emotion must have a source. I know we did sourcework in 116, to discover those sources, but isn’t drawing emotion from them a violation of Stanislavski’s axiom? Doesn’t that also mean that psychological gesture is emotional forgery? Didn’t Stanislavski end his career working with that stuff?

I’m confused. Writing it all out for public consumption helps a bit, but it’s still there.

How do you guys produce emotion, and what do you think of my Stanislavski-grapplin’?
Any and all comments are welcomed and appreciated.

- Brent McFarlane

But how I got my emotions was from a variety of things:

1) My adrenaline, I need to be nervous to act.

2) My experiences, I need to have felt it before, like in Education is our Right, I don't think I was angry enough, but that's because well I couldn't relate and such. But with Elizabeth, I know what it feels like to be cheated on so the devastation wasn't too hard, (I still feel like a phoney though...)and if you are going through a more difficult time it's easier to be upset. For me at least.

3) I think I have to feel about my scene, not necessarily love it. I hated my scene but especially my character. (I know this goes against what Raymon says, but I don't think you have to love your scene or character, I think you have to feel about it, and not be indifferent.) Elizabeth was everything I wasn't, I hated how she acted and talked and was so timid. She was a wimp essentially. For those of you who know me, would know I am not like that. (At least I don't think I am.)

So to sum that all up, uhhh... yeah, gosh Brent don't know. I guess it's whatever tickles your fancy and brings out the best in you.

I hope I helped, but probably not... But have a good weekend!

Cheers Caitlin

Hmmm . . . yeah, bringing stuff from your own life is always good, I think, but it's interesting . . . I don't know, you can't be like "BE SAD NOW! REMEMBER SAD THING!" Or can you? Do you consciously make yourself sad? What if the memory doesn't affect you as much that day? I don't know, emotion is so variable. That's why I HATE stage directions like "cries" or "laughs".

There's some stuff in Acrobat about everything being a response to real or imagined objects (or something like that) and about using images in your work. Maybe that has some relevance here, but I'll have to make sure I know what I'm talking about first.

Thanks for posting!
- Brent McFarlane

One thing I think was really cool about Laramie was that each character, because they were basically just narrating their own story, had a single pose, for the most part, and generally a gesture or two. The physical choices were really clear, and that alone got both the audience and the actors into the story more. For example, the actor who portayed the boy who found Matthew always sat in the same way, and when he came onstage and sat down like that, I didn't need to be told who we was. I didn't need to hear him speak. I saw the character. Cassie (the narrator-type character) had a lot less introducing to do by the second and third acts.

I guess being a mimic is an essential part of being an actor. It's just very hard to do and not feel like a huge phony, like Caitlin mentioned. Part of acting is being decisive, being bold, and making those choices, going with them.

I'm done rambling. Thanks a bunch.
- Brent McFarlane

I guess people, human beings, as a rule, are pretty conflicted. I'm Googling that Walt Whitman quote at the moment . . . here we go:

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes)."

I don't know if you can really say anyone's had it easy. I mean, in a way, we all have, 'cause, you know, we're all rich and privileged as hell to be at a university like this, speaking in a global sense (wow, I'm preachy). But we've all felt joy, sadness, excitement, anger, etc., and very strongly. Personal experiences and/or hardships are subjective and relative, and I don't feel comfortable making that judgement.

However, it certainly reflects that you consider yourself to have been in large part unshaken by whatever went on in your life, which is healthy and good, and probably advantageous as an actor.

Anybody else have things they'd rather not bring to bear on the stage? I know I do. "I could use this experience in a scene, but I'd rather not go there." Anybody feel a bit of that?
- Brent McFarlane

Cheers Caitlin

Basically, this is mostly in response to Bronwyn's post about how she "blacks out" and becomes the character. I find that darn-near impossible. I mean, I know she doesn't mean it as literally, maybe, as I'm taking it in that sense, but I never even feel like that.

I can never concentrate on just one thing. I can still concentrate well enough on things, well enough to do them, but my mind wanders, constantly. I'm typing, but for whatever reason, I've decided to watch my hands with my peripheral vision. I don't know why I'm doing that, so now I'm thinking about that. Someone is putting money into the printer terminal, 'cause it's making that weird coin-drop noise. I wonder where that comes from. There's an interesting squeak coming out of the rotating chair next to me. I wonder how that would sound as a sample in a song. And so forth. The whole time, I was still fully functioning as someone posting on a message board. I don't have that singular concentration, though.
That's why I find Stanislavski frustrating, and why I'm finding Acrobat so helpful. Wangh talks about not blocking out the audience, about not needing to force yourself into absolute concentration, but to integrate those things into your performance, to take that energy and use it as your own, like a judo or aikido master. (He explains things way better than I do.)

For me, this works way better. Stanislavski demands total concentration, and I can't force myself into that. I think he's nuts. That's just my approach, and my path, though. I'm not a fourth-wall-heavy kinda actor. I think I have stronger tendencies toward clown, towards direct interaction with the audience. The three to four times I have felt a level of mastery of an audience (very, very rare), I was playing a bit to them. I wasn't giving everything away, as I tend to sometimes, but I was inviting them in, like Raymon said. Citing Raymon again, it *is* like the sprinter relaxing at 50m. Stanislavski doesn't let me relax. What Wangh is saying does.

I'm finding stuff that makes sense. It's good. READ ACROBAT!
- Brent McFarlane

Hope this is in the right spot. Some interesting ideas in this thread. Do we actually take on someone else's voice and movements as Austin suggests? In my scene I found the character gave me the voice -- not the other way around. The character told me how to move. When it works -- when magic, transformation, the heavenly happens -- it is like being in someone else's body and soul. Oops, there's that word. Great discussion Wed. night. Still pondering the soul idea. Is it that which gives breath? The space between the "I" and "Thou" as the philosopher said? In any case -- something of the divine.

Avoiding the subject of Tchaikovsky, towards whom (as Raymon correctly pointed out) I would have a strong affinity as a fellow countryman, I would like to use another example.

Why should you care if somebody takes Mozart's music and makes it into jazz? I think the answer is because you want to try and preserve as much of the original vision as possible. Why?

There is nothing to stop artists from interpreting the symphonies in whatever ways they want – as long as they do not call those interpretations "Mozart's symphonies". That would simply be a lie. Call them something else ("Joe's take on Moe-dude?"), which would reflect the changes. Make sure people who come to listen are aware that the piece has been changed. Otherwise, we as artists would be running the risk of having the audience totally forget what the original was. It may not be that bad for one or two performances, but if the process runs for a long enough time, we will forget ourselves.
To add our vision to Mozart's may result in something deeper in the end. But to be honest to ourselves and to the work we need to know the scores written by him, played as it was intended. We need these constraints even if it is only to provide “obstacles” against which to work.

I fear that the currently embraced attitude of easily accepting any amount of cultural change (which is really a mass culture phenomenon) may lead us all to forgetfulness. What will we be if we do not remember? If we do not care to look back? I do not pretend to know. All I feel is that right now the West looks like it's becoming more and more nomadic; not in space, but in time.

All of this IMHO, of course.