href="#ulink_c7c7b509-69a4-5924-98d8-9e1af4ce8777">(**) Anton Chekhov, The Seagull, Act I. All original quotes translated by Michael Smith.
A century has since passed. Konstantin shot himself. Chekhov is gone. What has changed in our views of theatre? As before, most actors create a role on the basis of the personnage’s psychological state, purely on the basis of psychological conflict and the plot. I don’t want to say this is wrong but it is insufficient both for the role of the Actor and that of Theatre. What we take on board and sort out as our own personal baggage in life is perfect only for life itself and not at all for Theatre.
This unilateral way of analysing the role brings the actor to a low, base way of thinking, to a stage study, to put it bluntly, of coarseness. It limits his artistic potential, narrows the artistic scope, makes a cliché of the acting and results in inadequate proficiency. Let me explain why…
By taking such a one-sided view of the role, actors and directors basically draw on psychological material gained from their own experiences in life. But however great this experience may be it would be difficult to call it knowledge of human psychology. Psychology is a most complicated component to our lives, and it only seems accessible to all. And everyone considers himself an expert. In fact, this is gratifying self-deception. The deepest processes in our psychological lives are only to a tiny degree subject to our logic and the decisions we make freely. There are more questions than there are answers. Difficult psychological decisions are taken intuitively by the subconscious. So we have a paradox – actors use these psychological processes as if it were the most natural thing on stage while scientists state that the science of psychology is only just in the initial phase of research. Thus actors only use the uppermost layer of the very simplest psychological motivation, taken from life, on stage. They draw on its energy to create a role. But for the stage, for theatre and for art this is not enough. Due to its inconstancy, the everyday lacks sufficient energy for the simple reason that it needs energy itself.
The analysis of the role is often based on how observant an actor is in life and of his ability to render a believable imitation of a commonplace, everyday situation and human nature on stage. Everyday life gradually came to be the basic material of an actor’s art. The lifelike images that most actors strive to attain so selflessly merely serve to force their feelings and thoughts onto a lower level. This diminishes the energy of the acting and means they will never achieve the level of genuine “creativeness”. Because the creative spirit feeds first and foremost on ideas and images. By feeding on a diet of the everyday, nothing greater can ever be created. Surely the role of Theatre is more than rifling through explanations about who loves whom and who doesn’t? We find out who are friends and who are foes, and then what? In any case, as Oscar Wilde said – sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature. There is yet something else, something even more important, that truly steers life itself, alters it, something which defines our role in life and our attitudes. Surely this is a more worthy object when analysing a role? A study of the purely psychological relations between individuals is clearly insufficient to get a full picture of the world those people inhabit. Are the plays of Sophocles, Chekhov, Shakespeare or Becket built merely on “psychology”? Nonetheless, the vast majority of actors and directors continue to cut the philosophical worlds of the great playwrights to shreds with the scissors of psychological theatre.
Today an actor does not have the right to be satisfied with his work on a role by simply analysing the psychological being of the personnage. Contemporary theatre demands the analysis take different directions – “vertical”, “horizontal”, from different positions, based on different sciences and religions. Only by fulfilling this condition can the acting become truly rich in nuances and as varied as a great novel where, while everything exists in isolation, it seethes and boils together and is thus unified. Everything has to be acted out together and at the same moment – psychology and philosophy, physiology and aesthetics, biology, physics, religion, ethics and so on. The more views an actor takes in analysing a role, the more polyphonic the role will sound on stage. By immersing himself thus he is not faced with the question of where to get the energy to act from. If one line of analysis doesn’t work then another will. The actor doesn’t move about clutching to one single solitary thread of the role which, if he loses, will thrust him into a gaping chasm – rather he holds onto an entire network of various analyses that ensure his ability to structure his acting on stage. The rules proposed below differ widely, they offer you various studies that can support or contradict each other, bringing you to results, which are the opposite of your intention. That’s fine. Don’t be afraid of that – it is a game. I will even go so far as to say that if you are an actor then you should know what the joys of victory and defeat in acting are. If you know this then you will probably love to analyse.
I love to play with balls; hence the order of the questions bears no relation to the degree of their importance. Each question or rule is a distinct point on the surface of the ball. It suits me better that way. In a game all the rules are important, though the most important is what you need at a given moment. I think that sooner or later you will find them all useful. The main thing is to play with the ball, spin it around. The number of these rules increases with each year of my experiments in theatre and teaching. This pleases me rather than otherwise. I think that you too can add to and continue the list. It all started with one of my teachers, who once gave us twelve or fourteen rules of analysis, called them “axioms”, explained nothing in detail and then left. He was a good teacher, he believed in the aptitude of his students and trusted us with his knowledge. His name was Mikhail Mikhailovich Butkevich. He is no longer with us. It is with gratitude that I continue what he started.
I named these rules of analysis Questions of the Role. If you have a Question then you will have the energy to investigate. If a Question arises then that means somewhere an Answer awaits. Maybe you will never find it. But the important thing is to look – because that is what analysis is all about.
QUESTIONS OF THE ROLE
Question 1
What is the Idea of the role?
• How do you see the main idea of the work?
• What does this idea express?
• How does it relate to the present, to the past, to the future, to you personally and to all humanity – young and old, black, white, or yellow?
We know these questions from our school days. I was taught to understand the principle of an idea thus – “in taking a play to pieces you have to find the most burning issues of today in everything.” That is arguable. “Today’s issue”, so to speak, may only be burning today and lack powerful energetic potential, so it cannot count on lasting long and consequently has no claim to be classed as a work of Art.
But before we start to argue about that, we must define what an idea is. Often actors and directors call their own concept the idea of the role or the play. Others try to find the “idea of the author” by honest means. But you have to look not for the idea of the author and his play or your own idea but for the Idea itself. What does this mean?
The fact is that Ideas or groups of IDEAS exist outside the drama and outside us. They belong to no one nation, time or event – they are eternal. The time, the situation and the development of philosophical and aesthetic thoughts, of all culture and civilisation, are appointed by time so that the Idea appears before the new Aischylos, Shakespeare or Chekhov. The paradox lies in the fact that we are looking for a new Idea all the time, whereas actually it is looking for us, seeking out that worthy someone.
Its energy – and an Idea has incredibly powerful energy – strikes the playwright and thanks to the Idea he starts to create his own work. He embodies the Idea in his play – a specific story, theme, conflict, personnages or text and so on. The
