11. Animation pt. 2

Creativity depends on maintaining innocence and a never-ending curiosity about the human condition...all our discoveries lead to identification with the character and the circumstances in which he lives to animate our thoughts and senses in order to act, to do.

Hagen begins her discussion of thought in acting with three important points:

1. Thought moves with the speed of lightning.

2. Thought is not based on verbally organized ideas.

3. You cannot separate thought from action.

Onstage, just as we are working to project the character's physical behavior, we working to project their mental behavior. To tell the story of the character's thought rather than the actor's thought (which should be invisible at all times), true concentration is required. The thinking during a scene almost always relates to one's primary psychological objective, rather than the outer, physical action that is taking place. Opposites create texture and draw the audience in.

Our thoughts, as Hagen points out, are not verbal. Our thoughts are visual, and it is through the selection of particularized images relevant to our objective that we animate our character's thoughts. Hagen calls these images inner objects (as opposed to the outer objects that one is actually interacting with physically onstage).

Contacting the images connected with the character's objective instigate forward moving, traveling thought.

Can't help thinking of McEleney's "acting thought" lesson here. We can't go internal. There's a bit of acting in it.

Hagen summarizes it in a great way: The actor's thinking depends on the subjective process of weighing his course of action by contact with inner and outer objects.

10. Animation

Hagen describes animation as responding freely and intuitively to the imagined circumstances and surroundings and to the characters with whom you are interacting in the play. Essentially this harkens back to behaving TRUTHFULLY under imaginary circumstances. Animation = truth. Or reality, as it might be referred to. She separates the chapter into four sections: the body, the mind, listening, and talking.

BODY

The body is the visible tool with which I communicate a living character. Voice and speech, the soul and the mind, are not separate from the body but originate from it.

Animation in the body depends first on relaxation and concentration. Training teaches our body to work with our natural fear response when we step onstage in front of a large number of people. When we are relaxed, we are free to concentrate on the circumstances given to us by the playwright that dictate the behavior of our CHARACTER, rather than our ACTOR BEHAVIOR.

As McEleney says: do what people do, not what actors do. Actor behavior arises from self-consciousness. Self-consciousness in the body can be combated by knowing truthful, motivated physical destinations for your character. When your body is ceasing to serve you, always ask where you are heading. Hagen quotes Arthur Hopkins: "The reason for walking is destination."

You must know:

1. Where you have just been.

2. Where you are now.

3. Where you are heading.

The human body is always in motion. In true moments of arrest, the character is determining their next move.

HOWEVER, destinations are almost always secondary to your psychological objective (i.e. I want you to agree to fund my play but I am in the midst of serving you a cup of coffee).

Destination + objective = behavior.

So we can conclude that acting is a combination of both inner and outer action. Our inner action dictates how we perform our outer action.

You must also have a point of view about your surroundings. Is the place new or familiar? Comfortable or uncomfortable? Temperature? Time of day? Delicate or solid? etc.

Remember, human beings are always seeking comfort in the their surroundings. Even in crisis, we're always searching for a place to alight. We stand, almost always, to reach our next destination.

9. The Psychological Senses

Something that I always forget that Hagen makes clear in this chapter: Don't try to fix what isn't broken. The techniques she's describing are for when we need help. Sometimes things come naturally and at those times we should leave ourselves alone.

In the chapter previous to this, Hagen discussed sensory recall. In this chapter, she highlights the fact that the physical and the psychological are indistinguishable, and that we can use the physical senses as an entry point into whatever emotional requirements a character might have. She points to the use of "trigger" objects from our past experience--experiences that are the essence but not the actual event of the play--that will induce an emotional reaction. Of course she doesn't stop there. The process isn't complete unless, in our character's dealing with their emotional response to stimulus, behavior/action results.

She seems to make no distinction between inner action (to plead, to skewer, etc) with outer action (the way you pick up a teacup, the way you close the door). In either case the goal is that it is specific and truthful, springing from the actor's imaginative identification with the character and her circumstances.

We start with the senses: an improvisation through different environments. We then connect those sensations to our emotional response. We then see how we deal with that response--how we try to gain control of it--that results in behavior and action.

Pitfalls for the actor: waiting for the feeling; measuring the feeling; comparing the feeling to the last time; worrying whether the feeling will come; not connecting the stimulus to the circumstances of the play (you do this in rehearsal, in performance you play the play).

THE FEELING IS NEVER THE GOAL.

Imagining I will begin the class with a close reading of the phrase "BEHAVING TRUTHFULLY UNDER IMAGINARY CIRCUMSTANCES." I've heard this so often but haven't come to understand it until now. Each word has specific implications and must be fully understood.

Behaving: This is specific action. What do you DO??

Truthfully: This comes from your personal identification with your character's circumstances, the Magic If. You are not fulfilling a preconceived idea of the character, you are discovering the character's behavior imaginatively through improvisation within her circumstances.

Under: We are always working with obstructions, the things that keep us getting what we want, the oft-mentioned CONFLICT in the play. A character's struggle to gain control over their environment and their responses to it, TO GET WHAT THEY WANT.

Imaginary: The actor's primary tool, the facility they use to place themselves in the circumstances of the character. They use the imagination to recreate sensations of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound which create behavioral responses that tell the character's story.

Circumstances: This is the environment, relationships, needs and wants provided to you by the playwright. They condition your action and are what you must make real through use of your imagination.

8. The Physical Senses

One of the most amazing things to me about seeing Elizabeth Marvel onstage was the way, when she touched the silk dress her character coveted, I could feel the fabric as she felt it. I have rarely, if ever, seen an actor so sensitive--and equally capable of projecting those sensations to the audience.

In fact, sensory awareness seems to me one of the most undervalued skills to actors today. Perhaps because the film and TV world make us take it for granted. There they can simply show a closeup of the object, blood spilling from a fresh cut, steam rising from a hot shower. But it is one of the most powerful tools in the stage actor's arsenal. It is one of the things Duse was most known for.

Once again Hagen gives instructions for the direct, practical application of the imagination. Sensory recall is not an end in itself, she reminds us, and must always result in behavior that is applicable to the character's circumstances. In fact, she says that it is in trying to overcome the sensation (too hot, too cold, headache, etc) that we actually feel it. Waiting to feel the sensation will never work. How do you DEAL with it?

Physical responses, Hagen says, are accompanied by psychological ones. Behavior will induce feeling. As my acting teacher says, emotional choices are physical choices.

The key to successful behavior is to localize the sensation in a specific part of the body. If you are cold, do you feel it on the back of your neck? Does heat manifest itself as a trickle of sweat down your side or as the sun in your eyes? Is fatigue in your feet or your shoulders? By localizing the sensation we manifest specific behavior to deal with the problem.

A question: what if the sensation is pleasant? I suppose our behavior would be directing toward making the sensation last.

Awakening the physical senses, helping my students be aware (and, as Hagen suggests, cataloguing them for future use), seems to me one of the first steps. I've been thinking for a while that, for the first class, I will lead a guided improvisation through different environments and circumstances, so students may encounter their imaginations (or lack thereof). Afterwards they can journal about the experience and then we can discuss it. This work can then be combined with the beat, objective and action work I also plan to do in the first part of the semester. As we move in to the actual plays, we will then have a bit of a toolbox to work with and continually explore.

I think I will also have them keep a "sense log" in their journals outside of class. Each day they must spend 10-15 minutes writing about a particular object or sensation, cataloguing their reactions to sight, smell, touch, sound and taste.

7. Transference

This chapter is about what I know as "personalization." Following Hagen's dictum to find yourself in the part, "transference" involves immersing yourself imaginatively in the character's life by asking yourself what you know about their experience.

Hagen warns against trying to find exact parallels. This will stifle the imagination. When finding a transference for a particular event (such as discovering the body of your dead lover), she specifies that it is the essence of the experience you are looking for. For the latter situation, she suggests the death of her poodle as a useful transference.

You make transferences not only for events, but also for relationships and environments. But transference is not an end in itself. It is an incomplete technique until it results in behavior that is specific to the character's experience and story. It should never result in self-indulgent behavior the the part of the actor.

Transference is a rehearsal technique. By performance they should be well in place.

Some parts will require less transference than others. As Harriet Walter says, sometimes acting is as easy as falling off a log. For whatever reason, sometimes the imaginative leaps are remarkably easy and instinctual. Sometimes the character's experiences are so close to one's own that no transference is necessary.

Hagen recommends building a storehouse of transferences, making them an integral part of your homework and rehearsal procedures. This is where an actor's observation and daily imaginative life comes in. Perhaps do the exercise where the students observe a particular person and bring them in to class.

She also refers to "particularization," which I know as "endowment." This refers to more specific interactions with objects and environment--the stinging heat of a stiff shot (that is really cold tea or colored water), the delicacy of china (actually a plastic cup), a cold winter gust (on a sweltering stage). Students could do short etudes involving an entrance, interaction with object, and exit. They would have to particularize where they were coming from, where they were going, and their relationship to the room and object.

Hagen also stresses that it's important not to share your transferences with your director or castmates. They will then lose their imaginative power and cease to function for you. How then to work on transference in the classroom? Bring in some of the Meisner exercises we used to use with Kenny? Using the circumstances in the plays we are studying?

Also the exercise we did with Tom, exploring the themes of the play and then building scenes from our own experiences that involve those themes.

What I want to highlight is how the imagination is applied actively to the play to result in truthful behavior onstage.

6. The Self

You must find yourself in the part.

Hagen's topic sentence echoes one of my acting teacher's frequent statements: Start with what you identify with in the character. Start with what is the same rather than what is different. Starting with the differences means you will work to change yourself, you will work with preconceived ideas and mannerisms, when in fact you are enough.

The phrase in bold above is an oft repeated maxim in my graduate program. Hagen's chapter on the actor's self explains that philosophy well.

A person is actually many different selves. Our "self," in fact, changes with our circumstances: the people we're with, the place we're in, the clothes we wear, the event we're participating in. The actor playing Richard III may not be able to draw from an actual experience of murder, but he can identify a time in his life when his ambition was overpowering, when he wanted a part so badly he was willing to do anything. As Hagen points out, conscience only kicks in after the fact. Human beings are amazing self-justifiers. We always play the positive. You use your imagination to contact and amplify that identification.

It is necessary, Hagen says, to expand our sense of self. We must observe ourselves in different circumstances and catalogue those identifications. Not just the pleasant, but the unpleasant. Also as my teacher says, the hard part of acting is not exposing our vulnerable, sensitive side. The hard part is exposing the ugly parts: ambition, cruelty, greed. The important thing to remember is that we always act out of a pursuit of happiness and self-gratification. That will keep you playing the positive.

I need to imagine ways that students can encounter and explore various parts of themselves, safely, in the classroom. Engaging their imaginations in relation to different circumstances and relationships, to expand their behavioral palette, so they can then bring these identifications to characters.

5. The Actor's Techniques

When speaking about acting, I often struggle to articulate the difference, oft argued, between the technical and the..."other thing." The thing that elevates (or deepens) an actor's performance so it becomes recognizably human and moving. In actor training the vocal and physical technique we are drilled on is often separated from this more human quality. Our "technique" is in one place, our "humanity" in another. I've always felt that there was something wrong with this.

Hagen solves it. We are not separating the technical from the human. They are all, in fact, techniques. She separates the kind of techniques they are: the "outer techniques" (body, voice, speech) and the "human techniques" (imagination). I can't decide if I prefer "inner techniques" instead of her phrasing. The voice, body and speech are part of our humanity, too.

She describes the inner techniques (there, I've decided) as follows:

• The conscious use of subconscious promptings (personalized inner and outer objects)
• Selection of truthful actions (behaviors that develop out of the given circumstances)
• Execution of actions will involve a moment to moment subjective experience
• Spontaneity
• Reality is theatrical (references Christopher Fry article "How Lost, How Amazed, How Miraculous We Are")
• The intersection of psychology and behavior

She makes two other important distinctions. One, between naturalism and realism. Realism, she says entails a search for selected behavior pertinent to the character's needs within the prescribed circumstances of the dramatist. Naturalism is random modern behavior applied willy-nilly, regardless of character, language, or circumstance. Interesting. Conscious selection creates art. Picasso chose the colors, Mozart chose the notes, Graham chose the steps--all to communicate what they wanted about an idea. Actors choose the behavior to communicate the character who was chosen by the playwright to communicate an idea.

Secondly, between realistic and formalistic acting. Formalism is the style exhibited by performers by Olivier, objectively realized. Realism is exemplified by Duse, subjectively developed.

I am most interested in this chapter for the way it solves my problem of articulating precisely the way an actor works. I don't want "technique" to be a bad word in my classroom because I think that gives student a dangerous prejudice toward the outer techniques, which are essential and which we will also be exploring. I believe it sets up a wall when students start working on Shakespeare and other classical writers which are more technically demanding.

I am reminded reading this that make-believe is at the heart of an actor's work. After all is done, we are pretending, and it should be fun and freeing. The joy of acting is in letting the imagination run free, combined with the point of view which gives purpose and technique to communicate. I have a tendency to become serious, somber. I want my classroom to be a playground. I want my exercises to be fun, engaging, actively imaginative. I want my students to be actively discovering themselves and each other.

The students should begin by encountering their own behavior in imaginative circumstances. Perhaps on the first day we will do a guided improvisation through various environments and circumstances. On the second, Stella Adler's exercise of recreating the entrance into the room. These can be combined with a vocal and physical warm-up and getting-to-know-you exercises, and journal writing.

Finally, a note from my former teacher from Interlochen, Larry Reiman. "Have fun teaching," he said, "Keep them active (acting is doing) and don't call them out in front of their classmates and you should be fine." Not sure what the latter half means yet but of course agree with the former.