Manifesting Truth

So far in this study I have taken a semiotic  approach to the exploration of the relationship between the actor and the playwright. But in this chapter, as I turn towards an examination of what it is about the process of naturalistic acting that might provide further insights into the relationship, I think it’s important to employ an alternative approach in this scrutiny of the theatre process.

Phenomenology is an approach that is almost diametrically opposed to that provided by semiotics, because, whereas semiotics looks to deconstruct and analyse the theatre process, phenomenology seeks to address the effects theatre has on those who experience it as a whole. My reason for choosing to change tack here is that I think such a holistic approach might better enable me to explain the relationship between the work of the actor, the work of the playwright and the relationship between the two. In particular, because I believe the nature of this relationship is most likely to be found in the experience of the audience. 

Fortier writes of this approach...

“Phenomenology is concerned with what it is like for human beings to be alive in the world around them and how they perceive the world. Human perception has a number of aspects. First, humans have bodies with senses.”

And then, Garner quotes the French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, when he  writes, 

‘To perceive is to render oneself present to something through the body’ and refers to our ‘lived bodiliness’ [and later to the fact that] Theatre has most often worked with living actors on stage. The body is the actor’s instrument. Theatrical space is phenomenal space, governed by the body and its spatial concerns” 10)

Later in his chapter on ‘Theatre, Life and Language’ Fortier goes on to make a connection between phenomenology and the work of the Russian theatre director and theatre theorist, Constantin Stanislavsky. With reference to Stanislavsky’s book ‘My Life in Art’ Fortier quotes him as follows...

“When true theatre is taking place the actor passes from the plane of actual reality into the plane of another life; the actor creates life and ‘the feeling of truth’, incarnates the human spirit to the point of forgetting he is on stage.” 11)

Fortier goes on to make further connections between phenomenology and the work of Stanislavsky, when he writes about the sense of ‘attention’ actors are called upon to bring to their art when using the ‘System’; an attention akin to that called on by phenomenologists in relation to the world and ourselves. Emotion Memory, he notes, resides in the actor’s feelings and is brought to the surface by returning this feeling to the five senses. 

Again, in 2024, this seems important because what is being observed is the means by which ‘feeling’ is brought forward ‘in the mix’. In short it is the actor making contact with the causes of the playwright’s virtual action and crossing it over into the phenomenological experience of the audience through their action in the space.

But, perhaps even more importantly, he observes, picking up on the work of Counsell that...

“Acting of this kind involves ‘communion’ between actors and between actors and an audience” 12)

Now if such a sense of communion exists between the actor and the audience, then perhaps a similar sense of communion can be said to exist between the actor and the playwright using the same criteria.

In an examination of the art of the naturalistic actor, as this chapter develops, I hope to demonstrate that this is exactly what occurs when theatre happens at its best. In such an approach, I make a claim for the actor to be regarded as the primary reader of the playwright’s text, rather than assuming what we might term an open, ‘Derrida’ style, approach to the text. I posit this idea because in this way the actor takes a position whereby s/he makes a ‘link of communion’ with the playwright’s originating sense of virtual action – the ‘latent’ content within the ‘manifest’ content of the dialogue on the page to utilise the terminology of psychoanalysis. 

In 2024 I regard this as an important breakthrough because it makes a key point about the approach needed by the authentic actor to arrive in a state of communion with the playwright’s intentions. And, conversely, about the need for the playwright to have regard to this in the work they do on the text - that the playwright must be primarily concerned about the interaction between characters and not the structure of the play.

It is absolutely clear from an examination of Stanislavsky’s writing that there can be no drama without interaction between characters on stage, and that the words spoken, the play-text’  are only one part of that interaction. Beneath the text, according to Stanislavsky, there is ‘sub-text’, (of which more later in this chapter). 

Sharon Marie Carnicke, in her essay, Stanislavsky’s System – Pathways for the Actor’, in the excellent compendium ‘Twentieth Century Actor Training’ edited by Alison Hodge, creates the context for Stanislavsky’s work when she writes...

“The first, most pervasive of these is Stanislavsky’s holistic belief that the mind and body represent a psycho-physical continuum. He rejects the Western conception that divides the mind from the body, taking his cue from the French psychologist Theodule Ribot, who believed that emotion never existed without physical consequence. Stanislavsky insists that, ‘In every physical action there is something psychological, and in the psychological, something physical’ 13)

Again in 2024 this seems to be important, in that  it is obvious that the playwright’s intentions are only fully realised by an actor who is intent on seeking communion with the playwright’s original intentions; where the actors actions on stage mirror the ‘virtual actions’ that take place in the playwright’s imagination as s/he writes the play. 

Now here, once again, is a link back into the relationship between the actor and the playwright through the psychological/physical equation. 

Earlier in this dissertation I identified what I described as ‘virtual actions’ in the imagination of the playwright giving rise to the dialogue that appeared between characters on the page. To follow this train of thought through, it seems that, according to Stanislavsky, that the actor works with a degree of reciprocity back through the language on the page, into the virtual action inherent in the dialogue, and so back to the original intentions of the character as conceived by the playwright. In 2024 I see this as a key relationship and one that must prove to be central to my work as a writer.

I believe this sense of reciprocity is alluded to by Peter Brook when he writes in the ‘Empty Space’, “Again with Shakespeare we hear or read the same advice – ‘Play what is written’. But what is written? Certain ciphers on paper. Shakespeare’s words are records of the words that he wanted to be spoken, words issuing as sounds from people’s mouths, with pitch, pause, rhythm and gesture as part of their meaning. A word does not start as a word – it is an end product which begins life as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behaviour which demands the need for expression. This process occurs inside the dramatist; it is repeated inside the actor. Both may only be conscious of the words, but both for the author and for the actor the word is a small visible portion of a gigantic unseen formation. .... They recognise that the only way to find the true path to the speaking of a word is through a process that parallels the original creative one.” 14)

If my thesis is correct, and this reciprocal link is alive between the processes employed by the playwright and the actor then my examination of Stanislavsky’s work should throw up a number of other instances where we can see evidence of the coalescence of the two methodologies. 

In such an examination of Stanislavsky’s System it is possible to divide it into two sections; the first has to do with the development of ‘self’ and so with the development, within the actor, of the creative state of ‘experiencing’. The second looks to create pathways into dramatic text and is particularly about the successful development of character. Now it seems to me that both of these have relevance to the processes employed by the playwright.

In the first section, Stanislavsky looks to develop the actor’s sense of self through exercises that develop concentration, imagination and communication. Now all of these have resonance for a playwright, particularly the psychophysical state that Stanislavsky refers to as ‘the state of public solitude’. 

In this he calls on his actors to find total concentration, both physical and mental. Certainly such a state is something of a prerequisite for the crafting of a play. There is a focus on ‘attention’ – an awareness of the effect of the world on self as perceived through all the senses - and all playwrights will recognise the way in which the inclusion of relevant detail can lift a moment into life in the writing of a scene. This sense of detail is, in many ways similar to that depicted in Stanislavsky’s use of the anecdotes about the two travellers who stop on the cliff to look down at the sea, and about the two men listening to a familiar polka in ‘An Actor Prepares’. These anecdotes, for Stanislavsky, serve to illustrate the power of ‘Emotion Memory’, but they work equally well for the playwright as an illustration of what the playwright needs to consider when writing dialogue for any scene; in fact here there is a moment of coalescence, because I believe these two processes draw inspiration from the same well-spring of creativity.

Next in this section of ‘The System’ we come to Stanislavsky’s thoughts about ‘imagination’; the emphasis being on detail and an encouragement for the actor to visualise the details of the character’s world. Once again the same can be said for the world of the playwright, for the unfolding world of a play often manifests itself in the mind of the playwright as a series of images or moments of emotional electricity. Referring back to the work of Ribot it is possible to make a case for the reciprocity between psychological and physical action in the virtual world of the playwright’s imagination, where, I believe, this manifests itself in the interplay between the writer’s imagined characters. It is worthy of note here that the translation of the Russian word ‘feeling’ into English from Stanislavsky’s original text does not reflect the same emotional/physical interplay inherent in the word within its original language.

This is important, I believe, in that it critiques English as a language that devalues the breadth of influence of feeling as originally conceived in Stanislavsky’s original. Feeling, in the language of Stanislavsky is clearly more ‘all encompassing’ of the ‘lived experience’.

Finally in this section of Stanislavsky’s System we have his thoughts about an approach to communication for the actor. Here the emphasis is on the ‘text of the performance’ , a conceit beyond the actual words denoted in the script; reflecting the ways in which actors use ‘non-verbal’ forms of communication to articulate their character for an audience. Such ‘non-verbal’ work arises out of the ‘sub-text’ of the play and for the actor this is communicated through body language, gesture, tone of voice rhythm and pause etc. The key here for the playwright  here is that the writing of text and sub-text happen concurrently - with the text emerging out of the sub-text established through the ‘virtual action’ of the characters in the playwright’s imagination. The key concept here is ‘dramatic tension’ and whilst this is important for an actor to recognise in the performance of their character, I would argue that it is an even bigger factor in the ‘internal work’ of the playwright; for the wrestling with dramatic tension can produce ‘real’ feeling for the playwright as the fiction unfolds onto the page – producing emotional and physical resonances for the writer as he/she seeks to realise the fiction - resonances that are either revealed or hidden in the spoken text produced on the page.

The second section of Stanislavsky’s System is concerned with approaches to dramatic text and the realisation of character by the actor for an audience in the theatre. The System provides the actor with a variety of ways to work on roles.  Sharon Marie Carnicke describes it as follows...

“Some begin with imagination and intellect: ‘affective cognition’ and the ‘scoring of actions’. Others rely on physicalisation: the method of physical action and active analysis. All assume that a careful reading of the play precedes rehearsal.” 15)

Then quoting directly from Stanislavsky she writes...

“‘The first acquaintance with a role is the first stage of creative work.’ In an extended metaphor [he then] compares this acquaintance to the first meeting of lovers, in which the author seduces the actor. Rehearsals bring them ever closer, resulting in their marriage. The relationship eventually leads to the birth of a new human being, the character.” 16)

In 2024 this really resonates with Kelly’s phrase - ‘The imaginative eye of feeling’ , as it seems to capture the essence of what Stanislavsky talks about here.

What I like about this metaphor is the image it creates of co-dependence, where the actor and playwright seem to be mutually dependent on one another; in such a situation the issue of ownership seems less important than the fact that the result of the union is the performance of the play.

I diversify here, but in 2024, at this point in the argument, the role of the director would very much seem to be one of  inculcating this relationship between the work of the actor and the words of the playwright; as some might argue was the key purpose behind the work of Peter Brook. 

Stanislavsky’s concept of ‘affective cognition’ or ‘cognitive analysis’ seems important here because it focuses on ‘action’, where action denotes what the character does to solve the problem beset them by the ‘given circumstances’ of the play, creating individual ‘scores of action’ for each character throughout the play. It is out of this notion that Stanislavsky’s ‘Method of Physical Action’ emerges finally resulting in what Stanislavsky refers to as the ‘silent etude’, where the actor should be able to carry out the sequence of physical actions in any scene without using the language of the text at all, whilst still communicating to those watching the inner life of the scene; again the emphasis is on the realisation of the drama through action, which is where I contend the process begins in the imagination of the playwright.

‘Silent Etudes' became a key part of my practice as a director, particularly in working on the Edinburgh Shows at CLFS, after this. Indeed, such emotional/physical intensity characterised much of the work of these students in the latter period of my career at Freemen’s. And has been something I’ve almost taken for granted in my writing since 2014.

But finally we come to the aspect of Stanislavsky’s System that seems to me to be the final piece in the jigsaw I’ve been trying to put together about the relationship between the artistic work of the playwright and the creative work of the actor; Stanislavsky’s concept of ‘active analysis’. This was the last of Stanislavsky’s techniques developed in the twilight of his career just before his death in 1938 and whilst all his work up to this point has been essentially phenomenological this last section of his theory moves back towards a more ‘formalist’ point of view in which plays encode ‘structures of action’.

Once again Sharon Marie Carnicke in her essay entitled ‘Stanislavsky’s System – Pathways for the Actor’ captures the process cogently when she writes...

“In active analysis, actors grasp a play’s anatomy before memorising lines. To do so, they read the play as if it were a system of clues that imply potential performance, just as musicians read musical scores. Stanislavsky calls these clues the ‘facts’ to which actors accommodate performance.” 17)

And later...

“The ‘facts’ of each scene encode an event that occurs between the characters before the scene concludes. For each individual event, actors discover the action that incites or moves the scene forward, and the counteraction that resists the scene’s forward momentum. When action meets counteraction conflict results.” 18)

And then...

Stanislavsky means active analysis to be far from a mere intellectual exercise. He asks the actors to discover the play’s anatomy, not through discussion, but ‘on their feet’. The best way to analyse the play, Stanislavsky said, is to take action in the given circumstances. 19)

In this final take on the ‘System’ Stanislavsky seems to be refining his work to a point where ‘action’ denotes what the actor does to solve the problems set in front of the character by the given circumstances. Now clearly the element of action is within the domain of the actor in performance, but I would also argue, it is reflected in the ‘virtual action’ of the character that lies at the heart of the writing process for the playwright. In the same way, the problems created for the character by the  ‘given circumstances’ lie within the province of the playwright, yet they only gain a life when realised by the actor through action in performance. 

So perhaps at this stage in the analysis of the relationship between the actor and the playwright, I might best define as one of mutual dependency; where Stanislavsky’s analogy of the love affair seems to be the closest model that seems to work for me from my perspective as a playwright; not always easy an easy relationship but certainly intimate. 

But the real test lies with what ‘the actors’ think, and so in the next chapter I look to the interviews I conducted with Kelly Reilly and J.J. Field in order to test these theories out on members of the profession.