Pirandello's thoughts about Art and Style

so i happened across this book: "Pirandello's One Act Plays" in a book store in the west village today (the book store was incredible, but that is a different note all together) and the owner of the store was great, we talked for a while about who Pirandello was and what he did, which was really interesting (but that too is for another note) and when he opened the book he said there wasn't a price in it, so he would give it to me for FREE. so i start reading the forward by William Murray and he included in his forward a few excerpts from Pirandello's journals, and i was almost in tears at the profoundness of what he said, so i thought i would share just a tid-bit with you:

"...the various styles with which he became identified: realistic melodrama, ironic comedy, philosophical discourse, the play of illusion and reality involving the participation of the audience, the use of fantasy and dream to reveal the truth behind seemingly simple, even humdrum surface situation. About the question of style itslef, Priandello wrote: 'Style can be defined as the form of one's talent. For each talent a different style; but by talent I mean that interior virtue of spirit by which a man discoveres for himself what he has not learned from others. A talent without individualality is not a real talent. And style means individuality, one's own way of thinking, feeling, expressin. In short, a person has style who has things of his own to say and knows how to say them in his own way, with a completely personal attitude and manner that does not necessarily have to be beautifu.' "

this means that at the core of an actor is some one who is true to themselves, and therin lies the key: being our selves, generously, shapes our talent and makes it our own, thus that is our "style" as Pirandello would call it. but wait it gets better:

"Pirandello considered himself first and last an artist and he had strong ideas about what art was and what it was not. Among his papers was found the following revealing fragment: 'The realists limit art to the pure and simple imitation of nature. They make not pretense at saying anything; they wish to portray exactly what nature is. It follows that the masterpiece of masterpieces will be the image reflected by a mirror. But why repeat in a human and lesser voice what nature says in her powerful one? Can one perhaps succeed in taking from nature the sun, its warmth, the perpetual mobility of its succesive aspects? To copy nature is impossible. Yes, one should study her and follow her, considering her as the greatest and most prolific teacher. Art is nature itself, but proceeding along its own lines in the human spirit. Andit is from this resemblence that the artist's love of nature derives: he recognizes himself in her, and in contact with her he assumes consciousness of his own talent.In contrast to the realists, who have resolved to say nothing, there are those who want to say too much: philosophers, preachers, priests of the Idea. Before creating a picture, a poem, a melodrama, they write the commentary on it. And when the work is finished we are confronted by a sphinz, an enigma. Certain music called Wagnerian, certain dramas, certain novels or collections of verse of the the so-called symbolistic school, certain pictures or rebuses without perspective, without color, aridly outlined, unfortunatly provide us with painful examples of this. Art has nothing in common with this pedantic, obscure, and pretentious symbolism. Art does not derive from an abstract idea. But does this mean that thought has noghting to do with art? This is what the so-called aesthetes claim who say that the artist must in no way concern himself with the essence because the form is all. What does it matter what the artist expresses, if the expression is rich and powerful, the sounds, the lines, the colors joyfully beguile the senses and surprise the imagination by the fancy of their harmonious play? The aesthetes set themselves apart from the symbolists and the naturalists; they desire the cold representation of unalterable beauty, artifice for its own sake, for the pleasure of executing it. They distingusih the form from the idea and value only the former, without realizing that to seperate these two terms - form and idea - is to suppress art, which consists in essence of the compenetration of these two terms. The idea has no value in art until it acquires feeling, until, in entire possession of the spirit, it becomes a desire strong enough to arouse the images capable of endowing it with a living expression. Art, in short, is life, not a reasoning process. Now, all the founders of a system condem the artist to reason instead of to live. The realists make an artisan of him, the idealists a philosopher, the aesthetes and the partisans of art, fot art's sake, a kind of juggler who should divert his neighbor with words, sounds, lines, and colors in bizarre interplay, like so many little globes of colored glass. In each case we have the substitution of thought for nature. Instead of allowing the work to mature spontaneously in the spirit, they compose it externally by summing up various elements whose affinity they can study. Instead of abandoning themselves to the free movement of life, they assemble, they graft, they knowledgeably combine dead limbs in order to compose a living body. Art is the living idea, the idea that, in becoming the center of the interior life, creates the body of images in which it clothes itself. The idea is nothing without the form, but what is form without the idea, if the idea is what creates it? No formulas, then, for art. Whoever desires to create beauty by a formula deludes himself. Beauty can derive from anything except premeditated reasoning. Sinc, about all, the artist must be moved, out of his being moved the work of art will be born.' "

i think that speaks for itself. so there you have it... how amazing is that?

much love

adam

When Life Gives You Lemons...

...grab some salt, tequila and have a party!

Well, hell. The rights for "Equus" have been pulled, and we can't do the show. I am disappointed, as is the cast, but everything happens for a reason. Why do we only use that bit of rationalization when something bad happens?

So, it's onward and upward. I figure we had two choices: go hide under a rock and lick our wounds until "Lear," or shrug it off with a "Shit happens," let go of the "coulda, woulda, shoulda," roll up our sleeves and find something else. Which is exactly what we did.

I must extend kudos to the amazing group of people we have. So far, everyone involved in "Equus" has agreed to be part of whatever it is we decide to do instead. I am grateful for your friendship, loyalty and faith in us.

To those who were "scared" of a community theatre company taking on "Equus:" put your fears to rest. Better yet, find something more important to worry about, like global warming or the price of tea in China.

To those who posted on the Beehive and supported us: stay tuned for something wonderful...

To the haters who are rubbing their hands together with glee at our little setback: what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

Lisa

before you break the buck...

... thought I'd borrow the space for a bit to ho this show. Yeah, click for a more readable version.



And for details for what this is being paired up with CLICK HERE!

EQUUS: The Cast

Drumroll, please........the cast of Equus is finalized and we couldn't be happier. The production will go up this fall under the direction of Lisa Mercier-Taber, in partnership with our good friends at the California ARTS Academy. While our production is not an adaptation, it is a modern staging and revisioning of one of the more lauded and award winning plays of the last forty years. We expect it to be something wonderful, and we hope you will join us for it.

This Is Who We Are:

Martin Dysart/ Greg Taber

Alan Strang/ Stephen Torres

Hesther Saloman/ Jessica Reedy

Nurse/ Suzanne Garcia

Frank Strang/ Dave Otero

Dora Strang/ Devon Bailey

Harry Dalton/ Ronald Blackwell

Jill Mason/ Renee Newlove

The Actor's Essential Reading List

OK, this is in response to a number of people recently asking me which books I would recommend that an actor read. I'm never really sure how to answer that question, because what lights my fire might not light theirs. What I've decided is that there are three distinct answers to the question, so I'll present them all here.

Answer One
I suppose that there is a canon of sorts that every serious theatre craftsman should be familiar with just in terms of history, major movements, styles, etcetera. I have no doubt that such canonical lists abound on the internet so I won't reproduce them here. Check out any online course syllabus from any drama class at any major university, or look at the reading lists on amazon.com. Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to suggest that these works are without value to the individual actor. They have great value and are canonical for just that reason. However, like so many things canonical, if not approached in the right way, they become merely relics of old ideas, read just because they happened to survive rather than to plumb their depths. I know far too many actors who have read Quintillian, and Aristotle, and Craig, and Stanislavski, and Artaud, and Brook, and Grotowski, and whoever else you might care to name, in the former manner and are no better for it except to be able to say that they have read them. By all means, read them, read them all, but read them with a drive to learn from them, not simply because someone says they're important. Life's too short for that.

Answer Two
Read anything and everything that fuels your individual fire. It doesn't matter what it is: literature, genre fiction, non-fiction, comic books, bubble gum wrappers, or Congolese midget porn...whatever fuels you creatively as a human being fuels your craft and your art. Never let anyone tell you differently. If someone does, refer them to me. Better yet, just tell them what I would tell them: "Sod off!"

Answer Three
These are specific books that have directly influenced my thoughts on theatre and acting, or have had a direct influence on my acting. They are all theatre related and in no particular order.
The Actor's Eye by Morris Carnovsky: An artistic treasure trove that so clearly crystallizes what we are trying to so as actors. Unfortunately out of print.
The Intent To Live by Larry Moss: An excellent, if somewhat indulgent, primer on the basics of Stanislavski, and much more accessible than the translations of Stanislavski.
The Actor and the Target by Declan Donnellan: Provides some nice refinements to the System's basics as well as proposing some provocative new ideas.
Stanislavski in Focus by Sharon Carnicke: Clarifies a number of misconceptions and places them in their histroical context. Makes one wish for newer translations of Stanislavski's work.
The Empty Space by Peter Brook: The only book listed in everyone's canon that really did anything for me.
Playing Shakespeare by John Barton: Indispensible if you're planning to take on the Bard (and if you're not, what the hell's the matter with you?)
Speaking Shakespeare by Patsy Rodenburg: See above.
Improvisation for the Theatre by Viola Spolin: The introductory material alone is worth the cost of the book.
Book on Improvisation by Stephen Book: Takes everything you ever knew about acting and turns it inside out. The ideas and the work are immediately applicable and up the stakes like nothing else I have come across. My Bible.

The following books, also in no particular order, are not theatre specific, but I cannot emphasize enough their impact on what I belive and do.
Freedom from the Known by Jiddhu Krishnamurti: Just when you thought you knew what inspiration was....
Zen in the Art of Archery bu Eugen Herrigal: This is what training is like.
The Book by Alan Watts: Will teach you everything you ever need to know about being part of the whole.
Living Without a Goal by James Ogilvy: Will teach you everything you need to know about being in the moment.
Dune, Dune Messiah, etc by Frank Herbert: Not the stories, the epigrams.
No Boundary by Ken Wilber: Blows away all of the excuses.
Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse: Nothing is the same after this....
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran: The most sublime statement of Love and Divinity ever penned.

So there it is.
Happy reading.

etonne-moi!

Shagging Fungoes (Acting)

Thanks to all of you who took the time to respond to the last post.
Good thinking, all!
I'd just like to toss out a few thoughts of my own in response to your thoughts.
I'm sure there are those audience members who go to a play or movie looking for the acting, just like there are those who go to see a magician who are looking for the trick. They miss the point. It's about losing yourself in the experience. If you want to see how the acting is done, get off your dead ass and do a show. Brecht was seeking a very particular effect for a very specific ideological reason, which is all well and good if you want your theatre to be political. But the theatre isn't about politics, though it can be political; it's about entertainment. And remember that to entertain means 'to hold among' or 'to hold the attention of.' That's what the acting has to do before it does anything else: hold the attention of the audience. Utlimately, why the audience is there and what they are looking for doesn't matter. We do what we do and gift it to them, and, like any gift freely given, they are free to do with it what they will.
As for Meryl, well, she's just damned awesome isn't she? And it doesn't matter one bit whose thoughts you're seeing, though in truth it's both: it's really the actor's, but within the imaginary circumstances of the play/movie which you have suspended your disbelief to enter, it's the character's. All that matters is that you see it and believe it. When it's good, it's transcendent.
In general I'm in agreement with what Adam said except for one thing: how you, the actor, would respond in a given circumstance is irrelevant. No playwright wrought you. If personalizations, and what ifs and magic ifs and adjustment work for you as an actor and the audience believes your behavior, then rock on. However, for most, I find this approach to be self-indulgent. Often it leads to the actor simply being himself on the stage saying a different person's words depending on the play...which is pretty damned dull after a few shows. I don't care about and don't want to see how Larry, Richard, Mel, Kevin, and Ken react to the appearance of their dead father...I want to see how Hamlet, as interpreted by those artists, reacts.
In the end it's all just attitude-driven bullshit...and that's what makes it so damned fun!
Coming Next: The Actor's Essential Reading List.
Watch for it!!!

Acting: A Working Definition

Sanford Meisner was one of the most influential and respected acting teachers in American history. His teaching brought a new level of artistry to the craft of acting and his work is, rightly, studied by any serious student of acting. However, like most that have a significant impact on a field of endeavor, he was reacting to weaknesses he perceived in the work of others, specifically in the teachings of Lee Strasberg. In this vein, I would like to take a look at one of Meisner’s most significant legacies, his definition of acting and react to what I perceive to be a weakness therein.

Sanford Meisner defined acting as follows: living truthfully under imaginary circumstances. At the time, this was probably the most succinct and useful definition of acting put forward, and it still serves many actors well. However, there are several difficulties with this definition which bear close examination.

Of the three essential elements of Meisner’s definition, the final element, imaginary circumstances, is the most crucial in terms of setting the context for the other two, living and truthfully. Circumstances refer to all of the elements of the play that come to bear upon its performance. Here the idea of the play must be clearly understood. The play is the imaginary reality in which the characters exist and live out their imaginary lives. The play is what is directly provided by the playwright, the perceptual concept provided by the director, and the interpretive choices made by the actors in service of the playwright and the director. Everything else, e.g. lighting, costumes, music, sound, all of the elements that can be termed production, are peripheral to the play and, while they all may, and, ideally, should contribute to its performance, are not necessary to its performance. This is the fundamental reason that theatre is infinitely generative: given the same script, every new constellation of artists will generate a different play. Indeed, even if all of the production values are rigidly controlled for and precisely the same night after night, the play itself as performed will be unique to the particular artists performing it at that particular time.

The key word in this part of the definition, however, is imaginary. Nothing that happens in the play is real. The production itself is real; the play is imaginary. No matter how natural or realistic a setting may be, it is not what it purports to be. No matter how believably the actors may behave (a point I will return to), they are not the characters they portray. The play is an imaginary reality, a symbolic construct that, when successful, points to something concrete in the lives of its audience.

Acting takes place within a set of imaginary circumstances. It takes place within a framework of fundamentally unreal, though fully realized, details that create a context within which the audience may empathetically engage the play and come away changed for the experience.

So, if acting takes place within a set of imaginary circumstances, what, exactly, is taking place? It is categorically not living, nor is it truthful.

If the actor is living the part, then the actor is not acting. Living the part is not acting, it is schizophrenia, a breakdown of the distinctions between what is real and what is imaginary. The actor is always there witnessing the acting. No matter how immersed an actor may become in a role or a scene or a play, this witness always remains. Ideally, it is this witness that guides the performance, keeping it from becoming self-indulgent. This is the danger in the misuse of Meisner’s definition, it can lead to a self-indulgent quest for the actor’s holy grail: being in the moment. With the exception of the myriad misunderstandings of Stanislavski’s seminal work in the early twentieth century, no single acting concept has been so misunderstood and led to so much self-serving work. To put it plainly: characters are never in the moment. This is patently obvious when you accept that characters do not exist, they are imaginary. The actor who destroys the integrity of a scene and claims that his actions were justified because he was in the moment and that’s what his character would have done, betrays a terrible ignorance of his part of the whole play and demonstrates a narcissistic hubris of the highest degree. It is the actor that must be in the moment, not the character. The actor, as witness, must strive to be fully alive and present from moment to moment to moment in order to guide the performance, to respond properly to subtle (or not so subtle) changes in individual performances, and to revel in the playing. It is this revelry that is the actor’s greatest pleasure in performance: the scintillant joy that comes from the playing itself, a playing that is completely imaginary.

Acting is not truthful. There is nothing of the truth about it. It is a lie. At its best, it is a sublimely well-crafted lie that the audience freely agrees to buy into. At its worst, it exposes itself for the lie that it is in performances that are unwatchable and which an audience, no matter how forgiving, cannot participate in. Like living, truthfully centers the actor on himself and on his personal reality, which is of no concern to the audience. It doesn’t matter whether or not the actor feels the living truth of his character’s circumstances, it only matters that the audience does. As Stephen Book says, “We are not paid to have an experience; we’re paid to give the audience one.” Our creative and personal payoff must be in doing that, not in flailing about in the midst of our own personal and emotional reveries, an all too common form of masturbatory acting deriving from the actor’s mistaken belief that it’s all about him.

Acting is not about the actor, it’s about the audience. It’s about what we give to the audience. With that undersdtanding, I would amend Sanford Meisner’s definition of acting as follows: acting is behaving believably under imaginary circumstances. Set within the same context of properly understood imaginary circumstances, this takes the focus off of the actor and puts it with the audience. It does not matter whether or not the actor has an experience or not, feels an emotion or not, believes what he is doing or not, identifies with the character or not, it only matters that the audience finds the actor’s behavior to be believable within the imaginary circumstances of the play. The audience cannot see an actor’s thoughts, intentions, backstory, emotions, magic ifs, substitutions, or objectives; the audience can only see and experience what the actor actually does on the stage. And, to be effective, what the actor does must be believable to the audience. No matter how outrageous, or subtle, so long as it is believable to the audience, it is effective. And effectiveness, as measured by the audience for whom we play (as well as by our own artistic sensibilities), is a much better and, ultimately, finer arbiter of our work than our own, all to often, self-indulgent and self-aggrandizing feelings.

Note: Since drafting this piece, I have been fortunate enough to have read Ronald Rand’s Acting Teachers of America: A Vital Tradition. In it, Julie Garfield, daughter John Garfield, graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, and student of Sanford Meisner gave the following variation of his famous definition (attributed to Meisner, himself): Acting is the reality of doing moment to moment under imaginary circumstances.

And just like that...poof...it was gone...

Something Wonderful This Way Comes...

Fall 2007

Peter Shaffer's

EQUUS

This Flattering Glass

damn...

Da Count: Supporters...athletic and otherwise

This Flattering Glass closes tomorrow, and we cannot even begin to put into words how honored, humbled and proud we feel about the whole experience. We've never worked with a group of people more dedicated to excellence than this cast and crew.

But Da Count today is for another group of people: those who have supported us. Chris and Julie Ann for faith and space and lights. Marcel for advice, video tape, and just being there. Nora for being president of our fan club. Suzanne for being a treasure beyond value. Mike, Nancy, Kate, Patrick, Will, Donald, Jessi, and Charles for congratulations, encouragement, and very kind words. Everyone who has seen the show for taking time out of their lives.

Vive le bullshit!