Theatre Port

truly

Hi Sneakey,

I answer questions directly; I do not answer them simplistically -- and there is a difference, a BIG difference. Of course, everything happening on stage one takes in through the senses as this is how be are built -- biologically. ( I wish actors were trained to truly use their senses - and the "living" memory of their sensory experiences as the key to imagination and belief - on stage as acting would improve overnight!) Once the senses take it in we process the experience and feel it and this feeling then is shared with the rest of the audience and between the stage and the audience. Just saying it's all sight and sound is simplistic. It cuts the guts out of the real action of experiencing performance. The feelings engendered in the house and from the house to the stage and from the stage to the house -- this is the core of the theatre event.

I stress Stanislavsky as he stressed the nature and power of the artistic potential of actors experiencing on stage as the character and in the moment to moment interaction that is the REAL scene -- not the words and moves. Today's theatre and film rarely values this core experience of theatre -- i.e. theatre ITSELF. We value what we see and hear -- materialism, outer over inner, stimulation over emotional response. We have lost the craft, art and even understanding of the nature of stage experiencing. We think theatre is good if the audience responds -- whether or not an event, a real happening, real experience was created through artistic means on stage. This is a product of our commercial, anti-artistic values and simple theatrical ignorance coming from the embracing and celebrating of ignorannce as being "my right to my opinion."

Trust me Sneakey, the day you see real theatre experience created you will see "god" in the details -- and then the devil :-).

Michael Chekhov said that he played Hamlet differently each night based on the nature of the feeling he received from each night's audience -- chemistry, biology, organic and experience. The material world is sight and sound. The world of experiencing which is what real theatre and all real art IS, is about what begins to occur after you simply see and hear. Sadly, the fad in art today -- art as interior decoration, concept and form as meaning -- makes it almost impossible to understand the core nature of theatre and its main medium -- acting.

Bobby

Bobby,

Nice explanation.

"Michael Chekhov said that he played Hamlet differently each night based on the nature of the feeling he received from each night's audience -- chemistry, biology, organic and experience."

Sadly, few understand the importance in this. It is key.

A piece of theatre can be a real living experience. Or, more typically, it can be on exhibit for spectators to merely see and hear.

I'm only in this for the money, so I don't really know or care anything about this stuff. But I do know this..if you drop a tab before you go onstage you will start seeing what you should be hearing, hearing what you should be seeing, and smelling what you should be feeling. If you can survive this without vomiting onstage or wandering into a bus during intermission, you will receive your diploma from the "Carrie Fisher School of Acting", which we all know is much more beneficial than any graduate biological sciences degree.

drop a tab?

are we talking chemistry again??

I will decline to answer that on grounds that it will incriminate me absolutely. However, I will refer you to Dennis Hopper's seminal work on the subject, "Better Acting Through Chemistry"..the only treatise on the art of acting one truly needs.

After all, I believe it was Stella Adler who said, "Of Stanislavski I know little, but I do know that if he were alive today, he would be a Deadhead." Maybe it was Sandy Meisner who said that...

Its getting difficult to distinguish between the actual and vivid fantasy on this thread!

I thought the point Stanman was making was that an audience can tell, can sense, whether an actor is "faking it" or actually experiencing "as if it were real." When an actor is "experiencing as if it were real" the audience isn't busy questioning it. They themselves are then engaged, experiencing and "feeling." When an actor is "faking it" the audience is merely observing. The process of the actor is the event of the theatre. Everything else, scenery, tempeture of in the place, lights, seats, etc, is just the trappings. That stuff sets the mood, but ultimately has nothing to do with the real event of theatre, the process of the actor there with the audience.

You guys are a buncha drama nerds with no sense of humor. Wimps, the lot of you. I bet I could kick all of your asses at once.

(just thinking out loud)

i agree with all the stuff about being real vs faking (which sadly happens even when people think they are being real).

what concerns me is the notion that the event of theatre IS solely the actor experiencing, doing...as has been mentioned time and again.

mrg makes a clear distinction when he says "the process of the actor there with the audience."

key: WITH the audience. I thank him for that. the audience is essential to the theatre event, without audience I don't consider the work to be a theatrical event.

Acting can happen without audience. The event of 'Theatre' cannot happen without audience.

So, why then are the dynamics which provide the foundation of the audience's experience somehow unimportant and trivial??

"Everything else, scenery, tempeture of in the place, lights, seats, etc, is just the trappings. That stuff sets the mood, but ultimately has nothing to do with the real event of theatre,"

i would suggest that if the audience has anything to do with the "real event of theatre" then all the so called 'trappings' which contribute to the audience's experience and state of mind also 'have to do' with the real event of theatre.

consider 'culture', individual experience, social norms of behavior, status, level of education...all these can factor into whether or not the audience can even experience and understand the performance to begin with-- and further, they contribute to and complicate each spectator's own personal experience during the event.

...add in design elements which should function to aid and support the actor's creation of on stage reality, such as sets, lights, atmosphere, and the audience experience shifts. so why are these things trappings?

if someone says to me: "the acting sucked but the set was nice", then the set is a failure. the acting should be supported by the set. if the set exists in isolation from the actor, then it isn't necessary. if it serves the piece by supporting the actor and the audience's needs to understand the actor's experience then it is not a trivial trapping--it becomes inseparable from the actor's work, they become united.


i think very often the audience "isn't busy questioning it" even when the acting IS NOT good. 'Summer Shakespeare' festivals are a prime example. With the exception of the occasional individual, the acting is generally all over the map. but the public revel in it....afterall it is Shakespeare isn't it??

Perhaps, when the audience member(s) have no experience with good "believeable" performance, response is driven by expectation and association. ( ie. Shakespeare=good theatre.)

But then again, maybe it is more a social event to go to those festivals. One might aruge that it isn't a theatrical event at all. Is it?

Ionesco argued that the real theatre event happened among the stalls, in the audience, that the patrons with all their ridiculous socialized behaviours constitued 'theatre'. Very very often the patrons go to the theatre to "act." --to act like they have culture, to act like they understand something beyond their education, etc..to elevate their status. Not to experience good acting from the stage.

I am not disagreeing with mrg. His post made me think "out loud" for a minute.

So many fundamental details which play into the audience's total experience and disposition are so often unaccounted for and overlooked. It is a bit nearsighted to focus only on the craft of the actor, I think. Even the best, good, successful acting can seem unattractive, annoying, brain numbing to someone less interested in acting and more interested in the total experience of the production.

My experience with "Bring in da Noise Bring in da Funk" comes to mind...the best tap dancing possible, masterful, exceptional, no one better on the planet..and the more of it there was, the more I wanted to disappear. Nothing makes me happier than awesome tapping and I wanted to dry up and never breathe again..it was agonizing for me.

There is importance beyond the craft of the actor.

.....the elements fundamental to our several common and different human experiences unite us in our ability to feel and respond to a performance which immitates life. Our own private and social beliefs about what life is are at the root of our acceptance or denial of any proposal put forth by an actor, who performs his or her own reconstructed view of life.

If the acting were all that was important in theatre, and if there was truly one single, best, undeniable, provable method for achieving onstage reality, then there would be more agreement about performance theory and every house would be sold out every night. think about it.


When I think out loud i admit to myself that there has to be more than one way, because there is more than one human experience onstage...more than one human experience in the audience...more than one human experience backstage pushing buttons. Somewhere this 'actually experiencing' , no matter how profound, is destined to break down and not achieve success with the audience if you don't take the so called 'trappings' into consideration........



zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......ergh........uh...
zzzzzzzzzzz..........can't...reach...caffeine....zzzzzzzzzzz

..........marshmallow...............zzzzz

I agree.

With the zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz part.

Huh?

who's that?...what happened???