Day Twelve at the LCT Directors Lab

Macbeth presentations were held this morning, and my project went first, since I was letter "A". My cast stayed true to the kind of work we had been doing, and adjusted in subtle ways to the presence of a larger audience. Anne announced "Group A" and I said nothing. The room became quiet and after a few moments the actors began, as they usually do if I just stop talking.

It is worth describing what I remember happening. All of the actors "did" the things or "were the way" they have been exploring doing and being, but no action was ever actually was fixed, though we had developed an "outline" through our experience together (but not by much explicit discussion or direction).

Often things happened simultaneously or gave way to solo or pair moments. Portions of text were skipped, overlapped, or brought back. Contemporary conversation was invented. The actors centered their work in the middle of the square as planned, but did more playing among and around the audience, too. Overall, they took everything a little farther and allowed things to "change" compared to yesterday, though of course nothing was exactly the same because there was no fixed staging in the first place. I do not want to say it was "improvised" either, because to most people that implies some kind of fictional premise uniting the cast, with actors inventing information to fit. In this case, the premise that united the cast was sensitivity, independence, spontaneity, and awareness of the unfolding audience response.

Brook describes his improvisations in his years in Africa being based on objects and other people in the present, not on any fictional circumstances. In this case, we had the play text, which in rehearsal we had discussed in only the most thematic ways, such as "this play explores the gap between reality and imagination" or "in Act III, the play turns", "the issue of recognition should be explored", etc.

"K" lay face down on the floor and blew at his script, occasionally asking the other actors or sometimes an audience member plaintively for "some help?" Explosively he violently jumped about the playing area, repeating these actions freely, and at will. At the same time "R" and "N", sitting with audience members, began a discussion about scary films with a kind of well-worn casualness, ignoring K and "J", who stood close to them, like a sentinel. I say they were "ignoring" but also they let everything affect them in a present sense. Eventually N left R and R began some of Shakespeare's text when Macbeth asks Banquo, "Ride you this afternoon?". "M" walked the inside of the square tracing the air with her outstretched hand. K spoke the text of Lennox from late in Act III regarding all the murders that take place-- sporadically, to audience members. B sat behind one of the audience members on the floor, peering around in sunglasses, slowly slowly crawling under the chair... the text continued, roughly in the order in which it is written, with skips and returns and some repeats...

There were too many details to keep up the description in this way, but memorable moments included the repeated return of "Macbeth" and "Banquo" to casual conversation regarding scary movies (even while N played Banquo's ghost), the writhing "scrum pile" of J, B and K as the murderers, N's repeated satirical demonstrations of Banquo dying, his red socks revealed as his shoes were removed, M's deepening sorrow as Lady M and her intense sense of intimacy with R (Macbeth), and R's eerie and unconscious sense of internalizing all referenced moments of Macbeth's story into a shifting and painful present. How did the other actors know when to leave the space to Macbeth and when to return? We never discussed anything like that, but it all happened organically just the same...

The whole thing lasted about 35 minutes I think. The air in the room felt theatrical throughout, as though anything could happen, and I think we created a theatrical experience. There was a surprising humor in the event, and the humor turned to serious attention in an instant a number of times, back and forth. For me, that we had essentially "troped" non-literally and non-realistically on Shakespeare's Act III and still gave the sense of the underlying dramatic movement of the story was an achievement of this way of intuitive play-working. R decided to exit the rehearsal room with his last line "we are yet but young in deed" and after three beats I said "That's it" -- and that was it.

Working in this way, one could create both non-traditional or traditional (but fresh) versions of the story, simply by choosing what the actors created almost entirely on their own, within more developed parameters that might also emerge as part of a group process.

I wondered if my initial hunch about the play being concerned with reality and imagination might be more immediately described as "the future is never what it seems."

One director described the experience as "post-modern", which is certainly not what I had set out to achieve, but which I enjoyed hearing. A couple of others felt they had "seen the play." A few folks at the end of the day were very interested in how I achieved the results, and were surprised to hear how little traditional direction I had given the cast, having seen some of the results as clever ideas being executed. If you've been reading this blog, you know that I was not working on either externals or on "choices" or "good ideas" but rather the intuitive presence of the group. The "results" were simply what happened in this vein.

After the other three presentations (B, C & D), we held a discussion focused on the actors' experiences. They made insightful and amusing observations. One actor made an impassioned speech about the corporatization of theatre in America being related to the prevalence of unimaginative realism in American acting. Many observed that most rehearsal rooms are generally "dead spaces."

After lunch, we had a large and long discussion led by Anne intended to be about design and architecture, i.e., focused on the issue of our being in non-traditional, and then different, spaces. It was hard for the group to stay on topic however, and the issue of the limited financial ability of directors to pursue their design (and other) visions more generally was raised, and then dominated a long portion of the discussion. More questions and answers involving the project directors might have been more valuable to us as practitioners. I think all four Macbeth directors felt that the space-changing was at odds with our original intents for the week--and in particular that we kept being surprised by new parameters. In side conversations, I learned that many felt this was not especially useful.

However, the experimental plan of the week was earnestly conceived, and provoked additional thought and discussion outside of official Lab hours. For me, I feel that having rehearsed in the ramp area provoked distinct responses from the actors that we were able to work with in in the traditional rehearsal rooms. As a design "idea" however, being at the ramp would probably not lead to any kind of representation of the ramp in a hypothetical "full production." I would want to filter intuitive images through the actors and designers in the room to create something unexpected.

We had the opportunity to view the participating designers' portfolios, and the day ended relatively early.

Day Eleven at LCT Directors Lab - Afternoon/Evening

This afternoon I attended a discussion led by Anne regarding religious plays and how they might translate or be received in different countries and cultures. The participants each discussed a play and a possible country to produce it in. This process will continue next week with the addition of a number of established directors from around the world.

In the evening, our "Directors on Directors" series continued. I attended sessions on the contemporary French director Arthur Nauzyciel and the early 20th century German groundbreaker Max Reinhardt.

I knew nothing about Nauzyciel before the session. His aesthetic insterests me greatly as it begins non-psychologically based acting, and is audience inclusive (sometimes even site-specific), and artistically intuitive. So much of our acting, staging and design in America is about demonstrating the psychology of character for a voyeuristic audience. Larger theatrical and human metaphors are often lost in the projection of character. In fact, it is quite difficult for many actors to think of acting as anything but the imitation or projection of character, which much somehow pre-exist action. But just as a dancer or a musician is without a character in a fictional sense, but allows the audience to go on a freely imaginative journey, so an actor can be a kind of vessel or blank slate for an audience's creativity.

Nauzyciel apparently works from a place of theater as shared experience and shared artistic object, which puts actors into a different relationship with an audience, even to the extent of direct address, as in Shakespeare. His process--in the instance described to us--began with table work for two weeks, the sole purpose of which seemed to be the neutral, "stripped down", but deliberate speaking of text for its overt clarity, and the development of a way of being which could bring the actor himself or herself directly in contact with the the text, rather than through the filter of character. From there, new, more open questions can be considered while staging.

It was interesting then to hear about Reinhardt's obsession with "bringing the actor and the audience together" much earlier in the last century. To me, the most intriguing idea of his was "the bigger the audience, the better its quality," meaning, I presume, that the contact an audience has with performers is enhanced by a larger number of spectators. He obsessively redesigned and renovated theaters to accommodate large-scale productions, in effect making each project site-specific within each theater. Football, anyone?

Day Eleven at LCT Directors Lab - Morning

Instead of beginning rehearsal as usual for the last three days, we were called to a meeting of the morning Macbeth groups (2 directors, 12 actors, 2 designers, 2 design consultants and Anne).

Using tact and by way of describing Labs past, Anne told us that we were going to switch rehearsal spaces for today's rehearsal, in the spirit of experimentation. If you've been reading these posts, you will know that this processed seemed to be about "site specific" work. We were assigned to rehearse in a backstage ramp area six feet wide and perhaps 40 to 50 feet long with very high ceilings and very orange walls. Today we were sent to the traditional "small rehearsal room", a square whitish room about 30 x 30. We all accepted the news with good humor. Furthermore, I thought to myself that this was good, since we would have to be moving to the large rehearsal room tomorrow anyway for the presentation. Abstractly, I thought that it would be easy "to bring the ramp with us", even in an overt way, i.e., that the actors would behave roughly the same way (though not at all demonstrating the architecture of the ramp). But these actors had become more sensitive to their own inner experience through the work we had done...

We got there and no one knew how to proceed. One actor declared a "shutdown". We talked for a long time. Fortunately, observers were barred for the first half. We dimmed the lights. I stopped talking and hoped something would happen. We talked some more. Another actor noted that now we were all doing what we do in a regular rehearsal room with all of its associations. I noticed that, much more than before, the actors wanted me (or seemed to want me) to tell them what to do. Then we tried to do our "free work" again in the new space. Some of the actors used the chairs (and kleenex) as props. This was good to see, as good actors usually find their way physically, somehow.

I said I thought the space needed to be "defined". The actors said that they had, just by being in it and walking on the chairs, moving the chairs, etc...., but I meant defining the relationship to the audience. I was surprised to discover they had not imagined audience members in the chairs as I had. I had taken my own perception for granted.

Taking a cue from something one actor said yesterday, I placed 24 chairs in a square, to "define" the space, and they played again. I threw my right sneaker into the square. Lady M played with it creatively for some time, though that illuminated little, to me. Everything seemed less valuable and conclusive that it had at the ramp. One actor said that without additional direction, they would just play and play, though he said he wasn't asking for any direction (in so many words). I felt loathe to grab onto any kind of limiting "answer." I would love to free play for a month. Peter Brook did it for three years in Africa, without any playtext at all. On the other hand, I wanted a taste of what the next step in the process might be. I called the break.

About 10 observing directors arrived. I asked them to sit in the chairs (which I had reduced to 5 on a side). I instructed the actors to make an analogy between this space and the last... "The center of the square is the ramp... relating to people (audience) is being at the top of the ramp.. being outside the square is like being "around the corner" at the bottom of the ramp. This was enough--that and the presence of new people--to begin again in a more creative environment. I also stopped caring about what the "audience" thought.

Both yesterday and today, the sense of exploration relating to the play dissipated around the event of the "banquet/Banquo's return". We talked about "recognition" which took some teasing out, and ghosts, and seeing and seeing again. I said that this issue was at the heart of the play's turning point. The we did some more play around that issue, which was quite fruitful, made a few more comments, and the time ended.

When the onus was on the actors to explore from very little, two things happened more intensely than in a "standard" situation. The actors make more personal demands (in a good way) based on their own exploration, rather than pleasing the director. Also, it became even more apparent to me that a director must learn to listen to each actor differently, while setting his own agenda aside, while listening. With one actor in particular I kept hearing requests from me on his part, but he really was just making observations -- I think.