While reading Davis' article, I have to admit. I got very excited.
Perhaps it was because her subject matter is totally in my element.
Perhaps it was because what Davis had to say... is something that I've felt for a very long time and here it is! Down in black and white! In sentences that made sense! And written in such a way that I, seriously, read from my table just thinking, 'That. Is. EXACTLY. What I always thought..."
Regardless the reason for my 'giddiness', I think it is of, at least, some importance that... this argument that she makes against realism is a very heated debated. I've seen wonderful professional relationships crumble over this very notion that... perhaps realism isn't all that we make it out to be.
I focus on realism because that is the main argument that Davis uses in order to defend her definition of Theatricality.
"Theatricality is not likely to be present when a performance is so absorbing that the audience forgets that is is spectating" (128). This statement is, for me, in direct conversation with the quote she supplies from playwright Wallace Shawn on 137 about how if audience members are truly here to experience 'escapism', he feels "like an idiot grabbing him by the throat and trying to get him to worry about the things that are bothering me... it's quite embarrassing, it's quite unpleasant."
It is here that we begin to understand the danger of viewing theatre as an art that is associated with leisure. When a playwright like Wallace Shawn (the guy who played Vizzini in Princess Bride and the voice of the Green Dinosaur in Toy Story, right?) who is immensely talented, is worried about the audience before he is worried about the quality of his work.... I think is a good indicator that something is not quite right. Shawn and Davis have the same argument, in that, there MUST be participation from the audience. Even if the participation is quietly in their own head as they drive home. Theatre, like any other art, should inspire critical thinking. The danger of 'The Trance' that we discussed before in class, is that it encourages apathy. It sets up a system of, "As an audience member, I don't have to think of what it's like to be this character, how I would react, how I would like things to change... instead I'm just going to sit here and let other people figure it out."
In order for Theatricality to be present, there must be an audience present that is aware they are the audience. And not just because they have the ticket stub in their pocket.
In section VI (beginning on page 146) she addresses the system in which actors are trained to seduce the audience into this lull. Personally, I find this section very refreshing in the way I was trained as an actor, which was all based in realism. There were no other option. Realism. That's it. Sense memory was the end all, be all. As an actor you would be on stage while the director would bate you saying things like, "Your boyfriend just walked out on you after you told him you had AIDS and are about to die! When was a time when you lost someone you loved?! When they decided to leave you because they couldn't deal with your circumstance!!" The director would then continue to harass you and it was only until you broke down crying that he was finally convinced that you 'understood the moment'.
I'm sorry.... but I call bull crap.
And Davis does too.
I... have never been in that situation. I've never faced a life threatening illness and have my committed boyfriend of X amount of years leave me in one day.
And, for me to think of something that hardly even comes close to those circumstances, just so I would FEEL... is frankly insulting.
She directly criticizes this method of acting saying "it eliminates dissonance between actor and character, for "sense memory" is sincere, and taunts an audience to sympathize in the face of real human suffering" (146). She puts the actor (a medium of the director) on trial. Almost saying... how dare we ever think about doing that? Exploiting a real human emotion (and ignoring the circumstances the playwright has given the actor). She, instead, promotes Diderot's teachings. Diderot refutes the idea of sense memory all together: "they say an actor is all the better for being excited, for being, angry. I deny it. He is best when he imitates anger. Actors impress the public not when they are furious, but when they play fury well" (147).
I draw this back to a question that she prompts at the bottom of 138 (in communion with Diderot):
In performance, do actors feel what they show?
That has been a question and topic of debate I've heard before. And I think it is extremely fascinating. Because... these people are actors. They act. They perform. How much of what they are feeling is necessary in order for them to have a successful performance?
3 comments:
Kelly, you're not feeling 'giddy'. You're feeling giddy! And so am I, about this chapter. You described, and I felt also, what Natalie Bainter described feeling about affect theory the first time she came into contact with it when we were introducing ourselves for this class: "Yes! Someone's been thinking about this already!"
That in your experience realism has been the cause of professional relationships' sourings is fascinating to me. Mainly because I'm drawn to the question of why such an abstraction--which, contrary perhaps to its own preferences, it is--would incite such passion. Especially when , as you astutely point out—and I hadn't thought of “down time” in connection with all this, somehow--”the danger of viewing theatre as an art that is associated with leisure. “
But is 'the trance' truly a “place” of such leisure? When an audience member gets 'in the zone', does that mean a complete identification with the characters in the play, or the opposite?
I'm curious about the actor-as-medium-of-director mainly because, as someone with more practical training, you know more and different things about it than I do. I'm curious about the process of the director insulting the actor, and that being somewhat commonplace. There's such a lot of power commentary there, and I'd like to hear more from you about that!
P.S. Also, the man who delivered to us the immortal words “Never get involved in a land war in Asia” should never have a shred of doubt about anything he ever does. Just sayin'.
Thanks for this consideration of Davis' points, Kelly. As Ming says, hearing the perspective of someone who has experience with this is illuminating. You mention that directors take advantage of actors, requiring them to be sympathetic, "exploiting a real human emotion (and ignoring the circumstances the playwright has given the actor)."
I wonder if this adds another level to what Cody was saying during our discussion about child actors. Is this, perhaps, one of the greatest problems with using children in theatre - that we are asking them to feel painful, ecstatic, overly mature emotions for their age?
Consider if a director used the same techniques on an animal - if he tried to demolish the audience's dual awareness (as described by States) so that the audience is completely lost in the performance rather than distracted by the animal as an animal. For example, if trying to prepare the dog in the Annie clip to be a mangy, lonely street dog, the director would have to yell and physically threaten the dog. This is inconceivable. Then why require it of humans?
Let me just say that Jennifer's suggestion of doing sense memory with a dog is so fantastic to me that I'm brought out of my professorial role and Kelly's description of acting training makes me so angry I want to put on my Dread Pirate Roberts' role.
Post a Comment