Hi. I’m Phil, I’m a senior from TX, classicist/actor/occasional director, you know the rigmarole.
Honestly, until this show, I had never been fond of Chekhov’s plays. Ward No. 6 is perhaps my favorite short story in the world, but his plays never did it for me. Nothing happened, nothing interesting anyway, and if I wanted to watch sad people fail, I’d watch the Jerry Springer Show. But after hearing Jeff’s idea for the show, I was hooked, and as we went through the audition process I realized the brilliance of this work. It’s hilarious. And within that new perspective on the work, the fact that nothing really happens makes perfect sense. It’s kind of like real life; we have dreams on dreams, and we never do anything about them. Or we try to fly and realize that in fact we can’t dream ourselves wings and just sort of stay on the track we somehow fell on. I hope that isn’t true, but I get the feeling that it’s close enough to true enough of the time to warrant its posting here.
Anyway, I appreciate being brought around to liking Chekhov’s plays.
One of the tenets of Grotowski’s theory regarding theatre was that the actor should be able to play a role with nothing: no props, no costume, no makeup, nothing. (“The actor should, on cue, be able to become a crying child,” and then Ryszard Cieslak embodies a crying infant and everyone is impressed, yadda yadda yadda.) Then, if the action of the play absolutely requires it, props, clothing, etc can be introduced. But there should be an overwhelmingly good reason for it, and while I’m thinking about it wouldn’t it be great if one or two pieces could serve for all the props or set pieces that appear in the show? Towards a Poor Theater.
I’m aware that not everyone shares this view on things, but I quite like it as a starting point. I’m excited to work with Serebryakov, a character who is so unlike me in almost every sense. I’m going to work on exploring his physicality, how to express him both externally (rheumatism, gout, age) and internally (his haughtiness, his confidence). Some mask work would be cool too. I personally would love it if I had no accoutrements, no moustache, no glasses, no indicators, just my body. I know that might not fit with the overall idea, and I’m not married to any idea, especially at this point, but it’s a challenge I would appreciate (and one that will, in a way, be realized anyway, in rehearsals before any costume pieces are introduced).
So this was my test post rambling. This was actually more than I expected to share. I hope you enjoyed reading my secret desires (not the strangest context for that phrase to turn up, I’d say) and my obvious newfound interest in Grotowski’s work.
Until next time,
PLW
Your mention of Grotowski got me to remembering an essay Trevor Nunn wrote for the Cambridge Companion to Chekhov about directing the Three Sisters, which, as he describes it, seems to echo much of the same approach we are taking to this Vanya production (except for the double casting). He got Ian McKellen onboard with the project and they wanted to do a traveling production which required flexibility, which meant letting go of the typical trappings that usually accompany the staging of Chekhov. Nunn writes,
“I started to think of it [The Three Sisters] in Shakespearean terms. The seventeenth-century bare stage and back wall provided actors with the capability of entering and leaving an uncluttered environment, the specificity and detail of which could be created through language. […] It was clear to me that I because I was planning a mixture of a ‘poor theatre’ and ‘rough theatre’ relationship between the play and the audience, it was vital that everything be suggested and that the demand should be made on the spectators’ collective imagination to provide whatever scenically was missing. For example, I had no problem with the demand for there to be a large number of people at a lunch party, necessitating a hugh table […]. A ‘table could be made by a group of actors using only chairs, forks, and napkins. What was important was that they should be able to crystallise minute behavioural details at the lunch party, so everything of their characters’ physical lives could be selected to provide a recognisable and convincing clarity, […]. This is not the same as saying we were no longer in a naturalistic play, but that instead we were presenting a heightened poetical experience.”
I certainly got a glimpse of the path to creating a similar kind of heightened poetical experience with clarity and focus in our first workshop with Kali. What you mention about trying to find the Professor w/out costume prosthetics is very interesting and certainly part of this experiment that intrigues me the most (and is the most terrifying). How much can actors find their roles within the depth and breadth of their physical/vocal instrument so that the audience must rely upon the language and the actor’s commitment to the on-stage present to build their (the audience’s) understanding of a character. In this production, we’re not allowing them to lose themselves in the verisimilitude of expected period dress, age makeup OR, in some cases, even the continuity of one actor, one body = one character. It will be a trial and error process, but I’m quite excited to see the range of strategies we uncover over the next six weeks.
–Jules