There is a brief moment when all there is in a man’s mind and soul and spirit is reflected through his eyes, his hands, his attitude. This is the moment to record.
Yousuf Karsh
Yousuf Karsh was a portrait photographer. Born in Armenia and forced to leave during the Armenian genocide, he moved to Canada and made his living capturing faces in his little black box, and printing them out for the world to see. The subjects of his photographs include Mohammed Ali, the Kennedys, Albert Einstein, Grace Kelly, Ernest Hemingway, Fidel Castro, Audrey Hepburn and even Pablo Picasso himself. Karsh was the creator behind the iconic images we see of these giants of history. His quest was to find the inner secret hidden within every man and woman, and to reveal it. He would put his subject in front of the camera and wait for that revelation which would come, if it came at all, “in a small fraction of a second with an unconscious gesture, a gleam of the eye, a brief lifting of the mask that all humans wear to conceal their innermost selves from the world.” It was in this brief moment that Yousuf Karsh would bring down the shutter of his bellows Calumet and immortalise this flash of spirit before the veil was dropped, and it retreated back into the murky shadows of pretence.
In many ways over the last few weeks, I have felt like a photographer, only this time without my Nikon F3. The moments of greatest importance for me have been neither the grandest nor the loudest, but more the quiet, magical moments of minutiae that have shown me brief glimpses of the spirit out on that black rehearsal floor. The moments of fleeting eye contact, a brief touch of hands in passing, a slight smile in the crook of a mouth – these are the things that excite me most about this cast and this process.
Our exercises with Kali have been fun and loud and boisterous, and we have indeed learned a great deal about the vast world of the body. I wish I could say that I remember everything we worked on. I do not. There are entire exercises that even now, as I chase after them, slip from my mind – I don’t anticipate them ever coming back. I don’t remember all our catchphrases. I don’t remember all the movement exercises. I certainly don’t remember all our titles. But I do remember Thomas’ spit on the ground, his eyes growing wide, questioning, and asking me whether that moment could support our laughter. I remember Jaya’s furrowed eyebrows as she demanded I give her back her morphine. I remember watching Sam and Mike work the scene in which Astrov gloats about kissing Yelena, and I remember the betrayal in Phil’s eyes as he looked at me in that moment. “How could you?” We were just two observers, two actors watching a scene, but the moment grew. Suddenly, I saw how that kiss will have consequences for everybody. I saw betrayal and heart ache become real things that happen in the real world. A world apart from and so a part of Chekhov’s words. I remember Nick’s breath on my nose as we moved across the floor, pushing and pulling each other, repelling and yet holding on with all our might because we were afraid that to separate was to break something beautiful. I remember walking in a circle holding hands with Ashley, singing a song I didn’t know and feeling safe in the warmth of her hand, knowing that between us, we’d come up with a tune that suited us. I remember Faye glancing up at me from the floor through a mess of hair, eyes full to the brim with child-like urgency, asking “Do I look stupid?” I remember a suspension with Aurelia, a reach towards Sam, and a quiet and tender audition with Cynthia.
All these micro moments are surges that come and go in an instant, that reveal themselves only for as long as it takes for them to touch you, and then they are gone. For me, this is what acting is about. It is about breaking through the Act to the magma of spirit beneath, and hopefully catching a glimpse of its light. It is about the moments that make your heart skip a beat, and cause your throat to catch. In a way, it’s almost like falling in love.
Jeff, Kali, Jules – you may all deplore the fact that I cannot write a blog post about any one activity or exercise that I will remember and be able to repeat. But what the last few weeks have given me have meant something different. I have had the privilege of recording a few moments of soul for myself, and storing them in my little black box in the back of my mind, just as Yousuf Karsh did with his camera. I have seen life, and I am learning how to keep searching for it. I am learning when the exact moment is to close the shutter, to grasp the spirit of my fellow actors and hopefully to soar with them for a few glorious moments.
If there’s any one thing that I would like anyone to get from reading this blog post, it would be this: the next time we are all together in a room, working in calm or in clamour, try to be a photographer. Seek the spirit and hold on to it as long as it will allow. Then, and only then, do we cease to pretend.
Jamie,
Posts overflowing with lots of ideas and realizations are nothing to worry about. They are an expected by-product of our very layered, VERY layered process. : )
Have you ever read Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories” (#13 on a 2010 Time list of Best English Language Novels). These were adapted into a play titled after part of one of the stories more quotable lines, “I am a camera, with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking”. (These are also the stories that inspired “Cabaret.”) That was what I thought of when you mentioned Yousuf Karsh. Though it seems that Karsh and Isherwood thought of the camera (a literal tool for Karsh and a metaphor for Isherwood) in slightly different ways. While Karsh looks intently, intensely for *the moment* to be captured to reveal itself. That sounds very different from Isherwood’s “passive recording.” Of course I’d argue when one reads Isherwood’s stories you can see that he isn’t passive at all. Everything is meticulously chosen or specifically absented. Actually, now that I think about it, Chekhov seems be a blend of Karsh and Isherwood. He too was all about observation — his non-fiction writing bear this out — but also about pulling out those moments, those little things that are revelations of everything.
I love that in all the motion and productive chaos that has been the movement work you keyed in on so many little details. I think it’s a sign of just how much people were giving and finding in the workshops. It’s also a sign of how much richness there is built into this story and its characters. Not that I have a Ouija connection with our playwright, but I think Chekhov (and Stanislavski too for that matter) would be very happy with your assessment: “It is about the moments that make your heart skip a beat, and cause your throat to catch. In a way, it’s almost like falling in love.” To extend your simile a bit further: Falling in love with a story, its characters, and the process to make them come alive for an audience. It’s certainly one of the primary reasons I do theater. : )
–Jules
Your description of the moment between you and Phil, when Mike as Astrov and Sam as Vanya spoke of the kiss between Astrov and Yelena… When Phil looked to you with the “How could you?” expression… That kind of moment, a moment that breaks the literal spatial and interpersonal boundaries set by the script and extends the theatrical space to the background actors… That’s cool. That’s exactly the kind of moment that epitomizes our production. Actors reacting to actors.