If you’re nice enough to read this post–which I realize is long AF–know beforehand that I take a multi-paragraph detour that will, I promise, return back to Vanya. If you really want to go straight to the Vanya stuff, skip to the asterisks(***):
Sibyl Kempson, the New York playwright who spent a two-plus week residence at Duke for the New Works Lab Theater–of which I was a part–, took a very minimalist approach with respect to the direction of her experimental, free-association play-in-progress, Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag. Especially in the earlier stages of the rehearsal process, when the text was still new to us, she was very hands-off. She didn’t do any line readings for us, she didn’t give us any guidelines for physical or emotional “character traits,” and she left blocking and scenic interpretation largely in the hands of the ensemble. Even near the end of the process, when presumedly the actors had grasped meaning within the text on their own, she only occasionally intervened, and then mostly to shift the blocking for the sake of stage picture, continuity, or various presentational aspects not observable by those onstage.
As I understand it, Kempson took this hands-off approach partly because she herself admitted to not having all the answers, and partly because of her own philosophy on the artificiality of acting and performance. If I were to describe some of her views on acting, it would be like this:
Performance is by nature at risk of becoming artificial. Character choices, imagined circumstances, the elements of make-believe and pretend… These things can hold back a performance and increase the distance between playwright, theater company, and audience. Additionally, if the director/playwright exerts too much control upon the actors and their performance of a piece–by telling them how to perform their roles, for example–the meaning of the performance is then injected into a piece from without, rather than being born from within.
As a member of the cast for the staged reading, I at first struggled to connect to this unorthodox (avant-garde?) production process. I wanted more information about the play, it’s meaning, trajectory. I felt the absence of a directorial crutch…
The process of rereading and re-performing the text over and over, however, resolved many of the questions I had about the performance. I learned more about what I was doing just by doing it, not by asking questions. By moving in the space and using the text as a kind of audio-guide, I simply began to embody my role by happenstance. It felt very natural.
Kempson did not explicitly command us to adopt any specific character traits during our performance. She did, however, make a comment regarding individual performance that immediately made me think of our performance of Vanya. She said….
***
A Fluid Cast
“I want you to toe the line between being in character and out of character. An audience member shouldn’t quite be able to tell the difference.” -Sibyl Kempson
Now, I’m not sure whether we want the lines between our bohemian-actor-roles and our Uncle-Vanya-roles to be quite so blurred; I think use of onstage costume changes are partly there to emphasize and underline the shift in physicality between offstage and onstage personas. Nevertheless, the sentiment behind Kempson’s direction feels like it applies to our production. In Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street, the NY ensemble “toes the line” between character and actor from the moment they appear onscreen. And in the pre-script opening scene of our production at Duke University, I think we toe this line from the moment we “enter the rehearsal space.”
It’s this theme of seamlessness… I keep coming back to it during the rehearsal process. When, at the end of the movement workshop series with the wonderful Kali Quinn, we were asked what amazed us most about the process, I said:
What amazed me most was the seamlessness with which our cast transitioned from a casual, pre-rehearsal group atmosphere to the intense, focused, and emotionally vulnerable unit that we consistently formed during our process.
I remember playing around in a pseudo-devised theater club in high school, where we did similar movement exercises (though not in such detail) as we did in Kali’s workshop. I don’t ever remember feeling so close to the cast during such a process.
I mean, the machines we made with our bodies! We were fully interlocking gears, which ground together to make sound… An assembly line for feeling and experience and action.
Surely, the movement workshops solidified the sensation of cast unity that we felt in the very first group audition on the first day of class. But what of individual character work? Where did Kali leave each of us?
Breaking: Body Answers Head’s Questions
As for Sam and I’s collective understanding, and thus my own understanding, of the role of Uncle Vanya, I actually ended the process with more questions than with which I began. Which is a good thing, in this case. I came in with the simple question (and I put this question in my left hand, because it scared me):
How does Vanya manifest in my body?
Such a simple question. Too simple, I think. Unanswerable on paper. But because Kali was able to separate the elements of physicality (for the sole purpose of, as she said to us on the last day, uniting them with a stronger adhesive for a finished product), I now have broken this question up into many smaller questions. The first few questions that free associate to the surface:
How does Vanya open his hand? What is the Vanya finger puppet? —- (clammy, not quite arthritic but red-and-white-knuckled, cracks his joints too often out of boredom)
When he ridicules the professor in Act 1, where does he feel from? —-(the head, so as to entertain with intellect; but he feels the recoil in the hips, although he lounges on the bench so as to conceal the intensity of his pain)
How does Vanya sleep? —- (snores, apneal, shoulder tucked in the crick of his right arm)
Kali’s work made me a more conscious actor. I can identify many more of the choices available to me, and I feel much more in control of my body. I mean, just having such questions at my disposal… Is. Overwhelming. So many toolboxes. Before this process, I don’t think I would have A) have ever taken such questions seriously or B) have tried to answer these questions with my body and not my head.
Sure, if you’ve been in a couple shows, you’ve learned to “try leading with your _____” or “imagine that your character lives in your ______.” These little tricks are great starting points, but Kali showered us with complexity, duality. High-low pitch for gestures, two different rhythms in each half of your body, separate volumes for each line… I feel like every new term is a musical scale that you have to go home and practice and play around with everyday until it becomes natural.
(Finally) Feeling At Home in Vanya
It’s so great when everything feels natural. You know what I’m sick and tired of? Playing a character that I have to force myself into, one that feels distant from my own sense of self.
At the start of the class period, when I saw Sam auditioning as Uncle Vanya, when I heard him play in our read through, when I saw what he brought to movement workshop… I was very intimidated. I questioned whether I was well-suited for the role:
I asked, “Am I even like Vanya as a real person? Wouldn’t this be much easier if I was like Vanya in real life?” The answer doesn’t matter, I’ve decided. And, the question is flawed in itself. By describing the role of Vanya and my own personality as two entities that are solid, permanent, and predetermined, I’ve inherently created a fixed gap between the two points. Instead, I have both the option to move closer to my vision of Vanya on my own, or simply bring the vision of Vanya closer to my own sense of self.
Really, it’s the case that both options are available to me. I can blend elements from my understand of the character with my own physicality. Something I really want to do is give Vanya an injection of 21st youth, of real teenage fever and power (hey, I’m still 19 at heart!). I envision Vanya as a 47 year old teenager, anyways:
My absolute favorite moment from the workshop was when I got the privilege to play around with a piece of Vanya’s text (“Lit from within? That’s a cruel thing to say.”)…
Say it from the head, then the heart, then the gut. Now move it through all three places in order–head to heart to gut–during a single line reading.
When I moved into the gut, I remember a specific physicality I had. I was placing my hands on my high thighs, fingers laid flat across the inseam, elbows bent, a little crouch in the knees, shoulders back… I simultaneously felt like I was laying down smack in some kind of rap battle (the comedy) and yanking a knife out of my abdomen (the tragedy).
It was intense, yes, but something about that moment was relaxing. I didn’t leave that rehearsal feeling drained, as if I had pretended to be someone I wasn’t for three hours. Instead, I was energized. I didn’t feel like a character stitched together out of logic; I felt seamless.
Thank you, Kali.
-Thomas
