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September 29, 2006
Plasticity of Motion
Went a bit long on this one, just an area I've thought a lot about…
I had a very unexpected response to this reading. I trained as an actor, and some years ago read the seminal Stanislavski writings on acting and the theatre. At the time I accepted these teachings as the revered wisdom of the great master, as have generations of performers. To be sure, what Stanislavski did with his experiments in presenting psychological and emotional truth on the stage changed everything and created the foundation of the theatre we have today. What I remember from these books is the instruction to focus deeply on the physical, organic and natural, or “emergent” experience. Which is to say, as the “Plasticity of Motion” discusses, to ask such questions as: How does one walk? How does one move through space? How do I sit, or stand, or put on my hat? And then, given the quality and nature of my movement, or stillness, how then does that resonate and reflect the character and the story that is being told. And finally, to bring my awareness to whatever emotional and psychological states may arise from the physical state, from my awareness of the space I’m in and the manner in which I move through it.
Of course, this is counterintuitive for most people. The vast majority of first-time actors instinctively begin with attempting to find ways to display the emotional content of the story. Once in a great while, someone will come along with a curious ability to do so convincingly, and can repeat that each night. However, most of us cannot do so, and moreover, the viewer, when watching another having an intensely emotional experience, is closed off from having an experience of their own. I remember a moment in a production of “Antigone” where an actress had a moment of true emotional breakdown, sobbing hysterically. It was real, it was true, and it was theatrically not that interesting. All of the oxygen was sucked out of the room and all of the light seemed to become focused only on her and her moment of grief. The space itself deflated. It wasn’t because the actress was false in her tears, but that the “truth” we talk about in the theater is something that happens in the imagination. Room must be left for the spectator to enter the story, to see and experience the story in their own way. This interaction, between the imagination of those creating the event, and the imagination of those watching it, is what gives a performance it’s dynamism, it’s risk and it’s thrill.
Reading “Plasticity of Motion” again, many years later, I experienced conflicting thoughts. I was struck at first by the suggestion that there is a “correct” way to walk. While the intention of Tortsov’s instruction is to direct one’s attention to the nature and manner of our movement, we cannot have this idea that there is a particular way to walk. There are an infinite number of ways we could move through a space, and the specific qualities of that movement are such a subtle and eloquent storytelling device. The tone of the instruction in this chapter of “Building a Character” seemed to emphasize the “wrongness” of each actor’s movement, the disorientation that results from questioning an essential action. While asking such questions and exploring the range of possibilities in one’s movement is an essential experience for any performer, for any person really, telling someone that they are not moving correctly sets a strong psychological barrier to the very goal of exploring how to move.
I was also struck by the emphasis on industrial analogies to human movement. Of course, this was at a time where the machines of the industrial age had begun to awe people, trains that crossed continents, motors that could move people and products, ships, planes and automobiles. It was interesting to me to consider the human form as a machine – yes, there are resemblances, but only to a point. And humans are much more complex and interesting then the machines we make. The joints of the hip, knee and ankle do act like the shock absorbers in our cars, but you can also say “I love you” with your toes. It’s important to use and then discard our metaphors. We can also talk about moving through a space in terms of how the light was shifted by our shadows, or the way the sound changed.
I’m not saying that Tortsov is wrong in his description of movement, only that strong and powerful ideas that have been influential for a hundred years often need a bit of dusting off. Yes, this is one way to think about the question – what are others? We should take from Stanislavski the most essential instruction of all, which is to follow his example. Continue to ask questions of yourself and your work. Revise, discard, accept unexpected information and be sensitive to what results. Stanislavski did this his whole life. He did not arrive at a static truth that can now be disseminated to the masses, and it is a mistake to approach his teachings this way. A good friend of mine once referred to a lot of graduate school acting as the “limp noodle” school of performance. Since so many of us come in naturally with odd tensions and habits of holding ourselves, most graduate acting programs emphasize relaxation, ease of movement, a dilated physicality that the personality of the character illuminates. This is very useful and effective, but if we’re all doing the same thing physically the story begins to be about How we’re moving, instead of Why we’re moving.
Yes, let’s examine how we walk. Let’s also ask why.
Posted by Nathan Guisinger at September 29, 2006 10:43 PM