Well its been five days since my blog closed for business for the half-term holiday. It coincided with the onset of a nasty lergy - which was hovering on the edge of pneumonia I discovered yesterday! Thanks to the care of a dear friend who is a consultant paediatrician with whom I have been staying, I have recognised that it wasn't getting any better so have the anti-biotics in hand now!
I have missed writing the blog - and ended up jotting down the odd note here and there to remind me of a theme or idea I want to write about here. So resist it no longer can I.
A few blogs ago I wrote about the actor's work to excavate emotion, to call upon and tune their own emotional instrument and then to understand the techniques required to reproduce an expression of these emotions in performance. I have continued thinking about this, particularly in a week when there has been so much emotion played out in the public arena with the Oscar Pistorius case. Well, the truth is there is not a second when human pain and joy is not playing itself out in any of our lives of course. After all emotion is an in-built compass in all of us.
The emotion is the fundamental mechanism that all the living beings possess to be guided in their struggle for survival. - Wukmir (1967)
Now likening the emotional palette to a colour swatch or to a musical scale might seem reductionist, but for the actor/technician we have to do this. Emotions in our lives are so overwhelming and powerful that they have the ability to obliterate in a moment any semblance of rationality. We honour them, and indeed sometimes think that their very existence gives us the right to act them out in any context.
We are so driven by them that we will make decisions in a moment that may change the course of our life for the better or which we may later regret. And we are making tiny ones moment by moment too, which coffee do we fancy today, what colour shall we wear? And emotions are exquisite too of course. Falling in love, the birth of a child, the wonder of a magnificent view can all move us to a state of grace. So we all live within this rich world of emotion, much of the time working hard to keep what we are feeling hidden and under wraps, because without some control - just imagine!
And so to the emotional technician, the actor. I was in discussion yesterday with a colleague about young actors and their access to producing/re-creating emotion for performance. Generally by 21 most of us have had at least a passing experience of most emotions, we need them for our working knowledge of relationships and to keep ourselves safe. There will be some extreme ones that we may not have experienced yet, profound grief for example may be something we don't experience until much later in our lives.
So beginning work with the actor on finding emotion must bring together a working knowledge of their own emotional palette, an ability to observe and discern a range of emotions in others, a level of imagination that can elicit empathy even when the experience is alien. And most importantly the physiology. The emotions are expressed and live in the body - hence phrases such as "My heart is breaking", "I am falling apart", "My heart is bursting", "I have butterflies in my stomach", and many more. So the clue for the actor here is that we can approach accessing an emotion physically, imaginatively and biographically. Indeed being able to call on all three resources is a great help. Some actors will find one way in easier than another.
Take for example the student who has great voice and physical skills, but cannot seem to touch an emotional depth or find a truth that connects intuitively and will make her audience cry. With her I would begin with the physical. If grief were the emotion we were exploring, I would begin with the breath. The alteration to the pattern of breathing will immediately send a signal to the brain and the emotion will be accessed. So we might start with a study of a piece of film of a moment of grief and then simply take on the physicality and breathing, and repeat it until the grief emerges. Once the actor has located it, its then very easy to refind it at will. Its a key. Always but always both the actor and the director know when the authentic emotion has been unlocked, and its always a fabulous moment.
Let me give you another example of something I use often with actors. If I am looking for an emotion of fear for example, I will ask the actor to go outside the studio door and run on the spot for ten minutes. They usually start by pretending to run, not running really. I will shout at them hard to keep going, until I see in their face that they are actually running out of breath and their physiology is shifting. I will then ask them to come into the space and the scene and play it straightaway. This erratic breathlessness gives life and meaning to the fear they need for that scene. And once unlocked they can anchor it in their body so that it can be accessed at will at any moment.
The reluctant e-moter must learn to play her instrument if she is to be any more than simply an imitator. Of course the imaginative and biographical routes into emotion are equally powerful and in turn create the changes in the physical body. There is an intrinsic bio-feedback here.
I believe all young actors should have a go at a solo performance. Its a great teacher in learning to play the emotional instrument, making the shift from joy to sadness for example in a matter of a few seconds, and hitting the mark every time. That's it for today - I will come back to this subject many more times as its the route of the actor's work!
Have a good day.
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