Acting and Theory of Drama - Case Study Example

Performer is a man of action. He is not somebody who plays another. He is a doer, a priest, a warrior...” What is acting? Introduction Acting is a profound and vast phenomenon that initially holds its origin in the ancient classical Greek tragedies with the supernatural intervention of Dionysus- the goat head god of revelry. According to the legend of acting, in the sixth century Greece, a man called Thespis emerged from a choir of performers to utter aloud some solo lines, and acting was built eventually from there. (What is Acting, n.d.) The classical stage of drama portrays a miscellany of paradoxes in it. It depicts the characters like the blind and erratic Oedipus, revengeful Medea, and the rebellious Antigone with sheer accordance to the classical mythology. The works by Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles etc, are the treasures of the classical drama. In different times drama has unfolded several new facets that have brought revolution on the stage. In the Restoration era, drama featured absolutely different characteristics. (Jahn, 2003) It became more vulgar and vigorous, portraying the lecherous and degenerated society. The works of Wycherley, Etherege, Moliere enriched this age with their worthy contributions in drama. However, these were mostly comedies. The revenge tragedies such as Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, the Seneca’s bloodthirsty tragedies and many others of this genre, exhibited a gory and violent trait of stage performances. On the other hand in later period the classical notes are represented again, in the Shakespearean drama (both tragedies and comedies) with a close connection with the modern psychoanalytic traits, such as Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Julius Ceaser etc. In the later period, nineteenth century ushered a whole new schools of drama with several innovative carves in it. The dramatists like G. B. Shaw, Henrik Ibsen, Brecht etc. came up with excellent notions that metamorphosed the entire figure of world drama. The versatility in the genre of drama has kept the definition of acting or performance moving continuously. Each genre exhibited his or her uniqueness. An actor cannot be captured in a certain frame of definition for a very general reason. He/ she always keeps changing their roles according to the drama. He is essentially a ‘doer’ and hence a performer too. Acting is an art that the performer procreates in each moment of his/ her lifetime by giving life to series of characters, and such a performer who cannot be categorized in any definite role because the art of acting is universal. Dissimilar from the actors in ancient Greece, who were honored, it is supposed that the actors of Rome in the antiquity were mere slaves, who were owned by managers. The shows were set in the outdoors and the performers wore masks. Therefore, most of the task of actors lingered on the voice modulations and gestures. There were no constraint on the quantity of actors in the Roman theatre, but all male actors executed the performances. The theatrical objects also went through an enormous change in Rome. The narratives of the Greeks were adapted from valorous heroes and mighty gods. The tales of ancient Rome on the other hand concentrated on the details of everyday life and sometimes tended to be quite profligate. The later Roman regime was the initial era when Christianity started to reach the theater and actors meticulously. Theater was connected with pagan fiestas and had the tendency to exhibit vulgarity. With the emergence of prejudiced Christianity, the Christians were commanded not to be present at the theaters. If Christian went to the theater instead of visiting the church on a sacred day, he was charged severely and was socially alienated. Actors were not permitted to participate in the holy programs or to be buried in the compound of the church cemeteries. The theatrical performances and such means of revelry were looked upon as “unchristian, pagan, idolatrous, frivolous, seductive, ungodly and devilish” (Green, 2000, p.157) by the religious authority. During this era, theatrical performance received a great deathblow from the religious institutions. In the Middle age, quite surprisingly as well as ironically, the religion seemed to support the theatrical traits. This might be reflected in the following incident: “During an Easter service in AD 925, a performance that was probably sung depicted the three Marys looking for Jesus at his tomb and encountering angels that proclaim him to be risen from the dead. This was the beginning of liturgical drama where clergy and choirboys performed biblical stories and moral lessons as part of the church services.” (What Is Acting, n.d. p.3). Since then, a number of years have passed and acting has emerged as an extraordinary phenomenon. However it is now taken for granted by the spectators. Actors repeatedly plunge into the world of make-believe to entertain others, for the audience’s pleasure, without the intention to deceive. “Acting is a universal human activity, and one that is uniquely human—no other animals create dramas, not even nonhuman primates.” (Goldstein, 2009, p. 6) Almost all the human beings are actors to an extent. People put immense effort to chisel their real self out as they interact with others. The roles people enact in individual lives are generally interrelated with that of their own, and represent their personalities and emotional heights. This opinion correlates to the famous realization that Shakespeare puts forward through the speech of his famous tragic protagonist Macbeth: “Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player/ That struts and frets its hour upon the stage, / And then heard no more” (Shakespeare, p.154). Therefore the real life acting seldom gets any recognition and sustenance, whereas the on stage actor savors the opportunity of living in the memory of people and may be in the pages of history for ages. Actors are not only individuals in a certain profession pursuing the struggle to earn their daily bread or to reach to the pinnacle of fame and prosperity. Actors are also performers who are engaged in learning some lines and making certain body movements in front of the audience. There are far more than these physical moves in an actor’s task. In this context, Goldstein (2009) remarks, “Actors are individuals likely to have strong theory-of-mind skills, either as part of their innate makeup or as learned from acting training (or both). Actors must repeatedly become different characters, and acting theorists from different schools have stressed the importance of training the actor to understand and analyze a character’s inner thoughts to create a realistic portrayal of that character.” (Goldstein, 2009, p.7) A good actor must have that window of introspection in mind that would always keep him/her enriching and providing with some fresh dimensions to continuously rediscover the creative inner self. Alike the mode and methods of acting the actors also have altered and developed their skills and way of acting. Various exponents of modern and postmodern age have initialized several new theories and methods to enrich the world stage. Jerzy Grotowski brought in the revolutionary physical theatre, which emerged as a huge part of world drama later. It is an enormously formed physical and visual form of drama that consist vivid physical actions in it. Theatre is a vast platform that is enlightened by the performance of the actor. An imaginary role is breathed into life and one may note in this regard: “…through the actors technique, his art in which the living organism strives for higher motives - provides an opportunity for what could be called integration, the discarding of masks, the revealing of the real substance: a totality of physical and mental reactions. This opportunity must be treated in a disciplined manner, with a full awareness of the responsibilities it involves” (Jerzy Grotowski, N.D.). Here it could be observed that the modern drama leaves a beneficial note for people of contemporary time. According to Grotowski, the actor achieves this act, but this is possible only via a proper interaction with the viewer – “intimately, visibly, not hiding behind a cameraman, wardrobe mistress, stage designer or make-up girl - in direct confrontation with him, and somehow "instead of" him.” (Jerzy Grotowski, N.D.) Grotowski’s idea of performance and his notions about the performer or the actor might be observed in the following words: ‘Grotowski wrote somewhat cryptically of the double consciousness that this “Performer” needs to develop with the aid of a teacher. This capacity to see and do at the same time is nourished by being “passive in action and active in seeing…Performer must develop not an organism-mass, an organisms of muscles, athletic, but an organism-channel through which the energies circulate, the energies transform, the subtle is touched”’ (Gordon, 2006, p. 307) The actors performance conventionally involves the appropriate way of emerging from his own self to reach to another height and acquire traits that the character bestows upon him/her. However in order to communicate with the audience some connection needs to be built up with them. The audience knows the actor who is also perhaps a celebrity. Now, when the message is conveyed by a play through the actor’s speech and actions, there might be to possible effects. If the character of the story is highlighted then the audience might not be able to connect with a fictional character but if the actor is able to communicate individually through his performance then the message is likely to receive adequate attention since the audience relates more with the person they know and at this juncture the actor becomes a performer in the true sense. This trait could be trailed back to the striking dramatic effects that Bertolt Brecht brought upon the stage. Whereas most of the previous conventional dramatists put effort in adding some identification effects in their theatrical productions so that the drama lingers long in the minds of the audience, Brecht walked in absolutely an opposite way. He coined the ‘alienation effect’ in his dramas. This strange but profound effect was brought to alienate or separate the audience from the apparent sentiment and emotion of the story to make them a part of the larger socio political issues concerning a major part of society. Brecht’s way of organizing the actors might be stated as follows: “To realize this desired alienation effect, Brecht had actors step out of character during a performance to directly address the audience. Other devices include the use of placards that announce the outcome of the scene to follow so that the audience does not get carried away by the suspense of the drama” (Osnes & Gill, 2001, p.9). In the above process of management of the actors it is clear that the purpose is to assign a special role to the actors apart from the sentiments of the story being enacted on stage. When the actors are able to separate themselves from the specific roles and represent certain morale, ethics or principles to the society, he becomes a performer or a doer. In the beginning Anton Chekhov’s drama was thought to be alike those of his predecessors. Initially this opinion was held true. However, later he proved this notion wrong; especially in his play “The Seagull” where Chekhov’s individuality came up clearly. Actually, “What provides the special quality of Chekhov’s plays are his ironic distance and his bemused objectivity.” (McGraw- Hill encyclopedia of world drama: an international reference work in 5, 1984, p. 284) Uta Hagen in her work, Respect for Acting opines that Chekhov’s plays went beyond the conventional or theoretical methods of acting. To substantiate her argument Uta Hagen discusses a certain supper scene from the drama “The Seagull” where two most important characters work separately while the rest of the family is busy in their supper. To carve out the tragic onstage life the tool of counter acting is the key that Hagen points out here (Hagen, 2008, p.6). The actors thus get a feel about their existence in Chekhov’s plays. This is technically termed as representational performance where the actor retains one’s identity despite the traits and attributes of the role he plays. Hagen highlights the difference between representational and presentational performance, saying that presentational performance, where the actor adopts a different identity (of the character) is a weak form of acting. This explains why an actor might also be called a performer. Hagen herself propounded some valuable advice about acting in her work mentioned above. In this book she presents the instances of many other veteran and excellent actors who have enriched the arena of acting by their great performances. Uta Hagen shares her personal experiences where she meets these actors and gets to discover many unknown facets of acting. She also stresses on the systematic learning of acting because according to Hagen, an untrained actor holds the full risk to destroy the character he is playing and also thus may end up destroying his own image. (Hagen, 1973) Perfecting one’s outer instruments like voice, body and delivery of dialogues are essential for any actor who wants to make his mark. Again Hagen emphasizes that external beauty is not a must and says that an actor is supposed to “hold up a mirror to the society” (Hagen, 1973, p.15). This even conforms to Grotowski’s concept about the creation of organism-channel instead of the organism mass. Conclusion: An actor is a person who plays numerous roles with equal ardor and dexterity in his lifetime in any given genre of drama or other mediums. Several theorists have propounded various new concepts that have certainly enhanced the scopes for the performers. Especially, in postmodern stage the actors are well equipped with several prior methods, techniques, and tools, and with additional equipments of the modern age. Therefore neither the drama nor the performers have retained the same place from where the journey of drama actually began. Drama as an artistic platform has merged with a blend of methods such as bookish theory, history of art, various philosophies, history and several subjects that are attached with existence of human civilization. Time and space- the fundamental factors of Bakhtinian ‘chronotope’ plays the most significant catalytic role in shaping up the drama of different ages. That is the chief reason why Ibsen, Brecht, Grotowski, Strindberg etc., prominent figures of world drama have come up with several new ideas and scopes with ample scopes for the actors to show their expertise. Therefore it is not possible to decide who among them is the best, but it could be certainly stated that the actor who can play the role of Jim in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger successfully, can surely portray blind Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex or Shakespeare’ Macbeth, because an actor has no theory, only continuous performance throughout life is his rule. Now going back to the title and the quote of Grotowski “Performer…. is a man of action. He is not somebody who plays another. He is a doer, a priest, a warrior” (Gordon, 2006, p. 307), we may relate our above discussion to the expectations the society might have from an actor. In a nutshell the actor needs to represent himself before the audience instead of merely playing the role of the character he is assigned to. The process of performance for an actor and the expectations has undergone wide change. Connecting with the audience is the key to successful acting and this is where the actor is successful as a performer where he sets values and actually does things on behalf of the fictional or non-fictional characters of the plays. References Osnes, B. & S. Gill. (2001). Acting: an international encyclopedia. California, USA: ABC-CLIO. (1984). McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama. USA: McGraw Hill, Inc. Jahn, M. (2003). A Guide to the Theory of Drama. Part II of Poems, Plays, and Prose: A Guide to the Theory of Literary Genres. English Department, University of Cologne, available at: http://www.uni-koeln.de/~ame02/pppd.htm (accessed on August 6, 2010) Hagen, U. (2008). Respect for Acting. New Jersey, USA: John Wiley and Sons. Green, V., V., H., H. (2000). New History of Christianity. London, UK : Continuum International Publishing Group. Goldstein, T., R. (2009). Psychological Perspectives on Acting, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 6-9. Gordon, R. (2006). The Purpose of Playing, University of Michigan Press Shakespeare, W. Macbeth. UK: Arden Publishers. Jerzy Grotowski: Statement of Principles, (n.d.). Owen Daily, available at: http://owendaly.com/jeff/grotows2.htm (accessed on August 6, 2010) What is Acting? (n.d.) How Acting Relates to the Animator, Available at: http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/35/04702274/0470227435.pdf (accessed on August 6, 2010) Read More