He came . He performed. He conquered.
The other students, mostly beginners were clapping and I tried to hide my yawn, (or rather not hide it।) It’s usually on the second day that the students tell us something about themselves through a performance, and are on stage alone. Some experienced actors come and display their skills, their range, doing more where it’s not required, exposing their vain and narcissistic selves. The moment the ‘actor’ steps on stage he/she becomes another ‘person’… well person would not be the right word… becomes another ‘thing’, is more like it. And I can’t help but yawn.
Why do some beginners/aspiring actors get enamoured by all this?
One simple explanation is that their idols, stars and actors from cinema also do the same thing. Secondly they look at this experienced actor and sub-consciously tell themselves, “Hey, I can’t do That”! Hence the admiration and sadly, sometimes the aspiration to do the same one day. Similar reactions come from an insensitive audience.
It’s not entirely the fault of the ‘ACTOR’ (spelt ‘D I S P L AY E R’). Hardly anyone knows what acting is. Whoever has done some work, be it theatre, television, films, Advertisements, modeling assignments etc. is told to do more, show more. “I can’t see it”, these people say. It’s sad they’ve lost the ability to feel a true moment when offered; and are apparently artists!
It is not a bad thing to be skilled as an actor because you cannot be a variable performer if you don’t have skills. But skills are only a petty means to deliver something much more meaningful. Skills take a backseat in my workshop as there are few fundamentals that are of much higher priority and it is these fundamentals that I focus on through the two weeks.
It takes time to break one’s mould. Often, more an actor has worked, more difficult it is to break it. Some don’t accept they were wrong and they shall remain who they are all their lives. But some do trust an honest judgment, because they somewhere feel incomplete in their current status. If the student has Willingness to growth then my job becomes relatively easier. (It is a difficult job to pass this analysis/criticism as I, the ‘all-knowing’ teacher may be so wrong. But that’s my job. And I need to tread it ever-so-carefully.)
What are the impediments that come in the way of an ‘Actor’ from being an Actor? Some of these: (NOTE: Please read ‘he’ as ‘he/she’)
A. CONFORMITY.
When an actor has done work then he with time starts knowing what it is that works and what doesn’t. So the actor with time learns few tools to express/justify a certain situation. He does this by carrying an imaginary box wherever he goes. He keeps adding elements in it. Elements that directors, other actors or just a layman told them ‘Worked’. What is inside the box? It contains a plethora of fixed masks. When the director says, “You have to be sad”. He quickly opens the imaginary box, takes out the sad mask and puts it on within a matter of seconds. Nobody knows where the mask came from. But it has come from the actor’s experience of doing the same thing over and over again. This actor has stopped feeling. A good example of this is to watch a play which has had more than fifty shows. Notice how these actors carry their imaginary boxes and rapidly change & utilize the fixed masks inside it. Or for that matter a star in cinema that has been doing the same thing regardless of the character, the part he is playing. They trick the audience in believing something that’s not there, by mimicking a fixed cliché expression for all his variable requirements. The audience has been trained to these cliché moments/expressions/emotions over the years and they immediately use their intellect to tell themselves, “Oh yes, I know that one, it’s sadness. He’s acting sad”. The fact that this happens all the time, is actually sad. . Such actors use what is called the Box of Tricks. And for obvious reasons, whenever a student opens his box of tricks, in my workshop; I explain to the actor that he shouldn’t even have such a box. The onus for an actor is on being in that moment, not displaying it, so that the audience doesn’t have to exercise the intellect at all, rather feel what their actor is going through and by doing so the actor gives his audience a more cathartic, true and wholistic experience.
B. VANITY/PRIDE.
A student came on stage and danced. She’s beautiful and a very skilled dancer. I looked at her but I was not enjoying her performance. Because her every look, every jerk of her body, every throw of her head pointed to just one aspect, ‘Look how Beautiful I am’. And then another student, a man came on stage to perform a simple exercise. Every movement that he did and did not make, the stable narrowed look in his eyes, every sulk in his body muscles, announced loudly, ‘I know I’m a great actor’. The pride was so dominating that I even forgot what moment/exercise it was, that this student was performing. Unfortunately with these species mostly when you later give feedback in the same line of thought, they either deny the observation completely or don’t say anything nor do anything about it. Fortunately sometimes when they see even non-actors progress rapidly, especially by the latter half of the second week they sometimes pull their socks. It’s funny but sometimes competition makes them work harder as it comes in their pride’s way. But there are few such rigids of massive proportions.
C. THE PERFORMERS.
Then there are cases who just ‘love performing’. In these scenarios you almost have to stop them because they take twenty minutes to describe something that would usually take a saner human, two minutes. They don’t want to leave the stage. They want most of the lines. They always want to be in the center of the stage. They always want to face the audience and will throw some part of their body just before exiting so as to achieve that effect and laurel of being a ‘phadu’ actor. After watching this, in my imagination my head is thrown down and I’m shaking it slowly. And yes, did I forget mentioning, they often love shouting… They say, “Something just happens to me when I’m on stage. I’m electrified. (Or) I’m on fire.” I tell them, “Something happens to your audience as well. They like me, yawn. (Or) They get shocked with your electricity”. Unfortunately some of them not understanding the pun are happy to hear the ‘shocked’ part. And then I have to use more mortal words.
These are all examples of artists who become bigger than their art. There are many more varieties to the above. When they mention that they love Acting/Performing, they are in other words saying that they love themselves.
Art is not a means of sufficing our petty miseries, insecurities, discrepancies and allergies.
Art is a medium to lift our self, the artist’s self and aim to traverse our audience to question and rise as well.
On the other hand I have students who have never acted before.
A man in his late forties, who’s never performed before wanted to join the course. He told me that he wanted to do this since a long time. Of course he joined and I encouraged and welcomed him gladly. He had salt and pepper hair and mustache, yet he spoke of his want to Act as if confessing guilt. He was scared what I would think. He was unsure and somewhere sad. He had a great job, earning well yet the conformities of life and society’s dictums of what’s acceptable and what’s not had stiffened him and his entire body and mind in knots. After our first meeting I wondered by myself, “I hope it’s not too late”…
Another girl joined the course and hardly spoke to anyone in the class. I felt in the first few days that it was difficult for her to trust anyone/anything. Her shoulders too had tied itself in knots just as her mind. It’s amazing how much people’s bodies tell us about them!
When both these actors performed on their first solos, by telling us something about themselves via any medium of performance, they were both ingenious. There were few things they did which came just from them, from the rich experience of their life, some ingenious ways I had not seen before. Thankfully these two did not try to ape their experienced counter-parts, nor were influenced by cinema. They were not obsessed with acting. They wanted to do the course to explore themselves, some aspects of their selves. They weren’t here to prove any point, not here to win, not here to display. Of course they had a lot of technical flaws, but those can be learned within a matter of weeks and with experience. How many technicalities are there in any case? These non-actors sometimes get conscious yet often do things that are very interesting as they don’t know a fixed way of doing anything.
These actors borrow from life. They don’t borrow from film-actors or theatre-actors or any of those varieties.
Sadly, a lot of actors, when acquire technical skills, start believing that they are now perfect and are great actors. And you have these kinds in all fields of art. Be it a Filmmaker, writer, painter, dancer et al.
Some experienced actors call and say they want to join the workshop. But they add that they are experienced and have done work, they are joining as they are, say, new in the city and want to be associated with a theatre group. I correct them right there by saying that they should join only if they want to learn. But the fact remains that they are justifying superiority in the first meeting and also saying how perfect they are as they’ve already mastered all technical skills.
It is so important for actors; be they beginners, non-actors or experienced actors; to realize the importance of borrowing from life. There are six billion plus people on this planet and yet none of them is exactly the same. This should be one elementary fact that every actor needs to realize and remember at all times. Yet all of these six billion people have so much in common, with more experience in life we start observing similarities in thoughts, feelings and actions of different people.
With experience and realization, one can start associating patterns in life. How the person deals with those experiences and how much actualization is implemented to those realizations decree the greatness of that artist/actor.
With further understanding and realization an artist starts connecting with some universal laws of nature. Though Art is boundless and can expand from the greatest zeniths to immense depths, Art is somewhere always a recreation of nature, the original creation. It cannot function outside certain universal laws such as truth, beauty, love and grace.
Great writers like Shakespeare or Mohan Rakesh in ‘Aashaadh ka ek din’ realized this phenomenon and recreated universal characters in their plays. An actor too needs to be as observant, as aware and as keen to know more like these writers. By doing so the artist raises their self.
Be interested in life, in people and for God’s sake stop imitating stars and actors from cinema and theatre.
For the same reason, since I have 40 hours in two weeks, I don’t work on characterization at all.
It’ll be a great achievement if these students could just truly connect with their selves, be aware of their bodies and minds; in this short span of time.
It is truly a great achievement because some theatre and cinema actors can’t achieve connecting with their selves even in their twenty plus career years.
When the girl for whom it was difficult to trust, reached the end of the third advanced week, she imbibed a lot. She never spoke a word to me outside the class, never about how dedicated she is, just went home quietly and worked ardently on the feedback given. It is not possible to alter one’s life in 70 odd hours, yet the beginnings can be made. And she proved it. By the time we came on the monologues, this girl who no casting agent would ever look at, no director would ever cast (not for her looks, but just her quietude and restricted demeanour. These people want girls to be bubbly and laugh and giggle all the time and they tell themselves, “She’s expressive, she’s an actor”) What!!!???
This uninteresting non-actor, while performing her monologue, had left all experienced actors behind by truly being in the moment that was required of her.
And there I was looking at her perform, a constant smile on my face. It is in these moments that I find my work so fruitful.
Nothing gives me more contentment than to watch a student traverse, through the course to take first steps, from being a performer/non-actor to being an actor.
PS.
There are many aspects I want to explore and discuss:
With so much variety in life how can any actor do the same thing for every part?
How does an actor be honest whilst living in a dishonest world? Etc...
I think I’ll explore it in my next writing. Till then, keep traversing…
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