In Their Own Words

Acting is a mixture of truth and fake. Because none of us are dying on stage; none of us are in love with the person that we're opposite, but you want to get as real a feeling underneath it within a fake environment.

Lolita Chakrabarti, British Actress, born 1969

"Our revels now are ended"

It's the end; but the moment has been prepared for...

Well, that's that then. All done. Todo acabado. C'est fini. Consumatum est. I will never have another class, another essay, another exam, or another reason to go to my university campus ever again. I've dreamt about this moment for a long time.

The last three months have been an intense experience. On top of finishing my degree, I've been doing auditions for the top four drama schools in the country, as well as rehearsing and performing in a piece of devised theatre. Every day I've been waking up between 6 and 8am and going to bed between 1 and 4am. I've spent more time, energy and money in three months than I have over the course of a year.  I've pushed myself to new intellectual, physical and emotional limits: reading and writing about 16th-century drama; bending my body into a variety of shapes; and playing a range of roles, from kings and misfits to cats and pieces of dried spaghetti. It's a wonder I managed to complete any of it, considering how difficult doing any of those activites are on an individual basis, let alone together. Add to that the fact that I'm something of a lazy so-and-so, and I've had one of the first real tests of character I expect I will undergo throughout life.

After four years at university, I would never have expected to feel the way I do right now. Firstly, I feel so ready to finish studying. I know that in other countries university can last longer, but really: four years is too much! I sometimes even wonder if going to university was the right thing for me to do. After all, I never wanted to have a career which would have anything to do with English Literature or Spanish. I always wanted to be an actor. I applied to university for the sake of education alone. However, academia was a whole lot harder than I thought it would be. I enjoyed studying, reading, improving my critical faculties, and meeting so many other people, but I could have done all of those things through other means. I've always believed that university is not for everyone - god knows, I've met some pretty stupid and annoying people at that place - but I'd never thought that maybe I was one of those people not suited to it. Sure, I may be intelligent, and I might be articulate and able to analyse a text, but I realise now that I most certainly am not disposed to the discipline of sitting and writing down ideas in a manner which will convince other intelligent, articulate and analytical people. I basically bluffed my way through university.

Without a doubt, I developed more through working on student drama - another way of saying "amateur drama", but with the conceit of intellectual superiority - than in any other aspect of my university experience. With the exception of my year abroad, when I didn't perform once over the eleven months and three weeks I spent in Spain, I have been occupied with at least one play or theatrical production every term. I've spent two summers at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and spent most of my final year preparing and attending auditions. Despite the occasional moan and duff show, I've loved it. I can't help being a luvvie at heart. Sir Ian McKellen once said he shouldn't really have gone to university because he wasn't very academic, but doing badly with his studies gave him the chance to work on several plays and productions with John Barton, who then went on to set up the Royal Shakespeare Company. It's unlikely I'll have as good a time of it as Sir Ian, but the point still stands. I've done pretty well in my auditions, even if I do say so myself: I've ben offered places at three of the four schools, and am on the waiting list for the other one. Discretion and superstition forbids me to disclose which schools they are, of course: one wouldnt want to be presumtuous.

So, after four years of protracted preparation, I did it. I've lived and loved, cursed and cried, and done as much as I could possibly want to do which has no relation to the theatre; and yet I find myself, like Thespis' prodigal son, making my way back home. The chapter ends; the story continues.

The show must go on...

Reseña - Tío Vania

Tío Vanya, The Corn Exchange (Brighton), 19/05/10

Pocas veces tengo la oportunidad de ver obras de teatro montadas por compañías profesionales; aun menos en español. Una profesora que tenía en la Complutense me dijo que hay sólo un centro teatral del mundo hispánico: Buenos Aires, así que tenía muchas ganas de ver un montaje de Tío Vanya de Chejov hecho por una compañía argentina.

Hace ocho meses ví una versión adaptada en inglés, y me apeteció conocer la obra entera. Otra vez esta fue una adaptación, pero en cambio salí del auditorio dando gracias al dios inexistente por haber podido mantenerme los sentidos no eliminados del todo, pero sí violados: muy violados. ¡A quién se lo podría ocurrir!

¿A quién se lo podría ocurrir que una producción profesional de una obra clásica de uno de los mejores dramaturgos del s.xx pudiera haber sido una de las peores piezas de teatro que nunca he visto? La mayoría de la culpa está en las manos de Daniel Veronese, el escritor, director, y responsable de esta catastrófica adaptación. Se veía claro desde el primer momento de la actuación que la obra estaba de gira y que Veronese y su compañía estaban acostumbrados a palcos muchísimo más pequeños que ofrece el escenario del Corn Exchange en Brighton, construido con el teatro proscenio tradicional de la época victoriana en mente. El espacio en el que los siete actores interpretaron dejaba vacío más de una mitad del escenario, y cuanto más me distraje, más me enfoqué en las matices del diseño y la infraestructura del edificio. Si la hubieran montado en un teatro de estudio, el sentido de claustrofobia que se supone que querían crear hubiera sido un poco más tangible; pero incluso yo, sentado en una butaca de la segunda fila de platea, me sentí totalmente a distancia de los percibidos traumas.

Tal sentimiento de distancia tenía mucho que ver con las interpretaciones de los actores, también. No quiero acordarme tanto de la vergüenza indirecta que me sentí por su parte, pero no hay palabras para describir el nivel de exageración que desmostraron algunos de la compañía. La peor delincuente era la actriz que representaba a Teleguin, demostrando su capacidad de exhibir las cualidades masculinas sólo en el exterior, con gritos bajos y dando palmadas a los demás, sea hombre o mujer. El que hizo el personaje titular no era tan malo, pero su caída a la manía y la ira no me convenció nada y pareció un cambio demasiado repentino en vez de ser la culminación de décadas de desesperación reprimida y el odio que siente hacia sí mismo por haber perdido el tiempo a lo largo de su vida. No me preocupé por los personajes, ni por sus vidas, ni por sus líos ni sus tragedias. Nada me importó porque los actores falló de hacerme creer de ellos.

Durando una hora continua, sin interrupcion, pareció que Veronese pretendía seguir la tradición realista de Stanislavski, pero porque no invertían en la esencia de la obra o de los personajes, parecía un homenaje más al melodrama que una tragicomedia de una familia que está a punto de implosionar. Una ironía cruel, considerando que al principio de la acción los personajes hablan de lo que constituye el malo del teatro contemporáneo, lo satirizan, y la producción misma es una pura parodia accidental. Tío Vania es una obra que condena la falta de acción positiva en la vida de uno mismo, y demuestra los efectos de la vacilación y el peligro de dejar que te pase la oportunidad. Al final de esta representación, deseaba que nunca hubiera llegado yo a una comprensión tan profunda y personal de este mensaje.

In Their Own Words

There are as many Hamlets as there are actors to play him. He can be tall, short, fat, thin, black, white, whatever. There's always something in there that you absolutely respond to. It never ceased to frighten me. I always would be very nervous when I went on. In fact, it was the trigger for me "catching" - if that's the right word - stage fright, which stayed with me for nearly three years; and I didn't go on stage in nearly three years.

I'm standing in the wings, waiting to go on, and I suddenly thought, you know, "To be or not to be": that's the speech, they all know. At least they know the first line or the first two lines, the most famous speech. And whenever you got to that speech, there was a particular silence that falls on the audience. Tangible, you can touch it: because this is the moment he's saying "To be or not to be"; and every Hamlet feels it, I'm sure. And I'm in the wings, waiting to do this, and I thought: "What happens if I dry? What happens if I forget it?" I started, and I dried. I didn't know what... Every pore in my body opened. My shirt, my grey shirt turned black with sweat, pouring down my face. I'd asked all those questions that people ask and you think "what a silly question". "How do you learn your lines?"; "How do you get up in front of a thousand people?" Yes. How do I? How do I remember? How do I get up in front...?  And asking those questions was wrong, because I couldn't answer them.


Sir Derek Jacobi, British Actor, born 1938