An Actor's Journal

Sweet are the uses of adversity

Something very strange has happened over the past four months. Although I shudder at the mere mention of the word, the only way to describe how I’ve been feeling is by saying that I’m incredibly happy. That’s right; I have almost nothing to complain about in my life right now.

Not that everything is perfect: I’m still crushingly poor, my home situation is far from ideal, and I have an administrative backlog as large and as difficult to overcome as the national deficit. However, this all pales into insignificance when I consider the positives.

First, as clichéd as it may seem, I’m alive and in good health. Nothing really matters above that. It’s all very well making a million pounds, but if you’re too tired, ill, or stressed to enjoy it, what’s the point? Second, I had a fantastic second term at Drama School, and have recently begun what promises to be an even better third term. Third, I have been slowly carrying out my New Year’s sort-of-Resolution. Finally, I have been making better connections with old and new friends and colleagues; all culminating in creating a happier, more self-assured and less worrisome me. The results have been clear to those around me, too: I’ve been told on various occasions how much happier, better-looking and more grounded I seem. Who am I to complain?

It’s all connected, of course. I think the fact that I made a very conscious decision to take more responsibility for my life has seeped into my way of dealing with the expected and extraordinary issues I face. The returns have been generous. After completing two rehearsal projects at school, I have been given very positive feedback. This is not to say that there isn’t plenty to work on, and goodness knows I’m more aware than ever of how much further I need to go, but the challenge is to work on what I need to work on, and go as far as I can go. One hopes this will be a lifelong career, and recent figures suggest I have an average of fifty years to continue improving and learning. Why waste the time I have now by not focusing exclusively on myself and the areas in which I could push myself?

The most important ingredient to my contentment cake is that I have finally remembered just how much fun I’m having. Acting is a strange job: we deal with raw human emotion and face the issues which dog our species on a daily basis. Despite this, one needn’t feel eternally anguished or despairing. With tears must come laughter, and the only way to treat the job is with a commitment to joy, pleasure and fun. The line between comedy and tragedy is so thin it’s almost indistinguishable. Shakespeare, Chekhov and many others knew this, and I would wager that it’s probably hardwired into our DNA to find and extract the positive from the negative. Drama School is such an intense little bubble which takes up so much energy that one could be forgiven for becoming ever so slightly engrossed in one’s own life. Nonetheless, the bubble is transparent and of one’s own making. You get what you put in, and you must always focus on the bigger picture. No-one is forced to go (indeed, every student auditioned to be offered a place) and it is a training for a career, so if you really do hate it the door is not locked. If ever I slip into a negative stream of thought I remind myself of this and that I have the power to make my experience a happy one. I always honour my natural emotions – I would never force myself to feign “happiness” – but there is a difference between feeling something and wallowing unnecessarily in it. I know I have a tendency to wallow, so I’d like to know if I can wallow in a bit of excitement, joy and pleasure for a while.

All a bit boring and self-help, this time around, I’m afraid; but if you came looking for bitterness and resentment, you arrived too early. I have 60 years to bitch and moan. Come back then.

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

As You Like It, II.1

In Their Own Words

I don't really like productions in which the audience is told what to think and what to feel. It's very difficult not to be tempted to direct their feelings - but all you've got to do is direct their attention - to say "look at this". I think that's what audience participation is. They are the editors, they are the judges. It's not like a movie where everything is decided. The audience can look where they want. That is why it's important that wherever they look, there should be extremely detailed life.

All I have to do as an actor is believe in what I'm saying at the moment I say it. I have to make decisions. Am I pretending? Am I lying? Do I really believe it? Do I feel it? How important is it that I get the other person to understand what I'm saying? Are they likely to? All those things. It's not up to me whether the character would have been better off if he had or hadn't said that. It's not up to me to say: is he foolish to say that? He just does say it.

Sir Ian McKellen, British Actor, born 1939

The Magic Space

Making Something out of Nothing: Actors and the Audience

Theatre is an ancient art; it has existed in various forms in every culture across the globe. It is part of what makes us human, and as with many other elements of human existence it is very difficult to define. One simple yet by no means complete way could be to describe it as the experience of one group of people watching another group inhabiting a space out of which Something is created from Nothing. Often very recognisable stories are played out and – as many have noted through the ages – a mirror is held up to nature. Theatre shows us as we are and what we think we know, albeit in a heightened and often abstracted manner. To have the desire to stand in a space and discover what constitutes the core of humanity certainly requires a huge amount of confidence and bravery, but the space is still empty; rarely will an actor truly know what will happen when he steps across that silver thread and into a world created solely through the imaginative process.

During the first year of my training, classes go back to basics, as it were, by simply looking at what one of my teachers calls the strands which make up the carpet; the elements which make up our understanding of Theatre. Each week we explore first what an empty space is or can be. Then how it can be defined by an actor through technical application, such as the use of the actor’s voice and body, and how space between more than one actor can “read” to a viewer. This enables us to create a variety of worlds. One can travel from deserts and plains to mountaintops and cliff faces. One can be awaiting a boat at a harbour or scouring a forest for signs of life; lost at sea to being cramped in a small prison cell; all through simply being in the space. One can be prince or thief; god or mortal; human or animal. We can tell fairy tales and invent dreams. There is no need of costume other than our neutral items of clothing; nor any use of props or miming objects. It isn’t even necessary to use recognisable language. Communication works primarily through sharing space, and the Theatre is all about this.

Eventually, we were permitted to experiment with a prop, but the prop could only be used in a way other than that which it appeared to be made for. For instance, a boot would become a games console; a scarf could become iron chains; a wicker basket could become an oversized phallus.

“Why bother with this?” one may ask. “What has it really to do with the theatre or acting?” It is true that one can feel lost at first, but once you clear away all previous associations with your own perceptions of theatre and get used to the power of experimentation will the answers come. What is acting if not make-believe? Watching someone use a shoe as a toothbrush and recognising it as a toothbrush is infinitely more interesting than watching someone just brush their teeth. Seeing someone lost on a raft when sat on a bare stage can be more compelling than footage of the same thing happening. Watching people transform into monstrous creatures behind someone’s back is more frightening than any CGI animation. Why: because the audience are invited to imagine all of this along with the actors. They need to recognise the toothbrush, the sea and the monsters through their imagination. They can’t and won’t do it if the actor decides not to share, and who can blame an audience for not responding to an actor who refuses to play with them? No-one will pay to watch a bunch of people enjoying themselves for their own sake.

We are all imaginative creatures, but most of us have chosen lives which insist we use our imagination practically. This is honourable and the actor should have total respect for such a life. It is an actor’s job, however, to use his or her imagination to share with those who are sat watching. Just as a mechanic will be excited to explain the workings of an engine to you if you are really interested, an actor ought to relish the prospect of sharing his mind, his body, and his soul with those who have taken the time and energy – as well as spent the money – to be interested in what you have to offer. They expect something from nothing, and they are absolutely right to do so. The Theatre is a Magic Space.

Further Reading: The Empty Space, Peter Brook (Penguin)