40 Questions of One Role. Jurij Alschitz
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everything began so as not to corrupt it. Can a role or a play be constructed from several principal ideas? Yes, of course. A role or a production constructed on myriad ideas is much more difficult to embody, but, from my point of view, such a model has much greater energy and is of greater beauty.
As an Idea, the sea can be expressed in a single drop of water, a forest in a single leaf, so the Idea of a role can be expressed in everything – both generally and in minor details, in a long dialogue and in the shortest retort, in a pause and in the text, in movement and in motionlessness. It is an entire world built on and subject to one thing – the Idea. The Idea is the main impulse and guideline for analysing a play or a role. The Idea is the main source of energy for the imagination, reflections and the rehearsals of the actor and the director both when working on the entire performance and in the process of its creation and embodiment. In order to keep a production or a role truly alive for a lengthy period it is necessary to think, first and foremost, about their vitality in terms of the main Idea.
You have to see the difference between ideas of the present and Ideas for all time. They are different energies, different distances, different lives of the role and the play. An idea for today may be bright and burning now but tomorrow lose currency and fade away. It is important to find an Idea that will never die, which will live, independent of time, social structures and people’s dispositions. Don’t rush and call the first thought that comes to you in the role an idea. That’s akin to calling your first experience of love true love itself. You will soon be convinced of how fast the first “concept” of the role evaporates, how empty everything that you have analysed and conceived seems. That is normal. When working on a play your understanding of the Idea will grow, it will somehow change, it will become more defined, it will grow like a living being. Only practical work will help you give the Idea an exact name. But simply naming and understanding an Idea are insufficient for an actor. You have to feel its fire, let it burn you, your partners, embody it on stage and convey it to the audience.
An Idea can strike an actor not just when he is creating the role. He might discover an Idea for himself that fills his life and his entire artistic being with meaning. The power of its energy does not fade with the end of the work, rather it grows and other plays and other roles will be needed to embody it. If an actor grasps the Idea of the role as well as its main source of energy then he will discover a beautiful and endless well of creativity.
We will return to the Idea several times, which is proof, if such were required, of its importance, both as the main line of analysis and as the main source of energy for investigation of the text.
Question 2
What is the Energy of the role?
In an analysis, first and foremost you have to look for a source of energy – energy of the role, the scene and the performance, and not merely understand the meaning of the words. Below you will see that almost every question or rule is directly linked to the problem of seeking energy for the role. Because this is the basis for the life of your role. Finding the logic, defining the emotions, creating the chain of actions, identifying the meaning of what is said and what is done is much, but it is not enough. Find the source of the energy! Above all the analysis is needed for this. Naturally investigating the role is important for the clarity of its intrigues, the composition of themes and images, for understanding the structure of the text and style etc., but more than anything it is necessary to find its energy. Without energy there can be no life, and so analysis should act as a strong and powerful generator of energy for the role. This can be attained first and foremost by changing your way of thinking. When analysing, try to avoid purely logical or linear approaches, from a justification of events, the “organic nature” of emotions, pre-programmed behaviour. All this is important but it is not enough. Go one step further to discover all the resources of energy: Make your analysis of the role varied, expansive, paradoxical, awaken contradictory emotions and thoughts, bringing them to an irreconcilable contradiction, and then the energy will appear.
You have to assimilate the fact that energy develops when there is a battery. There have to be “plusses and minuses”, “hot and cold”, “poetry and prose”, “the exalted and the base”, “the tragic and the merry”, “the vulgar and the refined”, “the emotional and the intellectual” and so on. By analysing a role on several levels you have to make a sudden transition from one to the other. This will result in the greatest possible energy. You can analyse one and the same scene according to differing theatre schools and directions. This will also bring you energy. You see? It’s all very simple.
If you look at a role from various standpoints, altering the line of observation, and ensure that the “battery principle” is observed, then the energy will increase, endlessly shifting from one form of its existence to another. This is the main rule by which all the energy resources of the role are to be discovered.
Question 3
What is the tension of the role based on?
What I am now going to talk about is normally called “conflict” in theatre. I call it “tension”. In my opinion, thanks to the concept of “tension” there are greater possibilities to understand how to create the role and the scene. It is best to stipulate this from the very start so that it is understood what I mean when I use this or that word. Basically I am talking about one and the same thing.
First and foremost about School! The thing is that without School you will never discover anything new. You have to know the rules to be able to break them and change them. School tells us that conflict forms the foundation of foundations of dramatic art. Accordingly an analysis of a theatrical plot is a study of how conflicts arise and how they are resolved. Sounds clear and precise. But that’s not all – to know the profession is to know how to create conflict through action on stage. Conflict is a fact of opposing interests, views and convictions. An actor finds the conflict when he discovers this fact. The conflict comes to life in the struggle and the struggle comes to life in the action. Each conflict cannot remain unchanged, it has to be resolved. It grows all the time, the struggle develops and it leads to an event after which the conflict is resolved. A play, a performance, a role all exist, live and develop first and foremost due to conflict – that is how my teachers taught me. Look for conflict everywhere and all the time, they said. In everything… They taught me well. From them I learned to define the conflict, develop it and unfold it to the very limits, to bring it to an explosion so that it could no longer exist. In other words, to bring it to a dramatic culmination. These are the main rules of School.
But with the passing years, somewhat expanding my knowledge of theatre, I came to understand that “conflict” is by no means a characteristic of every theatre. There are other cultures besides. For example, the traditions of Eastern theatre are not characteristic of conflict as we understand it in European theatre. So today, when the borders of theatre are becoming increasingly blurred, I wouldn’t recommend that an actor be dogmatic in understanding the nature of conflict and the laws of its construction. A conflict can remain static for all time. It might not be resolved and it might not disappear. A scene can be constructed without any conflict at all. But in this case you have to understand and organise life on stage in a completely different way to what we are accustomed to. That is why in such cases we have to look for “tension”. It is a similar phenomenon. But all the same it is already a different world, another philosophy, a different theatre. The concept of “tension” increases our possibilities of seeing and creating a scene with invisible links, on unnoticed nuances, as if on a molecular scale. It could be said that the scene is not constructed but comes about according to the law of dynamic harmony to be found in nature. It is as if everything is evenly distributed and exists in harmony, while nonetheless there is tension. And thanks to this tension life takes on boundless meaning and volume of action. Within us there develop unclear, dequilescent feelings towards it and as a direct result of this the many possible ways of reading it. Learning to read the tension of a scene means being able to read the tension between a river and a field, between snow and a railway track.
I first came across this issue in the Soviet Union when I started out on my career as a director. The fact is that from the time of Stalin it had been said that as there were no antagonistic classes and no conflicts in socialist society, then they should not exist in contemporary drama. In performances