An often repeated complaint about Method Acting is that actors get so involved in what they are creating for a scene that they don’t have enough room left to be “in the scene” and “in the moment”. There are even complaints that the creative work in Method Acting takes an actor “out” and is a distraction from the script. Lee Strasberg made sure that all people who worked with him (both in his classes and at The Actors Studio) understood that it was necessary to pay attention to the other actors and to react and respond to them. He emphasized that it was important to “stay in the moment” so that the responses would be spontaneous rather than be pre-planned.
Long ago it was discovered that to rely on the other actors on stage with you, and to respond to their expressions, although an important part of acting, by itself is very incomplete. It is necessary for each of us to make “real” the elements of our character’s experiences so that those experiences shape and guide our responses. Many actors prepare for a scene by imagining the scenic elements and then trying to keep them alive while acting. These actors might even include some form of relaxation in their preparation. I have witnessed many actors listening to music for its strong affect while preparing backstage, only to leave the earphones, and therefore the music, in the wings when their entrance cue is heard. Lee Strasberg taught and demanded that we continue to “actively relax ourselves” and “actively explore our creative work” while acting. Only in this way could we be assured of continued response.
Konstantin Stanislavski’s student and protégé, Evgenie Vachtangov, observed that the responses that we have to our sensory tasks are “affectively real”. This means that the responses disappear almost as soon as we stop being connected to their sources, the sensory creations. This is unlike responses to real events, which stay with us until they are resolved. Thank G-d! It would be terrible if we had to live with what we created even after the curtain has rung down at the end of a night’s performance. But it also means that we are obligated to keep them active during each day’s performance.
Let’s take a moment to review a list of things that must be accomplished while onstage.
We must stay relaxed (let me emphasize that the use of the word “relax” is meant technically).
We must continue to explore our creative work (sensory tasks)
We must pursue our objectives
We must continue our actions
We must continue our activities (both physical and/or mental.
We must pay attention to our onstage partners (both physically and verbally).
We must allow ourselves to respond.
The list goes on, but this is enough for now. At this point, most people think “this is more than enough. This is, in fact, way too much. How can I possibly do all of that at the same time? I can’t do all of that at the same time!” In fact, you can and must. But how?
Take a moment to review my blog post of February 23, 2016. The one in which I review my conversations with Arthur Penn. If you remember, he said that we “don’t do sensory work during acting”, and I said, “yes we do, but we don’t do sensory exercises during acting.” The difference is in the amount of practice that each actor brings to his/her work. Each of us must practice as many times as it takes to be able to turn a sense memory experience on quickly and effortlessly. Each of us must constantly practice “relaxation” until it becomes a part of who we are, and not an element of craft that takes a special effort. As each part of an actor’s craft is strengthened it becomes less of an intrusion into the demands of performance.
In this day and age of workshops and quick fixes instead of classes and studies, actors begin to feel that to accomplish a creative moment is tantamount to being able to repeat it and use it. When an actor succeeds in creating a sense memory exercise, and then responds to it and expresses the response truthfully and freely, it is often thought of as a finished product. It is easy to see how the actor can feel that now he/she can take that into a scene. In fact, with this success comes the requirement to repeat it so many times that it requires almost no effort to be present in our scene work.
When an actor overlooks this part of training and tries to maintain an imagined (sensory) task in a scene, it often gets dropped. Lee would then coach an actor through maintaining the creative work within the structure of a scene even if other elements got overlooked. This, however, was meant to strengthen one skill even if it was at the temporary expense of other parts of our craft. It was never meant to be perceived as being complete. With Lee supplying a good deal of the concentration and will power from the sidelines, an actor felt as if he/she was succeeding and overlooked the need to develop these, and other skills, for him/herself through constant repetition. I have often enjoyed the french word for rehearsal, la répétition, because of its implied demand the we do it over and over again.
But what about the teachers? I can think of more than one person who attended classes with qualified teachers for only a few months before heading out into the acting and teaching world. These are the actors who can’t pay attention to all that is happening on stage and keep their work alive at the same time. And these are also the the people who teach incomplete tasks, or spread misinformation, because that is all they bothered to learn themselves. Even some of my own students have done this.
It was recently brought to my attention that a person who studied with me said that to do “the work, was to be too busy to be in the moment.” But I remember the student as being too frightened of his own expressions to commit to learning this work in the short time that he studied with me.
To a well trained Method Actor there is no greater freedom onstage than to live truthfully, in the moment, under imaginary circumstances. And we know from Konstanin Stanislavski to Evgenie Vachtangov to Lee Strasberg that the access to the imagination is through the senses. There is no way around it. We have to study and train with qualified teachers in actual classes and then we have to practice, practice, practice.
Vive la répétition!