The Actor and the Target E-Book

Declan Donnellan

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 351

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

A revised and updated edition of Declan Donnellan's bestselling book, a fresh and radical approach to acting by a world-famous director. 'Cuts open every generalisation about acting and draws out gleamingly fresh specifics' Peter Brook 'Explains Donnellan's highly practical system and sheds unique light on one of the greatest directors of acting in our time'Le Monde 'Hugely practical and never gets lost in theory'El Pais 'A gripping read, as acute about the psychology of lying as it is about the art of acting'Guardian 'Rooted in modern theatre, modern psychology and, above all, modern reality'Izvestia 'Unpretentious, straightforward, and pierced with acute insight'Kommersant

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Dedication

Epigraph

Author’s Note

Introduction

1 ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’

2 The Target

3 Fear

4 An Escape

5 The Stakes

6 ‘I don’t know what I want’

7 Action and Reaction

8 ‘I don’t know who I am’

9 The Visible and the Invisible

10 Identity, Persona and the Mask

11 The Matrix

12 ‘I don’t know where I am’

13 ‘I don’t know how I should move’

14 Control

15 ‘I don’t know what I should feel’

16 ‘I don’t know what I’m saying’

17 The Imaginary Text Exercises

18 Make-Believe

19 ‘I don’t know what I’m playing’

20 Time

21 Three More Uncomfortable Choices

Postscript

A Note on the Verse

Appendix: The Balcony Scene

About the Author

Copyright Information

For Nick

“Feverishly we cleared away the remaining last scraps of rubbish on the floor of the passage before the doorway, until we had only the clean sealed doorway before us. In which, after making preliminary notes, we made a tiny breach in the top left-hand corner to see what was beyond. Darkness and the iron testing rod told us that there was empty space. Perhaps another descending staircase, in accordance with the ordinary royal Theban tomb plan? Or maybe a chamber? Candles were procured – the all-important tell-tale for foul gases when opening an ancient subterranean excavation – I widened the breach and by means of the candle looked in, while Ld. C., Lady E., and Callender with the Reises waited in anxious expectation. It was some time before I could see, the hot air escaping caused the candle to flicker.

There was naturally a short suspense for those present who could not see. When Lord Carnarvon said to me, ‘Can you see anything?’, I replied to him, ‘Yes, it is wonderful.’ ”

Howard Carter, 1922,

taken from his personal diary,

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This book was originally published in Russian in 2000. However, Nick Hern had commissioned me to write a book in 1988, and dutifully phoned me every six months wondering where it was. So twelve years later it occurred to me that a reworking of the Russian book would fulfil my promise. And here it is, with thanks for his welcome tenacity.

I have added some exercises and an extra chapter on blank verse. The text has shifted a lot as it was revised for various translations and the revised version that now appears has been thoroughly reshaped by all those influences.

In short, the number of people to whom I am now indebted is far too long to be included. But particular thanks must go to Dina Dodina and Judith Greenwood who toiled over Russian and British manuscripts and who encouraged me from St Petersburg and Yorkshire, and also to Stacey McNutt for her re-editing, and to Matt Applewhite and Fiona Williams.

Declan Donnellan

London, 2005

INTRODUCTION

Acting is a mystery, and so is theatre. We assemble in a space and divide into two parts, one of which enacts stories for the remainder. We know of no society where this ritual never happens, so it appears that humanity has a profound need to witness acted-out representations, from shamanic rite to TV soap.

A theatre is not only a literal place, but also a space where we dream together; not merely a building, but a space that is both imaginative and collective. Theatre provides a safe frame within which we can explore dangerous extremities in the comfort of fantasy and the reassurance of a group. If every auditorium were razed to the ground, theatre would still survive, because the hunger in each of us to act and be acted to, is genetic. This intense hunger even crosses the threshold of sleep. For we direct, perform and witness performances every night – theatre cannot die before the last dream has been dreamt.

‘I am therefore I act’

A baby is born not only with an expectation of ‘mother’ and ‘language’, but also with an anticipation of ‘acting’; the child is genetically prepared to copy behaviours that it will witness. The first theatrical performance a baby enjoys is when its mother acts out appearing and disappearing behind a pillow. ‘Now you see me; now you don’t!’ The baby gurgles away, learning that this most painful event, separation from the mother, might be prepared for and dealt with comically, theatrically. The baby learns to laugh at an appalling separation, because it isn’t real. Mummy reappears and laughs – this time, at least. After a while the child will learn to be the performer, with the parent as audience, playing peek-a-boo behind the sofa; and eventually the game will evolve into the more sophisticated ‘hide and seek’, with multiple performers, and even a winner. Eating, walking, talking, all are developed by observation, performance and applause. We develop our sense of self by practising roles we see our parents play and expand our identities further by copying characters we see played by elder brothers, sisters, friends, rivals, teachers, enemies or heroes. You cannot teach children how to act out situations, precisely because they already do – they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t. Indeed, we live by acting roles, be it father, mother, teacher or friend. Acting is a reflex, a mechanism for development and survival. This primitive instinct to act is the basis of what is meant by ‘acting’ in this book. It is not ‘second nature’, it is ‘first nature’ and so cannot be taught like chemistry or scuba diving. So, if acting in itself cannot be taught, how can we develop or train our ability to act?

Attention

Our quality of acting develops and trains itself when we simply pay it attention. In fact, all we can be ‘taught’ about acting are double negatives. For example, we can be taught how not to block our natural instinct to act, just as we can be taught how not to block our natural instinct to breathe. Of course we can learn a multitude of stylised developments of our natural reflexes. The Noh actor in Japan may take decades to perfect a single gesture, as the ballerina will sweat years developing feats of muscular control. But all the Noh master’s virtuosity will go for little if his ornate technique reveals nothing but ornate technique. This highly controlled art must appear, in some way, spontaneous. Those who appreciate this specialised form can discern the flicker of alertness that quickens each ancient gesture. The difference in quality between one performance and another is not in technique alone, but in the surge of life that makes that technique seem invisible; the years of training must seem to evaporate in the heat of life. Truly great technique has the generosity to vanish and take no credit.

Even the most stylised art is about life, and the more life there is present in a work of art, the greater the quality of that art. Life is mysterious and transcends logic, so the living thing can never be fully analysed, taught or learned. But those things that apparently cut out life, or seem to conceal or block it, are not nearly so mysterious as they pretend. These ‘things’ are bound by logic and may be analysed, isolated and destroyed. The doctor may explain why the patient is dead, but never why the patient is alive.

Therefore this is not a book about how to act; this is a book that may help when you feel blocked in your acting.

Two provisos

It is not easy to write about acting. Acting is an art, and art reveals the uniqueness of things. But talking about acting is hard, because ‘talking about’ tends to make us generalise and generalisation conceals the uniqueness of things.

There is also a problem here with vocabulary. The words ‘actor’ and ‘acting’ are devalued. For example, we say that people are ‘putting on an act’ when we mean that they are lying about themselves. The word ‘acting’ is often used as a synonym for ‘lying’. Plato argued that there was no difference between acting and lying, and roundly condemned the theatre. Diderot’s Paradox of the Actor asks how we can speak of truth in performance, which of its very nature is a lie.

Emotion and truth

But we can never fully tell the truth about what we feel. Indeed, the more we feel, the more useless will be the words we find to express ourselves. The question ‘How are you?’ becomes increasingly banal the more the relationship matters; the words work reasonably well to greet the postman as he delivers a package, but are woefully inadequate to a friend with cancer.

There will always be a gap between two things, namely what we feel and our ability to express what we feel. This is not enough, but what is even worse is that sometimes the more we want to shrink this gap, the wider this maddening gap yawns. Sometimes the more we are desperate and push to tell the truth, then the more we end up ‘lying’.

At times of crisis this inability to express ourselves causes great pain. Adolescence can be a journey through hell when we feel completely misunderstood; ‘first love’ seems unalloyed bliss only in nostalgia. We are tormented not only by the spectre of rejection, but also by the creeping hopelessness that we will never be able to express what we feel. The emotions are turbulent, the stakes seem impossibly high: ‘Nobody understands what I am going through. And what’s worse, I just hear myself spouting the same old clichés other people use.’

As adolescents, we discover that the more we want to tell the truth, the more our words lie. But to mature, we must get on with the humble process of performing, because acting is all we can do. Acting is the nearest we get to the truth. We act constantly, not because we are purposely lying, but because we have no choice. Living well means acting well. Every moment in our lives is a tiny theatrical performance. Even our most intimate moments have a public of at least one: ourselves.

We do not know who we are. But we know that we can act. We know that there is a greater or lesser quality to our performances as student, teacher, friend, daughter, father or lover. We are the people we act, but we have to act them well, and with a deepening sense of whether our performances are ‘truthful’ or not. But truthful to what? The real me inside? To others? Truthful to what I feel, want, ought to be? The question marks hang with the observation that the above and all the following are not necessarily true, but may prove useful.

Block

Rather than claim that ‘x’ is a more talented actor than ‘y’, it is more accurate to say that ‘x’ is less blocked than ‘y’. The talent is already pumping away, like the circulation of the blood. We just have to dissolve the clot.

Whenever we feel blocked the symptoms are remarkably similar, whatever the country, whatever the context. Two aspects of this state seem particularly deadly: the first is that the more the actor tries to force, squeeze and push out of this cul-de-sac, the worse ‘it’ seems to get, like a face squashed against glass. Second is the accompanying sense of isolation. Of course, the problem can be projected out, and ‘it’ becomes the ‘fault’ of script, or partner, or even your shoes. But the two basic symptoms recur, namely paralysis and isolation – an inner locking and an outer locking. And, at worst, an overwhelming awareness of being alone, a creeping sense of being both responsible and powerless, unworthy and angry, too small, too big, too cautious, too . . . me.

When acting flows, it is alive, and so cannot be analysed; but problems in acting are connected to structure and control, and these can be isolated and disabled.

Other sources of block

Many different problems arise in rehearsal and performance that can damage acting. The room may be ill lit, badly ventilated, echoey or cold. More significantly, there may be a difficult atmosphere in the group, or a bad relationship with the director or writer. External problems over which the actor may have little control can also coagulate the work; but circumstantial difficulties will not be dealt with here.

When things go wrong we must distinguish between what we can change and what we cannot change. We also have to divide the problem into two parts: first, the part that comes from outside, over which we may have little or no control, and secondly, the part which comes from inside, over which we can learn to have increasing control. This book only addresses that second part.

All serious acting problems are interconnected, so interdependent that they seem to be just one huge rock cut into blinding facets by a demonic jeweller. To define the stone by describing its facets is misleading because each facet only makes sense in the context of all the others. Therefore much of what is said at the beginning of this book will make little sense till the end.

A map

This book is like a map. Like all maps, it is a lie, or rather, a lie trying to tell a useful story. A metro map bears no resemblance to the city street system and will mislead the pedestrian, but it will help you if you want to change trains. And as with many maps, it takes some familiarity to help you find your way.

So before we continue it will help to revisit some basic terms.

Rehearsal

Broadly speaking, we can divide the work of the actor into two parts, rehearsal and performance. More controversially we can also divide the mind of a human being into the conscious and the unconscious. The rehearsal and the unconscious have certain things in common. Both are normally unseen, but both are essential. They are, in their different ways, the four-fifths of the iceberg that are concealed. On the other hand, like the tip of the iceberg, the performance and the conscious are both seen. We can easily see the tip of the iceberg, but we need wisdom to infer the other four-fifths.

However, this book makes a slightly different division: here the actor’s work will be divided into the visible work and the invisible work. In fact actors normally work to a similar division; but then this is just a new map to make an ancient landscape clearer. We can begin with some features:

1. All the actor’s research is part of the invisible work, while the performance is part of the visible work.

2. The audience must never see the invisible work.

3. The rehearsal comprises all the invisible work and passages of visible work.

4. The performance consists only of the visible work.

The senses

The actor’s flow depends on two specific functions of the body: the senses and the imagination.

We are completely dependent on our senses. They are the first antennae that detect the outside world. We see, touch, taste, smell and hear that we are not alone. As tortures go, sense deprivation is theatrically weak but surprisingly efficient. When the stakes rise our senses become more acute. The interface between our bodies and the outside world becomes more sensitive and intense. We recall exactly the place where we heard astonishing news – no wonder that so many remember not only when but also where they heard that President Kennedy had been shot.

Three remarks may help here: first, it is dangerous to take our senses for granted. Occasional meditations on blindness and other sensory loss are nearly as life-affirming as the regular contemplation of death. Secondly, the actor’s senses will never absorb as much in performance as the character absorbs in the real situation. In other words the actor will never see the asp as acutely as Cleopatra herself. Finally, this graceful acceptance of inevitable failure is an exhilarating release for the artist. That we will never get there is an excellent starting point; perfectionism is only a vanity. The actor needs to accept the senses’ limitations in order for the imagination to run free. The actor relies utterly on the senses; they are the first stage in our communication with the world. The imagination is the second.

Imagination

The imagination, the senses and the body are interdependent. The imagination is the capacity to make images. Our imaginations make us human and they toil every millisecond of our lives. Only the imagination can interpret what our senses relay to our bodies. It is imagination that enables us to perceive. Effectively, nothing in the world exists for us until we perceive it. Our capacity to imagine is both imperfect and glorious, and only the paying of attention can improve it.

The imagination may be mocked as reality’s understudy: ‘That child has an over-active imagination’ or ‘You’re just imagining things!’ However, it is only imagination that can connect us to reality. Without our ability to make images we would have no means of accessing the outside world. The senses crowd the brain with sensations, the imagination sweats both to organise these sensations as images and also to perceive meaning in these images. We forge the world within our heads, but what we perceive can never be the real world; it is always an imaginative re-creation.

The imagination is not a fragile piece of porcelain, but rather a muscle that develops itself only when properly used. It was an eighteenth-century view that the imagination was an abyss that might swallow the unwary, and this mistrust persists; but to shut down the imagination, even if possible, would be like refusing to breathe for fear of catching pneumonia.

The dark

Everything we see in the outside world is manufactured in our heads. We do not develop the imagination by forcing it into prodigious and self-conscious feats of creativity; we develop our imaginations by observation and attention. We develop the imagination when we use it and pay attention; the imagination improves itself when we simply see things as they are. But seeing things is not so easy sometimes, particularly when it is dark. How then can we light up the darkness? Actually there is no such thing as the dark; there is merely an absence of light. But what could be casting this shadow over everything I see? There is a clue. If I examine this darkness I will see that it has a familiar outline. It has exactly the same shape as . . . me. We make darkness by getting in the way of the light. In other words we can only nourish our imaginations by not getting in the way; the less we darken the world, the clearer we see it.

1

‘I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING’

The spider’s legs

Actors often use precisely the same words when they feel blocked. Nor does it matter if the words are French or Finnish or Russian: the problem transcends language. These cries for help can be classified under eight headings, but, as we will see, the order is of no importance, because they are no more different than the legs of the same spider:

‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘I don’t know what I want.’

‘I don’t know who I am.’

‘I don’t know where I am.’

‘I don’t know how I should move.’

‘I don’t know what I should feel.’

‘I don’t know what I’m saying.’

‘I don’t know what I’m playing.’

It is strange to discuss each of a spider’s legs in sequence, as if each leg could walk independently of the other seven.

The actor’s imagination, text, movement, breathing, technique and feeling are essentially inseparable. Yes, it would be convenient if there could be a logical step-by-step progression, but there isn’t. These eight apparently different problems are utterly interlinked. We cannot pretend to deal neatly with one difficulty, finish that and then go on to tidy away another. The damage spreads from one area to another and cannot be quarantined.

However, the main cause of an actor’s problems is far simpler than its many effects, just as a bomb is simpler than the havoc it wreaks. But although this particular ‘bomb’ is simple, it is hard to describe and isolate.

Before we can identify and defuse this bomb, we need some tools. These tools take the form of choices and rules. Rules should be two things: a) few, and b) helpful. So a) this book will not lay down many rules, and b) you will know whether they are helpful only if they work for you in practice. We normally test rules by considering whether or not we believe them or agree with them. But these rules do not claim to govern a country or save life; they just help us make-believe. Whether or not we actually agree with these rules is therefore beside the point. They are not moral absolutes; they work only if they work.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing’

This is the mantra of the blocked actor and can prise open a trap down which all can tumble.

Rather than consider the content of this spider’s leg, we might think laterally, and examine its form. The structure of the statement is important. The word ‘I’ is repeated. The cry implies that: ‘I can/should/must know what I am doing; it is my right and duty to know what I am doing which I am somehow being denied.’ But this reasonable-sounding complaint has entirely ignored something crucial. What is this ‘something’ that has been airbrushed out of the photograph like Trotsky?

This ‘something’ has been demoted, denied and finally obliterated. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’ mentions one word twice: ‘I’. The attention that was due to this ‘something’, its personal share, has reverted to the banker, ‘I’. The central importance of this forgotten character is what this book is about, because this oversight is the chief source of the actor’s misery.

It is crucial to see that the demands of ‘know’ and ‘I’ cannot be resolved unless we deal with the nameless one first. So we will start with the ‘something’, so neglected that it hasn’t yet been given a name.

The nameless one I will baptise THE TARGET.

Unlike the arbitrary order of the spider legs, here the sequence in time is absolutely crucial. The target must be dealt with before ‘I’ and ‘know’. The ‘I’ is so hungry for attention that it demands to have its problems solved first. It barges right to the front of the queue, closely followed by ‘know’ and the target gets flattened in the stampede. This vulnerability of ‘I’ and ‘know’ is quite ruthless. Indeed we have to cover our ears to their screaming for a while, otherwise we will never be able to help them. We mustn’t look back, although they are very good at making us feel guilty. Lot’s wife looked back and was paralysed.

2

THE TARGET

Irina

Let us meet Irina who is playing Juliet. She is rehearsing the balcony scene with her partner, and feels that she doesn’t know what she is doing. It seems unfair that she should feel so stuck, because she has done all her research. She is bright, hard-working and talented. So why does she feel like a piece of wet cod? In fact, the more Irina tries to act sincerely, the more she tries to express deep feeling, the more she tries to mean what she says, the more she freezes over. What can Irina do to get out of the mess? Well, if she cannot push forward in her work, Irina may have to go sideways, think laterally, and consider the following.

If you ask Irina what she did yesterday, she may reply: ‘I got up, I brushed my teeth, I made some coffee . . . ’ etc. As she begins to answer your question her eyes will probably look straight back at you. However, her eyes will stray as they try to picture the events of the previous day. But the eyes never lose their focus on something. Irina is either looking at you or at something else, the coffee that she drank. She is either looking at something real or something imaginary. But she is always looking at something. The conscious mind is always present with this ‘something’. While she digs for a memory: ‘I went to work, I wrote a letter’, her eyes still focus and refocus on points located outside. Although common sense insists that all her memories must be contained within her brain, she still must look outside her head to remember them. Her eyeballs do not rotate inwards and scan her cerebellum. Nor do her eyes look vaguely outward, but they focus on a specific point, and then on another specific point where the events of yesterday are recalled and re-seen:

‘I read the paper.’

‘I had some coffee.’

Each finds its own specific target. Perhaps she finally gives up and says:

‘I can’t remember any more.’

But her eyes still will search in different places for the elusive memory. What may appear to be a general sweep is really a finding, discarding and re-choosing of a multitude of different points. This gives rise to the first of the six rules of the target:

1: There is always a target

You can never know what you are doing until you first know what you are doing it to. For the actor, all ‘doing’ has to be done to something. The actor can do nothing without the target.

The target can be real or imaginary, concrete or abstract, but the unbreakable first rule is that at all times and without a single exception there must be a target.

‘I warn Romeo.’

‘I deceive Lady Capulet.’

‘I tease the Nurse.’

‘I open the window.’

‘I step onto the balcony.’

‘I search for the moon.’

‘I remember my family.’

It can be ‘yourself’, as in:

‘I reassure myself.’

The actor can do nothing without the target. So, for example, an actor cannot play ‘I die’ because there is no target. However, the actor can play:

‘I welcome death.’

‘I fight death.’

‘I mock death.’

‘I struggle for life.’

Being

Some things we can never act. The actor cannot act a verb without an object. A crucial instance is ‘being’: the actor cannot simply ‘be’. Irina cannot play being happy, being sad, or being angry.

All an actor can play are verbs, but even more significantly, each of these verbs has to depend on a target. This target is a kind of object, either direct or indirect, a specific thing seen or sensed, and, to some degree, needed. What the target actually is will change from moment to moment. There is plenty of choice. But without the target the actor can do absolutely nothing at all, for the target is the source of all the actor’s life. When conscious, we are always present with something, with the target. And when the conscious mind is no longer present with anything at all, at that very point it stops being conscious. And the actor cannot play unconsciousness.

Greeting the trouserless Vicar, while pruning Chrysanthemums

Dissecting the venerable ‘double-take’ makes the target clearer. To ‘take’ is old theatre jargon meaning ‘to see’. And a ‘double-take’ is when you see something twice for comic effect.

An example: you are pruning your chrysanthemums, when the vicar runs in:

Step one: ‘Good morning, vicar!’ – you look at him.

Step two: You then look back at the chrysanthemums.

Step three: While still looking at the chrysanthemums, you realise that the vicar is not wearing any trousers.

Step four: You look back at him aghast.

Where does the first big laugh come? Learned international authority is unanimous: the first big laugh occurs during step three. Step three is the moment when the image transforms before the actor’s eyes. Let’s reconsider the four steps.

Step one: You ‘look at’ the vicar but do not truly ‘see’ him. Instead you imagine he is his usual respectable self.

Step two: You think you have finished with greeting the vicar and so set about pruning the chrysanthemums.

Step three: Then, in your mind's eye, the false image of the modest vicar is replaced by the true image of the vicar in his spotted shorts.

Step four: You look back at him to confirm that the knobbly knees quake there in embarrassing reality.

You expect a trousered vicar and ‘see’ only what ought to be. The audience waits in gleeful suspense for reality to force you to see the target as it truly is. One target transforms into another before your eyes and the audience howls with laughter. But most importantly, the audience does not laugh because you change the target. The audience laughs to see the target change you.

2: The target always exists outside, and at a measurable distance

As we have seen, the eyes have to see something, whether real or imaginary. And the impulse, stimulus and energy, to announce

‘I had bacon and eggs’

or even,

‘I don’t have breakfast’,

come from specific images outside the brain and not inside. The eyes refocus on different targets, as if trying to find not just the memory, but as if trying to uncover the specific location of that memory. Indeed, the very place where the memory is hiding, the site where the memory already exists, can feel as important as the memory itself.

What happens, however, if the target seems to be inside the brain, as say when we have a deep headache? How can this be located outside?

Whatever pain we have, however intimate the agony, there will always be a difference between the patient and the pain. And people who suffer great pain will tell you that they feel themselves strangely separate from their pain. The more intense a migraine becomes, then the more it seems that only two entities exist in the world, the pain and the sufferer. The ache may invade the brain, but it remains outside the consciousness. There is always a crucial distance.

3: The target exists before you need it

If you go on to ask Irina how she might like to celebrate her birthday next year, something interesting happens. Her eyes still flash around trying to discover something, i.e. what she would like to do next year. But, in a way, this is rather strange. Because what she wants to do next year cannot already exist. Yet her eyes hunt this future event as if it already existed. Logically, she must be inventing on the spur of the moment what she might want next year, a day by the sea perhaps, or some party, an event that does not as yet exist. However, she still has to search as if it already did exist. It is as if she has to find or uncover what her wish for next year already is, rather than invent something new.

And this is significant, for, as we shall continue to see, ‘discover’ always helps more than ‘invent’.

Sense and sight

The words ‘sight’ and ‘seeing’ will be used from now on as a metaphor to refer to all the senses, of which we can name but five. On this point, the blinding of Gloucester may be appalling, but there exists a fate grimmer than having your eyes torn out – and that is tearing your own eyes out. The terrible fate of Oedipus was self-inflicted blindness. Sadly this is not such an exotic affliction; blinding ourselves is the common cause of block.

A place for seeing

If Irina feels blocked, if Irina feels that she ‘doesn’t know what she is doing’, it is because she does not see the target. The danger is extreme, because the target is the only source of all practical energy for the actor. Without food we die. All life needs to take something from outside itself to inside itself in order to survive. Actors are nourished and energised by what they see in the world outside. In fact, the very word theatre comes from the Greek theatron, which means ‘a place for seeing’.

But surely we are nourished by what is outside and what is inside? That is possibly true but it is not useful. It will help Irina more to transfer all inner functioning, all drives, feelings, thoughts and motives, etc. from inside and relocate these impulses in the target. The target will then energise Irina just as a battery that gives power when needed.

When something moves us deeply, psychology tells us that these strong feelings must come from inside ourselves. But the opposite principle is more helpful for the actor. In other words, it helps Irina more to imagine that it is the target that gives her these strong reactions. Irina gives up control and entrusts it to the thing she sees. The actor abdicates power to the target.

There is no inner resource that will make us independent of other things. There is no internal dynamo independent of the outside world. We do not exist alone; we exist only in a context. Imagining that we can survive without the context is rash. The actor can only act in relation to the thing that is outside, the target.

4: The target is always specific

A target cannot be a generalisation. A target is always specific. We know the target can be an abstraction as in: ‘I try to blind myself to the future.’ Here, although the ‘future’ may be abstract, it is not generalised. For it is to specific elements of the ‘future’ that ‘I try to blind myself’.

We have seen before that ‘I struggle for life’ has ‘life’ as a target. And the wounded soldier fighting to live will have a very specific image of the next living moment that he needs. He doesn’t fight for a generalisation. There is nothing general about the trying or the struggling. The push, the effort, the cough is propelled by the image of the next living moment that he sees and needs, and if only he clears his throat this time, or takes another deep gulp of air or endures just this next spasm of pain, then perhaps there will be hope.

We each see different targets, even when we happen to be looking at the same thing. So Rosalind sees a different Orlando from the Orlando who is seen by his jealous brother Oliver. The specificness of the target is different for each of us. We will discuss this later in Chapter 5.

The external world is always specific. The thing that is outside, the target, can only be specific.

5: The target is always transforming

We have seen that it is not enough for Rosalind to love ‘Orlando’. She must see a specific Orlando. However, that specific Orlando will change into another specific Orlando. She may start seeing a desperate young braggart who takes on the Duke’s wrestler, then she may see a romantic David who defeats his Goliath, then perhaps she sees a lost young man. Orlando will mutate again and again through the course of As You Like It into countless different ‘Orlandos’. Rosalind will have her work cut out for her trying to deal with these changing Orlandos. Does she kiss him, fight him, tease him, mock him, seduce him, confuse him or heal him? And not only Orlando, Rosalind also has to deal with all the other metamorphosing targets of her world. Simple shepherds wax into neurotic poets, aristocrats change into outlaws, and her own body gradually transforms into an ambivalent object of desire and love. Rosalind’s universe and all the targets in it do not remain the same, they change and change again. Seeing the target transform will free the actor to play Rosalind.

6: The target is always active

Not only is the target always mutating, the target is always doing something. And whatever the target is doing must be changed – by me. Instead of teaching Orlando what love is, let Rosalind see an Orlando who sentimentalises love, so she must try to change this. Instead of wanting to murder Desdemona, let Othello see a wife who is destroying him, and he must try to change this. Instead of defying Goneril, let Lear see a daughter who is humiliating him, a daughter he must change.

The external target

The active target locates the energy outside us so that we can then bounce off it, react to it and live off it; the target becomes an external battery.

So, instead of always wondering ‘What am I doing?’, it is more helpful to ask ‘What is the target doing?’ Or better ‘What is the target making me do?’

The first question robs energy from the target and hoards it in ‘I’. It is worth observing here that ‘I’ tends to be a dangerous word for the actor and is best used with caution. ‘Me’ is usually more helpful.

The more energy the actor can locate in the target, the greater the actor’s freedom. On the other hand, stealing energy from the target actually paralyses the actor. If Irina tries to take power from the target and keep it in herself then she will become blocked.

Irina can imagine all the different things that her character wants, all the different things that Juliet might want to do to Romeo. Listing what Juliet wants from Romeo may indeed help in the early stages of rehearsal. But it will help Irina more if she can open her imagination to see what Juliet sees. And what does Juliet see? A father to be feared, a mother to be dealt with, a future to be avoided and a Romeo to be wooed, tamed, supported, warned, frightened, cheered, discovered, reassured, opened, scolded, protected, spurred, ennobled, chastened, heated, cooled, seduced, rejected and loved. For Juliet, the scene is not about her and what she wants; the scene is about the different Romeos that she sees and has to deal with. Irina’s energy does not come from within, from some concentrated internal centre; it comes only from the outside world that Juliet perceives: the breeze that caresses her cheek, that marriage she dreads, the lips she desires. The target is all.

It clearly follows that the actor playing Romeo needs to make the balcony scene more about Juliet and less about him; and Irina needs to make the scene more about Romeo and less about her.

For all practical purposes then, there is no inner source of energy. All energy originates in the target.

More than one

Nor do Irina’s eyeballs need to be glued to her partner. Talking to friends while walking down a long beach, I will fall over if I keep looking at them. We can talk to each other through the things we see, the seaweed, the gulls, the rock pools. Breaking difficult news, we may scrutinise how we stir our coffee to avoid uncomfortable eye-contact. Does this mean we are only looking at the coffee? No. Does this mean that we do not see the coffee, but only imagine the other’s falling face? No. We see both at once. How we achieve this we need not know. What we do need to know is that there is always a target, although there may be more than one at the same time.

A digression: an experiment with hypnosis

Even when we are unaware of the specific target we will supply one. Our imaginations shun the general and the unknown. Even if there were no target we would have to invent one. Sigmund Freud described experiments where patients, under hypnosis, were instructed to flick their ears at a given signal. When the suggestion was complete, the subjects were woken up, the signal was given and the patients duly flicked their ears. Of course they had no idea why. What fascinated Freud was that when questioned why they had flicked their ears, the subjects always invented a specific reason. They would explain: ‘Because my ear was itchy.’ This suggests two possibilities. First, we may lie rather than admit to being irrational. Secondly, and more usefully for the actor, we can only think in terms of a specific target . . . and will even supply one if it appears absent.

What the target is not

The target is neither an objective, nor a want, nor a plan, nor a reason, nor an intention, nor a goal, nor a focus, nor a motive. Motives arise from the target. A motive is a way of explaining why we do things. Now ‘why’ we do things may be interesting. But relentlessly asking ‘why’ can tie the actor in knots. For example, ‘Why’ does Juliet fall in love with Romeo? Why indeed? Can any of us explain the reason we love somebody?

And if a helpful friend took it upon themselves to explain ‘why’ we loved someone, we would feel patronised. And the actor should never patronise the character. Explaining ‘why’ gives us the tingle of control. Certainly if Irina can fully answer the question, she has fully missed the point. We cannot fully know why we do some things. But we will deal with the dangers of ‘why’ later.

Nor is the target my ‘focus’. Focus is a misleading word. Focus sounds as if it has a lot to do with the target. But saying: ‘I focus on something’ is utterly different from saying: ‘I see something’. And it is worth taking time to ponder the difference. The target needs to be seen: my ‘point of focus’ implies I can decide whether to focus on that point or not. The target is the master. But the ‘point of focus’ sounds more like a servant. For the actor it may seem more comfortable to choose points of focus rather than react to targets. Indeed ‘choosing where to focus’ may help the actor feel more in control. But this particular control is not a long-term friend; this particular control is a reassuring delusion. Choosing her point of focus may return Irina neatly inside herself. Choosing a point of focus can conceal the outside world and all its nourishing stimuli, for it tends to relocate inside the actor those energies that are more helpfully located outside.

Before we think about control, it will help to consider an uncomfortable choice.

The first uncomfortable choice: