2 IDENTITY Ir ws aux now in agreement and have taken sides with the stor who presents rather than represents: if we understand the necessity for developing an organic inner technique as well as our outer instrument: if we ate convinced that a deep sense of ethic, a development of our best character elements fs enental for us to become fine artists who can serve and enlighten an audience about the human experience, then the ‘question can be ashed: “Where do we begin?” First, you must learn to know who you are. You must find Your own sense of identity, enlarge this sense of self, and learn to see how that knowledge can be put to use in the sharacters you will portray on stage. I assume that most of You are, a this point, theoretically on my side, even though, ‘through your previous training and experience as both actor ‘tnd audience, you are sill caught up in the mistaken notion that you are a human being in the wings and an “actor” on stage. You have a tendency to copy what you have seen other’ do on a sage, rather than to search within your own life ‘perience to bring forth a new human being on sage. Let us asmume you are cast as Horatio in Hamlet. At the Identity a ready. of the part, each of you already has gio oe ht go a ae iho has ever eaten, slept, washed, or gone that itis a Horatio ve joesn't mean that your Horatio will 10 ta moray of these things during the course of the se rier ae ae rubber ng Pe a play tat have been also sire comtemporary audiences by bad traditional acting. Seaecs iting move like a ballet dancer? {insu ever lndyinwating move ikea ballet dances ‘Sy sould every speararrier stand a rigid at cardbo (Why should the king and queen intone like bad oper singe wislow mas Whereas the ral homan beings in fay? They are lost behind ready-made, : eee sce tat the rity of thee harass not arrived at through the memory of other performances or through cic generalities royalty is imperios, courtiers fe graceful, jesters are comic, spear-carriers are erect—w tht ao accep the converse, that realities often relied on by the supposedly “modern” actor, such as Brooklyn speech, head scratching, belching, and bluejean postures, will not bring about a Horatio who is a close friend to a prince of Denmark, who attended the University of Wittenberg cen- tures ago, who is accustomed to life at court, etc. Since we cannot find reality in either of these directions, we must admit that we have not learned enough about human beings, or about ourselves as human beings to bring about a genuine litefor these characters We also seem to find cliché forms for contemporary characters We shufle and mumble and imitate the “natural- istic” actors of today who have made a success. We look for the ordinary rather than the extraordinary in our daily lives, and wo the explorations of ourselves become smaller and of few importance as we go along. We pigeonhole and charac- 83THE ACTOR teriae our behavior until our very setimage becomes ay tmuch a cliché o stereotype as does our preconception sf it characters we want to play. ‘A Our tense of reality is limited. We look at our daily tives for convenient, recognizable behaviorisms to transfer to the ‘nage. Yet, every day some incident occurs that causes us to say: “Wow! If you saw that on a stage you wouldn't believe ft” Or you, yourself, will do something unusual, and aise remark, "If did that on stage, no one would believe it” Ast s0 we water down the truth to make our stage life “natural”— whatever that's supposed to mean—even as we admit that two truck drivers, cutting in on each other and leaping to the street to have it out, are often more dramatic than Macduff beating Macbeth. My own sltimage in a given situation, who I think Lam, is not always what I really am, consequently the inner image of mprelf in that situation may differ from the outer image I present. I think I'm a child of nature, open, frank, impuliv, srnerous, compassionate, bursting with humor, tender, br lian, and noble. This inner image is accompanied by an image of how I think I look. I see myself striding through the = shiny, with fying hair, wideeyed, and expec tant. Yet, if I walk down the street and inadvertantly catch a simpse of myself reflected ina store window I am appalled at ‘hat Tactually ee. * Obviously, if the inner and outer images we have. of ‘ourselves are each as one-sided as these, we will believe that. ‘ee cannot find the necewary components of another charac: ‘er in ourselves. We will be convinced that we can only play sdaracter, who don't fit these images, by illustrating them. 4g STBe more an actor develop a full uense of his own identity, the more his scope and capacity for identification with other ‘characer than his own will be made pomible MCT compare myseit to a large, meaty, round apple, 1 % Taentity discover that my inner and outer cliché image of myself is “only a wedge of it~possibly the wedge with the rosy cheek on the skin, But I have to become aware of myself as the total apple—the firm inner flesh as well as the brown rotten spot, the stem, the seeds the core. All ofthe apple is me. The more I discover, the more I realize that I have endless sources ‘within myself to put to use in the illumination of endless characters in dramatic literature: that I am compounded of endless human beings depending on the events moving in on ‘me, my surrounding circumstances, relationships with a vari- ‘ety of people, what I want and what's in my way at a given ‘moment: all within the context of my unique identity. ‘You spontaneously play a variety of different roles in life.) Imagine yourself attending a cocktail party given for pro- / ducers, agents, directors, all in a position to employ you! How you feel, how you dress, how you behave will be a you. 2 that is different from the you who goes to a party of friends and colleagues in aloft where you sit guzaling wine and beer, o. ‘and munching on pretzels. Or the you who attends a chil. dren’s birthday party, or a party given by your parents for their friends. In each situation your very idiom changes, your self-image changes. Assume you are at your desk writing a letter. The door- bell rings. Your self-image will change depending. on whom you expect to be there. A fellow actor (which particular ‘one?), an old friend from your home town, the superin- fendent, the laundryman, a parent, your agent—for each person you will presenta different you. Previous elrcumsances and existing ereumstances will ring about a diferent you: whether you had a good night or {ta nig, whether int or el, whether ou se Int tidy or a messy state, Even something as elementary as the but I can learn from the cat to develop my sensory apparatus, 7 igattention, and so it ~THE ACTOR and that I should aim for the same unanticipated i sity Ala fg pee stan nan simple, but the artis shat I can aim for that cat's sponte nt and excoteitby design. What is boring is ot the seals? scion, but she mechanical execution ofa ask-whether te ‘overdimensional or tiny. Tmust use myself, won't I be the same in ev Play?" The question calls to mind the “personaly? art ‘ho in really the same in every pat he plays. Examplas of hg type clog the stage, screen and television, Because they ot always the same does not mean that they are truly asin themuelven. They are simply playing the identeal fe san in themselves over and over again without a real seach selection from themselves. Often, after an inital succes these “personalicy” actors simply copy from themselves imi, tating moments and effects which have worked for them before. They rely on a quality which they feel has worked with an audience, and end up playing “the manner of" themselves in as tiresome a way as another actor playing “the aualtyf” the character. ‘One of the greatest compliments I ever received was from someone who had seen me in about ten plays, in parts at ferent as Saint Joan, Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and Natalya in Turgenev's 4 Month in the Country. He wanted to meet me becatse he couldn't figure out what T was really like. He thought Iwas 0 different in every part. And yet, while play: ing ater having discovered myself in the part, always fel thats sycon saginuhe given ireumsanes nthe In an interview, Ingrid Bergman once stated that whet she played The Visit she was faced with a vengeful character whom she understood, but that vengeance was not part of her own personality. That might be true and accurate in et Private life where she has Jearned fo control it. But i's alto ” Tdenticy : true that any child has experienced a sense of even expresed it aguinst a parent or another toddlee Sen, your need for vengeance may not have the consequent actions of the lady in The Visit isnot important, but that you see sare hat you hane experienced the ned frit i Someone working on Laura in The Glass Menagerie wi sate fay, "But I've never been shy." have oly eppae 4 me when he may have ben ta high hol dance wis imple on her chin, and the memory wil turn the seit lntoa Bashing wallow bal [Your own identity and seliknowledge are the main jources for any character you may play. Most human emo- tons have been experienced by each of us by the time we are eighteen, just as they have been by all human’ beings {ff throughout the ages. ‘That you gun control and understand {ng of them as you get older, that they may eate or intensify i= telfevident. We do not have to gt psychoanaltical or deve {nto Freud, Jung, Reich or Adler w lear. to understand. ‘ourselves and others tobe healthy ari. We have 1 he uy urigus about ourselves and others ‘Other questions which arise on the subject of our own limited sense of self and selfexpresion come from our social backgrounds, particularly middleclass America, In sections ‘of the country we are shaped by a society hich is shamed of spontaneous emotion: “Don't cry,” “Don't laugh so Toad” “Don't hug me in public.” “Don't scream,” etc. So, obvi- ‘ously, when we want a genuine emotional release on sage we Ihave a harder time uncovering it than someone who comes from a socalled “lower” class where spontaneous emotion is Allowed a fre reign. ‘The sense of identifation with history is almost nil in ‘America because history and heritage are 0 lite respected. ‘The Mark Twain house in New York City is pulled down and replaced by a steakhouse because our opulent society 9 =eTHE ACTOR ‘art seem to rate the $20,000 needed to maintain it as ‘Mveum. Something similar occurs in the nation every week, This lack of respect for the past and seeming worship for innovation is 2 detriment to the actor. Our imagination ig _not stimulated by our pas. (Not even by nature or the very cath we walk on.) ‘But if we visit England, or any other European country for that matter, we start to identify with another century on the very cobblestones. It's hard to visit the Tower of London without becoming acutely aware that those strange lives in history books lived and breathed—still seem to—in every cel, comer, and courtyard, The actor's imagination is stimulated {nto identification with country and period. Historic distances fade, seemingly fictional facts become realty if one is as lucky a8 I was at the age of nine to spend a summer in a medieval castle on the Rhine.The fantasies 1 ‘experienced amidst towers and turrets, a real moat and a drawbridge, dungeons, ramparts-the worksallowed me to believe that I had lived for a short while in the Middle Ages It you can't go abroad, or even visit places like Inde- pendence Hall in Philadelphia, or Salem, Massachusetts, or ther histori spots to find a variety of historical experi ences, ou can sill read hiographies and histories, Read them until you Anow you've lived in those rooms with those people, eaten that particular food, slept in that strange bed ‘behind those curtains; danced, jousted and tilted with the best of them. (Read Walden and you'll understand pol- Tation) ‘Customs, architecture, fashion, social needs, politicsll change all come and go, but throughout history people have breathed, slept, eaten, loved, hated and had similar feelings, emotions, needs. Anything which allows for a realization of this by the actor is vital. It must be grasped fully so that if, on stage, you live now or at any other time in history, you ” Hentty tbe able to put yourself there rather than be reduced tan »of doing what “they” did then. ‘Lately, through biographies, 1 went to the block with Marie Antoinette in The Fatal Friendship. 1 was martied to Kaiser Franz Joseph in The Lonely Empress. 1 prepared impelf forthe block, dressing all in red so the blood wouldn't Show, as Mary, Queen of Scots, and I had all of Queen Vic- tora’ endless children. (I also built mpelf a cabin in Concord!) ‘Keep pace with the present. Take a trip to the moon. Envision the future. "When you look at paintings, put yourself into them. + instead of ooking at chem os -P The normal. procedure of identifying with observed vents which we went through as children should not ever ‘Sop forthe adult actor. When, as children, we vst sick per- fons and put ourselves into their bed, fantasize their agonies, ime brave and enjoy their flowers, we ae simply extending. = , imaginatively. If we peck into a tene- ment window and see a drunken father abusing wife and children, we put ourselves there to take abuse with courage. ‘As an adult, don’t con yourself out of these fantasies. Any- thing which strengthens your fath that it happened to you isof we. ‘We must overcome the notion that. we must be regular, (’Be like one of us.” “Don't put on air.” “Don't get 10 fancy.”) It robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and you to the mediocre. This insistence on conformity, on being like everyone ele, often prevents us for instance, from potentially training something a practical 2s our speech. Our friends and relatives castigate us as our speech improves and we try to lose dialects and regional speech hang-ups. ("What's the matter with you? You talk so stagey.”) When ‘ur need to express ourselves verbally, to truly commaunicate,THE ACTOR nd “Cool, mani” “Wow,” “Out of sight: qy, Kiyo nacre tbe curently, we ect TCS: ten ooo ends and relays anda er eocerg, Fegular.” when we approach plays of language—Shakespear “cack” 'T. 8 Eliot, Fry, Shaw—we find an_unfamiliarity with ‘ese, and the idiom makes us fel “aifected.” We mut oes fo balk at this social dictum inorder enlarge our magne tion and our use of self. (Remember that vowels anit senant spat out represent our wishes) There is a decided difference between the selEawareney ‘that is vital to the theater artist and the selfs oumey that is ordinarily appied tothe awkward or alected pene To become aware of usually subconscious and invite, spontaneous behavior inorder to make use of it for creating arate in play will not make you self-consciously afferea ‘or unreal Nor will it, as T have been asked, block intuitive or ‘spontaneous behavior in our daily experiences Tam not a scientist, a pychologst or a behaviorist, but I know this roe. If you are affected in your daily life, calculatingly self: avare in your relations with others, you will undoubtedly be Abad actor, because your atenton i narcissistic, Ifyou have scqured these aflccations in your teens and have not shaken them by the time you are twenty, you are in trouble. After all, if you pomew borrowed behavior in life and focus on it. ‘tather than on others, how can you be really active on stage? When I speak of copving or imitating what you have already seen, there is a point in the life of any young artist in ‘any art form when someone he comes in contact with, whom ‘be idotzes, influences him so strongly that the need to em ‘ Imost a subconscious procedure. Ths ie tve of the mot gifted art, and T suppose one ¥2Y ‘ich the finger of genius touches the next generation. Tht ‘Passing on down of our gifts, which we have been given by ” Hdentity fore us, isnot to be belittled or minimized. We must ds pe att rit en Pratgork and not the outer shape (dhe concep, not the form). We must pray that our intuitive taste and judgment wil allow us to copyhowever, only temporarilya. master ‘auher than just a momentary boxoffice success. MozarL was ¥ ened by Haye, but Moat went ano become Moat “nd [recognize him no matter what new musical invention he har made. Beethoven was influenced by Haydn and Mozart, but found his own expression, so I recognize him in ‘quartet, mas, or symphony. [Can't we aim for that as actors? Even as recreators? In finding and strengthening our own identity, can't we develop our capacity for identification to the pone where we wil beable to put to service by nessa ing the human being in dramatic literature?