Presented by Stephen Heatley and Ann Penistan at the Association of
Canadian Theatre Conference, Dalhousie University, Halifax 2003
Copyright © 2003 by Ann Penistan,
all rights reserved worldwide
Abstract
Little has been written on the
pivotal relationship between the actor and the director. We regularly
hear about combative rehearsal periods where actors feels
disenfranchised while the director feels frustrated at being incapable
of making the actor understand. There has been nothing written on the
actual experience of actor and director when they are in conflict.
Many rehearsal periods have been
hijacked due to an assumption of understanding when none existed? At
this point, the actors start talking among themselves and the creative
process usually unravels. There is a prevalent opinion that a negative
hierarchy exists between actor and director. Actors feel that the
director has the upper hand, because (s)he apparently knows what (s)he
“wants” and the actor doesn't. There is also a presumption that the one
who “doesn't know” is in a weaker position.
However, the place where learning
always begins is through clarity about what we don't know. In positive
actor/director relationships, there is little experience of this
hierarchy. Using case studies, our paper explores the differences
between these two situations to examine the actual experiences in these
difficult moments, as opposed to what is assumed is happening.
Canadian director Stephen Heatley
and LearningMethods™ expert Ann Penistan will chronicle and report
their findings. What are the inaccuracies that send the two parties into
reaction so that the process ceases to operate out of the joy of
creation and plummets into the uncreative depths of generality and
misunderstanding?
Exposing the Obvious
Stephen:
When I was an apprentice director at
a small regional theatre, my mentor told me quite bluntly that you
cannot train to be a director. You either are one or you aren’t one. He
made this pronouncement just as I was heading off to graduate school…to
study directing. I didn’t believe him then and still don’t, but the
question of what aspects of the art of directing are innate and what
aspects can be learned has piqued me ever since. You certainly cannot
train to be an artist if you have no instinct to artistry. But as both a
student and a teacher of directing, I now know that you can open up
questions that will sharpen a director’s thinking and encourage
experimentation with how the art is practiced, especially when you
become aware of habits that get in the way of the creative process. One
major tool missing in my director’s tool kit that I became painfully
aware of about seven years ago is an understanding of what I was doing
that got in the way of my creativity and a free flowing collaborative
relationship with actors. This was highlighted especially in moments
where I was in conflict. This realisation has lead to this research and
the desire to write about it.
Ann and I asked the question, what
is missing in a director’s training that addresses the difficulties
similar to those I had encountered? This paper introduces the
foundations of our research and is our first step toward future writing
and workshops. Our purpose is to offer a director an opportunity to
clarify for themselves their struggles and difficulties in directing
and, of equal importance, to bring clarification as to how things work
when they work well.
The paper is divided into three sections. Ann will describe the
evolution of her work known as LearningMethods™ followed by my own story
of an actual experience as a director and the significant impact of
LearningMethods™ on my work. In the third section we will chronicle the
information gathered from actors and directors that lay the groundwork
for further investigation.
Ann:
As an Alexander Coach with the
Stratford and Shaw Festivals I worked with actors who brought their
physical difficulties to me to get help. They would also bring their
ideas about their difficulties. The context of our classes would cover
many territories: from working on a scene in rehearsal, voice
difficulties, physical demands of a show, basic tension or ongoing
chronic problems, to the inevitable desire to find a way to do what
their director wanted. We would work and they would leave with a greater
sense of presence and wholeness. In most cases ease and creativity would
prevail in their next few rehearsals.
With experience, I began to see more
clearly that the difficulties I was being asked to help with were in
people’s ideas not in their physical symptoms. For example, years ago,
when working with an actress on a movement she was having difficulty
with; she kept saying “I should know how to do this.” Each time she said
this, her pattern of tension through her whole system would increase.
She was getting more and more tense the more she was not getting the
movement.
We began to explore her idea that
she “should” know how to do this movement, and found she was trying very
hard to get it and to get it right. She would focus in on a part of her
body and try to make something happen at the same time as trying to do
the movement. This was causing great tension.
In further exploration I asked her
if she knew how to do the movement and she said “No. But, I have an
expectation that I should know how to do it”. So there we were
discovering that, with this idea, she was finding herself trying very
hard to do something she didn’t know how to do! Her pattern of tension
was the pattern of trying to do a movement she simply had no idea or
experience of.
At this point, I invited her to make
an experiment to find out what would happen if she accepted she didn’t
know how to do this; to align with reality instead of with her
expectation; that she had a clear intention of what she wanted, and to
see what would happen. The moment she accepted she didn’t know how to do
the movement, the pattern of tension changed completely to one of
fluidity. She was suddenly finding herself moving in a very easy and
direct manner.
The intention organised the
movement. She was very aware that she could never have co-ordinated that
movement herself.
The significance of this was not in
the change from tension to ease, but in what she did differently for
such a change to occur. In the actual moment of so much tension, she was
able to change her idea from believing that she should know how to do
this movement to accepting and aligning to the reality that she didn’t
know.
It was so clear to us that her
pattern of tension was organised by her expectation, and by her valiant
pursuance of wanting to get it right.
For her, the movement had had a
property of being difficult when she couldn’t get it. When she found
herself moving so freely and easily the movement no longer had a
property of being difficult. To her the movement was easier than she
could ever have imagined. The idea of the movement being difficult was
simply an experience of her own difficulty; conversely, the movement
itself didn’t have a property called difficult or easy. The difficulty
she experienced came from her ideas…and changed when those ideas
changed.
I had seen many dramatic changes
occur in a moment when working with people, but this was one of the
first very clear indications to me, that her release from tension, and
her frustration of what she couldn’t do, had nothing to do with a
physical change and everything to do with her idea. It also had very
little to do with me helping her to do something physically different.
Her ability to accept what was real (that she didn’t know how to do the
movement) and her clarity of intention, which organised such an enormous
change.
This was confirmed in the next class
when she said she was realising over the last few days how much she had
been trying to get things in a scene. She had become aware that when she
found herself getting tense, she was having thoughts that she should
know more about this scene than she did. She was able to make an
experiment; to not know what would happen with the scene. She found
herself responding more easily and creatively with the text.
These kinds of fluid moments were
not unusual to her, but what was unusual was that the easy and flowing
times had always seemed like a bit of luck, and if there were
difficulties they were things to be suffered through until the easy
times came back.
What she found very constructive was
that she now saw her tension not as something wrong and something that
shouldn’t be happening, but as a guide to showing her what she was
trying to do. She then had more information clarifying what she was
doing in the moment of tension, and she cared less about fixing it. The
tension was operating as a navigating tool revealing what she was doing.
This was extremely practical and helpful.
It was examples like these that took
me into the direction of exploring the territory of people’s ideas in
the very real moments when they were experiencing difficulty. This was a
direction away from working with their tensions as being the motivation
for change. They had a greater understanding of how they were getting in
the way of their own inbuilt responsiveness and ease. They were
discovering tools to help them in these moments of powerful tensions.
The implications of this were intriguing.
I soon accepted a job as Assistant
Director to David Gorman who ran an Alexander Technique Training Centre
in London where these ideas were being explored on a deeper level.
The timing of this position was
fortuitous as I was also working closely with an actor in a leading role
of a west end show in London who was excited to take our insights into
performance and begin to experiment. He found the practical nature of
the work readily accessible. A whole new flow and ease began to move
consistently into his performance. During the run of this physically
demanding show he found himself becoming more responsive, and vocally
easy.
A whole new way of working developed
over these years which has had enormous implications and brought deep
positive changes to many artists in Sweden, Canada, France and America.
In the process, the work transcended the Alexander Technique and is now
called LearningMethods™.
I first met Stephen when I was
invited to the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton to give workshops while this
work was in its deepest developments. We worked on a particular problem
he had recently experienced which had immediate and lasting changes for
him. Last year we began to talk seriously about the implications of this
work in training directors - how they may be able do things differently
when they are coming up against their own struggles in working on texts
and communicating with actors.
Stephen:
Here is my story:
It is the fall of 1996 and I have
been directing plays for 23 years. I am about to direct a production at
one of our major regional theatres. As a director based in Edmonton, I
had the idea clearly fixed in my mind that the rest of the country (read
“Toronto”) didn’t take me seriously as a director. Here is my “Fixed
Idea” number one – that everyone in the country is thinking there are
important places to practise your art and there are unimportant ones. A
major Canadian television personality has been hired to star in the
show. The scenario becomes immediately clear in my mind. This star will
come to Edmonton, work with this fabulous if unknown director, return to
Toronto singing my praises and the next level of my career is “made”.
Here is my “Fixed Idea” number two – “to make it” as a theatre artist in
Canada means doing it in Toronto. My actual experience of being an
Alberta-based director was that I was perfectly happy and quite
successful. This fixed idea I became caught in, of becoming a “big
league director” somewhere else, blurred my actual experience.
This is a key concept in our
research. What happens when directors get caught in a fixed idea of how
things are supposed to be rather than relying on their experience of
what is actually happening? Fixed ideas can take on many shapes – mine
was thinking about outcomes rather than focussing on the work at hand.
And do you notice a problem in the production scenario? There is no
discussion of what this actor would need to assist him in playing this
demanding role in a tricky performance space, or how to help him make
the transition back to the stage after an absence of several years. The
director’s focus is on something other than the work at hand.
I had successfully directed
something in a similar style three years prior but with actors that all
knew my work and trusted me. In that production, the staging was quite
difficult to sort out but once it was, we had experienced a great joy
playing within it. Since this approach had worked before, I decided we
should start this new production the same way. So, famous tv star
arrives, and we begin rehearsals. The first two days go by prosaically
but in the middle of day three, the tv star stuns me by stopping the
rehearsal cold. He announces that he is so bored that he cannot stand
another moment of it, that he is feeling absolutely uncreative and that
the production doesn’t have a hope in hell of succeeding. I sit mouth
agape for a few moments before saying, “well, let’s take a break”. I
thought that in my 23 years of directing I had seen and heard
everything. After the break and a lot of deep breathing, I asked the
actor how he wanted to proceed. He said he wanted a lot more freedom to
experiment, so we started over again.
I confess that I was shell-shocked
by that day’s events and was never really on my game with that actor for
the rest of the rehearsal process. Every time he spoke I felt nervous
and uncomfortable, fearing there was going to be another conflict. Here
is another key point in our research – I had gone into reaction around
this actor and therefore was incapable of seeing what was actually
happening with him for the rest of the rehearsal period. In my mind, he
now had a property called “difficult”. I just wanted the experience to
be over. I realise now that my habit when dealing with “so-called”
difficult people is to shut them off, to drop them. So, to survive this
situation, I had dropped him. But we still had three weeks of rehearsal
remaining.
As the show was about to open, this
actor suffered a major crisis of confidence. I had essentially left him
alone to do whatever he wanted, assuming that he had everything under
control. But on opening afternoon, he was apoplectic. “You haven’t given
me a note in a week. I don’t know if I’m doing this right or not and
frankly, I think I’m terrible in it.” I was stunned again. After our
rocky beginning, I had had no desire to wade in with him if I didn’t
have to. It never occurred to me that he might need me to reinforce his
work. Although in my mind I was perfectly justified in treating him with
deference, the fact that I went into reaction had not allowed me to pay
attention to this actor’s actual experience. I never asked him how he
was doing and, unfortunately for him, he never asked for my help until
the 11th hour. It would be easy to say “it served him right”. It did
not, however, serve the production right.
My learning experience in this
production was compounded by a second actor who had no interest at all
in the freedom desired by the tv star. He wanted to be told everything.
Despite the frustration with his lack of participation, I did not drop
this actor. I actually met the pressure he put on me to “tell him
everything”, and eventually his resistance began to dissipate. He began
to respond with ideas and suggestions of his own which contributed a
great deal to the production.
In the end, despite my four weeks of
nightmares, the show turned out very well. In fact, it was nominated for
four Sterling Awards. But I was left shaken and questioning my ability
to work with actors. This was a very big deal as I loved directing, my
work was successful and my career had been developing very well. Another
experience like this one could have ruined my passion for something I
liked best in the whole world...
Enter Ann Penistan. After the show
opened, I attended a series of professional development workshops in
which Ann was introducing her work to the Edmonton theatre community.
When she asked us about our “issues in the theatre”, I was quite anxious
to address this recent set of rehearsal problems. It was a tremendous
relief to explore the inner conflicts I had experienced. We looked at
how I had been caught up in my fixed idea about becoming a “big league”
director and my very different reactions to and assumptions about the
two very different situations regarding the two very different actors.
The work we did together revealed the habits that were deeply ingrained
in me and allowed me to look at my work afresh.
As a result of our work together, my
approach to rehearsals changed significantly. Eighteen months later I
was slated to direct another big star from Ontario. This actor had a
long-standing reputation for being “difficult” and I know I felt
trepidation about working with her. But, I had no idea what other
people’s difficulties were with her. I realised I was basing my worries
on other people’s experiences which I actually knew nothing about. So
this time, instead of getting caught in the fear, I met the actor
directly. In a telephone conversation before rehearsal, I asked her how
we could best support her in this large and difficult role and promised
that her working needs would be our primary focus. She was very
concerned that the character had to “look fabulous” and I assured her we
would do everything possible to achieve this. She didn’t know me from
Adam, but I gained her trust, we had a wonderful time together and she
was excellent in the role. My experience with this actor was completely
different than others had experienced.
I have had many more experiences
since, of taking the tools I have learned from this work into moments of
teaching and directing. When I began teaching in the graduate directing
program at the University of British Columbia, I realised again how
little is written that sheds light on the actual moment-to-moment
thoughts and feelings of both people, the director and actor. It is
these real experiences that hold the information about when this
relationship is flowing and when it is stuck.
Ann:
We began our research by asking what
is happening in the field between actors and directors. What are the
experiences in their relationships and do they think the investigation
into them worth exploring? The answer was a resounding, “YES”! Much of
the information we received was general. These generalisations reveal a
lack of clarity for many actors and directors about this territory. This
feedback has helped us to pinpoint where some of the most common
problems lie; that is, what people are coming up against but are not
clear about. What follows is a distillation of some of this information.
1. Assumptions that are
treated as realities:
“Directors don’t know how to talk
with actors”.
Well, which director and which actor
are we talking about, since they are all different? This is a sweeping
statement. If it is true in some cases, we can address the question,
“how can the director learn to communicate constructively?
Interestingly, we didn’t hear from directors that actors don’t know how
to talk with them. That is not part of the framework for the directors
we asked.
“I have to protect myself from
directors.”
What are they protecting themselves
from? Do they know it’s true with the director they are in communication
with? Directors have not volunteered that they need to protect
themselves from actors.
Stephen:
2. Generalised Directing:
Here are some generalised notes from
a director to an actor:
“You need more edge.” “Could you
play higher stakes in the second act?” “You need to be louder.” These generalised directions often cause an actor to seize up. An actor in
this state needs to sort out the specifics on his own. This becomes a
problem when there are two different ideas of what “edge, higher stakes,
or louder” mean. The actor does one thing but it is not what the
director thought they were asking for. There is a leap of assumption
that the actor had understood, but the director does not enquire as to
how the actor understood the direction. Confusion inevitably arises. “I
thought that’s what I was doing.”
Ann:
3. Directors’ questions that
are often voiced yet rarely fully explored
“How can I make the actor do what I
want?”
This is a common question. It is
posed without the input of the actor. To be able to explore this
question right in the middle of rehearsal gives an insight into
intentions, communication and collaboration. Two people are involved
with the intention as related to the text, instead of the actor “doing”
the director’s vision.
“How can I be sure to have a happy
and comfortable rehearsal atmosphere?”
Can one be sure? Is it even possible that
every show will have this ideal? If there are tools to meet
incompatibilities constructively, does it matter?
“What are the conditions that allow for an in depth exploration of the
text, unfettered by unspoken questions, fears and judgments?”
This is an invaluable question and
is the underpinning of our research. It requires each director to ask
the question and take the time to find out for themselves out of their
actual experience.
Stephen:
4. Assumptions Based on
Hierarchy:
The following are fixed ideas that
sustain the impression of the negative hierarchy in the theatre:
“I won’t be hired again if I’m not
good.” “I can’t ask question in case he thinks I’m stupid or being
difficult.” “It’s the director's show.”
When caught in these thoughts, the
actor is not free to ask questions or explore his ideas about the text.
He finds himself with less information than he needs, and does his best
to satisfy his director under these less than ideal conditions.
Ann:
5. Struggles:
“I need to be director proof.”
Many actors express the need to be
“director proof” yet they are still having struggles working with
directors. But how many variations of “director proof” are out there?
And how does this affect a director?
“I don’t get to explore my idea. I have no chance to show the director
what I mean.”
When a new idea is introduced, it
can take a bit of time for it to integrate. When a director gives little
time for an actor to integrate the idea it can cause the actor
unnecessary and frustrating reactions.
Often the excuse is given that there
is not enough time. However, if the time is taken to understand how
quickly an idea can be integrated (usually three or four times), then a
director can use his own informed criteria for how long he will allow
something to be explored. Here’s one director’s approach to exploring
the actor/director relationship:
“I've thought about it a lot over
the years, but mostly not very constructively, as most of the thinking
was from within the context of trying to win some sort of struggle that
had developed between me and whoever.”
Stephen:
6. Unfinished sentences:
“The key is trust.”
Trust in what, trust in whom? What
do you mean by trust? Are the director’s criteria and the actor’s
criteria for trust the same? Each person has their own criteria for what
“trusting someone” means. A director trying to gain the trust of an
actor is battling on delicate ground if he doesn’t know what the actor’s
criteria are for trusting his director.
Ann:
The above are all points that are
rarely looked into and clarified. There are many more. Questions that
appear rhetorical, when treated as questions to be answered, are often
filled with vital information. A director’s question like “when are they
ever going to learn their lines” is treated rhetorically. If actually
addressed to the actors, who are the only ones with this information,
instant clarity is provided for the director. They know where the actor
is in their process and can guide the next step from there.
Generalisations cause confusion, yet
they are part of everyday language. Being able to recognise a
generalisation can reveal foggy thinking. The director says “more
energy”, catches it as a generalisation and can ask himself,“how can I
be more specific?" Instead of going into reaction and thinking, “I
shouldn’t have said that”, he can actually use his experience to reveal
where he needs to be clearer and navigate toward specificity. It is a
brilliant learning system all inbuilt.
Stephen:
In conclusion, we know the learning
of a play is a great experience when a cast is not clouded by foggy
thinking, confusions, assumptions and generalisations; yet it is
considered a fortunate experience, one of those special rehearsals that
are all too rare.
Problems will always occur. However
with more tools to meet them, the joy of directing will not be squashed
like in my story. Simply they are seen as an opportunity to learn and
grow. Knowing how things work when they work well is also an important
tool in rehearsal. When things are working well, the director is in a
relationship of discovery with their actors and the text. Insights are
guiding the rehearsal process. The actor and director are solving the
problems of the play rather than the problems of their relationship.
Ann:
Since the director is at the helm,
the next stage of the research is to provide the opportunity for them to
take the time in rehearsal to explore their approach in depth. What
happens if they explore and clarify the fixed ideas and assumptions
that they learn to recognise they are caught in? What can directors do
differently to get out of the way and let the work happen? The
information is inbuilt. When a struggle occurs within them, the director
does not have to go any further than his actual experience to gain
clarity into his own work.
Copyright © 2003 by Ann Penistan,
all rights reserved worldwide
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