"And as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and name." --A Midsummer Night's Dream 5.1, William Shakespeare 

Drop Curtain of "The Light Princess" at the National Theatre

I don't know who decided that having an imagination was childish, but obviously he was not an actor.  This week, through a performance of "The Light Princess" and in my classes, I've experienced the invaluable congealing of three important entities: movement, thought, and imagination.  These three pieces can only be useful to an actor if they're used in conjunction with each other; otherwise, an actor will simply be caught in his head, always thinking and never acting on impulses, or always moving without intention, or exploring so much with imagination that the embodiment of the character strays from the clues in the text.  Regardless of being an actor or an audience member, imagination is used by both sides in every show as we suspend our disbelief for an hour or two and enjoy a story about people, their struggles, and the relationship between the two.

On Monday night after classes, I made my way with two friends to see the National Theatre put on an incredible theatrical feat: "The Light Princess."  (Can I interrupt real quick: OMG I get to see amazing theater on Monday nights after going to acting classes all day.  This rocks!)  The word 'light' isn't referring to actual light, but to the property of being physically light, since the main character (Princess Althea) has lacked the ability to feel deep emotions since her mother passed away and from that time has floated in mid-air.  Yeah, I don't know how George MacDonald's original 1867 production of this fairytale compensated for having a main character who floats in mid-air, but I'm sure it was interesting.    

Advertisement for the National Theatre's "The Light Princess"

But I will tell you how the 2013 production of the mature fairytale pulled off this challenge:

 In the very first scene, Princess Althea is supposed to be descending in front of a very large, Wicked-reminiscent bookcase (I'm guesstimating about 20 feet tall) to about a foot off the floor.  It was clear she wasn't using one of those "whoops, I just saw the invisible string" wires.  No, no.  Instead, she was fashionably harnessed (it fit right in with her orange outfit) in the back to a movement man dressed in all black.  He was facing the bookcase and crawling down it very slowly (with a 5'8'' full grown woman attached to his back as she belts songs).  I promise you, I gasped out loud, pointed with my finger and remarked in a whisper, "Fuck!  Do you see him?" (very British with the "fuck") to my friend Victoria.  She nodded in agreement with big eyes and equal astonishment.  The Princess really looked like she was floating; I had to look closely to even notice the movement man since he was practically hidden behind her!  Throughout the play, the number of movement people taking on her entire body weight increased, and at one time there were four people dressed head-to-toe in black clothing on the stage, moving Princess Althea's limbs and torso with such flawless execution and fluidity that at times I forgot that she wasn't really floating.  At one point, one movement woman lay on her back on the stage, supporting Princess Althea with only her legs and feet.  As Princess Althea tilted her head and upper back down to the stage in order to float horizontally, the movement woman simultaneously adjusted her legs, placing one leg on the actress' spine and the other on the back of her upper leg.  I have no idea if the moves were choreographed down to the second, but I never once felt that Princess Althea was in danger of being dropped and cracking her head, even though all of her body weight was being supported by movement professionals that were essentially invisible to the audience members who bought into the story and used their imagination to believe in a floating princess.  When I can find another actress who can be so relaxed physically that she can convince me she's floating AND sing beautifully at the same time, I'll let you know.

Today in movement class I got to experience another mix of imagination, thought, and movement, but this time I wasn't in the audience.  Our movement teacher repeated that phrase that we hear all too often at drama school: "walk around in the space." (To be fair, walking is just about the most neutral physical activity a character can do.)  So we followed instructions, like obedient school children, and all 12 of us walked naturally and fluidly through the space (we had spent the previous 45 minutes stretching and soothing bodily aches, so we were all very happy to obey her orders).  Now Fey gave us another thing to do:

"I want you to pick a person in the room.  Be subtle about it!  I realize that's not an easy task for actors, being subtle, that is.  But, pick a person and notice their walk.  Do their shoulder rotate?  Do they swing one arm more than the other?  Do they stick their bum out?"

As I ticked through a whole checklist of that person's movement in certain body parts, their walk evolved into a predictable system, not just something random that a person does to achieve walking around a room.  Our walks reflect what injuries, tendencies, and inadequacies we've had in the past. We're constantly compensating for aches and pains.  Therefore, each person's walk is uniquely crafted for that certain somebody.  Fey recommended we don't share who we picked, so for this blog I'll call the person I picked Jenny.  Jenny's stride was pretty short, kinda like mine.  She swung her right arm a bit more than her left, but overall didn't rotate her shoulders much.  Her mouth formed a small, determined pout, and her head was slightly tilted back.  These are just a few of the characteristics I noted.  Then Fey took it one step further:  "As I count down from 10 to 1, 10 being your walk and 1 being the walk of the person you chose, I want you to embody their walk.  This is not time to impersonate somebody's walk or your opinion of their walk.  This is fact, and merely an embodiment of their walk."  Slowly I adjusted, remembering all that I had noted about Jenny.  My shoulders stopped swiveling, and became stiffer, my mouth turned upside down slightly, and my speed decreased just barely.  Then Fey asked us to create a character based off this new walk we had taken on.  Who would walk like this?  Where are they going?  Where are they coming from?

Joanna would walk like this, but everyone calls her Jo for short.  She's on her way to her flat from her job at a cafe, one of those little places that sells lattes and little breakfast pastries.  She's exhausted, and just scraping by with a meager job.  She thought she'd be someplace better at the age of 27.  She's going home to see her boyfriend, they've been dating for many years, but he hasn't popped the question. She's kinda one of those tough girls, she doesn't have many acquaintances, but the friends she has are lifelong and trustworthy.

So I came up with that whole character and background story in about three minutes of just walking like Jenny.  That's imagination.  That's connecting a movement with a thought.  It was surprisingly easy, to be honest.  So maybe I wasn't floating with the support of movement professionals like Princess Althea, but my imagination was floating and bright for the first time in many years.                

             

"Prepare for mirth for mirth becomes a feast." --Pericles 2.3., William Shakespeare.  

Acting isn't always about telling the saddest, most dramatic tale possible.  In fact, even in Shakespeare's most tragic stories, such as Macbeth or Othello, a fool or lighthearted character is inserted to keep the audience's spirits up and chuckling in between the oh-so-frequent death scenes.  During my study at LAMDA, I have two classes that specifically focus on creating a game with the audience, or adding a humorous take on even the darkest subjects.  Welcome, Ladies and Gentlemen, to Clowning class and Improv class.

1) Clowning.
Job: PLAY.

The playful entity an actor creates with a large red rose and innocent manner, commonly known as a clown, is really a manifestation of that actor's individual impulses and habits.  Some basic rules: the clown always tries its best to follow instructions and feeds entirely off of the audience's response to its behavior.  The common theme of maintaining contact with the audience or people you're working with also continues here, and will thread throughout all of my classes.  So, in fact, a clown is simply another character the actor must become.  The large red nose, the most famous accessory of a clown, creates a barrier between the audience and the clown through costume and conceals the identity of the performer.  The clown's job is simply to play, innocently but inherently incorrectly.  Whatever the clown does, it sincerely thinks it is doing what you've asked of it.  For example, if my clowning teacher, Michael (a native American and lighthearted fellow), instructs us (we have our big red noses on) to be as quiet as possible, we all may begin to bang on the ground or speak to one another loudly.  Thus the clown's accidental prank is meant to have good intentions, but fails so miserably it transforms into humor.  During clowning, all topics lose their seriousness and depressing content, and instead are funny since we know the clown is playing a harmless game with us.  Important:  the clown never makes us (the audience) into the fool, all jokes and laughs are done at the clown's expense.

Now to discover your own personal clown personality:

You'll need a semi-circle audience (we had 12 people watching), a simple chair or preferably a flat piano bench, and behind the bench you'll put a drapery/door/hidden place for exits and entrances. One person goes behind the door and puts their red nose on.  As they come out from behind the door, they find their way to the bench and should maintain eye contact with the audience the entire time, not acting.  It's important that the clown has an honest response to the audience's response; if the clown should accidentally stumble into the bench, and the audience snickers a little, the clown should be open to responding honestly (whether that's looking ashamed, giving an embarrassed chuckle, or blushing).  Just from these natural impulses and behaviors, Michael will ask the clown to investigate something further.  For instance, the French guy in our class happened to respond to the audience's responses with his fingers first, almost like his fingers got hit with a wave of energy before the rest of his body did.  Michael picked up on his energetic fingers and would give simple instructions, "Hadrian, now fall in love with someone in the audience through your fingers."  So Hadrian played along: he made eye contact with one of us in the audience and his fingers gave a little flutter and hovered above his heart, doing a kind of "jazz fingers" dance.  Michael continued to play with this clear trait and habit, and thus the beginning of Hadrian's clown's personality began to form.  Going back to the idea that all topics lose their seriousness in clowning: in our class one girl's clown personality was that of a killer.  When she was just organically responding to the audience, her eyes continually darted back and forth, sometimes zoning in on one person.  Therefore, Michael asked her to do everything like a killer (laugh like a killer, sit like a killer, fall in love with someone like a killer, and then ultimately get up and exit behind the door like a killer).  However, since the performer and the audience were invested in the playful manner of the clown, we all laughed at her killer demeanor instead of being frightened of it.  Interestingly, an actor's clown may change from day to day, since certain days we will have different reactions to things.

2. Improv
Job: Commit.

"Improv can either be hilarious or amazing, just commit."

These wise words were said by our substitute improv teacher, a young, small wiry man (he attempted to bulk himself up with a very puffy winter vest), who has a passion for the side-splitting humor of improv but also the deeper, more serious stories that can be told.  Let's see if you can avoid the trap he set out for us: "Alright, here's the scenario: two people are in a raft.  Go! Make a scene!"  Let's see which scene you prefer:

1) So two of my classmates got up in front of us and were in the supposed raft.  They spent the first minute of the scene in the raft and arguing about which way land was. They eventually decided upon paddling North.

OR

2) GET OFF THE RAFT, and find an ISLAND!!!  This island happens to be filled with a magical fruit, and is surrounded by mermaids, and also cannibals.

Hopefully you prefer option #2, or your sense of entertainment may have been dulled by years of bad TV shows.  As an actor, picking the right way when you come to the fork in the road between these scenes is dependent on knowing what the audience wants to see.  Chances are, the audience would prefer to see two people discover a magical island via their raft instead of watching two people bicker on a raft.  This leads us to another magical quote:

"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired.  Otherwise don't put it there."

Basically, don't tease the audience and then never get to the climax of the scene.  In one of our scenes in class, a man and his daughter wanted to purchase the Eiffel Tower.  I repeat: they wanted to BUY the fucking Eiffel Tower.  Therefore, in the scene the purchasing of the Eiffel Tower should happen.  The man and his daughter shouldn't just mention, "I'd love to buy that and put it in the backyard" and then decide that they want to buy a croissant instead.  Knowing that the audience wants to see the climax of buying the Eiffel Tower (the crazier the idea, the more important the idea is to the audience), don't backpedal towards safer ground!  Take the risk!  Either it'll be hilarious if it fails ("Improv is 95% failing") or it'll be amazing when the man who sells the daughter and father the Eiffel Tower goes around with a tiny hand wrench unscrewing the massive structure's bolts from the ground and then offers to fly it to their backyard in Ohio (this happened in our scene).  Usually when Improv scenes are ridiculous and hilarious this implies a large circle of expectation, or basically the number of possibilities is greater.  For instance, wanting to buy the Eiffel Tower increases the circle of expectation, and even more ridiculous ideas, like the offer to fly it across the ocean, enlarge that circle even more.  However, you can also have Improv scenes that have a smaller circle of expectation, and tend to be a bit more realistic in their story lines.  For example, we could have a scene centering around a nursing home and the seniors who inhabit it.  Maybe a nurse has to take care of an elderly man who just lost his wife, and he looks to the nurse for comfort.  Both of these scenes, the one about the Eiffel Tower and the one about the elderly man, are plausible and legitimate in Improv.

I feel like people in general tend to have a misconception about both of these arts.  People assume that improv must be hilarious and void of anything serious, and people assume that clowns are just creepy (Okay, that is sometimes valid--Krusty the Clown, anybody?).

See, he is kinda creepy. 

Improv and Clowning can be used to address serious issues, but they often turn to a veil of humor to make the topics more palatable for the audience.  Then again, nothing is wrong with buying the Eiffel Tower either.            

               

"Fair is foul and foul is fair." --The Tragedy of Macbeth 1.1., William Shakespeare 

Even though risky to insert my own words into the work of a genius, "easy is hard and hard is easy" essentially defines my two weeks working in a small 12 person group with my first (of three) directors, Dominic.  Full of energy like a coiled spring, Dominic's vibe was that of a pixie; a short, petite man, Dominic boasted eyes that seemed to be so full of magic and sparkle that I almost could have entertained the idea that he was an elf or fairy-like creature.  The staple of his wardrobe are forest green pants and a bright green watch (surely from the Elf Forest) and his voluptuous hair seemed to literally defy gravity.  But in all seriousness, Dominic's brilliance as a director comes from his ability to give depth and meaning to the (seemingly) easiest tasks and unite a group of twelve strangers.      


Most days we begin our three hour scene study session with ensemble exercises.  Especially for young actors, taking risks with Shakespeare's text will be only successful if you can dive 100% into the risk, and thus an environment of trust and respect is needed among those working.  Dominic gave us a simple task:

"Walk around the room and live out here with us."  Okay, sounds pretty basic.  However, so many of us are unaware of our tendency to look at the ground (Dominic: "I swear guys, nothing is on the fucking floor."  I would also like to point out that British drama teachers throw "fuck" or "fucking" around with the same frequency that they drink tea, so don't be alarmed.)  and our hesitancy to make honest contact, with eyes or smiles or bodies, with others.  Have you ever just wanted to hold eye contact for one beat longer than is socially acceptable?  Too bad, you're going to come across as a creeper.  Luckily, that instant response of disgust doesn't exist in a room full of actors.  If you want to look at someone for 4 seconds instead of 2, go for it!  If you feel the impulse to smile a little at someone as you walk by them, oh snap, go for it, you rebel!  This is what "living out here with us" means:  keep your head up and be open to communication with others.  After all, how can you feel emotion in a scene if you're not open to feeling it?  Once we mastered walking around in a space and not looking at the riveting and exciting linoleum floor, we challenged ourselves with tasks that seem simple but are actually kind of impossible.


Get into a circle.  As a group, you will raise your right hand together and simultaneously, then, when you feel the time is right, you will all quickly drop your right hand, sit down, have a moment of stillness, stand back up, and repeat.  But the trick is that nobody can lead and yell, "Okay, guys, on 3!"  Instead, you must be aware of all the movements in the circle and listen to your own personal impulse that whispers, "Goddamn it, put your fucking arm down." When in true cohesion, the movements are spot on and there is only one flicker of all twelve arms dropping, not twelve separate movements.  The other difficulty in this exercise is the deflection of the want to do superfluous movements, like adjusting your shirt or wiping your brow, or pushing hair behind your ear.  Learn to focus, and yet at the same time notice everything that your peers are doing too.  So after the previous exercise of walking to sprinting in the space, I had sweat literally dripping down my face.  You have no idea how much I wanted to wipe the burning, acidic sweat out of my eye.  But in that moment, that was not the task.  The task was to focus and raise my arm, and drop it, and sit, and stand.  It would not be fair to my peers, who are all invested in this goal, to get distracted now.  Discipline is pretty cool, actually.            

On Tuesday night, we attended Macbeth at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, a space that has been triumphant in preserving a sense of itself from hundreds of years ago:  no roof, no microphones, a partially standing audience, and two notoriously large and obstructive poles on the stage that block the view for some unfortunate part of the audience.  I was standing three feet from the stage in the front of the standing audience, where all the peasants would have smelled of rotten vegetables and sewers, but still with an awesome view of the actors.  I could see the sweat fly from the actors' faces during a fight scene, could pick out the seam that connected the pieces of their old-fashioned costumes, and witnessed a second possible tragedy that was cleanly avoided as the person standing in front of me dodged being hit in the face with a prop (we were that close).  Once you've been working in depth with Shakespeare's neatly packaged yet puzzling language for a few weeks, it's almost like you don't have to untie the metaphors, rhyming couplets, and subtle (sometimes) sexual innuendoes of the time; everything just makes sense.  All the lines that would muster up only sighs of frustration and doodles of boredom in high school English classes now held importance and my utmost appreciation, because Shakespeare wasn't meant to be read like a book in an uncomfortable wooden desk.  It's supposed to be put up on a stage under a sky full of stars (and now planes) and acted with true emotion.  That's what makes Shakespeare timeless: the relationships between the characters and the emotions.  Any modern audience can relate to Macbeth's desperation to succeed and to gain power, or to Lady Macbeth's hope and certainty that her husband will in fact be victorious.  Nobody speaks in sonnets, or in iambic pentameter, be we all feel and connect on some level with others, and as theatre-goers we've been that way for hundreds of years.

The play closed in a semi-choreographed dance, accompanied by two violins and the clapped rhythm held by the audience.  But the dance was special:  the majority of the actors couldn't see their fellow actors up on stage.  They didn't appear to be counting beats in their heads.  They couldn't make eye contact or yell, "Oy, when I count to 3 we'll all raise our right arm!"  Instead, they proved that they had mastered the art that Dominic had been directing us towards in our class: feeling the support and presence of your peers.  So there I stood, my heels partially numb from standing for three hours, and I realized as these actors all raised their right hand to begin the dance, that they were doing what I was learning.  The dance continued, and the actors never were out of sync with each other.  Having struggled with it in class, I appreciated the bond and trust they must have created in order to pull off this act of ultimate connectedness.

When you think about it, life can always be a beautiful dance.  All it takes is some feeling, some trust, and the risk of making honest connection.