20th Century Theatre. Essay.

Aaron Lim Si Ru
Lecturer Chris Lee Ban Loong
CDP201: 20th Century Theatre: Theory and Practice
19 November 2010

Finding the self in the non-self.

It has always been my belief that drama or theatre, or rather the process of it all, is a long arduous journey that one undertakes to find a deeper understanding of oneself. How ironic, in a society that is filled with people wearing perpetual masks daily. Changing them as the situation demands, everyone else should be a master actor. But they are not, and that’s why we are in this very class, slowly touching our faces and acknowledging the existence of these masks.

CDP101 has been an eye opener; drama club in junior college did little to help. My concept of theatre has been shattered and enlightened. Theatre of Cruelty, Poor Theatre, Theatre of the Absurd, Epic Theatre, Naturalist Theatre, Realist Theatre, there are probably dozens of sub genres that I don’t know about but all the time up till now, I was merely touching the tip of the iceberg in realism. CDP101 did a right job in providing a diverse introduction of the myriad theatrical conventions. We were given the freedom to create, experiment and put together a presentation with only a guiding, however not a masterful directorial hand.

CDP101 is like an exploratory module. CDP201 is the ‘real’ introductory module towards theatre. Theory is substantiated with consolidated with practice and honed with execution. It’s back to the basics, the root of theatre. The differing theatrical practices today all stem from a single root of expression, simply put they are all different means of expressing our very human condition. Thus, 20th Century theatre is perhaps an attempt at reconciling all these diverse forms of theatrical practices. I shall attempt an analogy of a tree; the branches of the tree are like the differing theatrical practices that we have learnt from the masters. All these practices however come from a single trunk of knowledge, of how the body works. The roots are thus like the different methodologies that constitute how the body works; voice, breath, movement. My understanding of the class is that 20th Century theatre is an attempt at the holistic understanding of how elements in this whole ‘tree’ influence one another.

In a general manner of speaking, our first foray into the theatrical space, we carry with us our preconceived notions, our emotional baggage, and most of all our selfhood. We have an identity, a name and a self. Yet, as actors we are required to take upon us a fictional identity, one which is inherently at war with our ‘master’ identity. In Chekhov’s opinion, “actors must reach beyond their everyday lives and feelings, into the realm of their Higher Self”, a self that is unburdened by “emotion memory” (Daboo 269). Chekhov requires his actors to cast aside their emotionally laden selves before they can become good actors. Chekhov likens the actor’s burdened state of mind, as being like a “small dirty envelope” because in theatre, a good actor must needs be able to take on a diverse range of roles, “our real-life memories do not offer enough potential in themselves for this transformation on stage” (Daboo 269). Therefore to access the unfamiliar actors must first let go of their own emotional memory, actors need to become impressionable again, actors need to undergo metamorphosis for it “enriches and expands the consciousness” (Daboo 269). This notion perhaps sheds some insight to when you said we were not characters but ‘actors’ in our penultimate rehearsal.

Stanislavsky adopts a slightly different approach of what he terms as ‘Solitude in Public’. In essence an actor is asked to visualize a circle where he must focus his attention, and this circle is the realm of his acting; “within the circle… nothing exists but the world of the stage” (Wegner 87). In the same way, actors are asked to cast away all exterior influences and distractions, to train the mind upon the realm of the stage. Whilst entering into the state of ‘Solitude in Public’, one is still aware and conscious of the ‘public’ space, which could refer to the audience and other actors; ‘solitude’ then refers to the level immersion within the character, the imaginary circle that surrounds the actor.

One can see influences of both these methodologies in the practices we do in class. We are asked to be aware of the ‘I’, the ‘Us’, the ‘We’ and the ‘Them’, differing levels of awareness and consciousness, which we must acquire. If one were to visualize, it would be like drawing concentric circles around each actor, each larger than the first, with the first as the awareness of ‘I’ around the actor as the deepest level of concentration. We are then asked to connect on the 2nd level of ‘Us’ with our fellow actor, establishing an almost visceral connection within this ‘visual corridor’. As we move to break this corridor, more concentration is needed to maintain that tenuous link with the level of ‘Us’; this inadvertently leads to something resembling the Stanislavsky’s idea of ‘Solitude in Public’. As we proceeded to introduce disturbances to break into this ‘circle of self’ we had to strike a balance between completely thrown off and completely ignorant of these disturbances, we are likewise trying to balance solitude with public awareness. Whilst in this state of awareness, we recited snippets of dialogue from the script. Honestly, I was trying very hard to process all these actions; my bodymind was pushed to its limits. However, there were visible results when I rehearsed after the exercise. The lines showed me a meaning I had never seen, previously I had attempted to understand the lines from my limited life experiences but after the exercise where most of my emotion memory has been scourged, my mind was like a blank piece of paper, free for the lines to imprint their nuances upon me. In doing so, I have to some degree, embodied the requirements of the character rather than striving to represent the character through my own flawed interpretation of it.

In Grotowski’s own words, “ours then is a via negativa – not a collection of skills but an eradication of blocks” (Grotowski 17). For me, creating that corridor to form the realm of ‘us’ is in its own way an eradication of blocks in communication with my fellow actor. It is the opposite of the active and systematic deconstruction of a character, but rather the “requisite state of mind” should be one of “passive readiness to realize an active role, a state in which one does not “want to do that” but rather “resigns from not doing” (Grotowski 17). To put it succinctly, it is to gain knowledge of being a good actor by learning what does not constitute a good actor.

Our progress in theatre it seems depends on how far we are willing to regress past our fixed notions of theatre. Chekhov asks us to ‘unburden’ ourselves; Stanislavsky wants us to limit our awareness into a focused space; Grotwoski tells us to forget. Metaphorically speaking, it is almost as if we are asked to shed off pieces of clothing, which we wear to define ourselves, becoming naked again, free from any clutter physically and mentally as if we are newly born into the space. We like babies slowly become aware of the way we breathe involuntarily, however as we grow, we consciously control and interrupt this innately natural breathing mechanism leading to a loss of ‘kinaesthetic knowledge’. It is this knowledge often referred to as “wisdom of the body” that we seek to recover but unlearning our conscious actions – via negativa (Grotowski 17). Thus, as we work our way down to the basic mechanics of theatre, we are able to draw that line of commonality from the branches all the way to its roots.

During the final presentation, there was a sudden introduction of the rapid exchange in Love a Quartet, and that the whole play could be performed in the same succinct manner. You said that we were taking too much time. Could it be that we were again lapsing into trying to infuse our own meaning into the lines instead of letting them speak to us? All that I have ‘learnt’ for the play was thrown out of the window, I realised that I was becoming aware of the changes that I was making. So much so that at times during the actual presentation I was questioning what I was supposed to be doing, but there is no answer to that question, it is all written in the lines. There is no motivation behind the character, there is only meaning imbued within the lines. There is no subtext hidden between the lines, there is only the context in which the lines are spoken. Therefore, instead of trying to read into the subtext, I should simply react according to the context of the play. Perhaps Joseph was right, we weren’t really learning to act; we were merely beginning to learn to read closely.

At the end of the course, I have not learnt much about acting, except maybe learning about the uses of certain dramatic exercises, but nothing really specific about how to act. Yet, I feel as if I have come away as a different person, drama isn’t really about how to act, but how one sees things. The whole journey was like removing a veil from my eyes, teaching me to see many things, which my old eyes will have missed. After this removal of blocks, perhaps only now the path of learning can finally begin.
1571 Words.


Works Cited
Daboo, Jerri. “Michael Chekhov and the embodied imagination: Higher self and non-self” Studies in Theatre and Performance. 27.3 (2007): 261-273. Print.
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968. Print.
Wegner, William H. “The Creative Circle: Stanislavski and Yoga” Education Theatre Journal. 28.1 (1976): 85-89. Print.