TALES FROM GRADUATE SCHOOL:
Funky, Cool Acting Exercises from NYC

If you are a regular Real Art reader, you might have noticed that my commentary has slowed down a great deal lately. Obviously, the summer has ended, but this year things are different because I'm studying acting in grad school. I'm still managing to post links and excerpts regularly, and I'll try to keep doing that, but time for me has become more of a premium than it ever has before. One of the things taking up my time (actually it's only an hour a day, but it's worth a blog post) is some outside the classroom training I'm doing.

LSU's professional theater company, Swine Palace Productions, has brought in a funky, cool group from New York, the SITI Company, to help stage a production of Macbeth. I'm not in the show, but the first year MFA acting students have been invited to take part in actor training sessions that are being hosted by the good people from SITI. Actually, one of SITI's founding members, Leon Ingulsrud, Macbeth's director, is on LSU's faculty--he's the reason, I think, SITI is even here in the fist place.

After a couple of weeks of this training, I must admit that I'm blown away, an experience that seems to be happening to me less frequently as the years go by.

Each hour of training is broken in two: for the first half hour we study Suzuki; the second half hour we study the Viewpoints. It's difficult to explain what this is all about. Suffice it to say, the work is both liberating and enlightening. The Suzuki work deals with, well, just read this excerpt from Tadashi Suzuki's bio:

Not just one of the world's foremost theatre directors, Suzuki is an important theorist about performance. The Suzuki Method is a system of exercises, designed to be a realization of Suzuki's Philosophy. The cornerstone of this philosophy is a belief in the fact that human beings possess the ability to tap into the expressive power of animal energy, and that theatre, as a context for this expression, is socially and spiritually crucial in the present-day global situation.

For more of Suzuki's bio, click here.

Of course that's all very abstract and esoteric, but it's right on the mark inasmuch as what I feel like I'm getting out of it. However, for a more concrete description of Suzuki's Method, read this excerpt from the Cal State at San Marcos website:

The Suzuki Method of Actor Training develops the actor's inner physical sensibilities, builds the will, stamina and concentration. The workshop activities include a series of exercises centered around the use of the feet in relation to one's center. These exercises are designed to throw the body off center while maintaining a consistent level of energy and not swaying the upper body. The energy necessary to accomplish this task is considerable and constitutes a primary focus of this work. In the course of doing these exercises the body becomes more centered, and thus changes the manner in which the actor views his/herself within their body. This change is also related to how the actor views their work onstage. Issues such as engrained habits become more apparent as do strengths and weaknesses. By developing the body awareness of the corporal center, and a consistent level of energy, primary elements of the actor's awareness are heightened.

Click here for the rest.

So far, this stuff seems to be having some payoff: my ability to focus and concentrate seems to be increasing, which is odd, given that the work seems to consist mostly of strange walks and painful bodily contortions while maintaining good posture.

The Viewpoints work, taught to us by SITI member, Barney O'Hanlon, also deals with the body, but it's aim is more about developing the actor's aesthetic sense. From director Brian Jucha's site:

My memory of the development of Viewpoints theory is they were created as "The Six Viewpoints" by Mary Overlie in 1977 and taught to me by Wendell Beavers as: SPATIAL RELATIONSHIPS, SHAPE, GESTURE, KINESTHETIC RESPONSE, NARRATIVE (story) and REPETITION. Anne Bogart began to develop the theory for use in theater and replaced NARRATIVE with ARCHITECTURE in the belief that stories were inherent in theater. In 1993, Mary Overlie told me that these named six viewpoints I and many others had been working with for some fifteen years were incorrect and that the Viewpoints were conceived of and have always been SPACE, STORY, TIME, EMOTION, MOVEMENT, and SHAPE (with the mnemonic STEMSS). Meanwhile, around this same time, Anne Bogart in her work with the SITI Company was creating an extension of her understanding of the original six viewpoints to include three new concepts: TEMPO, DURATION and TOPOGRAPHY.

So, what does it all boil down to?

Viewpoints Theory is a set of definable and recognizable tools from which we can create work and have the vocabulary to discuss it. The concepts extend from the fact that there are two givens in any performance situation whether it be theater, dance, performance, film or video.

We have SPACE. We have TIME.

Jucha offers one actor's (humorous) summation of the Viewpoints:

"When in doubt:

1. make a diagonal

2. be someone's shadow

3. see a gesture someone's making onstage - repeat it - either simultaneously or in canon

4. find a pillar - use it

5. find a corner - use it ("corners are poetic")

6. stand "too" close or "too" far from the person you're talking to

7. walk purposefully from one side of the stage to the other

8. lie upside down on a staircase - works best if you don't have to speak

9. "GET OFF THE FLOOR!"

10. do something else unless Brian says "that's a keeper"

11. After the staging is set - JUSTIFY IT! (of course this is the most important of all)"

Click here for the rest of the article.

This list may have been offered as something of a joke, but it doesn't seem to be a bad description of many of the ideas that we're working with. What's really amazing to me about the Viewpoints training is that every day, we are creating art with our bodies, and I don't mean crap art. The exercises that are designed to heighten our aesthetic sense essentially amount to spontaneous, improvised human compositions in space. There was a point last week when we were all dashing about on an imagined grid to a soundtrack of minimalist music that I suddenly had the most profound feeling that I was in Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie. As the training has progressed, these spontaneous dances have become more sophisticated, more creative; I've almost been moved to tears on at least one occasion while watching other students, so beautiful was their work.

Like I said, I'm blown away.

It is important to note that the Jucha article mentions SITI. Indeed, their artistic director, Anne Bogart, was apparently in on the Viewpoints from their very beginning. Likewise, Leon, and his wife, Akiko Aizawa, who are teaching us Suzuki, trained extensively with Tadashi Suzuki. The point is that this training is putting me in close proximity to the source of these disciplines, which makes this all the more exciting.

Maybe I'm just culturally deprived after six years of teaching in Baytown, but, exhausted as I am, I feel like I'm in heaven.

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