However, an ongoing part of the schedule, in which I was also expected to participate, was, devoted to “workshopping”. This was very much a trend of the time that followed on from the leads of New York’s Living Theatre, Peter Brook’s resuscitation of Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, and Jerzy Grotowski’s Poor Theatre. At The Stables these sessions, that focussed on group work, physical expression and improvisation, were frequently lead by, my friend and neighbour, John Downie, whose mantra was, “process before product.” I could see how this might be liberating for an actor, but I could not agree that this was an appropriate motto for a director to have on his T-shirt. It struck me that this was, in fact, shrugging off the director’s prime responsibility, which was specifically to the end-product.
When I began training at Granada TV the first director whom I shadowed was Derek Bennett. He too had become caught up in this trend, and often began rehearsals with some kind of theatrical game. I soon learned, however, that the more seasoned actors, and particularly those who were orientated towards working on screen rather than the theatre, found all this an embarrassing waste of time. This was a relief because I felt much the same. This group work was not what screen acting was about; It was the internalised, often solitary moments that counted for most on screen. Once while, I was watching from the the multi-camera control room, production was halted while some technical problem was solved, but the actors remained in position, with cameras lined up on them, closeups on the monitors before me. As they sat doing nothing, thinking about — who knows what? — I was struck by how very intimate this experience was. Rarely in real life do we watch anyone with such close scrutiny except, perhaps, our closest loved-ones, and then only for moments.
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| John Wheatley and Tessa Peake-Jones in Fallen Hero |
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| Wanda Ventham and Del Henney in Fallen Hero |
Always under pressure of time in the run-up stages of a shoot I several times brushed off, or made light of, actors requests to meet for a chat. I have since come to realise that this was a bad mistake because the actor/director’s one-on-one is an essential step in the process.
This was strikingly brought home to me by an actor at the other end of the scale in experience. This was Ian Bannen, who had been nominated for an Academy Award and twice for a BAFTA. On Bookie Ian would just mark through the scenes in rehearsals for the benefit of cast and crew. He would then wait until he saw that I had a moment spare, take me aside, and, often gripping my forearm and holding his face only inches from mine, run through his lines for the scene, just leaving gaps when others spoke. He would play these at reduced volume, but, otherwise, giving clear indication of the performance he would give for the take. In effect, he was offering up a big close-up of the scene while at the same time putting me in the position of a close-up from which he could read the nuances of my immediate reactions.
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| Ian Bannen in Bookie |
In European cinema there has always been an accepted focus on fulfilling the director’s vision. Because our practice in Britain has largely been derived from the theatre and the text, it has taken a long while for this one-on-one communication between actor and director to become accepted as a necessary stage in the process.
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| Directing Bookie with Maurice Röeves foreground |
“… what's happened more and more in my process is that I've sought that experience of working with the director one-on-one before we've been in a more communal environment. In fact my whole process has changed quite considerably ... I can feel solid in a role, when I've had that one-on-one experience and asked all those questions and looked at everything. I demand it now. Not by 'being demanding' but just to say, 'I really need this time with you to ask you this, this and this.' (29)
Jude Law
The screen image is one of extreme intimacy; it rarely evokes or relies on the same collective experience as the theatre.
References:
29. Potter, Sally, Naked Cinema: Working with Actors, Faber and Faber, London, 2014
I wonder what you make of Mike Leigh's extended improvisation method, which seems to be at the opposite pole to yours?
ReplyDeletePerhaps, though I haven't really thought about this before, there are at least two things going on in theatrical rehearsals: (i) each actor thinking about his or her performance and its effect on an audience, and (ii) each actor thinking about how he or she will relate to the other actors, both within and without the play. The playing drama games approach, which you found mostly a waste of time, may relate more to (ii) than to (i).
And I suppose that in film/TV because of the fragmentation of the production process (i) becomes dominant over (ii) and hence your one-to-one work is also more important.
Your piece also reminded me of an incident in Penelope Fitzgerald's novel: 'At Freddie's' which is about child actors. One talented child rehearses, right at the end of the book, on his own over and over again, with no one to talk to about it.
Hi Richard, and thanks for contributing. I'll be talking quite a bit about Mike Leigh in a future blog. So, for now, let's move on to your other points. The thoughts of the actor during rehearsal ...
DeleteRehearsal must be seen as a process and what is appropriate in the early stages of familiarisation is not appropriate at the end. The actor may start simply imagining himself in the role and he may indeed go through the thought processes that you suggest. But, gradually the actor has to put this kind of thinking aside; he has to go from the dissociated mode of seeing himself in the role to an associated mode where he sees through the character's eyes, where he sees only what the character sees. The actor thinking about the effect he is having on the audience is just what you do not want. So the actor has to rely on the director to take that objective viewpoint. Similarly one does not want the actor thinking about how he is relating to the other characters but to act instinctively. Obviously the actor still has to remember to hit his marks, etc., but in a great performance this is carried out subconsciously.
The tableaux has always had a place in film but the close-up is the unique contribution of the medium. Even more so for TV. This is where the actor/ director face-to-face comes into it's own. You always start with a written script but the close-up demands so much more than delivery of the words. The words are like the tip of the iceberg and, as a director, one is always trying to find a way to get to the vastness beyond.
The solo child actor in the Penelope Fitzgerald novel is perhaps going through what all actors go through in the early stages of preparing for a role, but they then have to forsake their own scrutiny for that of the director, their imagined co-actors reactions for the real (perhaps unexpected) thing.
The article and subsequent discussion brought two things to my mind. 1. The actor Ken Hutchinson stated about his work on "The Sweeney" that the set was generally too busy to deal with character nuances: "I went to them and said, 'Look, my character here ...' - and they were gone!" Despite that approach - maybe when there were new directors at the helm, who then never got the call again - the series did have some good performances.
ReplyDelete2. In his book on "Magnum, p.i." the actor Larry Manetti states that quite often they had British directors working on the show, whose approach to acting was noticeably different - more effort went into the quality of the actors' performances.
Studying several episodes after reading this, I noticed there were indeed differences. The lead(s) could be good, when t(he)y just ran with the material, or t(he)y could be truly convincing or even mesmerizing, probably as a result of some "tweaking" by all involved.
I'm not sure whether Manetti's generalization is appropriate, but he does seem to have a point.
1/ Well ... the continual pressure of time on quick turnaround shows, like The Sweeney, was a constant and continual irritant. (I still have nightmares about it!) I often ended up feeling quite distraught that I did not have as much time as I would have liked during the shoot to spend with the actors; particularly so as I was well aware that some of them may have been preparing their performance for weeks. However, often actors wanted changes to the script to explain the reasons for their character reactions or dramatic changes, which were quite unnecessary in that kind of fast moving story. So sometimes you just had to cut them dead and tell them to get on with it.
Delete2/ In British TV the director always had control over both the artistic and technical presentation of the show. In other countries this was not always the case. I was once asked to be a "technical director" for a drama in France, which meant that I would control cameras, lighting, etc., but that the author would deal with the actors' staging and interpretation. This I refused to do. On the other hand I was asked to go to Germany precisely because I could fulfil both directorial roles. I was told that they had directors there that worked this way for the cinema, but not for TV. Also, of course, in Britain directors controlled the editing and post-production. When I worked for the US company, Warner, it was quite a shock to me to discover that they just expected me to deliver footage to be edited in another country to the one where I was continuously occupied with the shooting. They were not even interested in discussing my intention in designing the shots! So the British director would expect to play a more important role than many of those working in television in other countries. I have been told something similar to that which you report Larry Manetti said.