Lately
at the theatre I have seen instances of actors, supposedly performing in the style of
realism, playing on a set, or playing in front of a set, but not using the set, not
working with the set pieces, not working with props, not contributing to the life of the
place, that is, not living within the circumstances of the play. This is a poverty
situation: actors merely walking and talking on stage. I would like to offer a passage
from my book Acting with Adler that describes the unmitigated value of establishing
the Given Circumstances.
In her teaching, Stella Adler described two sets of Given Circumstances,
the Larger and the Immediate. The larger set answers the question, "Where is the
play?" - meaning, the society and period in which the play is placed. The immediate
circumstances answer the question, "Where am I?" - meaning, the place and its
effects, including the stage partner, in which the current action is being done. . .
Having remarked that, "in life, everybody is a great actor because
they accept the ease of circumstances," Adler explained that on stage the
circumstances are not so accessible or generous as in life. To be comfortable on stage,
the actor creates a fleshed out version of the circumstances that are merely indicated in
the script. Then he grows very familiar with the circumstances he has created.
The immediate circumstances - including the place, the situation, and the
partner - exist to impel the actor to do something. The actor does something about what is
happening in the place where his character is (the situation) and the actor does something
about with whom his character is (the partner) - all according to who his character is. As
Adler said, "The action is found within the place." For example, when Adler
placed us in a train station, we found the action To Wait. Where the character is, and who
is with the character in that place, determines the action the actor/character takes.
Adler referred to the immediate circumstances as the now, which, she said,
the actor must want. If the actor wants an alternative time and place, he is not in the
play. If the actor prefers a train station from his own life or the train station of
yesterday's rehearsal or the train station of last night's performance, instead of the
train station logical to the now, the acting is an anachronism. Adler was totally against
putting one's own life on stage or attempting to repeat a performance. In her view, all
the actor could, should and must do was an action in specifically created circumstances
experienced for the first time. The now of the play is the actor’s focus and contains
all that exists.
Yet it is by the grace and power of the actor's intelligence and
imagination that the now exists on stage at all. From clues given in the script, the actor
generates the now. The actor brings to life the props and set pieces, creating attitudes
toward them, investing them with personalities of their own. The actor creates a world
within the immediate circumstances — a world that has climate, sounds, smells and
vibrations, an array of qualities logical to the place.
The immediate circumstances give the actor his action, affect the manner
of carrying it out, and determine whether he wins it or loses it. (Losing it means
terminating or abandoning the action prior to reaching its end.) Some factor (a telephone
call) may enter the circumstances to terminate the action, or the partner may successfully
resist the action, or the actor may win (reach the end of) the action. At such points, the
actor stops the action and a time of transition emerges. During a transition, the actor
thinks or verbalizes the transition or does some simple physical action logical to the
place. Whatever the actor does in the transition carries him over to the subsequent action
necessary for the subsequent now. As Adler explained, the action changes when and because
everything else has changed. She gave an example:
A man is at a party. The lights go out and he seeks to embrace someone in
the dark. The lights come on, revealing that the person in his arms is another man.
The man has lost his action because the circumstances have altered. There
is a transition. His next action arises from the new now. The play is played by adjusting
to the ebb and flow of one now to another now.
Adler defined acting as not talking but doing something in a place and
letting things happen. To the degree that the actor personalizes the immediate
circumstances - making himself familiar with everything there - he has the capacity to let
things happen in the place. Being at home in the place, the actor is available to life
arising within the place - to complications in the action, intrusions on the
circumstances, surprises, things happening for the first time. . .
Adler taught us to establish circumstances: to walk around in the place,
seeing things through our imagination, personalizing things, becoming familiar with the
place and relaxed. Familiarity with the circumstances leads to inspired acting. She said,
"Never do anything without the ability to cross and use the room." Accordingly,
she gave us the situation that the character is waking up in his bedroom and his simple
physical action is To Get Dressed. Instead of having all the character’s stuff at
hand, we arranged his materials so as to have to use the place. We decided that there were
no clean shirts in the drawer, yesterday's shirt was stuffed in a laundry bag hanging over
on the door handle, and the character’s favorite socks were under the covers. We
filtered the immediate circumstances through our imagination, so as to use the place in a
personal way. Personalizing the circumstances helps the actor achieve the following:
Want to reach the end of his action.
Reveal something about the character.
Live in a place where things happen.
Take the "curse" (weight of importance) off the words.
Release to a deeper level of talent . .
Adler passed on to us, her students, a lesson she had absorbed from
Stanislavsky, her teacher:
Stanislavsky said, "If you don't physicalize when you have to do your
action, if you don't physically use the circumstances to feed you, the theatre will go
down." He would give me three physical things to do in a place. When I did them, I
immediately realized how smart he was. I realized that the play [the situation in a place]
has to be physicalized enough by the actor to let something come through him. But if you
have no play [no imagined circumstances], even if you are relaxed, nothing comes through
you. You must never be on stage without a situation, an imaginative situation. You must
not be on stage in your situation [from your own life]. It must be imaginative! Otherwise,
it is not theatre.
Above all, before talking, before acting, the actor needs to accustom
himself to the situation of the play. This ability to grow accustomed to the place, to be
able to live in the situation of the play, may be missing on stage today. |
