At times in the
movies, particularly in action movies, we encounter a form of acting
that would have been better as a form of puppetry. What if certain
actors in action movies had been treated as if they were puppets, and
had not been permitted to speak the lines but had been asked simply to
inhabit the costume and perform the action? If believable-sounding
actors were to dub the lines of certain actors in action movies, the
genre could conceivably enjoy a boost in credibility.
Surely this
dubbing device could have helped the credibility of several vampires
occupying the screen in Blade II, as it could likewise have
solved the incredibility of Blade II’s female lead, the beautiful
Leonor Varela. In the words of my action-movie viewing companion, who is
also my son, “She looked right for the role and she looked really good
in that black costume, but she had about twelve lines in the whole movie
and every one of them sounded like she was reading off of a cereal box.”
It doesn’t matter that Ms. Varela’s resume reports that she has played
Cleopatra in a TV mini-series, although it could not conceivably have
been Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. Until Ms. Varela (and every actor sharing
her line-reading handicap) learns to convey the sense of a script, she
and they would be better off as actor-puppets, having someone speak the
lines for them.
Assuming that
the sound of stilted speech is less common in legitimate theatre than in
the movies, I would hope never to feel obliged to advocate for dubbing
stage actors. Nevertheless, theatre history recalls the radical view of
visionary designer Gordon Craig (1872-1966) who proposed an
ubermarionette to replace the actor. The avowed purpose of Gordon
Craig’s super-puppet was to eliminate star actors who tended to
aggrandize themselves when they ought to have been creating a role in
support of a unified production. What Craig most wanted was a
non-hierarchical theatre, and if the ego of the actor insisted on
domination, well then, ideally for Craig, let the actor be gone! It
occurs to me that Craig’s proposal of an ubermarionette was an intense
way of asking the actor to subdue his ego.
I would like
the actor to develop a contemplative practice through which he could
directly experience the true nature of self, which is, of course,
insubstantial, indeed, illusory. How fitting that the actor, whose work
is to create myriad roles, would come to perceive his very self as a
creation: a person he has made up, a person capable of backing off and
letting the character emerge! Stanislavsky’s My Life in Art is
testament that not only can the actor transcend self-centeredness and
self-consciousness but that it is infinitely valuable for him to do so.
The actor can get over craving admiration and get beyond wooden
line-readings. The actor can work with his mind. He can quiet his mind.
He can cultivate a mind capable of absorption -- as the puppet master is
absorbed in the life of the puppet, as the master actor is absorbed in
the situation of the character. An irony of the profession of acting is
that it seems to be ego-driven; but the very best acting, the most
effective, moving and immortal acting, is surely born of the
nonappearance of ego.
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