a poor player

Dunkirk NY – Last night we were at the park for our first rehearsal on stage. The rehearsal ended a little early for me and my partner-in-comedy Gerry (playing Trinculo), so we decided to head off to a local watering hole and catch the last few innings of the Yankees-Red Sox game before heading home. Delaware Park is located just north of the “Elmwood Strip” in Buffalo, which is one of three locations in the city which cater to a younger crowd. Gerry and I were fortunate to be able to grab two stools at the very end of the bar in front of the TV which had the ballgame on. Conversation was perforce limited due to the general loud volume of the music and the crowd, but our talk did turn to why the both of us continue to act. Given that the atmosphere was not conducive to any sort of lengthy philosophical response, my in-a-nutshell response was, “It’s the only thing I know how to do.”

For the past 10 days or so I had been pondering this question posed by Leonard Jacobs over at the Clyde Fitch Report:

There is also a deeper question here, and it’s one that Back Stage never really got into sufficiently, I think, during all my years there: Why do actors become actors? Or, better put, Why should actors become actors? Is it to entertain or is it really more for validation — that hunger for acclaim?

I’ve also been reading the various postings and discussions prompted by Isaac’s reporting from the TCG Conference. All of this had gotten me to the point of asking myself where am I headed artistically. It’s taken quite some time to filter all the various issues though my brain, but I think I’m ready to begin to take a stab at some things and work it all through in a series of posts. My working space in my house is far quieter than a bar, and more conducive to philosophical ramblings.

Here is the nexus of the whole issue for me: I am of sufficient age that I find myself caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, I can’t deny that, theatrically, I am “old school” in the sense that my training and artistic background harkens back to the American theatre of the 30s-60s. I came of age theatrically in the late 60s/early 70s, just as major changes were taking place in the commercial and regional theatre world. On the other hand, I recognize that the kind of theatre that was my primary influence is rapidly crumbling under the weight of enormous cultural and economic forces. I’m not the kind of person who likes to look backwards and pine for the “glory days,” but at the same time I don’t see a theatrical movement or “next wave” (to borrow a term from Toffler) which interests me. For a time I thought technology might provide a new form of theatre, but I think theatre, as an art form, simply cannot keep up with the speed of change which technology demands. So, where does an actor with mid-20th century theatrical sensibilities go when he’s witnessing the demise of just about everything he came to know, respect and enjoy?

Why did I become an actor? That’s an essential question to begin this series of posts. For me, though, the question has to be refined just a bit – why did I become an actor/educator? In my mind, I cannot separate the two. Of all the things I like to do most in life, teaching acting is number one, and acting is number two. So let’s set out to try and give some sort of answer.

There are several reasons why I became an actor, and in no particular order of importance they are:

1. I discovered that, as an actor, I had the opportunity and ability to make people feel emotion. I also discovered that acting allowed me to feel things and release those feelings in a way that no other form of human communication allowed. This feeling of emotion is key, because acting seemed to be the best way to connect intellecutal ideas with emotional existence. I came to understand that acting was, for me, the best means possible for connecting the mind, the body, the emotions and the soul in one human form of expression. As an actor I had the ability to give ideas life, a living, breathing, emotional existence, as opposed to letting them exist in a dry intellectual climate.
2. I like the self-revelatory aspect of acting. When I act, I know that in some measure I am revealing to the audience aspects about my own personality while disguised as a character. You can learn a lot about me just by watching me act. This concept that my own life and experience constitutes the raw material for my artwork is exciting to me.
3. I like community and ensemble. I enjoy being a part of something larger than myself. I relish doing my part to make that happen. I enjoy the camaraderie. I like the fact that I’m “in” on a special argot that resonates in theatres around the world. I’m more fond of acting than directing because I prefer to be a spoke in the wheel rather than the hub. I love the challenge of having a collection of artists strive to create a single production wherein the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Theatre is, to me, the only art form where so many diverse artists – even from other disciplines like music, dance and visual arts – can come together to create that one synergistic artistic event.
4. I like tradition and ritual. For me, this notion gives my craft and my art its truest and most lasting meaning. I’ve always wanted as a person to be able to stand in the line of something which continued through time, something greater than myself, and I saw that acting allowed me to take my place, however humble, in a line of tradition dating all the way back to Greek civilization. When I act, and particularly when I act in the so-called classics, I am fully cognizant of the reality that I am continuing an unbroken artistic tradition that is as old as western civilization. The three most influential human institutions in my life have been the theatre, the university, and the Catholic Church. They are, coincidentally, the three oldest human institutions in western culture, and each one of them has a tradition and history which is rich in tradition, cultural achievement, and controversy. While I have abandoned the Catholic Church institutionally, its spiritual traditions and mythology remain a part of my makeup. Each institution appeals to me as an actor: the ritualistic performance of the Catholic Mass (and most especially the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass), the university lecture as storytelling and performance, and of course acting in the theatre itself. My make-up as an actor has aspects of all these institutions woven into it. You can also add baseball, the oldest sport played in this country, into the mix as well – but that’s for another post.
5. I’ve always viewed theatre as a way to “change the world.” I suspect that in this matter I have been naïve for most of my life, but it was a reason I became an actor. I always felt that theatre would be, for me, a way to get people to change themselves, which I’ve always maintained is the only way to “change the world.” Perhaps this was not such an unreasonable view 30 years ago, but experience has demonstrated to me that changing the world is probably not a reachable goal. One of my formative experiences in theatre was going to see Man of LaMancha at 14 and hearing “Impossible Dream” sung by Richard Kiley, standing on stage, absolutely stock still, leaning on his lance, looking heavenward. I was mezmerized. That quixotic atmosphere which acting promised but never quite delivered was a reason I became an actor.
6. Although this is phrased in the negative, I think it’s important for me to state it: I did not become an actor to entertain or to achieve acclaim. If you take a look at all the other reasons above, and factor in the fact that I came of age in the late 60s/early 70s as a war resister, conscientious objector, tax resister and Dorothy Day Catholic Worker/liberation theology Catholic, I think it’s honest of me to say that entertaining people or becoming famous was not any sort of motivation. Even the movies and plays of the day had more art and social awareness than entertainment value in them, and if one could become famous doing that kind of work, it was merely, in my view, a side aspect. Chinatown, Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, Taxi Driver, To Kill A Mockingbird, Lilies of the Field, In The Heat of the Night, Network and so many others had so much to say about the culture that if one could achieve fame doing that, then it was for the right reasons. The same could be said about plays from authors such as Miller, Albee, Williams, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Sartre, Havel, Fugard and Wilson. Besides, I knew fairly early on I didn’t have that kind of talent, so I chose education as a main path in the hopes of someday inspiring someone who did have that kind of talent to carry on that tradition. I always thought that if the day came when I got my 15 minutes of fame, it would be because of who I had taught, not who I was.

When you examine that list, you realize a couple of things. One, it’s deeply personal. Two, it conflicts with the nature of how theatre gets done in today’s cultural and economic climate. It’s decidedly “old school.” Three, it reflects values which are rapidly disappearing in modern culture. In this age of mass media, mass culture, post-modernism, identity culture and politics, and individualism, the reasons I’ve listed for wanting to be an actor simply run counter to the times. The rock and the hard place seem to be closing in on me. Where my escape lies will be the continuing theme moving forward to the next post.

Side note – in pondering Leonard’s question before I began to write this post, I thought I would take a tour around the blogosphere just to see if there were other actors who might have some insight into the question. In doing that, I came to the rather stunning realization that of all the bloggers I read on a regular basis,  I’m the only actor/acting teacher that I am aware of who blogs about the art of acting (as opposed to the business of acting, for which I have seen a number of actor bloggers. But the internet, being what it is, will produce a correction to this observation, I have no doubt). Most bloggers are either playwrights, directors, marketers, or some combination of all three, and the focus tends to be on the business and issues of theatre as opposed to the art of theatre. I don’t really know what that means other than that actors must have very little to say about their art, are too busy looking for work, or believe no one will hear them when they talk. Tradition has it that the actor is the center of all theatrical activity. I suppose that tradition is just as old school as the rest.  -twl