True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor Read Free Page B

of school.

FIND YOUR MARK
    Find your mark, look the other fellow in the eye
,
and tell the truth
.
    — JAMES CAGNEY
    W hy accept the second-rate in yourself or in others? Why laugh at the unfunny? Why sigh at the hackneyed? Why gasp at the predictable? Why do we do that? We do it because we need to laugh, to sigh, to gasp.
    And in the absence of the real stimulus we are capable of being manipulated and of manipulating ourselves, to take the form for the substance. To take cheap, degraded thrills for fear of having no thrills at all. Because, remember, it is the audience that goes to the theatre to exercise its emotion—not the actor, the audience. And when they go, having paid to be moved, they exercise their right to their money’s worth.
    What moves them?
    When we read the newspaper, we are most moved by the ordinary man or woman forced by circumstances to act in an extraordinary way. We are moved by heroism.We are not moved by the self-proclaimed emotions of the manipulative, or of the famous. We discount to the greatest extent these reports, as we fear, correctly, that they are only advertising themselves. Similarly, at the theatre or at the film, we are truly and only moved by the ordinary men or women (actors) doing their best under extraordinary circumstances, forced to act in an extraordinary way in order to achieve their goal. Just as when we read in the newspaper of the postman who rescues the invalid from the burning building. We are moved by the heroism of the ordinary person acting in an extraordinary way.
    We enjoy the foibles of the great, their follies, and their self-proclamations, as it titillates both our own grandiose folly and our feeling of self-importance—as we feel ourselves, rightly, superior to them. But this thrill is cheap and it is as nothing compared to our enjoyment of real heroism. Why? Because when we see real heroism, the heroism of the ordinary person forced by circumstances to act bravely, we identify with that man or woman and we say, “If they can do it, then perhaps I could, too.”
    The actor who mugs, who hams it up, who lays claim to emotions which are false, or who uses these supposed emotions to make a demand upon the audience, can extort an unhappy admiration as he asks the audience in admiring him to admire itself. But the actor who tells the truth simply because the circumstances require it is like the postman who saves the invalid, thebicycle messenger who rides in the Olympics, an ordinary man or woman behaving with address and direction in extraordinary circumstances. And, at this, we, the audience, exercise a higher faculty than that of getting our money’s worth: the faculty of admiration, of love for true nobility in human character. Now, I have spoken of “the situation.” You say, “The postman was placed in a situation; Hamlet was placed in a situation. I might act
truthfully
perhaps, but cannot one act truthfully and be out of adjustment with the situation? How can I be true to the situation?”
    Stanislavsky said the actor should ask, “What would I do in that situation?” His student Vakhtangov said the question was more aptly put, “What must I do to do what I would do in that situation?” But I say you should ask not “What would I do in that situation,” not “What must I do to do what I would do in that situation?” but you should discard the idea of “the situation” altogether.
    None of us has any idea whatever what we would do in such a situation—Hamlet’s or the postman’s. How can we know? Only a fool or a liar would claim to know what they would do when called upon to act with courage.
    Well, fine then, let’s disavow foreknowledge of our capacity for bravery, for grace under pressure; and rather than idolizing ourselves—which is what sense memory is all about, enthroning our power to feel and hoping that that includes the power to move—rather letus learn to submit, as it were, to stand the gaff, to face the audience, the casting