Directing Actors by Judith Weston

Author:Judith Weston [Weston, Judith]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780941188241
Publisher: Michael Wiese Productions
Published: 1996-01-25T05:00:00+00:00

IMAGINATION

Many actors are drawn to the profession because of an overdeveloped access to the imagination. For many of us (I must say “us,” of course, since I am one), imagined reality (i.e., the lives of characters in books and plays and movies) is as real as life itself, and more compelling. A sense of belief in an imagined reality gives the actor solitude in public, allows him to be absorbed in the created realm and reprieved from the duties of the social realm.

All of us, actors and nonactors alike, are sitting on a vast iceberg of submerged resources—memories, observations, feelings, impulses, images, associations, meanderings—that are not useful to our daily lives and have been filed away, to all practical intents and purposes no longer available to us. These are the resources of our story imaginations. Stella Adler included among the riches of the subconscious the resources of the “collective unconscious.”

When I use improvisation as a teaching technique, I see released the depth and range of my students’ unconscious resources—much vaster than what is available to our conscious minds. I’ve seen students instantly go believably to the controls of a spaceship or to the jungles of Vietnam, in an improv, when only moments earlier they had been miserably struggling to place themselves in a family kitchen, and believably say the lines of a character who is actually very much like them. I am a great believer in improv for engaging an actor’s imagination and sense of belief.

Also daydreaming. Sanford Meisner in his book On Acting advocates daydreaming as an actor’s resource. What does this mean? Sometimes nonactors tell me they are analytical and don’t have good imaginations and don’t understand what I mean by daydreaming the life of a character. It’s something most actors do automatically: the mere mention of an idea sends them off and running, building images and associations and backstory (both imaginative and personal) around it. They start having ideas for the character’s spine (“I think he’s in love with death!”). Or for ways to physicalize: “I’ll grow a mustache for this role!” “Can I knock over the chair on this line?”

Imagination is precious. It’s a bubble of belief. The bubble of belief is punctured by result direction. Actors are suggestible and kid-like. Directors are the parental figure. When the actor is told, for instance, that “at this point in the arc of the script, we need an ominous note,” it’s like being reminded of the adult world. It’s the director’s job to pay attention to what is needed “at this point in the arc of the script.” It’s the actor’s job to play.

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