The Actor and the Target by Declan Donnellan

Author:Declan Donnellan [Donnellan, Declan]
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780010182
Publisher: Nick Hern

When the stakes go up we all start to ‘try’: we try to keep utterly still as the bear lumbers past the tent. But only Juliet should be ‘trying’, and not Irina. Irina will see through Juliet’s eyes a Romeo who needs to be told that the world, in its three entities, is in reality different from how he sees it. His perspective is simply wrong. To Juliet, her perspective is right . . . and crucial. And so she must change what Romeo sees; Juliet must try to change what Romeo believes.

All text changes belief

All text attempts to alter a perspective. Are there exceptions to this rule? No. Say someone says to you: ‘I look dreadful, don’t I?’ and you reply: ‘Yes, you’re right. Actually you do look dreadful’, you are bolstering their feeling of fatigue; for even to confirm is also to change.

Indeed, ‘I want to change what you believe’ is the foundation of all text, as we shall see later.

Irina needs to see a Romeo who continues to misunderstand the precise and specific difference between these three entities, and its overwhelming importance. And in order to make him understand she will do everything she can. She may point, gesture, flail, run, stand fixed to the spot, yell, whisper, crouch; still he doesn’t understand and she tries again to find the right gesture or intonation that will make Romeo grasp what he must. Juliet can ‘show’ as much as she likes to get what she wants. But Irina cannot show anything. This exercise can help to make this separation.

The observer

When Irina has lost herself in what Juliet is trying to do, when she starts to see these three things as essentially different and is indicating, signalling, demonstrating this difference to Romeo, then an observer should shout: ‘Text!’, whereupon, immediately and without preparing, Irina launches into Shakespeare’s script. It is important that her body continues to move and her eyes continue to see as when the stupid message bound and frustrated her. Irina’s body and imagination remember the ways she reacted in the message. The maddening inadequacy of the message has forced Irina to scour her imagination to convince her partner.

The first few times the exercise is played, Irina’s body may return to being over-controlled after the observer calls ‘Text’. Although she may have discovered wonderful things in the exercise, she may drop them all again in the panic of returning to the text. Repeating the exercise brings both frustration and relaxation. However, bit by bit, Irina will feel freer when she is forced to use her whole body, and everything outside her body, to make these distinctions vital for her uncomprehending partner. It is important that Irina never knows when ‘Text’ will be called, so that she cannot plan the transition from message to text.

The space

As we have seen, Juliet cannot do anything she likes. She is always constrained by the specific given circumstances. For example, Juliet probably cannot shout for fear of rousing the house. But this injunction can be built into the message sequence.

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