The Great Acting Blog: "Poetic Acting"

Poetic acting is expressive but not expository, it is intense but with a sense of ease, it's minimal, but most importantly, it seeks to express something in-the-moment, but which cannot always be explained away. On a practical level, the actor commits to doing the actions of the scene, and does not worry about the outcomes. This approach can lead to facialexpressions, small movements, bits of emotion, which the actor may not even realise he was doing until after he has seen his performance on screen (he may never realise them on stage). These unconscious, unfettered, unplanned expressions are the poetry of acting. Poetic acting is very different to expository acting, or “doing a character”, whereby the actor consciously and rationally designs his performance, explaining the character with thought-out detail, and detail which may not even be germane to the scene at hand. Designing a performance is not necessarily the same as including those things which are essential to creating the illusion of character – for example; if one were to play a hunchback, a prosthetic hunch may be employed.

 

Poetic acting gives expression to human experience which cannot be dealt with in any other way - for example; if, in the scene, the actor tries to conceal a difficult emotion (perhaps has to tell a lie in the scene), the repressed energy may express itself, for example, as a displacement, such as the actor handling an object or adjusting an item of his clothing. These small actions may not necessarily “mean” something in terms of the literal plot of the scene, but are the symptom of some deeper movement within the actor. These wonderful, subtle expressions may never happen for the by-design actor, because he is controlling everything to the extent that he doesn't allow deeper movements to occur within himself, and so there is no poetic spin-off during his performance.

The full implications of a poetic performance may not be fully understood by an audience on an immediate, conscious level, but the performance does create a sense of harmony (even when the action is tumultuous). That's why the poetic actor produces richer results than the by-design actor. The by-design actor may produce a performance which is more immediately impressive, may at first appear to be “natural”, but it is usually generalised and superficial, and the effect dissipates fairly quickly, whereas the poetic actor's performance may at first give the impression that nothing is really happening, and his effect may creep up on the audience almost imperceptibly, but all of those organically created moments of his performance add-up to something deeply affecting, they leave us unsure, they hang in our minds long after the action has finished,lodging themselves there (even if it is only certain moments of the performance which do this). 

I intend to use the poetic form of acting for my feature film, Noirish Project, and I do not mean my own perfromance only, but the performances of all the actors in the film. The camera-work and editing will be pared back, and the script is flat and minimal, with scenes where the characters are hanging around and waiting. It is out of these seemingly empty situations that I hope this poetic form of acting will emerge to create wonderful, unplanned expressions, with the minimalism of the film giving them centre stage.

The Great Acting Blog: "Poetic Acting"

Poetic acting is expressive but not expository, it is intense but with a sense of ease, it's minimal, but most importantly, it seeks to express something in-the-moment, but which cannot always be explained away. On a practical level, the actor commits to doing the actions of the scene, and does not worry about the outcomes. This approach can lead to facial expressions, small movements, bits of emotion, which the actor may not even realise he was doing until after he has seen his performance on screen (he may never realise them on stage). These unconscious, unfettered, unplanned expressions are the poetry of acting. Poetic acting is very different to expository acting, or “doing a character”, whereby the actor consciously and rationally designs his performance, explaining the character with thought-out detail, and detail which may not even be germane to the scene at hand. Designing a performance is not necessarily the same as including those things which are essential to creating the illusion of character – for example; if one were to play a hunchback, a prosthetic hunch may be employed.

Poetic acting gives expression to human experience which cannot be dealt with in any other way - for example; if, in the scene, the actor tries to conceal a difficult emotion (perhaps has to tell a lie in the scene), the repressed energy may express itself, for example, as a displacement, such as the actor handling an object or adjusting an item of his clothing. These small actions may not necessarily “mean” something in terms the literal plot of the scene, but are the symptom of some deeper movement within the actor. The wonderful, subtle expressions may never happen for the by-design actor, because is controlling everything to the extent that he doesn't allow deeper movements to occur within himself, and so there is no poetic spin-off during his performance.

The full implications of a poetic performance may not be fully understood by an audience on an immediate, conscious level, but the performance does create a sense of harmony (even when the action is tumultuous). That's why the poetic actor produces richer results than the by-design actor. The by-design actor may produce a performance which is more immediately impressive, may at first appear to be “natural”, but it is usually generalised and superficial, and the effect dissipates fairly quickly, whereas the poetic actor's performance may at first give the impression that nothing is really happening, and his effect may creep up on the audience almost imperceptibly, but all of those organically created moments of his performance add-up to something deeply affecting, they leave us unsure, they hang in our minds long after the action has finished, lodging themselves there (even if it is only certain moments of the performance which do this). 

I intend to use the poetic form of acting for my feature film, Noirish Project, and I do not mean my own perfromance only, but the performances of all the actors in the film. The camera-work and editing will be pared back, and the script is flat and minimal, with scenes where the characters are hanging around and waiting. It is out of these seemingly empty situations that I hope this poetic form of acting will emerge to create wonderful, unplanned expressions, with the minimalism of the film giving them centre stage.

 

The Face Of Another: "Laughton"

The Great Acting Blog: "Actors Need To Reclaim Acting - Lessons From EA Dupont's Piccadilly"

 

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EA Dupont's silent era masterpiece, Piccadilly, is set in a fashionable London nightclub, and is about an exotic dancer, played by Anna May Wong, whose routines lead her to become the toast of Jazz-Age London. She also becomes the erotic obssesion of the her boss Valentine Wilmot (played by Jameson Thomas), which in turn, pushes the nose of his former lover and star dancer, Mabel Greenfield (Gilda Gray), out of joint, all of which sets off a chain of events leading to tragedy. Piccadilly features some simply breathtaking cinematography, which your eyes will hardly believe, and if anyone is any doubt about the credentials of early British cinema, then they need not look any further than Dupont's film. Joyously, we are also treated to an early Charles Laughton performance, credited as “nightclub diner”, where he complains about a dirty plate. However, it was by the acting generally, that I was piqued – I would not be exaggerating to say that I have simply never seen so many masterful performances all in the same film.

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I could single out the sheer intensity of King Hou Chang, but that would be unfair to the provocative and piquant Anna May Wong, and to the grace and technical execellence of Thomas and Gray. The acting in this film is beautiful. The performances are made up of small moments possessed with a perfectly distilled meaning, serving a very precise purpose, and executed with a consummate control. In some respects, a silent film gives us a clearer view to the actor's work, similar to when watching a subtitled foreign film, because we don't have potential distraction of the sound of what the actors are saying, and which is particularly distracting when the actor speaks the lines falsly. Certainly in Piccadilly, some of the power of the performances would have been lost if we had been able to hear what the actors were saying – it was just such a rich experience observing their movements and facial expressions. As with all great performances, we are treated to witnessing the truth of the actor's personality, and that was no different in this film, where the honesty and lack of self-consciousness meant that the actors revealed themselves, made themselves vulnerable, which, in turn, rendered the film's love triangle truly heartbreaking – a human being defending their position with everything they've got, is indeed a powerful sight. In the end, the performances in Piccadilly attain the highest point in acting; they show us that the human face can be poetic.

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All of which left me confused. Surely the acting in silent cinema was no match for our all-dominant contemporary “naturalism”? Aren't pre-mid 20th century actors supposed to be false, “theatrical”, mechanical? And yet, Piccadilly, and other films from that era, have proved to be such rich viewing experiences, especially when compared to today's work, so much of which seems trivial, cynical, superficial and self-serving (I've found this to be even more the case in theatre). It's generally thought that acting changed around the middle of the last century, that what had gone on before that period was no longer acceptable - a new, apparently idealistic new generation of teachers and directors, ushered in a new modern era of “realism”. It's hard to see how acting has changed in that period, but what is certainly true is that actors have become completely dominated by directors, and subservient to teachers, even to the extent that the actor himself is marginalised within his own performance (eg – directors or teachers getting the acclaim for great work done by an actor). More broadly speaking, the stature of actors has diminished, with less of them now in control of companies, or even being perceived of as capable of running companies (would the establishment of an institution such as the National Theatre be put in an actors hands today?). Donald Wolfitt set up his own touring company because nobody would give him a chance to play Hamlet, and in early cinema, there was no director: the cinematographer took are of the pictures, and the actors took care of the acting. Could it be then, that there never was anything wrong with the way acting was done, but that it was attacked by directors and teachers in order to create the space for them to have careers, ie – directors and teachers shove actors off their own work, then take responsibility for it, and, voila!

 

Masterpieces like Piccadilly, show us that there never was anything wrong with the way acting was done, infact, there is strong evidence to suggest that perfromances were (and are) generally stronger when the actor left alone to get on with his work, in the best way he sees fit, taking responsibility for all aspects of it.

The Great Acting Blog: "A Beautiful Object"

 

“I get impatient when I hear dialogue that's just too natural. I write what people would really say and then I artificialize just enough so it becomes a beautiful object”. - Hal Hartley

For anyone not familiar with Hartley's work, the dialogue is very distinctive, it's precise and rhythmical (the clip above will give you a taster), critic Jason Wood even described the characters as speaking in inverted commas. Hartley doesn't disguise the fact that what we hear is scripted dialogue. An attempt to create “naturalistic” dialogue, is an attempt to convince the viewer that what he is hearing is real – which of course it isn't.

“Naturalistic” acting then, is a style which the actor applies to his performance in order to convince the viewer that what he is doing is not acting but real, and hopefully, the viewer will buy into the fiction of the film as a result. However,  whether a film seems real or not, is irrelevant - The Fox And The Hound is no more nor less real than Casablanca - what counts is whether the film is true or false.  When the work is true, the viewer will accept that a talking fox and a talking dog can be friends, and the viewer will accept that Humphrey Bogart is in love with Ingrid Bergman – the viewer uses his own imagination. In the theatre, it is more obvious: the actor stands on a bare stage, and, speaking in verse, informs the audience that he is stood in a castle, and the audience will create the castle for themselves, in their own minds.

Artificial means consciously creating something which serves a specific function within the overall piece, creating it with a specific intention, which gives it a specific meaning – this is very different from adding extraneous details to masque a lie. And so with acting; having a specific intention for the scene, for the performance, organises it, gives it definition, rhythm and force. Talking of Casablanca, a quick comparison of American acting from that era, where nothing was included which wasn't serving the film, with the “naturalistic” performances of contemporary American acting, reveals how trivial and tight-fisted the vast majority of modern actors are. An attempt to naturalise our performance, is the attempt to remove from it all beauty, as if ashamed, but the actor needn't be ashamed: cut out the feeble-minded irrelevance, find an intention and stick to it with an iron will.

I leave you with that maestro of acting, Charles Laughton:

“Great acting is like painting. In the great masters of fine art one can see and recognise the small gesture of a finger, the turn of a head, the vitriolic stare, the glazed eye, the pompous mouth, the back bending under a fearful load. In every swerve and stroke of a painter's brush, there is an ambundance of life. Great artists reveal the god in man; every character an actor plays must be this sort of creation. Not imitation – that is mere caricature – and any fool can be a mimic. But creation is a secret. The better – the truer – the creation, the more it will resemble a great painter's immortal work.”

 

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The Great Acting Blog: "A True Actor-Director Collaboration - Boredom Of The Disgust Part 3"

 

Boredom Of The Disgust is a film made up of a series of scenes but there is no through-action – they are linked because each of them is about cinema itself. The film has documentary scenes (as discussed in Part 1), and it has fiction scenes (including a film noir scene about a man trying to escape from some people he owes money to, and the imaginary argument discussed in the last blog), so it was only natural that the film should culminate in a scene that was both fiction and documentary.

Set in the screening room of The Guesthouse in Cork, I was to play an affable, if eccentric, film lover, who had built a cinema with his own hands, in order to screen the films he loved, and here was opening night, and he was explaining his intentions for the cinema. The cinema did not exist of course, not in the sense that I was talking about it in any case – at one point, I introduced Le Samourai as the next film of the evening to the audience, but there was no audience, and I had no intention of screening Le Samourai.  So much for the fiction then. During the improvisation, Rashidi would interject and ask me to speak about my thoughts on cinema generally, about my favourite filmmakers, and what kind of films I loved. Essentially, I gave truthful answers (ie – my actual thoughts rather than made up ones for the character) - I spoke about my penchant for discovering obscure masterpieces, and my preference for personal, idiosyncratic cinema (or auteur cinema) – watching individualist cinema, is, for me, like entering a secret garden. I also spoke about an idea which is important to me: that the richest way a film can be experienced is at the movie theatre, infront of a massive screen (and if you're skeptical about that; watch a film at home on DVD firstly, then go to the theatre to watch the same film). For this whole scene, I was really just riffing – letting ideas form in my mind, in response to the few notes I had been given - it was “playing” in the truest sense. However, I put on a slightly upper class voice, and behaved in a rather stiff manner, along with displaying a certain affability – these are all externals which I applied in order to help create the illusion of character (another example of an external, would be a limp). Of course, this kind of characterization makes perfect sense for the fictional parts of the scene, but is strange when you think I maintained this character while I was explaining my actual own ideas. If the actor is the truth at the heart of the filmmakers artifice, then we can also say he is the truth at the heart of the artifice of characterization – now I think of Charles Laughton in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, where he uses externals masterfully for sure, but it is undeniably the force of Laughton's spirit underneath

 the prosthetics and the make-up, which truly moves us.

 It has been a joy to be given a platform to expound my ideas on acting, and then to put those ideas into action in the same film – and it is a testament to Rashidi's love and respect for acting, that he decided to give the craft such focus within the film. Further, as the role of actors is diminishing all the time, Rashidi is to be commended for striving to give responsibility back to the actor, and, by offering challenging work, offers the opportunity to unlock his true creative potential, and all this takes place within his own personal, cinematic aesthetic. The actor, for his part, must not waste the opportunity, but rise to the challenge, and stretch every sinew in service of the film.

Boredom Of The Disgust & Monotony Of The Tediousness, is the fruit of a true actor-director collaboration.

 

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