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ESSAYS ON ACTING
I don't read many books about Acting but I like Essays. Essays seem to give a particular
point of view about acting which is easy to digest and absorb into the many facets of the
actors psyche to enable him to encompass it or not as he chooses in his armoury of hidden
skills which is usually referred to as 'The Craft'.
Complete books seem to me to be an all encompassing doctrine which are intended quite
often to be absorbed as a whole into the actors digestive system for complete consumption,
but unfortunately with me this approach seems to stick there more often than not and I seem
to psychologically jam up; a bit like a boa constrictor sleeping for several days while it digests
an entire bovine meal.
This is a particular symptom of the Hollywood acting teaching industry, where the 'cult'
teacher is the norm; where a particular teacher; often well intentioned; who is lucky enough
to have a student attend his classes for a period of time and then go on to major stardom
will write a book.
The book quickly becomes a bible; but usually refers mainly to a series of class exercises
which seem to me to only tamper with the externalities of performing; something to create
an impression and get a big role and will often hamper rather than assist the process of
convincing emotional expression in a role. Actors who come to Hollywood expect to get
Professional Roles; yea Demand to get work and this approach seems to pander to that
need.
Audiences of any culture are not stupid. They often know that they are being 'duped' but
enjoy it nevertheless; but when the genuine article is presented to them it shines like a
precious stone and they recognise it; like a diamond in the dirt and respond accordingly.
That's what actors should really strive for.
The difficulty with the Professional actor is that there is always financial pressures on him.
The pressure to pay the rent; to pay his union dues; pay for tuition, to show his sceptical
family that he can be financially independent and so on. And even when they have achieved
a level of success there is the pressure to stay there. Not to take lesser roles; to maintain
their 'current lifestyle' and so forth; it's endless; and emotionally stressful.
Ironically; the amateur actor doesn't have those difficulties and can quite easily take a
chance. The worst he can do is 'look foolish' in front of his friends; and often, to the surprise
of one and all, succeeds beyond his wildest imaginings. Of course there is little in the way of
'craft' there but who cares; It's not rocket science anyway.
So what to read? I have maybe read three books which meant anything to me.
The first is AN ACTOR PREPARES by Konstantin Stanislavski.
Well of course I hear you say; but let me tell you why. Yes he lead the way to 'the method'
but what is more important is that he was truly the first to explore the problems of emotional
expression for the actor; To actually make notes about his personal difficulties with roles and
set in motion a process to overcome these difficulties.
Stanislavski didn't completely succeed however; for instance he eventually lost faith in the
ability to control emotional memory and create it at will and in the context of the playwright's
words; but he made most of the great discoveries of the actor's 'craft'; without entirely
making the process of emotional creativity practical.
The second book is A DREAM OF PASSION by Lee Strasberg.
This book documents some of the major contributions made at the Group Theatre in America
in the 30's; but mainly it traces the incredible intellect of the author; Singularly the most
knowledgeable mind in relation to artistic matters to emerge in the 20th Century.
Above all Strasberg solved many of the problems that Stanislavski couldn't. He created
exercises in relaxation, concentration, imagination, sense memory and Emotional memory
that could be used in the practical expression of a role in a play night after night. He also
discovered the Song and Dance exercise, which with the will and control of
the Actor resolves the difficulties of the art of the simplicity of his true expression.
The book, I believe, has been heavily edited since his death and seems to be a bit disjointed
but stick with it. The title is also misleading. It's nothing to do with 'Dreams'.
The third is A RESPECT FOR ACTING by Uta Hagen.
This is like the 'handbook' you get with a new car. It's heavy on information and thin on
theory; but immensely readable and full of useful advice about how to include many of the
theories of Stanislavski/Strasberg into the actors day to day work; For example how to move
the 'fourth wall' to wherever it will be of best use to the Actor in the performing of his role;
and not just have it where the stage ends and the audience begins.
Here are also some useful passages from contributions about acting which make interesting
reading. I'll call it INTIMATE WITH STRANGERS because that is how it feels to me personally
when playing a role at it's most intense moments.
WHAT IS ACTING?
Acting is of all the arts the most purely imitative. In this respect it stands at the opposite pole
from music, with sculpture, painting, poetry, in intermediate positions. Music deals almost
entirely in what may be called sound-patterns, which have no prototypes in external nature.
Poetry, and indeed all literary art, leans in the same direction. Its matter may or may not be
imitative; its medium must be a more or less rhythmic succession of sounds, which does not
depend for its attractiveness on its resemblance to anything under the sun. Painting, in these
latter days, tends more and more to the condition of colour-music, the very vocabularies of
the two arts being, it appears, interchangeable. Even sculpture without entirely deserting its
function, may present a mere arabesque of curves and surfaces. But acting is imitative or it
is nothing. It may borrow from all the arts in turn - from the arts of speech, of song, of colour,
of form; but imitation is its differentia. Acting is imitation; when it ceases to be imitation it
ceases to be acting and becomes something else - oratory perhaps, perhaps ballet-dancing
or posturing. Everyone knows that the actor is not necessarily a copyist of nature; he may
sing, for example, or he may talk alexandrines; but he must always preserve a similarity in
dissimilarity; he must always imitate; though we may permit him to steep his imitation, so to
speak, in a more or less conventional atmosphere. “He plays naturally,” or, in other words,
“He imitates well,” is our highest formula of praise even for the operatic tenor or the French
tragedian, who may not deliver a single word or tone exactly as it would be uttered in real life.
HOW DO YOU DO IT?
Mr Bannister is the first low comedian on the stage. Let an author present him with a
humorous idea, whether it be of jollity, of ludicrous distress, or of grave indifference, whether
it be mock-heroic, burlesque, or mimicry, and he embodies it with an instantaneous felicity.
No actor enters so well into the spirit of his audience as well as his author, for he engages
your attention immediately by seeming to care nothing about you. The stage appears to be
his own room, of which the audience compose the fourth wall: if they clap him, he does not
stand still to enjoy their applause; he continues the action, if he cannot continue the dialogue;
and this is the surest way to continue their applause. The stage is always supposed to be an
actual room, or other scene, totally abstracted from an observant multitude, just like the room
in which I am now scribbling: an actor, therefore, who indulges himself every moment in
looking at the audience and acknowledging their approbation, is just as ridiculous as I should
be myself, if I were to look every moment at the reflection of my own smiles in my looking-
glass, or make a bow to the houses on the other side of the way.
How would Jack Bannister cope with ‘Sit-corn’ on television if he were alive today? Apart from
the obvious disadvantage of being over two hundred years old, he would have a studio
audience heard - but not seen - at home and be surrounded by cameras, microphones and
scores of technicians going about their various tasks while he tried to remain absorbed in the
scene and speak and listen to his fellow actors as though unobserved.
WHAT IS STYLE?
Style is the dirtiest word in the actor’s vocabulary. It belongs to critics, essayists and
historians, and fits nowhere into a creative process. It is serviceable for catalogues and
reference books. But in the act of creation, whether it be a baby or a role in a play, you
cannot predetermine style (shape, sound or form).
The many reasons behind most actors’ misunderstandings and inaccurate concern with style
have made for a chain reaction of centuries of bad acting and empty, tedious, or just plain
noisy theater. One reason is the actor’s mistrust in his own instrument or ability to bring his
own being into full play. Or he has an academic education which he is misusing. Or he has
no education and is self-consciously employing empty formulas. A deep-rooted reason
springs from the stylized productions we were taken to as children, which conditioned us to
acept the “manner” of performing certain plays. For some of us, the conditioning is so strong
that as we grow up, we neither question nor challenge these stenciled preconceptions so
that we actually come to believe that predetermined styles for presentation are a necessary
part-and-parcel of the play.
Remember that all of the labels you are familiar with (realistic, surrealistic, romantic, satirical,
farcical, tragicomic, naturalistic, classical, neo-classical, avant-garde, theater of the absurd,
theater of cruelty, etc.) were stuck onto a piece of work after it came into existence and not
before. The beat and sound of “rock and roll” was made before someone named it. Works
are categorized by observers, audiences and critics, but not the creators. Any concern
you have for the “style” will immediately place you on the wrong side of the footlights.
INNER TRUST
Don’t make “stage” decisions about when you will use what or for what purpose. Decisions
will come later.
When you consider the circumstances of time, weather, state of health and being, do
something about them. For instance, if it is supposed to be an overheated (or chilly) room,
work for a sense memory and see what happens as you explore and handle the objects in
the room. In other words, wherever you can do instead of talk, do so!
When I insist that you don’t tell each other what to do, I mean not only the obvious (“Look at
me on that line,” “Why don’t you walk around a little more?” “It would help if you were a little
more threatening,” etc.) I mean literally never tell, advise or ‘help” your partner with his role!
You immediately become a director instead of an actor. You also become his audience by
watching him and judging whether he’s more threatening to you, or walking around enough,
or looking at you on cue. You destroy all innocence of receiving.
If the information or the facts of the scene are unclear, you obviously must come to an
agreement about them. But don’t verbalize your wishes or your actions or your obstacles, or
theorize about them. You will immediately become self-conscious and destroy the
confrontation with your partner, and the possibility for true interaction!
I can make some funny examples, taken from my own experiences, for how to avoid “your
fault” talk. If the other character is supposed to stop you from leaving the room, but doesn’t
do it quickly enough - leave! The next time that actor will stop you on time. You never have
to say, “You’re supposed to stop me there,” or “You didn’t say your line fast enough.” It also
works in reverse. If the other actor rushes out and leaves you no room for your line, let him.
Don’t say, “You’re not giving me enough time for my line.” If the other actor is off
circumstances, instead of arguing, go along with him, and the scene will grind to a halt for
him. Use what the other actor does, make his signals alive by endowing them with what you
need and want.
THE PLAY AND THE ROLE
After conceiving and exploring the previous circumstances and everything tangible in the
place, put the first beat of the scene on its feet. If you have worked for several hours on the
place (for a five-minute scene) and have thoroughly examined the objects which surround
you, it won’t be time wasted. If you work several more hours on the first beat of the scene,
it won’t be too much time spent either. This first beat can be improvised, tried, tested and
“probed” for a long time to make certain the circumstances, the previous relationship, the objectives and obstacles are operative.
Not one piece of “blocking” will be necessary because your physical life will organically
evolve from all the things you have just tested. Not one line will have to be memorized or
fixed because the volition which will send you into the verbal actions will have sprung from
your character’s needs. When the first beat seems to be valid and the accompanying words
have run out, pick up the script and continue to the next beat. If the seemingly endless
work on that first beat has been solid, the next one should evolve and the work will become
less agonizing.
Avoid run-throughs at all costs. Save them for the last. And don’t finish a rehearsal just
because it “felt good” or was “comfortable.” If your inner and outer sources were vague,
your place and objects and objectives general, your action work will be fuzzy. So no matter
how good it “felt,” unless that one-in-a-million moment of inspiration blows your way the next
running through will be full of hot air.
When the scene is ready for studio presentation (after you have incorporated all the
elements necessary and executed them to the best of your ability), you may still have
problems which you don’t know how to solve. But that’s why you are testing your work for
your teacher and colleagues. If you present the scene for “applause” you are working
incorrectly. You will have been objectively editing and directing. The most valuable criticism
you get will involve the areas where you have failed in subjectivity. This occurs whenever
you have stalemated your innocence, where, whatever objective work you may have had to
do, failed to free your intuitions, failed to lead you to an acting score which could be executed
spontaneously with all the logic of your character in action. Whether or not your concept for
the material is ideal, whether or not you are upstaging or being upstaged, whether or not
the mechanical trappings of the scene function is all immaterial for scene study.
The same holds true if you are observing your other colleagues’ scene work and listening to
the criticism they are receiving. Avoid becoming an “audience.” Don’t judge, don’t approve or
disapprove. Concern yourself with their technical problems and identify with them. If the work
is successful, ask yourself why. If it is unsuccessful in certain areas, ask yourself why. See if
you can use the criticism the other actors receive to relate to your own problems, where
yours are similar. We are always most open-minded and understanding when our problems
are discussed in terms of someone else. Sometimes we learn most off the backs of others. Adulation or putting-down, approval or disapproval, is just opinion, bunkum and gossip.
MAKING DISCOVERIES
‘Let us give a new play,’ said the Director to Maria, as he came into the classroom today.
‘Here is the gist of it: your mother has lost her job and her income; she has nothing to sell to
pay for your tuition in dramatic school. In consequence you will be obliged to leave tomorrow.
But a friend has come to your rescue. She has no cash to lend you, so she has brought you
a brooch set in valuable stones. Her generous act has moved and excited you. Can you
accept such a sacrifice? You cannot make up your mind. You try to refuse. Your friend sticks
the pin into the curtain and walks out. You follow her into the corridor, where there is a long
scene of persuasion, refusal, tears, gratitude. In the end you accept, your friend leaves, and
you come back into the room to get the brooch. But - where is it? Can anyone have entered
and taken it? In a rooming house that would be altogether possible. A careful, nerve-racking
search ensues.
‘Go up on the stage. I shall stick the pin in a fold of this curtain and you are to find it.’ In a
moment he announced that he was ready.
Maria dashed onto the stage as if she had been chased. She ran to the edge of the
footlights and then back again, holding her head with both hands, and writhing with terror.
Then she came forward again, and then again went away, this time in the opposite direction.
Rushing out toward the front she seized the folds of the curtain and shook them desperately,
finally burying her head in them. This act she intended to represent looking for the brooch.
Not finding it, she turned quickly and dashed off the stage, alternately holding her head or
beating her breast, apparently to represent the general tragedy of the situation.
Those of us who were sitting in the orchestra could scarcely keep from laughing.
It was not long before Maria came running down to us in a most triumphant manner. Her eyes
shone, her cheeks flamed.
‘How do you feel?’ asked the Director.
‘Oh, just wonderful! I can’t tell you how wonderful. I’m so happy,’ she cried, hopping around
on her seat. ‘I feel just as if I had made my début... really at home on the stage.’
‘That’s fine,’ said he encouragingly, ‘but where is the brooch? Give it to me.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said she, ‘I forgot that.’
‘That is rather strange. You were looking hard for it, and you forgot it!’
We could scarcely look around before she was on the stage again, and was going through
the folds of the curtain.
‘Do not forget this one thing,’ said the Director warningly, ‘if the brooch is found you are
saved. You may continue to come to these classes. But if the pin is not found you will have
to leave the school.’
Immediately her face became intense. She glued her eyes on the curtain, and went over
every fold of the material from top to bottom, painstakingly, systematically. This time her
search was at a much slower pace, but we were all sure that she was not wasting a second
of her time and that she was sincerely excited, although she made no effort to seem so.
‘0h, where is it? Oh, I’ve lost it.’ This time the words were muttered in a low voice.
‘It isn’t there,’ she cried, with despair and consternation, when she had gone through every
fold.
Her face was all worry and sadness. She stood motionless, as if her thoughts were far away.
It was easy to feel how the loss of the pin had moved her. We watched, and held our breath.
Finally the Director spoke. ‘How do you feel now, after your second search?’ be asked.
‘How do feel I don’t know.’ Her whole manner was Ianguid, she shrugged her shoulders as
she tried for some answer, and unconsciously her eyes were still on the floor of the stage. ‘I
looked hard,’ she went on, after a moment.
‘That’s true. This time you really did look,’ said he. ‘But what did you do the first time?’
‘Oh, the first time I was excited, I suffered.’
‘Which feeling was more agreeable, the first, when you rushed about and tore up the curtain,
or the second, when you searched through it quietly?’
‘Why, of course the first time, when I was looking for the pin.’
‘No, do not try to make us believe that the first time you were looking for the pin,’ said he.
‘You did not even think of it. You merely sought to suffer, for the sake of suffering. But the
second time you really did look. We all saw it; we understood, we believed, because your
consternation and distraction actually existed.
‘Your first search was bad. The second was good.’ This verdict stunned her. ‘Oh,’ she said,
‘I nearly killed myself the first time.’
That doesn’t count,’ said he. ‘It only interfered with a real search. On the stage do not run for
the sake of running or suffer for the sake of suffering. Don’t act “in general”, for the sake of
action: always act with a purpose.’
VOICE AND BODY TRAINING
The basic means of the actor, which have traditionally served as the primary area of his
training, are voice and body gesture. The methods used to train these tools of the actor
derive from other fields, such as from the training of the singer’s voice and of some forms of
dance and pantomime. These contain many useful exercises for the strengthening of the
respective muscles of the voice and body. But the singers voice must retain its beauty and
its musical quality regardless of the circumstances involved, and the dancer’s body must
always wind up in a formally acceptable attitude; and their respective training is so designed.
Their needs are quite different from the needs of the actor. His voice must be flexible and
expressive of all situations and experiences. It must be able to deliver a “poor” voice or a
vulgar, rough, angry, or harsh voice. It must vary as much as the events to be created. His
attitudes must be those of the character - of a human who may be ill at ease, slovenly,
awkward, debilitated, or natural - giving no indication that it is being accomplished by a
skilled craftsman. The technical accomplishment in the singer and in the dancer may
represent a large part of what is appreciated in their performances; but in the actor, the
very fact of the accomplishment must remain hidden. Technical accomplishment should go
unnoticed by the audience.
TO CRY
Breathing facilitates crying, and people cry a lot in this work. They cry not only for the sake
of catharsis; they cry for joy, from having made connection with more of themselves.
Crying expresses the full range of human emotion from anguish to ecstasy. Even laughter is
a derivative of crying. If you watch someone cry, in pain or for joy, you see that the whole
person is convulsing rhythmically. It’s interesting, because crying, unlike other forms of
expression, almost always brings about the basic involuntary, pulsatory movements. Anger
generally does not. A person capable of expressing anger is not necessarily willing to cry. It’s
the person unwilling to cry who is unwilling to practice his own freedom. It’s the person who
won’t cry who does not fully share.
Anyone who has been around children has noticed that their every emotion is expressed by
some form of outcry. Their cry is the voice of their bodily freshness. And in this respect adults
are no different from children. As we become able to cry, our bodies become more capable
of expressing our selves. As we learn once again to cry, we grow more and more willing and
able to make joyful love.
We enter the world with a cry, and from that time on, our crying or our not-crying is part and
parcel of our forming. He who never cries out is never heard. The warrior’s roar, the lover’s
shout, the victim’s scream evoke human response and are heard by the gods as well.
The cry is the mother of all emotional expression: howls of anger, moans of sadness, sighs of
tenderness, bellows of hunger, shouts of joy. We who do not cry ensure that our rigidities
never soften, that we never become impressionable enough to form again.
SELF REGARD
I do not mind being greeted with “Hello, Stanislavsky,” or “Hi-ya Konstatin,” or receiving
anxious enquiries as to the state of my “super ‘objective” or whether “my units” are in order.
Only my friends dare do this and in any case it is not unflattering. What is not so satisfactory
is when people suppose that I would mean my own work to be an example of the Stanislavsky
method, or assume that I would condemn any style of work which is not based on this method.
For of course no single actor could possibly, on his own, give any effective demonstration
of the method. This can only be done by a group, and would take years to perfect. As far as
I know, the only English-speaking group which has attempted to absorb and put the method
into practice has been the Group Theatre of New York, who were seen here only in Golden
Boy. (Alas the Group Theatre is also now disbanded, and the better known members of it are
known here only through the screen: Luther Adler, Morris Carnovsky, Clifford Odets, John
Garfield.) But I have derived great stimulus from the book, and constant reference to the
high standards it demands can help check, to some extent, the varying quality of one’s work.
When I have directed plays I have tried to apply its first principles; that is to say I have tried
to dissuade actors from flying at their parts “like French falconers,” hoping to give a
performance at the first rehearsal, but instead to encourage them to find their way into a part
by degrees, and to try to make sure that they supply themselves with a good imaginative
foundation to the part.
For again and again we see actors who start off well but who can never give a full expression
of the character because they have not imagined it fully and actively and laid its foundations
well; or others who have given a good performance on the opening night, while their
imaginative powers were still at work, but who gradually lose life and conviction as the run
proceeds, repeating maybe each move and inflection with expert precision but finding that
they need the stimulus of a “good house” or “someone in front,” or a particular scene in
which they know they are especially effective to help them give their best. They are aware
that something has gone out of their performance but do not know it is. They know that
certain scenes become increasingly difficult to play and they do not know why. At worst, they
begin to indulge in private jokes which even the audience can see are not part of the play.
Even the actor will have recognized some if not all these symptoms in his own or other actors’
work. Nor are these flaws primarily caused by long runs. They are caused, quite simply, by
the actors losing sooner or later (some lose quite early) the “offered circumstances,” of
which their part, not to mention the plot, depend. Every actor knows how the impact of a first
night audience adjusts his sense of the play as a whole. Some less thorough actors are
never so good as on opening nights. The audience reactions supply such actors
with the impulses which should have come earlier. But although audiences vary, they do not
vary to the extent of supplying a fresh stimulus every night, and then such actors become
morbidly dependent on their audiences and cannot give their best except on rare, and
unpredictable occasions. Such actors need to go back to the beginning and start again,
trying to revive that imaginative faculty of believing in what they are doing. For that is
part of what Stanislavsky taught: belief. No half-belief. Not make-believe. Belief that does not
begin and end by an intellectual process, but which is so deep-rooted that it fires each
movement, echoes in each silence, and penetrates beyond “the threshold of the
subconscious,” where it becomes creative....
CAN ACTING BE TAUGHT?
Ladies and gentlemen, I feel very much flattered indeed to see before me such an assembly,
and more particularly as I have seen on the plan that it is mainly composed of my fellow
members and colleagues of our profession. I am glad that they have so great an interest in
questions that we are about today to discuss. I am not going to give you a lecture in any
sense, much less to keep you to hear me speak on every form of acting. Nobody could do
that in an hour, or an hour and a quarter. All of you know that perfectly well. All I have
to do today is to explain how acting can be taught and I hope you will agree with me before
the end, that this is the way acting should be taught. There was, you are aware, a few weeks
ago, a lively discussion with regard to the establishment of a permanent school. There was
one project that was put forward by members of our own profession. I say of our own
profession, because I know I am addressing actors and actresses, my colleagues and my
fellow students. That project was dropped, suspended, put aside because certain good
patrons of the drama had organized another project and pushed it forward with a great deal
of energy. During this discussion certain influential members of the public press-graciously
taking as they have always done, great interest in the art dramatic-in their editorials
pronounced their opinion that acting could not be taught; that it was not an art at all; that it
was a gift; that it was the effusion of enthusiasm; that, in point of fact, actors, like poets,
were born, not made. Now that appeared to me to place our art below that of a handicraft,
for no art becomes respectable or respected until its principles, its tenets, and its precepts
are recognized, methodised, and housed in a system. If it be said that we cannot teach a
man to be a genius, that we cannot teach him to be talented, that is simply a fact; but I ask
you in any art what great men, like, far example, Michelangelo, Landseer, Murillo, would have
existed if some kind of art had not preceded them by which they learned the art of, say mixing
colours, the principles of proportion, and the principles of perspective. Where would
Shakespeare have been if he had accidentally and unfortunately been born in some remote
region at the plough-tail, where there was not within his reach the drama school of
Stratford-on-Avon? He would have perished at the plow-tail and have been buried in a
furrow, and we should never have known it. You must absolutely have principles in all arts.
You cannot produce your own thoughts, your own feelings, unless you have same principles
as some guide, some ground. I am not an eloquent man. I am simply an actor, an author,
one who is in the habit of giving speeches to others, and supplying speeches for others,
rather than delivering speeches myself.
Well, this is, as l have said a large subject. I cannot do more in an hour than just skim the
surface. I can, as Newton said, but wander on the shore of the great ocean and pick up the
shells. I can but give you enough to make you understand what our art is, its philosophic
principles; that a good actor is not due to accident, that a man is not born to be an actor
unless he is trained.
Acting is not mere speech! It’s not taking the dialogue of the author and giving it artistically,
but sometimes not articulately. Acting is to perform, to be the part; to be it in your arms, your
legs; to be what you are acting, to be it all over, that is acting.
IDENTITY
A tribute to Tree from the playwright’s point of view is a duty of such delicacy that it is quite
impossible to be delicate about it at all: one must confess bluntly at the outset that Tree was
the despair of authors. His attitude towards a play was one of whole-hearted anxiety to solve
the problem of how to make it please and interest the audience.
Now this is the author’s business, not the actor’s. The function of the actor is to make the
audience imagine for the moment that real things are happening to real people. It is for the
author to make the result interesting. If he fails, the actor cannot save the play unless it is so
flimsy a thing that the actor can force upon it some figure of his own fancy and play the
author off the stage. This has been done successfully in several well known, though very
uncommon cases. Robert Macaire and Lord Dundreary were imposed by their actors on
plays which did not really contain them. Grimaldi’s clown was his own invention. These
figures died with their creators, though their ghosts still linger on the stage. Irving’s Shylock
was a creation which he thrust successfully upon Shakespeare’s play; indeed, all Irving’s
impersonations were changelings. His Hamlet and his Lear were to many people more
interesting than Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Lear; but the two pairs were hardly even related.
To the author, Irving was not an actor: he was either a rival or a collaborator who did all the
real work. Therefore, he was anathema to master authors, and a godsend to journeymen
authors, with the result that he had to confine himself to the works of dead authors who
could not interfere with him, and, very occasionally, live authors who were under his thumb
because they were unable to command production of their works in other quarters.
Into this tradition of creative acting came Tree as Irving’s rival and successor; and he also,
with his restless imagination, felt that he needed nothing from an author but a literary
scaffold on which to exhibit his own creations. He, too, turned to Shakespeare as to a forest
out of which such scaffolding could be hewn without remonstrance from the landlord, and to
foreign authors who could not interfere with him, their interests being in the hands of
adapters who could not stand up against his supremacy in his own theatre. As far as I could
discover, the notion that a play could succeed without any further help from the actor than a
simple impersonation of his part never occurred to Tree. The author, whether Shakespeare
or Shaw, was a lame dog to be helped over the stile by the ingenuity and inventiveness of
the actor-producer. How to add and subtract, to interpolate and prune, until an effective
result was arrived at, was the problem of production as he saw it. Of living authors of
eminence the two he came into personal contact with were Brieux and Henry Arthur Jones;
and I have reason to believe that their experience of him in no way contradicts my own. With
contemporary masters of the stage like Pinero and Carton, in whose works the stage
business is an integral part of the play, and the producer, when he is not the author in
person, is an executant and not an inventor, Tree had never worked; and when he at last
came upon the species in me, and found that, instead of having to discover how to make an
effective histrionic entertainment on the basis of such scraps of my dialogue as might prove
useful, he had only to fit himself into a jig-saw puzzle cut out by me, and just to act his part
as well as he could, he could neither grasp the situation nor resist the impersonal compulsion
of arrangements which he had not made, and was driven to accept only by the fact that they
were the only ones which would work. But to the very end they bewildered him; and he had
to go to the box office to assure himself that the omission of his customary care had not
produced disastrous results.
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