Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Five Minutes of Imagination

"The actor relies utterly on the senses; they are the first stage in our communication with the world.  The IMAGINATION is the second." -Declan Donnellan, The Actor and the Target

When I started to working on this post I found my brain going blank.  I was at a loss of words--to discuss imagination!  Imagine THAT!  How is that even possible?  By definition, my imagination should inspire an ENDLESS amount of possibilities of word and thought!  But there I was finding it very difficult to IMAGINE where to START talking about the actor's most useful tool.  I mean, its so much part of who we are that we often overlook just how present it is IN our daily lives--not to mention the VITAL role it plays in the creation of art and acting.  And that thought inspired a revelation.  I realized that I wasn't actually drawing a blank.  My imagination wasn't being strangled or shut down.  My imagination was in fact RUNNING WILD!  But where it was running was the disturbing part.  I was so concerned with what NOT to say about imagination that my focus turned to insecure worries about crafting the "prefect" post.  As a result I sent my imagination off after failure.  There is no such thing as perfection and all I was really doing was allow my imagination to run amuck about useless fears.  But never the less my imagination WAS quite active. 

Our imaginations are CONSTANTLY at work.  They are alive and running all over the place every second of our lives.  I've always been taught that my imagination is like a muscle and if not exercised then it will grow dim and atrophy--and while this IS true I think an important element is missing.  Here was the revelation.  Your imagination IS like a muscle but I do not think it is just ONE muscle.  I believe it is made up of groups much like the muscles that work together to rotate, flex, and extend your arms, legs, or whole body.  One set pulls one direction.  Another set pulls a different direction.  With your imagination the muscles fall into two categories--creative and destructive.  And over using one WILL cause the other to weaken and waste away.  You may not notice until it is too late and your destructive imagination has grown so strong that it is the only one doing the heavy lifting.  In real life it is useful to cultivate a healthy dose of destructive imagination.  It keeps you safe and instigates precaution.  However, as an artist this muscle can cripple and there's the rub!  My writer's block was a perfect example of what we often DO with our imagination--we let it run to the dark side.  Our creation is over before it ever began.  We feel like the tap is closed and don't understand why we can't open the flood gates but in reality the flood gates ARE open and we are drowning in imaginary fear and insecurity!

As children our imaginations run wild with fantasies.  We conjure imaginary friends, we concoct elaborate and detailed stories of the adventures, we travel with a team of experts through the caverns of our closets, under our beds, and though the woods.  We use our imaginations to compensate and find creative solutions for all sorts of challenges we face in our early development.  And as mentioned above we also use our imaginations to stifle and halt our development with fear and uncertainty.  But for the most part the spirit of our imaginations are challenged and encouraged to thrive positively.  If you think about it our imagination is the driving force behind mankind's evolution and development throughout the history of time.  It makes me wonder if our imagination should be considered instinctual.  Because where would we be as a species if we never never thought two simple words--WHAT IF?

As an actor, your imagination is your greatest ally, your strongest asset, and you most useful tool.  Your imagination is what opens the door into every creative universe that you embark to re-create.  It is the link between your personal experience and the character's reality.  Your imagination is how you are able to experience ALL the experiences you HAVEN'T experienced and MORE.  It is the sights, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, and the touches of your creation.

In Stanislavsky's system he perfected the use of that marvelous phrase the "Magic If."  It was such a popular concept that it is used throughout most, it not all, modern schools of actor training.  You see it in the teachings of Meisner, Adler, Hagen, and Strasberg to name a few.  I believe the Magic If is so effective because its universal appeal to a core element of humanity.  Everyone thinks "what if" it was me?  "What if" (blank) were to happen?  Stanislavsky was just one of the first to articulate what artists do naturally.  However, what is brilliant about the Magic If is the use of our natural creative process as the corner stone in the foundation for the actor's technique.  Stanislavsky says it perfectly--the IF "works as a lever to lift us out of the world of actuality into the realm of imagination."

Still the realm of the imagination must be fed.  I MUST be encouraged to grow and be attended to on a continual base.  As actors we have an obligation to cultivate our creative imaginations and dissuade our destructive ones.  So it only makes sense that this is done with care.  Force will only produce destructive outcomes and strengthen the negative images.  So what if we think of our imaginations as something wild, like a wild pup?  That pup sees us as a threat.  There is uncertainty.  So we slowly coax her out of her lair.  We offer her treats.  We give her affection. We gain her trust.  Our imaginations are not that dissimilar.  The more confidence we build in our ability to coexist with this wild animal the stronger our bond will be.  Your creative imagination will eventually be like a loyal friend who will always be at your side.   

When I was in graduate school, Earle Gister was the mentor who introduced me to the concept of an actor's imagination as a muscle that must be exercised EVERY day.  He would ask us to dedicate at least five minutes each day to an imagination exercise.  This is a small commitment to make but the rewards are beyond valuable.  When you play with your imagination it's sometimes easier to start as an observer.  You don't have to create an elaborate VISION on the spot.  You just need to SEE to start with.  Maybe you are on a dirt road?  Maybe there is a huge oak tree looming overhead?  Maybe it's autumn and the leaves are bright red?  Where does the road lead?  Which brings me to the next helpful idea--let your imagination be active.  Let it TAKE you.  MOVE you.  FOLLOW it where it wants to go.  It will be safe because you are right there looking after it but give it some slack to explore the world it has suddenly found itself in.  Before you know it you are no longer an observer but a participant.  Always remember that TRUTH is found in the details.  Clarity and specificity will create a continual "living" picture that plays out in our performance and informs and arouses our emotions within the limits of the play. The details of truth are where your imagination thrives.  It draws inspiration from your sensory storehouse of personal images and memories and from there creates a clear and effective experience that has a living effect on the character.  As a result, every invention of your imagination must be thoroughly worked out and built on a basis of facts consistent with the world of the story such as:

When?  Where?  Why?  and How?
 
It is IMPOSSIBLE to discuss acting without the IMAGINATION.  It is the most crucial part of EVERY actor's technique.  An actor's imagination is like a hammer to a carpenter--you will always need it and need it close.  Never forget--if you find yourself artisticaly STUCK have faith your imagination will always show you the way out but you can't find your way out if you never ask the question.  What if?

Monday, October 17, 2011

Your Sensory Storehouse

As we begin to develop our technique we start with developing our Actor/Self--our instrument.  Therefore our investigation begins with ourselves and how OUR instrument works.  One of the key elements of investigation is the collection of information.  So with acting how do we do this--where do we start?  With our FIVE SENSES.

Developing an acute awareness of your senses is one of the first fundamentals of acting.  This seems obvious I know but it bears repeating.  And repeating again!  If our job is to create a truthful fabrication of reality then we must discover truth within the details of REAL LIFE--and those details are revealed by our senses. 

SO!  In real life how we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste the world is how we experience everything that is considered LIVING.  All of the external information, or stimulation, is received and filtered through our senses.  We are bombarded all day long with information.  Whether we are conscious of it or not, we are constantly storing up a massive catalogue of sensations in our memories.  This collection is how we learn, recognize, and identify our reality.  This is why most of our memories are accompanied by one or more remembered sensation.  Bottom line is that our senses perceive our existence.  Unfortunately, in our day to day life many of us take our senses for granted.  Sometimes this is out of necessity and we are forced or choose to ignore certain sensual information so that we can function/cope with our reality.  This may be good for real life but it's bad for our acting one.  As we develop our Actor/Self we have to be more aware of how our senses work and what they sense.  We need to become extremely observant!  We need to be more aware of what we see.  We need to learn to notice small details and the information those details can offer.  We need to learn how to hear more than what is being said.  We need to learn how to notice all the sounds that are constantly vibrating around us.  We need to learn to articulate the effect these sounds have on our experience.  We need to become aware of how important touch is and just as importantly--the absence of it.  We need to learn to feel presences within our personal space and how we define that space.  We need to learn how to notice that each person carries with them their own unique fragrance and that every place we go--every room we enter has its own particular smell.  We even need to pay closer attention to the way food, or drink, or dirt, or blood, or sweat tastes.  All our senses work together to create a fuller experience of reality and as an actor the more attention we can give to our senses the more fulfilled our Actor/Character experience will be. 

Important to note here!  Even if the Actor/Character has NOTHING in common with who WE--our Actor/Self--is we still draw all our INSPIRATION from our own PERSONAL store house of experience.  BUT always remember--drawing inspiration from our experiences is not the same as MIRRORING our experiences.

In real life it is impossible to go through our experience without collecting memories.  Some are easier than others to remember and some we try very hard to forget.  But for an actor it is essential for our artistry to collect as many sensual memories as we can.  We need be able to truthfully imagine whatever possible sensations the story and character may demand and our sense memories are the seeds from which our imaginations grow.  I think it is very important to distinguish here that sense memory is not the same thing as emotional memory or affected memory.  I will spend more time on emotional memory and my thoughts on the subject in a future post but for now--sense memory is simply memories associated with your five senses.  For example, if the tasks demanded by the story require that you are standing on a beach at dusk basking in the sunset--but in reality you are standing on the edge of the proscenium looking out into a (hopefully) sold out audience...or perhaps you are working on a film that is being shot entirely with computer generated imaging and you are standing in the middle of an empty sound stage surrounded by green screen--then as an actor, you must be able to truthfully imagine and experience every detail of that vision before you.  This is when you will draw inspiration from your memories.  Perhaps directly from a beach sunset that you have experienced personally.  You can recall the smell of salt from the ocean.  You can recall the sound or the waves crashing on the beach as the tide rolls in.  You can feel the cool evening breeze on your face and the soft sand--still warm from the afternoon sun--in your toes.  Once these memories spark inspiration then your imagination takes over to assist in the full developed of the character's experience. 

Now when we start out in acting most of our character's imagined and sensual experiences will be mirrored from those of our real life experiences.  It's not preferred but it's inevitable.  That sunset mentioned above will probably look and feel exactly like one we experienced as a child on a family vacation.  This is how we define what a sensual experience IS by associating it with our own experience.  However, I believe for your Actor/Self it is important to DISASSOCIATE your own personal sensual memories with the ones required of the character.  Your Actor/Self sense memories should only be used as an inspiration for your character's experience.  The trap we fall into is a SHORT CUT for truth but in the end it will always mislead you.  The shortcut is so tempting BECAUSE of the personal connection that resonates from our OWN experience but the pitfall is when we interpret our experience as the character's truth.  It's not.  It has all the residual essence of OUR interpretation of that experience and not the character's.  For instance, let's imagine you are playing an old "salty dog" sea captain who can't wait to get back out to sea.  As you long to set sail you reminisce about your life out on the ocean.  You recall the sights, the sounds, and the smells of sailing and fishing.  Now what if in real life you have a bad memory associated with the salty smell of the sea or the fishy odor of low tide?  You will clearly have no trouble filling your nostrils with the sensation of this odor but what additional memory baggage will YOUR sense memory evoke?  Will this create an obstacle as you create a character that is asked by the story to be filled with vitality from that odor?

"I don't understand!  How can you possible draw inspiration for your character FROM your own memories WITHOUT incorporating your experience into the characters?!?  Isn't that what I bring to my interpretation!?" 

When we take on a role WHO WE ARE is what gives our performance its uniqueness.  Even if we were to give the same line readings as another actor our performance would STILL be unique to us.  The way we sound, the way we look, the way we move, they way we see through the character's eyes will always be uniquely ours because no two humans are the same.  This is incredibly liberating!  And YES, who we are is all of our experience and history, memories and make up, however, bringing my own personal experiences into the character is only the beginning and can lead to artistic blockage if it is used improperly.  Allowing your personal experience into the work may give you a deeper understanding for the character's needs but the difference is that you cannot assume your experience is that of the characters.  What makes a performance INSPIRED is not only how YOU would react in the given circumstances but having the vulnerability and courage to let your experience transform beyond who you are to that of the character. 

I believe the difficulty is that ALL of our sensual memories carry with them an emotional memory--which may not be appropriate for the character you are creating.  Sometimes those are vivid emotional memories.  Sometimes they are not.  So what I suggest is that once you have identified a sensation you should store it as a "detached" sensation.  A bright light is just a glare that causes your eyes to squint.  A burn is just the pain of your skin being scalded.  The smell of fresh cut grass is just a crisp clean aroma with a hint of bitter wild onion.  All your sensual memories become independent "files" that can be uses for inspiration.  They are like sound bites of sensation.  I prefer to imagine a large storehouse with rows of shelves.  On each shelf are mason jars containing one sense.  It could be a fragrance.  Maybe it's the smell of cinnamon?  Maybe it's garlic?  It could be an object.  Maybe it's a piece of rabbit fur to touch?  Maybe a swatch of silk to see shimmer and feel cool against my cheek?  On other shelves are a collection of snap shots from sights that I have seen--either in person or from photographs in books or on the Internet.  You can choose however you would like to organize your sensual memories but I believe it is important for your Actor/Self development that your memories are visualized abstractly.  This way they are more accessible to the needs of the character.

When you take on a role you immediately start filling in that character's existence.  You are literally building the character from scratch.  As you create the world they live in within the story you are filling it with all of your sensual inspiration from your personal catalogue.  As your Actor/Character's NEEDS become clearer and are established then your Actor/Self's imagination will give appropriate values to your sensory inventory.  Now that they are connected to your Actor/Character's wants and needs the result will ignite your Actor/Character's emotional life to organically create truthful behavior and reactions.

I'm in no way suggesting that you shouldn't bring your personal experience to a role but I am suggesting that when you rely solely on your personal experience--and use your own memories directly (mirroring) for the character's wants and needs--then you immediately place limitations on your art and the depth your creation can go.  It will be like fitting a pentagon peg in round hole.  It looks like it will fit but it doesn't.

The bottom line is that everyone approaches the work differently but when it comes to character one rule is law.  You must always bring yourself to the character and never the character to yourself.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Investigation Now

I remember years ago coming home from college one weekend.  I went to church with my family on Sunday morning and I also went to a college age class for "Sunday school."  That class was taught by teachers that I had grown up with over the years and had learned to value their perspective.  After class I was so excited to share with one of these teachers some of the new and exciting things that I had learned and discovered while away at school.  The funny thing is that to this day I don't remember WHAT we were discussing but I do remember that what I was offering--for my beliefs--was very affirming stuff.  This is why I was so shocked and will never forget what was said in response.  I was told that the Devil works in mysterious ways and that knowledge can sometimes be dangerous.  WHAT!?!  I was furious.  That didn't even make sense to me.  How could knowledge and wisdom be considered EVIL?  So I went to the one man I always went to for inspiration--my Pop.  My father is a high school drama teacher but he started out in life as a preacher.  I retold the "advice" that I was given and how angry it made me feel.  What he said next changed my outlook on EVERYTHING.  His words grew to be the phrase I depend on as a mantra for my life AND my artistry.  He said...

"Truth has nothing to fear of investigation."
How perfect is that?  Truth has nothing to fear of investigation.  Nothing!  No matter where truth may hide, and truth has a funny way of hiding in all sorts of unseemly places, no matter the questions, the knowns, the unknowns, the suspicions, the theories, the doubts--no matter WHERE truth is hiding it welcomes investigation.  Because truth doesn't know how to be anything but the TRUTH.

!!WARING!!  This calling for truth presents a great challenge to each of us.  The challenge to be brutally honest with ourselves.  We may not like what we find.  It may not be the easy or popular answer.  It may not be what we were taught or always thought/believed it to be.  Sometimes accepting a truth that is buried deep inside us can be painful to recognize but in art--as an actor--when we DO accept those truths then we allow them to be elevated ABOVE ourselves.  We discover freedom to move deeper within the work--the characters we play and the story we are attempting to tell.  So dig away!

As actors TRUTH is the essence of what we seek.  Even if we're recreating a fabrication of reality we are always striving for truth.  Truth in our characters.  Truth in our actions.  Truth in our emotions.  Truth in our tasks and objectives.  It ALL has to be TRUE for the audience to benefit from the experience.  Even in abstract forms if you are not committed to the purpose of every moment--then every moment will appear false.  Truth is what we long for.  We desperately desire for our audiences to BELIEVE in the characters and stories we share with them because belief is what makes truth true.

So how do actors investigate truth?  The same way anyone would go about investigating in real life--with your senses, intellect, and imagination!  In the beginning we investigate ourselves and our instrument.  We search for truth within our Actor/Self.  We search to identify our personal habits and personal barbwire that our technique will eventually become entangled.  We investigate our instrument's greatest potential.  We identify our instrument's most challenging limitations and then investigate how we to move through them.  We investigate our experiences for inspiration.  We search for truth of courage and faith in our technique.

Then we investigate our Actor/Characters and search for their truth within the text of our story and in the heart of the story itself.  We seek out their purpose to the story.  We discover who they are and what they want.  We discover who they aren't and what they don't want.  We investigate their likes and dislikes to deepen and inspire their emotional lives.  We look at what they say and what they don't say and how they say it.  We investigate what THEY want and not what we think they want.

But the greatest thing about investigating for the actor is in the doing.  We get to ACT out our investigations.  We get to rehearse possibilities to discover if they are truths or not.  This is what makes acting so much fun.  The story and our character's truth is just waiting to be found and with every project we start--we set out to find it.  Be honest, don't be afraid--and start investigating!