“Truth in acting was something he could recognize when he saw it or when he momentarily experienced it in his own playing, but he found it difficult to define and to capture.”
Harold Clurman on Konstantin Stanislavsky
Harold Clurman in his book, On Directing, was writing above about Stanislavsky, creator of what in America became known as ‘The Method’ approach to acting. Stanislavsky was the greatest influence upon Clurman who in turn became one of the finest stage directors of his time. And those first three words above — truth in acting — are what we pursue when the audience comes into the theater. Truth set forth onto the stage electrifies us; we walk away marked by the performance. There’s nothing like it.
And we know when we see it as I have known it working with John Blaylock in three plays: as Matt, the wise-cracking liberal younger brother in Grudges (co-written with my friend and colleague Joe Queenan), as GUNNAR GUSTAFSSON, fastidious but corrupt boss of the Swedish Traffic Authority, in Keeping Right, and now as Ludwig Cade, the consummate corporate general Counsel in HONOR opening February 16th in The Chain Theater Winter One-Act Festival. The effect of John’s talent strikes just as strongly in other performances: Victor Frankenstein in The Articulate Theater production of Doctor Frankenstein, Fr. Tommy DiCamilo in Holy Child by Joe Lauinger, Disraeli Levering in Both Your Houses at Metropolitan Playhouse, and Jack Mullen in The Weir at Gallery Players. John brings that truth to each part he assumes. I struggle to say more about the energy and intelligence he marshals and can you blame me? If Stanislavsky found it difficult ‘to define and to capture‘ that truth, what words will I find or invent? You have to see and hear John to understand the veracity of his work.
So buy a ticket using discount code ‘HONOR” to see John along with excellent castmates Alinca Hamilton and Ed Altman at one of our three performances:
John Blaylock and Alinca Hamilton in rehearsal for HONOR
And about that book, On Directing? I don’t consider myself a by the book director as a great deal of the delight and satisfaction from making theater live is its collaborative nature, the mix and mess with good talented people of making it up as you go along to some extent. But through the span of a directing project, I am definitely by the books. I return again and again for inspiration and refreshment to three sources: Declan Donellan, Katie Mitchell, and then Harold Clurman. When I am preparing before rehearsals, Declan provides the framework for marking the ‘targets’ of the play: the specific and active focal points outside the actor to direct their performance towards. Katie Mitchell in The Director’s Craft helps to anchor my rehearsal planning in effective structures and routines that are at once practical and illuminating. When it gets to that inevitable point where after a flock of rehearsals I’m not sure exactly how the puzzle of performance ultimately will be solved, I go back to Harold and read him as if that faded paperback was the Gospel. Passages like the one below allow me the occasional epiphany and the constant reassurance:
“Certain directors compose beautiful or striking tableaux or visual patterns. I never consciously attempt to do so. I direct for the idea or intention of each scene for the play as a whole, and seek whatever combination of means will best convey them. I direct for the actor and through the actor: he is body and voice, movement and feeling, and something more than all these. The actor like the production itself, is an indivisible totality. I do not conceive a production in “departments.” I seek the integration of all the theatre’s elements to form a unified effect and meaning.”
Harold Clurman, On Directing
For anyone interested in directing, in theater generally, or any form of art, these books will reward the reader greatly.
Leave a ReplyCancel reply