Last weekend I found myself on stage failing to recite a passage from an acting book – not the one in my last post but another one (copied below). I’d been trying to learn it by heart all week and realized just in time that I’d never manage. So I brought the text on stage with me and managed to incorporate into my reading a few stealthy glances in its direction, and got a few laughs doing it. Later on a friend in the audience told me he thought it was all on purpose.
I enjoyed the spontaneity and (honesty?) of it: imposing a restriction upon the performance, and attending to whatever the restriction draws out. In this case, the restriction was a genuinely bad memory. Not quite by coincidence, the text I was failing to remember describes the need to exert a genuine and immediate presence on stage, rather than a cleanly premeditated performance. The blurring of performance and immediacy comes up again and again (oh Kaprow shhh).
This reading was for Maintenant Slovakia at the RichMix, London – videos of the readings are online here. I read two texts I’d written last year, with the quasi-memorized acting excerpt in between them. To introduce some of the themes of the excerpt I prefaced it with a more spontaneous piece describing the clothes I was wearing. I’d had to learn this text by heart too – it had to sound genuinely spontaneous – but I had much more success with this one because I’d written it myself and it was fairly straightforward.
Here’s the description of the dress followed by the text on acting.
I SHOULD POINT OUT THAT THIS IS MY NORMAL DRESS FOR READING OUT POEMS. IT HAS THIS FUNNELED NECK WHICH IS GOOD FOR PROJECTING [indicates direction upwards from neckline]. AND IT’S MADE OF THIS THICK GREY FELT, SO NONE OF THE LINES SHOW WHEN I’M READING. BUT WHEN I TAKE IT OFF I CAN SEE ALL THE LINES HAVE BEEN COLLECTING IN THE LINING, BECAUSE IT’S MADE OF SILK AND IT CREASES EASILY. IT HAS THIS ENORMOUS POCKET AT THE FRONT. I ALWAYS HAVE TO BE CAREFUL NOT TO REST MY HANDS IN IT WHEN I’M STANDING UP [demonstrates] BECAUSE IT’S TOO LOW AND IT DOESN’T LOOK CASUAL. YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO TRY AND ACT NATURAL.
I’M READING A BOOK AT THE MOMENT ABOUT ACTING. IT’S CALLED No Acting Please. ON PAGE 24 [holds up right hand as though reading from a book] IT SAYS:
The actor who premeditates his behavior [forgets words and looks at notes concealed in other hand. Continues to forget and check words throughout] short-circuits the process anywhere along the line. He is so intent on executing his plan of how the scene should go that the stimulus may not even reach him. Or the stimulus may reach him but he’s so committed to his intellectual concepts that he is unaffected by the stimulus. If he’s busy simulating an effect, how can he be truly affected? Or he is affected by something that happens on stage – his partner pats his cheek that night for the first time, but he doesn’t allow himself to respond because he’s imposing the behavior he feels should be there in the scene. He short-circuits the natural process of life, because he does not include his response to the pat on the cheek. If his responses are exclusive and premeditated, how can he respond with what he really feels? Instead of going with the organic response, his expression becomes prostituted by what he thinks the character should do or say. In this way, one denial sets up a chain reaction of denials until the lack of reality is epidemic.
BUT IT’S A GOOD POCKET ANYWAY, BECAUSE IT’S LARGE ENOUGH TO HOLD THIN BOOKS. [Takes thin book from pocket and reads.]
…
I’m now developing these texts (and clothes) towards new work for The Other Room next month.
The grey felt dress is in the picture.
