Drama Studio
Welcome to Drama Studio Online. First take a look at this picture of an ancient theater. I find it inspirational. That is what theater essentially is: a magical circle reserved for the actor to perform, surrounded by the audience where everybody is invited. Between them there is an invisible barrier, the primary condition of the theater. This barrier is a taboo, if you cross it, the illusion is gone, and there is no theater anymore. For the theatrical inspiration comes from within, not from without.
An Ego-Spherical Theatr
“I often warn people: “Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, ‘there is no “I” in a team. What you should tell them is, ‘Maybe not. But there is an “I” in independence, individuality, and integrity.”
Quote by George Carlin
So, please, don’t tell me ever again to get rid of my ego. It is the best thing I have. It is who I am as I know it. It is my individual identity. In Latin ‘ego’ literally means ‘I’. Why would I even consider getting rid of my ego? Supposedly, in the name of some collective “we”? Oh, no! Who would do such a morbid thing: to deny oneself in the name of some collective ideology or belief?
If someone asks you to sacrifice your “I”, and/or to deny yourself to belong to some collective, such as some party, or some church, or a sect, or a theatre, or any kind of a group, run away. It is not a good group, or ideology, or faith that does not respect the individuality of a person. They want to make you a totalitarian being that is a no-one, a conformist, a member without your own self, without your own mind.
The group mentality of the collective is to modify your “I” by “They”, so “everyone is the other, and no one is himself,” as Martin Heidegger put it. It is in particular harmful for art. Mind you, collective theatres are never good. They can’t be good because the collective is not creative; it is not able to create but only to shout slogans.
Artistic creativity is rooted in the individuality of the artist. Only an individual man or woman can come up with something new, original, or simply authentic. It is a matter of an individual talent and genius, and those gifts are not endowed to the collective. In fact, the collective aborts it.
The artist speaks only in his own name, expresses the self, and shows the world as he or she sees it. One must be true to oneself to be a creative artist. John Wolfgang von Goethe said, “Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.” This statement can be a motto of The Ego-Spherical Theatre.
The Ego-Spherical Theatre places an individual artist in its center as its alpha and omega. No doubt this formula fits perfectly well to the one-person theatre, when the artist is both the author and the performer of the show, as a one-man or woman show, or solo concert, or solo exhibition, and so on. I’ve done a one-man show, called “A Quest for Human Identity,” which I wrote, staged, and performed myself. It was a fully satisfying experience. I did what I wanted and how I wanted, with full conviction that it is the right way. It is because in art there is only one right way to do it and it is my way. The point is to find it. What is not obvious at all, because you do not know it in advance, you only discover the right way in the work, in working on it, you discover your own identity, which you did not know fully or at all. When you discover the right way, you recognize that this is it, and that you cannot or should not do otherwise, because otherwise it will be a denial of yourself, and the creation of a false ego, and this is uninteresting in the theatre, and overall in art. It is also unethical. The true ego appears when one both discovers and reveals oneself.
Alright then, but how does the formula of the Ego-Spherical Theatre fit to the group theatre, if at all?
Well, it does fit, if you treat each member of the group as an individual with his or her own mind, so to speak, with respect to her ego. The group theatre is run by a team of individuals and each of them has a specific function, which differ from each other and requires different skills and talents. It is obvious but it is also fundamental, so let’s not forget about it.
There is the writer who might not be present during rehearsal of the production, but he or she wrote a play, or a script. And the first principle of the Ego-Spherical Theatre is: respect the author. Realize his play as written. For any unauthorized changes to the play is a travesty. Unfortunately, it became an accepted practice in the theater, in particular, so called, the postmodern theater. They change everything: text, context, periods, and character’s dispositions, under the pretext that they are creating an author’s theater. Who gave them the right to do this? The Ego-Spherical Theater is, by definition, an author’s theatre, but the author is only the author of the play, not its director. The director should serve the author of the play, and strive to do it in the way to fully satisfy the author.
The main duty of the director of the play, or film production, is to stage the author’s vision and to overview its realization done by the actors, choreographers, designers, and technicians. The director’s position in the theatre is the least creative – in the strict sense, but the most authoritative, because he determines the concept of the performance, organizes the rehearsal process, and the director always has the last word. But it is the author of the play, the actors, the choreographer, and designers who are the undisputed creators of the performance. I am not saying this to diminish the director’s merits. The director is indispensable in the theatre; without him it is difficult to put on a good show. The theatre team works well only under the director’s leadership, because he or she guides them so that their work fits the whole performance, integrally coherent. Otherwise, if there were no director, it would be a patchwork of often incompatible elements and parts. To prevent that the director needs to impose the strict interpretation of the play as the common denominator on everybody involved. Everyone involved has to agree on that to unify the message of the play (or a film), and to find its characteristic style, and to invoke its particular spirit. Nevertheless, the director shall not limit the creative input from the designers and actors. They are independent artists, responsible for their own work, in their own rights. A good director would not trample on their creative freedom but at the same time would not let them go overboard or in the wrong direction.
I realize now that what I’ve said sounds dogmatic—and even confrontational—as if I were declaring war on director-driven theatre, which dominated the second half of the twentieth century and continues to hold sway today. I won’t win any friends this way, and I likely won’t live to see the vindication that might come years from now—once this style of theatre has completely failed and everyone realizes there was a fundamental flaw in the approach. Nevertheless, I have no intention of backing down; conformism has never been one of my virtues—or my vices, for that matter. I know I sound naive, like the child in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes, shouting out during the imperial parade that the king is naked. Yet, I cannot help but notice how, in these postmodern productions, directors usurp authorship at the expense of the original work—which is, after all, invariably superior and the only truly authentic version. I want to return to that—to the original—and let it speak for itself, free from pretentious reworkings.
On the other hand, I do not wish to portray director-driven theatre solely in a negative light, for I know better; in my youth, I saw many outstanding productions and was even an actor in one such company—the Wrocław Pantomime Theatre, founded and directed by Henryk Tomaszewski. It is true that Tomaszewski based his productions on works by other authors—often outstanding classical literature, though contemporary works were included as well—but he did so with respect for the original author’s ideas and vision. Even when he made changes, he did so meaningfully and in a spirit of artistic dialogue. Sometimes he would add elements—such as an ancient-style prologue, drawing on the source material, or a contemporary epilogue—to demonstrate how the underlying idea had evolved over time. The very act of translating literature and spoken drama into the medium of movement and pantomime allowed Henryk Tomaszewski to create a new, original form. Such formal approaches are nothing new; after all, literature and spoken drama are frequently and successfully adapted into musical theater, opera, ballet, and pantomime, bringing out a distinct artistic quality. In these instances, the director or choreographer acts as an autonomous creator.
Transposing and adapting a work to a different cultural context is also entirely acceptable, provided it is done convincingly—much like the approach taken by Akira Kurosawa. Consider his film Throne of Blood, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Kurosawa transposed the action of Shakespeare’s play from eleventh-century medieval Scotland to sixteenth-century feudal Japan during the Sengoku period. He borrowed the plot and characters from Shakespeare but rewrote the text to suit a traditional Japanese style—and it worked brilliantly. Then again, Akira Kurosawa was a master; he knew how to adapt a play while respecting the original.
When I direct a play, be it written by me or someone else, I expect the actor to portray the character as exactly as written. Yet at the same time I want the actor to be authentic in it, to express his or her own self. It seems contradictory, but it is not. The character in the play is merely a blueprint described as a pattern of conduct and behavior, but the individual essence is missing. In different words, the character in the play is like a human puppet but without a soul. To bring this ‘puppet’ to life the actor invests it with his own soul, or in different words, with her own individual inner essence, which is the self or simply the ‘I’ of the actor.
I believe that this individual inner essence is innately given, let’s say, by nature or God, if you prefer, by that it is irreplaceable. The idea is that there is predestination in it and it manifests itself as the subjective disposition “I”. Each individual “I” has a preference for this or that. “I” makes choices and decisions and is able to experience the world in an individual way. Naturally there is no other “I”, there is no collective “I”. So, it is why we are not all the same.
However, “we” is also only one, although it is collective, the same for all people of a given group. As “we”, we are all the same, as “I”, each of us is different, unique. Human identity is found at the intersection of individuality and universality.
The individual preference of “I” is a decisive factor in forming the character of a person, which in psychological sense is the ego. The repeated choice becomes a habit, and habit forms the character.
In life, the functioning of “I” might be automatic. It is enough to trust it, to be true to yourself, to discover your preference for this or that and by that to always be certain what you want, and what to do, and how to conduct yourself in life. Just by following your preference, you will become who you are. Great, it seems simple. But is it good or bad? Well, it is good if you are by nature a good person, but bad, if evil. By nature human beings are both good and evil. Yet the proportions of it are not the same for all, some people are more good, while others are more evil. There is no equality here; the proportion varies. In some extreme cases, there are bad seeds that become evil persons, such as perverted sickos, or murderous psychopaths. If they become such by nature, it is better if they restrict their natural impulses and develop an alter ego instead. But is it possible? Not in all cases, some psychopaths are not reformable, but virtually yes, it is possible: people have free will to choose and to retrain their preference, if it is harmful to others. It can be done through education, cultivation, and also conscience does its work on its own, if you let it.
In acting, the functioning of “I” is rather not automatic but must be consciously readjusted to make the same choices as the character does in the play. For the actor, the character in the play is an alter ego. To acquire it, the actor must suspend her own private ego on the account that one is not able to act in two different characters at the same time.
Mind you, I am asking the actor to suspend her ego, not to rid it off. Having an alter ego isn’t something unusual in life, even a few of them. Almost everyone has at least one alter ego, usually it is a professional ego, such as being a nurse, or a doctor, or a bricklayer, or a fashion model, or a soldier, or a writer, or a lawyer, or a politician. But the actor has as many alter egos as the roles he plays, or rather how many characters he portrays. And by that the actor experiences many different ways of life through fiction, as if he or she had many destinies or fates.
Apparently acting is ego-centered. But I don’t want the actor to fall into a pitfall of extreme individuality, which would be being narcissistic, with a mantra: me, me, and me. To avoid that, the actor must remember that s/he is acting not for herself but for the audience. And the audience represents the humanity as a whole, with which the actor has contact on the universal basis.
I suppose that the essence of human identity may be grasped, revealed or understood as a crisscross of uniqueness and universality. That crisscross is mysterious. And although the proportion of universality is vastly larger than uniqueness, without this bit of difference we would all probably be the same, as if we were cloned. But we are not the same; you can see it with your own naked eye.
I would also like to add that humans are the only creatures that have consciousness, which distinguishes us from animals and also from robots. This consciousness is not artificial intelligence, as in robots, or natural instinct, as in animals, but an individual ego that everyone creates for himself, according to his own discretion and belief.