An Interview about González Caballero's Acting Method

Last May 14th the book on Antonio González Caballero’s acting method was presented during the week dedicated to commemorate his work. Due to engagements I had previously committed to, I could not attend in person, so I sent a video of about 10 minutes to do the presentation in a virtual manner.

For that same event, Diana Ham, a member of the Teatro de Árbol group (the organizers of the event), sent me a series of questions - an interview - for me to answer in another video that would be shown during the presentation. The lack of time (and possibly of interest, which I’ll explain later) made it impossible for me to record yet another video with these answers, but just days before the date of the presentation of the book I decided impulsively to answer them in writing so that at least they could be read in part that day, which is what happened.

For some years I’ve decided not to speak directly (in public) about the acting method unless I had something written in advance and that had been reviewed carefully by me. When one speaks while thinking, interesting things happen, but also unforeseen ones that lead to big misunderstandings that I do not want to repeat, at least consciously. So putting things in writing was ultimately the best way to fulfil this commitment.

Answering these questions has, in turn, helped me define my own position on the research, collection and analysis of the method of Antonio González Caballero, and I thought it important to publish them on this Blog (and on the sites that talk about the method) so they can, if such is the case, be discussed or analyzed.

I have left the questions exactly as Diana Ham sent them, while my words may differ somewhat from what I initially sent for the presentation.

Here is the interview:

1. How did you meet Antonio González Caballero?

The first time I had contact with Antonio González Caballero was when I was a teenager, in October 1982, at Arte Escénico (Instituto de Arte Escénico) where I studied acting; he was substituting for an acting teacher. While other teachers put us to work directly with scenes of plays, he directed us through an exercise of footsteps and elements that opened an unknown door towards my sensitivity and creativity. His personality, on the other hand, was very affable, comparing with the ego full of whims of the other theatre teachers I had known.

2. How was your experience like learning the method proposed by Antonio González Caballero?

As I spent more time at the school (Arte Escénico) I discovered that acting classes with González Caballero were giving me more than anything the other teachers were giving me in the same institute. After a controversial (due to its irreverence and absurdity) dropping out of school of most of my generation (we were against the policies of the directing body), we went to take the master's workshop at the home of Norma Román Calvo, who also offered to give us theatre history classes independently.

Dropping out is a decision I call absurd because I did not finish acting school, which eventually haunted me for years, though it was obviously a lucky decision for my creative life because it brought me to the method that is now a major part of that life.

From about six or eight students who started learning at the workshop, only two of us finished the whole process of assimilating the method, José Vera and me, which is why at the book presentation I thank José Vera for much of the impetus to write this method: he continually questioned the teachings of the master, I tried to explain them, convinced as I was of their usefulness, trying to translate them into a more general language to show they worked and why. That's what I've been doing for more than 25 years.

3. What difficulties did you face during the learning process?

Learning the acting supports ('apoyos actuacionales' in Spanish) posed no difficulty for me, every door they opened was to a world of creative and cultural opportunities, they gave me tools to solve technical problems in my profession, they made me read about the human being, learn about the history of theatre, observe life differently.

The difficulty in any case laid in finding that the directors I started working with did not know, let alone the method of González Caballero, but about acting, and that their directing methods were archaic or generally very basic.

But this "difficulty" also became fortunate: firstly, it forced me out of that small group of people who did know the work of González Caballero to seek out others who knew of acting and directing, and I have not stopped doing it since then, taking me this quest to the great living masters - and their heirs - of the theatre scene all over the world, literally; and secondly, it led me to become a director.

4. What elements or references from other proposals for acting training do you recognize in the methodology of  Antonio González Caballero?

For over 25 years I've dedicated myself to trying to find all the references and lines of similarity of the method of González Caballero with other techniques and methods around the world and through the history of performance, expanding now this search to the performing arts in general.

González Caballero was a great creator.  At the same time he was also was a huge collector and also a great interpreter of other methods.  Nevertheless it is clear that he developed his method based on the lack of methods at schools for actors in Mexico during the sixties and seventies, and also in response to what he considered a damaging interpretation of the method of Stanislavski, especially in regard to the use of the actor’s emotional memory. On the other hand, even though he didn’t follow the guidelines of performance exploration of Jerzy Grotowski, his voice method was mainly based on this research. His personal turmoils led him to the hermetic philosophy and to the westernized versions of Eastern teachings, especially the so called The Science of Mental Physics, which he used abundantly in the basis of the method itself: imagination and energy for transformation.

I think there is much more hidden there. Dozens of researchers and explorers are needed, as well as consuming time, to find all the references around the method of González Caballero.

5. Is the proposal of Antonio González Caballero a method or a technique? And why?

That’s a trick question because, from my point of view, it is a method as well as a technique:

- It is a method if what you want to discover in it is a creative methodology for the actor to create on stage, it is a way for creating (a total -or complete- character in this case).

- It is a technique because whoever has mastered this method has assimilated and obtained technical supports (the "apoyos") for a creative end (which one is not important).

The method, conceptually speaking, is a methodology for achieving a goal, the technique is the means used to achieve this objective: in our case, the technique would be the use of the acting supports, and the method would be the structure of these supports with the acting movements (corrientes actuacionales) -Realism, Naturalism, Super-Naturalism and Super-Realism- and the four authors -Chekhov, Ibsen, Strindberg and Pirandello- to achieve the creation of a full character for the scene in question.

Personally, now that the book of the acting method has been published, I'm more interested in the technical aspects of the method because it has given me the opportunity of using it in other fields of theatre, like in Butoh, for example, where it doesn’t matter if there is a character or not, but where I can freely use the method’s acting supports: I use the technique but do not follow the guidelines of the method. In that sense González Caballero becomes a theatrical scene theorist beyond the western modern theatre of Mexico and can be compared with leading researchers and creators worldwide.

6. From your perspective, what differenciates the method designed by Antonio González Caballero from other methods or pedagogical proposals for acting training?

The method of González Caballero is unique from the Mexican perspective, there is simply no other acting method as elaborate as this one in the history of Mexican theatre.  Even though there has been research and great acting teachers, both past and present, none of them has created a method from beginning to end like González Caballero did. In the world and in the history of theatre, that's even stranger than you can imagine: methods like these are few and far between.

These methods, which are rare to find in a finished state, acquire universality when one discovers them and explores their basic principles.

The method of González Caballero is unique because it is a creation of González Caballero himself, it is his own method.  Though he explored with different actors for over thirty years, it was him who gave names to the acting supports, he decided the path to follow, he decided the final objectives, he managed the exploration.  It is his own method, his personal creation towards which all who passed through his laboratory helped.

But I insist, the most important thing lies not in the differences with other methods but in its similarity to them and its twists, in that sense this creation is universal. Its universality is based on following certain principles that every creative being needs to create.

It is a Mexican method, which makes it different, and it is a universal method, which makes it a gem.

7. How important is the existence of an acting method created with the Mexican temperament in mind?

I do not think González Caballero had intended all those years to always address the Mexican temperament, I think it is much more simple: the method was explored by Mexicans because it was Mexicans who worked with him and it was a Mexican who created it. That would theoretically make it ideal for Mexicans to comprehend, but then I would get into a long discussion, because it is not always so.

I think it's a an acting method that has in mind the human temperament in general.

8. How is energy defined within the method/technique of Antonio González Caballero?

Energy in the technique is something concrete, it is physical, as in science. That’s all it is. If energy is not matter, if it is not a body, then it won’t exist on stage. It’s not about thinking it or desiring it, it’s learning to feel the transformation that it causes in the body. Practicing the acting supports ("los apoyos") makes us discover the physical powers of feeling energy, as simple as the basic footsteps exercise from the elements: it’s not about taking a step and acting that out, it is about stepping on the element and feeling it, its texture, its body, and being faithful to the impulse in order to start a transformation of the body. If changes in the body were measured while working the method’s supports we’d discover that there are specific physical changes (muscle tensing and relaxing, changes in the rate of blood flow, breathing, changes in the tension of sight, changes in body temperature), the energy the method talks about is physical.

9. How should one understand imagination with Antonio González Caballero?

Imagination is a powerful tool of humanity and its base is creativity, imagination is innate to creativity; the method directs creative imagination to achieve defined objectives; in the case of the complete method, the defined objective would be creating a full character as would be required from an actor in theatre, film and television today; in the case of each technical support (apoyo actuacional), creative imagination is the means to discovering emotions, depths, atmospheres, masks, etc.

10. How much of the method proposed by Antonio González Caballero depends on observation of everyday life and how much on imagination?

The use of your imagination will depend on the development of your observation capabilities, but if your imagination is let free, if it is channeled and it develops, even what little you may have observed in life will become great material to achieve something creative on stage. González Caballero knew that and although he asked us to observe the world he was not demanding in that area, he did not drive us to have experiences as other acting teachers do, who say that if you have not had diverse sexual experiences you can not be an actor, or that if you have not felt deep pain you will never feel that on stage. The most important thing for him was to use your imagination, with it we could create all necessary situations and achieve moments that were unimaginable for us but possible for a character.

11. How is the evolution of the ABC like during the technical process proposed by the methodology?

The ABC is one and it’s unique, it never changes: interior-body-voice will remain interior-body-voice to the end, it is a principle of work and is not something you can develop, it is something that is there.

What the actor should do is take conscience and let the ABC free and, with time and practice, that freedom develops to flow much better so we may achieve the creative goals that we may have set beforehand.

12. How did Antonio González Caballero arrive to the sequential order of the acting supports he explores?

After about 15 years, between 1971 and 1985, mainly through chance (as in all exploratory tasks). But more importantly, I think, was the exploration path he set with the four revolutionary authors of modern theatre (Chekhov, Ibsen, Strindberg and Pirandello) and the theatrical movements -or tendencies- (Naturalism, Realism, Super-Naturalism, Super-Realism) they caused; they were the precursors for the sequencing of the acting supports of the method, as he realized that each current was channelled in the exposition of a concrete part of the human being.

If the goal was to create complete characters with a strong sense of truth and the four authors exposed human nature from four major perspectives (Chekhov with Naturalism and character, Ibsen with Realism and personality, Strindberg with Supernaturalism and the unconscious, and Pirandello with the Surrealism and the superego), then the path to follow regarding the sequence of the acting supports was clear.

13. Why choose only four authors of modern theatre as a basis of a methodology for the creation of a total character?

They were not chosen by him.  They, and this is widely acknowledged, are the proponents (some people say "creators") of modern theatre as such, of the modern character, the one that is used today and which we should use as starting point to break or discover new horizons.

In any case González Caballero decided not to use beforehand what was usually done, based on the study of stage directors or of theatre theoreticians, as basis of a method, but not the technique.

Many researchers are contained in the acting supports.  The most famous that comes to my mind is Stanislavski and the acting support in the method called  'character's emotional memory', for example, where González Caballero transfers the application of Stanislavski’s emotional memory from the actor to the character: the actor does not use his own emotional memory to give it to the character but instead has the character create that emotional memory on stage , through improvisations that create that memory in the character. Even then Stanislavski's proposal is contained in Chekhov’s proposal.

14. Can we think of each of the acting supports as metaphors of human complexity?

The acting supports are technical tools, I would not call them metaphors, they are concrete tools.

You can philosophize much about them, of course, but they are practical tools, they turn creativity into something practical for the actor.

15. Do the supports allow becoming aware of human complexity, to then potentiate it on stage? Why?

When you view the method's acting supports from afar you discover a kind of deconstruction of our humanity, they are points of reference for our human encoding; if we look at them separately they are part of us, if we piece them together we see ourselves completely. Obviously their diversity and their combination create an unprecedented complexity, but through the method they become manageable, and they are technically very useful for any creative development on stage.

We could devote an entire creative career to just the acting support called Body Zones -zonas del cuerpo-, for example, or complete plays using only the acting support Masks; González Caballero didn’t ask for it, but it is a possible consequence of their exploration.

It is obvious that once one finishes the method and with the ability to create a complete human being on the stage we have greater awareness of human complexity, but also of its richness; by following your words, each acting support is potentially a way to address parts of our humanity.

González Caballero liked to say at some point that one of his goals was to make better human beings and that the best way to do that was through the method, that the method helped us to completely know ourselves or to be aware of all our human complexity.

16. Does the method / technique favour the construction of a fictional universe that takes the actor away from the idea of acting, to bring him to the experience of living a universe different from his?

The actor is not taken away from the idea of acting, but from idea that it is him who is the character: it is the character who is the character and who comes to life.  That creates a new experience: it's like living other lives without those being yours and without being affected yourself by them, except by increasing your experience and wisdom.

17. Is each acting support a door leading an actor to activate his infinite creative imagination? Why?

They are doors indeed, they are supports that support the actor in achieving certain goals, they are working tools; by being means to discover and explore a part of the human being and being something you can use on stage to create a character they become, depending on the artist's interests, endless possibilities or a specific training to address an issue in the scene: it needs emotions and complicated, deep, non-specific feelings, there are the Levels of Interrelationships and the Haiku, but if you want you can use the Levels of Interrelationships to create entire plays and the Haiku, needless to say, is an art in itself.

18. Is the method / technique functional for a director's work? (If the answer is yes, how?)

Directors who use the method of González Caballero can use, in a very interesting way, the actors educated with it, but I should warn that, according to González Caballero, it should not be an obstacle: the actor does his job and so does his director.

I am of the idea that a work with a unified common language between actor and director can help prevent problems, but that's my idea; González Caballero prepared us for going out and working well with directors who could either know the method well or ignore it completely.

19. What was a character for Antonio González Caballero?

A living being, just like any of us.  But even more so, since there are no limits to the imagination of the actor on stage, anything can be a character.

20. What is a character for you?

I believe in González Caballero’s open concept: any creation on the stage is a character. A character, according to modern theatre conceptology, is a complete human being, but the door is open, anything can be a character.

It is when we study and practice Strindberg proposals and the unconscious in acting when we discover that that Gonzalez Caballero wanted to see, how far the actor’s creation could go, where imagination and the magic came together, where we could devote hours to "forms", to "beings", to "projections" that open new paths for theatre. He used to say that Strindberg was the creator of the new theatre, and what he meant with this was that the subconscious was the door to the new theatre. My concept or what a character is would lean towards that perspective: it’s anything that can happen on stage.

21. What do you think is the importance of Antonio González Caballero’s pedagogical proposal for the actor of the 21st century?

That will depend on the amount of people who are willing to assimilate it, use it and explore it to find new paths; it will depend on there being groups wanting to work with it, schools that wish to use it and actors who want to do something with it; it will depend also on there being people who want to do something else, in open new frontiers with the principles of the method as starting point. If that is achieved, it will be very interesting, it will be fertile ground for many more things.

22. Do you consider that the proposal can evolve? Why? (and if the answer is yes, how?)

Obviously I am a fervently interested in the idea that González Caballero’s proposal itself may evolve. But the acting method, in the case of the book, is a moment in the history of that method, it’s like a stop that helps us discover the method in a way that would be very difficult to do if we were always in exploration and movement. It is not a formula, it is not a closed proposal, it is like a photograph, a stopping in time that captures texts, voices, ways of doing something; it is a document and therein lies its importance.

We know very well that González Caballero’s method would evolve if he were alive, surely some acting supports would change in his hands, others would surely be added, new doors of exploration would be opened; that was being done with the study of energies and with some supports.

González Caballero is no longer with us, but if we keep the premise that he had, of an ongoing exploration, the method will be open to keep evolving with us, his heirs.

23. What is your responsibility to the method / technique of Antonio González Caballero?

At first, 25 years ago, I thought that my responsibility was the commitment of finishing writing the book and publishing it.  Then I thought it was also passing it on.  Now I know my responsibility to the method of González Caballero has split into two: making it known and expanding it from the point of view of its technique.

The method is an ingredient of my professional life for creating a character, the supports are the technical basis of my stage creativity, my interest lies then in further exploring those supports while following at the same time my personal creative interest, no doubt.  I do that with each support, I write with them, I dance with them, I act with them, separately and fully, I follow my personal exploration and document it, trying to keep in mind the bases and principles from which I start, the exploratory work of González Caballero.

Answering this questionnaire-interview for you is also part of another responsibility, to keep expanding the knowledge of what was so functional for me as a student of acting and what was essential in the early years of my life as a theatre professional. I strongly believe it will be so for others who come to the theatre to find tools and can’t find them easily, for those who are not as attractive or great as to be blinded by instant fame.

As Stanislavski said: “Not all of us are talent geniuses, for those of us who are not there is the method, the observation of geniuses to repeat what made them great."

(Many thanks to Tadeo Berjón for his invaluable help in the translation of the original text from Spanish)

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

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If you read in Spanish you might be interested in my book about Gonzalez Caballero's Acting Method, "El libro del método de actuación de Antonio González Caballero"

El libro del método de actuación de Antonio González Caballero (NO incluye el Método de Voz), en su versión en papel (en especie) está a la venta solamente a través de Internet, y en tres sitios: 

Amazon España:  
http://www.amazon.es/Método-Actuación-Antonio-González-Caballero/dp/1466261919

Amazon.com: 
http://www.amazon.com/Actuación-Antonio-González-Caballero-Spanish/dp/1466261919 

CreateSpace: 
https://www.createspace.com/3677417


También está a la venta en formato electrónico (libro electrónico o ebook), en la tienda Kindle de Amazon:


Kindle amazon:  
www.amazon.com/Actuación-Antonio-González-Caballero-ebook/dp/B009HUT5AA

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Images of transformation in Tatsumi Hijikata's methodology, and the "Elements" in González Caballero's Acting Method.

Tatsumi Hijikata performing "The girl" (Still Photography extracted from a video in Youtube)

Reading the article "Tatsumi Hijikata. The Words of Butoh" by Nanako Kurihara (1), I found a description of an exercise by one of Hijikata's disciples, Ashikawa Yoko, who proposed the dancers (actors-dancers) to transform - through the guide's words and in a continuous guidance of that transformation- into insects formed in turn by thousands of small insects that entered them through their skin pores. (2)

At the beginning, reading this was nothing new to me because I am more than used to guided body transformation exercises, thanks to González Caballero's Acting Method, where 'the elements' ('los Elementos': concrete physical images) enter our bodies and transform us completely.  But it was Kurihara's conclusion that made me stop and think about the importance of that "coincidence" and which prompted me to write this short note.

Here’s the quote as it appears in the book (in its original English version):

"The most difficult part of this exercise was that one had to "be it", not merely "imagine it". This was emphasized in the class again and again. The condition of the body itself has to be changed. Through words, Hijikata's method makes dancers conscious of their physiological senses and teaches them to objectify their bodies. Dancers can then "reconstruct" their bodies as material things in the world and even as concepts. By practicing exercises repeatedly, dancers learn to manipulate their own bodies physiologically and psychologically. As a result, butoh dancers can transform themselves into everything from a wet rug to a sky and can even embody the universe, theoretically speaking (Kurihara 1966)."

Anyone who has worked with González Caballero's Acting Method will recognize and fully understand the text quoted above, especially the description of the transformation through images (in this case guided by a teacher).  The "apoyo Elementos" (Elements) are indeed the same as those 'images of transformation' in Hijikata's method.

The transformation I've experienced using González Caballero's Acting Method is the same I’ve had exploring the Butoh technique, and so I've found it somewhat "familiar", never feeling a conflict between my creative tools on the stage. Antonio González Caballero wanted the actor to transform, and so wanted it Hijkata with dancers, both virtually through the same method; I, working and exploring both methods, have never experienced any problem or misconception.

The ultimate goal of both methods is the transformation through "embodying" what is referred to (during the transformation) through the guide's voice (or sounds), while being imagined by the actor, and making the process of that transformation into a habit. The literature through which both tell the experience is different, of course.

Theatre Anthropology has found certain physical principles in all human activity on stage, it would be important to find the similarities and possibly principles of transformation between the different methods explored during the second half of the twentieth century. If we add to these methods the exploration of physical actions based on the actor-dancer’s inner monologue worked by Grotowski in the sixties and seventies then we could open an even bigger door to discovering these possibles principles of transformation, and thus extend the experience of the artist's creative spectrum.



Gustavo Thomas © 2013

 



(1) The article "Tatsumi Hijikata. The Words of Butoh" appeared in a TDR magazine edition dedicated to Hijikata (Vol. 44, No. 1, Spring, 2000)

(2) Being stuffed by insects is other version of this exercise. Here the quote of the description of this exercise in the article: “In Ashikawa's class, there were routine exercises. One of them was called mushikui (insect bites). A student is first told, "An insect is crawling from between your index finger and the middle finger onto the back of your hand and then on to your lower arm and up to your upper arm." The teacher rubs a drumstick back and forth across the drum, making a slithering sound. Then she touches those particular parts of the body to give some physical sense to the student. The number of insects increases one by one and finally, "You have no purpose. In the end, you are eaten by insects who enter through all the pores of your body, and your body becomes hollow like stuffed animal." Each insect has to be in its precise place. One should not confuse or generalize the insects even when their numbers increase.” It remembers me the word repeated by González Caballero when he wanted the actors to feel the element inside his body, “retacarse del elemento” (probably the most precise translation be “stuffed”)
In both methods the actor shouldn't react to the presence of the insects, bites or being stuffed by them as if they were acting or suffering the experience in a naturalistic way, instead of it they have to feel the transformation and let it be freely using the images.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked otherwise. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

The book "Método de Actuación de Antonio González Caballero" (Spanish edition) is now in ebook version at the Kindle Store (2012)

Ebook of "Método de actuación de A. González Caballero" is already at the Kindle store

It has been another long wait but the Spanish edition of my book "Método de Actuación de Antonio González Caballero" is already on sale at the Kindle store in Amazon. This is exactly the same text already published in paperback: 381 pages (more or less, depending of the Kindle app version you use) with all the exercises and "apoyos" from González Caballero's acting method, with direct quotations from the master's voice.

As commonly occur there are minimal changes from the original text, mostly because of the change of format: for example, there are no links in the list of content, but you can easily find any word or sentences in the 'search" window.

The most important and valuable thing is the price, US $ 9.99 (instead of US $20.00 + shipping of the paperback version), and that you can easily download the book to your electronic device (mobile phone, tablet or computer) and start reading and working with it almost immediately.

Here's the link to the Kindle store:

Kindle amazon:  

www.amazon.com/Actuación-Antonio-González-Caballero-ebook/dp/B009HUT5AA

It's time to rest a little bit around this project (around González Caballero's Acting Method) and continue with my personal work.

Hope in no much time I can start the work of the English version of this very important book.

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The book "Método de actuación de Antonio González Caballero" (Spanish edition), in paperback, is on sale in these sites:

Amazon España:  
http://www.amazon.es/Método-Actuación-Antonio-González-Caballero/dp/1466261919

Amazon.com: 
http://www.amazon.com/Actuación-Antonio-González-Caballero-Spanish/dp/1466261919 

CreateSpace: 
https://www.createspace.com/3677417


The ebook version:


Kindle amazon:  
www.amazon.com/Actuación-Antonio-González-Caballero-ebook/dp/B009HUT5AA

Helene Weigel in Mother Courage (Mutter Courage): Screen photographs of her acting and gestures.

Rehearsal of Mutter Courage (Berlin, Deutsche Theater. 1949. photo by Willi Saeger)
From left to right: Erich Engel, Bertold Brecht, Paul Dessau and Helene Weigel.

 

Helene Weigel is one of the greatest actresses of the theatre of the twentieth century and she more than anyone was the living proof of Brechtian  theories on acting.

We could read dozens of books on Brecht's performances and how he taught his theories, even more, we could read dozens of biographies of actors who worked with him, but none of this would be compared with direct observation and watching performances given by actors and actresses who assimilated such theories. Helene Weigel is gone but, luckily for us, some documents were recorded and filmed with her work, documents that not only identify her artistic greatness but become a kind of acting teachers, transmitting her form (or style) of acting that otherwise would have dissolved over time in the memory of her spectators and the death itself of its representatives. 

 

I explain this again in this blog (I did previously with Meyerhold's The Inspector General): thanks to certain developments within everyone's reach we can see in a more effective way these film-documents: screen shots made with the computer.  Viewing a video of a performance itself is very interesting, but the possibility of holding postures and gestures of that performance is phenomenal; theatrical photography, which is is an interesting document in itself, of course, is not taken at the moment of the movement itself, but is often taken at moment where the motion stops, while the images that we capture directly from the computer screen where we're watching the film or video is a forced stopping of the image.  It is not the beauty of the position or of the image but the functionality of the image for the observer what I value in it.
I found, in a BBC documentary on Brechtian theater, some shots of the filming of a performance of the play Mutter Courage directed by Bertold Brecht himself and played by none other than Helene Weigel; although it is a very short video,  I decided to segment the video into stills of her movement and gesture, and I think it's definitely of great value for anyone interested in the history of acting and in the dissection of living documents dissection of stage creators.

Enjoy it.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

The Hitler's Technique of Saying a Political Speech

Reading "The Coming of The Third Reich" by Richard J. Evans I found a very curious paragraph dedicated to Hitler's technique of saying a speech during his early years as a politician (that means, the technique which brought him to success). Even if this short historical analysis is important to understand how Hitler influenced through his speech some millions of Germans and many other millions around the world in that moment of history, it is also an interesting example of speech technique as simple as that, and more, it is written in a very practical way by Evans, so, very functional for actors and orators as well (if you don't have some moral and political issues from past decades, of course):

"While conventional right-wing politicians delivered lectures, or spoke in a style that was orotund and pompous, flat and dull, or rough and brutish, Hitler followed the model of Social Democratic orators such as Eisner, or the left-wing agitators from whom he later claimed to have learned in Vienna. And he gained much of his oratorical success by telling his audiences what they wanted to hear. He used simple, straightforward language that ordinary people could understand, short sentences, powerful, emotive slogans. Often beginning a speech quietly, to capture his audience's attention, he would gradually build to a climax, his deep, rather hoarse voice would rise in pitch, climbing in a crescendo to a ranting and screaming finale, accompanied by carefully rehearsed dramatic gestures, his face glistening with sweat, his lank, dark hair falling forward over his face as he worked his audience into a frenzy emotion. There were no qualifications in what he said; everything was absolute, uncompromising, irrevocable, undeviating, unalterable, final. He seemed, as many who listened to hi early speeches testified, to speak straight from the heart, and to express their own deepest fears and desires. Increasingly, too, he exuded self-confidence, aggression, belief in the ultimate triumph of his party, even a sense of destiny. (...)" (Page 172.)

Of course today that "school" of speech technique is absolutely recognizable and very bad received if used in similar way, it was the summit and the final of its kind (as powerful as it was), but it is still a theatrical technique, a way to produce some reactions from spectators through voice and gestures. A colorfoul analysis should be done it that sense, but not by me, I only wanted to share this curiosity.

As many have said before me, theatre and their techniques can be used to transform real life over and over again, but remember that they are theatre techniques at the end.

Note: I'm not embedding any video of Hitler speeches because all of them are propaganda edited by the Nazi government or by actual followers, so it wouldn't show the technical line Evans wrote about. 

   

Approaching to the Origin of Chinese Puppets and Chinese Actor Technique: Chinese Funerary Figures.

It is said (people who knows about it) that in the origin of the acting technique in Chinese Opera it was the way puppets were manipulated to become alive. Following strict patterns from ancient rituals to convert a dead matter in a live body, in the same way the actor’s body becomes alive in a new one, through training, in a theatrical body. That’s a fascinating subject but today I want to go further back in history. It is also said (the same savants) that the origin of the Puppet Theatre technique of movement it was inside of the ancient tombs of China, in the technique mortuary figures were made for. Human-like figures, made of wood, paper, bronze or clay, which must have had movement to recall and to reinforce life to the dead once installed in the other world; and the techniques to provoke movement in those mortuary figures were used later to create a Puppet performance outside the tomb (and at the end the actor’s performance as well).

I knew a little bit about this ideas before arriving to China but it was there, in 2005, when reading Jo Riley's book Chinese Theatre and the Actor in Performance (1) that I answered many of my questions about Beijing Opera Actor’s movement technique and I could compare them with what I was seeing in every performance I attended in China. Of course, and I must say it, this doesn’t mean that a common modern Chinese Opera actor is aware of this origin, or any other, in his training, he learns from a tradition, most of it imitation, and in that kind of education many questions are not answered and origins usually are covered with mystic and fantasy. That’s then part of a researcher’s field or maybe of a curious observer.

What it’s fantastic in all this story is the origin of all of it, apparently very simple human-like figures buried in a tomb, functioning as puppets for the dead, as a company for the other world, recreating life and movement in a subterranean stage-world. It wasn’t till the last century that Chinese discovered the figures and researchers could elaborate a reasonable discourse about their function in funerary rituals, keeping the idea of being alive through reaching the movement inside the tomb. So, many of these figures were made with moveable arms and jaw, painted with vivid colors for the eyes and signs referring to muscular gestures, and in some tombs hanging in a position that could keep them in movement thanks to the air (as a common puppet); all of these figures imbued of substances linked to the fluids of life (related to the Chinese terms of Qi and Shen), blood of course and several mineral powders.

Riley makes for us a fantastic parallelism of the ways those figures were made with the objective of becoming alive and how Chinese Opera training technique is structured to create the actor’s new body for the stage. In the beginning puppets were a medium for exorcism in the underworld while actors were exorcists in this our "real" world; both should follow the same patterns, being related to the same materials, and of course the same technique to become alive.

I didn’t find any of these figures inside China, only because I didn’t have the opportunity to travel where they were in exhibition, but surprisingly I found two of them during my visit to San Francisco in February 2009, inside the very well known Asian Art Museum; these figures are made of clay and their arms, once moveable parts, are missing. The Museum information said they were more than 2000 years old.

Video: Mortuary Figures in China (SF Asian Museum)

The next photographs of mortuary figures come from Jo Riley’s book, from a Principal's tomb in Mawangdui, just 40 kilometers from Changsha, in Hunan Province. The Tomb dates to approximately 168 B.C.

Finally here you see two photographs with more mortuary figures taken from an Internet site: one of them, from the Mawangdui tombs, shows a group of musicians with their instruments (it is not dated), and the other presents an almost recognizable modern puppet (but still a funerary figure), dating from Liao Dynasty (Between 907 and 1225 A.D.).

As usual, I’m happy to expose information and documents, then, the rest, if up to you. See you next time.

(1) Jo Riley "Chinese Theatre and the Actor in Performance" Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, 1997.

Legong Dance Lessons at ARMA in UBUD, and some thoughts about Theatre Schools in China and Bali.

Nyoman Suastini Legong teacher teaching at the ARMA Museum in Ubud. Bali, 2009.

When I was a child, there was a lot of possibilities for fun in the field of art, but only two were taken as seriously as the beginning of a career in piano or ballet. Those were not entertaining games where doodling or playing with dough became art, there you were going to study something with discipline, you would use a technique, a particular technique, to advance, a technique which, if you didn't follow within certain parameters, you could be rejected . So, not wanting to be a pianist or a dancer I amused myself by painting and wanting to be an actor, pretending to direct orchestras, writing melodramatic dialogues and organising theatre plays among my friends say, at a very high level of improvisation and fun.

It was not until my teens that, when beginning professional acting studies, I discovered I could have started my acting career in my childhood, with the same seriousness as that in ballet or music, but not in my country but in the Far East. The stories of the wonderful Chinese and Japanese players came to my ears: great actors who began their studies at 6 or 7 years old and spent 10 or 15 years working with their masters to attain their first important role in a production; actors who learned a physical and vocal technique not through exercises as such, but through the "imitation" of their master (1). And so I also discovered how this educational process in the performing arts was a common situation in India, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and, of course, Bali, the theatre island or, rather, the island of the performing arts.

China showed me the first live examples of these "serious" schools for children where there is no way to achieve perfection but through discipline and following for years a rigorous technique of imitation and repetition from the beginning. I could observe and see not only how these children were being educated, but also their results on stage after 8 to 10 years of study (before they began their professional life), and then I could understand why the technical grandeur of these actors in their youth (in their twenties and thirties). In the same way and through the direct testimony of young artists who had just entered the professional world I could hear their questioning of such a rigorous and cruel education which, in today's China, would give them a profession would that barely cover for their minimum financial needs when, in the past, it would have given them wealth and fame (2).

Video 1: presentation of a training at a Peking Opera school

Video 2: presentation of acrobatic skills of the Peking Opera school.

(click to go to the video)

Reuters' photographs of children being educated in the Peking Opera school.

(click on the link above to go to the main page of Reuters)

Video 3: Annual Function of the Peking Opera school. Beijing, 2007

Unlike their Japanese and Chinese counterparts, Balinese artistic education is much more relaxed; the same principles of imitation, repetition and practice are followed, as well as the beginning of education from early childhood, but not so the tremendous discipline demands (like boarding-schools, between 10 and 12 hours of practical study, etc.) nor the violence by which several great masters of the north are known. In Bali itself children are still taught to dance and act for the Balinese, for their religious festivals and temples, for their entertainment and for the tourists who support the economy of the island, all in the same way as Miguel Covarrubias observed and filmed in the 30s of the last century.

Learning in the Balinese performing arts is a learning based on physical contact. Most of the dancers-actors begin their learning between 6 and 7 years old. At first, the student stands behind the teacher and imitates his movements. The teacher sings the melody of the dance, or uses a boom box, and follows the beat of the gongs marking a pace and giving directions based on that rhythm. Once the choreography is learned in its basic, the teacher changes and moves on par with the student, behind him, and manages the student body like a puppet. This allows the student to feel exactly the inclinations and movements of the wrists and elbows, plus the position of the back and hip. No mirrors are used, so the student follows by imitating the teacher or the teacher moves the student's body to show through physical contact the total energy and rhythm to be danced. With his voice, if that's the case, the student imitates the singing or recitation of the teacher.

In 1930 Covarrubias filmed a couple of girls learning and dancing together with their teachers. In the tiny scene (20 seconds) we can see direct imitation where the teacher handles the trainee like a puppet, and repetition is a component of teaching (the narrator's voice was added in 2004 and is not part of the original).

Video: Covarrubias film about Legong classes. Bali, 1930.

In the following two pictures we see I Ketut Mario, one of the greatest Balinese dancers and choreographers from the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century, and I Nyoman Kakul, in 1974, teaching their respective students. It is very clear how physical contact between teacher and pupil happens.

Master I Ketut Mario (1927)

Master I Nyoman Kakul (1974)

In my last visit to Bali in July 2009 I photographed and video-recorded a class at the ARMA Museum in Ubud, where the teacher, Nyoman Suastini, was working on a Legong Kratong piece with a group of girls; once again we note here the continuous practice, repetition and imitation of the movements of the teacher.

Video Legong dance classes in Arma Museum Ubud. Bali, 2009.

I do not pretend to explain the education in oriental performing arts, but to stress, by exposing them in a document, some of their essential characteristics and thus bring the reader of this blog closer to them. The differences with my personal educational experience in the field of acting are extreme, and I'm sure they are so when it comes to the educational experience of actors in most of the Western world, hence the importance of their presenting as a document. Once exposed we can pose questions, with knowledge, to our educational systems for theater, and propose possible changes to them, new avenues of exploration, or simply an enjoyment of what seems part of the weird and unknown.

Following with my experience in Bali, I can now turn to the surprising dances that I witnessed at the Royal Palace of Ubud.

(1) The film "Farewell My Concubine" has a very long and accurate sequence on the demanding education in Peking Opera in the late nineteenth century. In the following link you can see some images of drawings that show a school of Peking opera in the early twentieth century:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ-rRPH2R5c

(2) This is one of the greatest cultural challenges in today's China, the glorification of western entertainment culture at the expense of their traditional culture. (Until the late forties of the twentieth century Peking opera was as commercial as any other current entertainment, but at present it is only a theatrical vestige of the past).