An Analysis of Marowitz
In yesterday’s blog, I lead you to the infrequent blogging of legendary director Charles Marowitz, and his blog on ‘Getting Stanislavsky Wrong’.
Great as it was, I thought it would be interesting to provide an analysis of his blog, examining and exploring his main thesis and other areas of interest.
First off, he gives us a potted history of how Stanislavsky influenced American acting developments. “In 1923, all of New York was bowled over by the first visit of the Moscow Art Theatre to America”. Much of this is disputed by Strasberg revisionists and Method apologists, who are now re-writing the history to suit their own cause. They insist that Stanislavsky did NOT change his mind and move towards physical action and instead that was a constraint ordered from the Dark Empire of the Red Menace. Second they dispute the cause of the schism in the Group Theatre, and belittle Stella Adler’s meeting with Stanislavsky in Paris. Of course, it’s a totally revisionist view of history that suits the Method’s practitioners and is part of a wider move to turn Strasberg into some sort of kindly-old-Grandfather figure. When questioned, they point to HISTORY as a concrete and unbiased record of exactly what happens, we all know that history is written by the dominant party, and the dominant party in American acting for the past 50 years has been Method Acting. So, let’s agree to disagree that there is a SCHISM in how we view the influence of Stanislavsky on America to start with.
Marowitz says that no dogma is ever so entirely persuasive that it does not create skeptics. Skepticism is healthy of course. And as some of Stanislavsky’s own students became exponents of their own approach, so some of Strasberg’s students started to develop their own ideas too and out of Meisner’s work sprang Practical Aesthetics, which has a healthy dose of skepticism and an attitude that if it looks like bullshit and it smells like bullshit, there’s probably a bull close by.
His basic description of ‘actions’ and ‘actioning’ is well explained, it helps many of our students that have never heard of it and he describes that there can be many actions for a character in a single scene. We call ACTIONS – TACTICS and we also believe that TACTICS are continually changing. However Marowitz means that the character has many different tactics in a scene but they always remain the same. This is his main criticism of actions that they do get the actor DOING, actually ACTING but that after a while, the spontaneity of the actor is decreased because the action/tactic is straightjacketing the actor in the moment.
We suggest a get around for this, that many different tactics are explored in the scene and they are never chosen in the same order, because they are only used in response to what the actor’s task is and what their scene partner is doing in the moment. This way, they remain entirely alive, spontaneous and immediate. We do not ‘account for each moment of the scene’, we simply live truthfully in each moment of the scene, knowing that we have something to achieve and in each moment the actor will be going after this TASK to some degree. Sometimes our TASK changes as he explains due to ‘unexpected pressures’, the writer will have provided these and the suitable moment for this TASK to change. And again he’s right, if everything is worked out too strictly in advance, we cannot change with spontaneity. Although, I believe it would be impossible for the actor to spontaneously change what they want from their partner in the scene and stay in line with the writer’s intention and BE in the scene at the same time, in this way, the TASK is a map to follow, you can sometimes take a different route, perhaps a diversion or a mistaken route, but you always try to come back to where you are going.
The example that Marowitz gives of the director in Copenhagen is typical of the director that has discovered actions and wants to control each moment of the scene/play/movie with total dominance over what action should be played in each moment. There’s no problem with the director preparing this plan, it’s just that if they expect the actor to carry it out, they are mistaken, it is not set in stone, it is instead a jumping off point, if they want to use the actor as a marionette, then by all means, tell the actor exactly what to do, but if the actor is your collaborator and you want to include their inventive and impulsive ideas into the work, then you are better off letting them play with their own actions/tactics and suggesting things if they get stuck.
Again the director says that if they prepare this way, they will be able to prepare themselves for all the twists and turns of the play. This is deadly and deadening of course, to play immediately, to play with spontaneity means letting go of such restrictive practices. But that requires a director to trust you and treat you like the adult you are.
Marowitz comments that the actor who ‘actions’, bases their decision on textual choices, not subtextual choices. I entirely agree and when our actors choose their tactics, they are governed by the character’s WANT, the situation the character is in, the TASK they actor needs to achieve, and the individual moment in which they are working. Textual tactics exist of their own accord, there is already power in the words, we add a third dimension through subtextual choices.
Marowitz also suggests that the character can have multiple wants. He calls it the ‘most perillous fallacy’ – which is a bit much, and yes, I agree but I believe that the actor can only do one thing at a time, and if the want changes, it is the actor’s job to discern this from the script as written by the author. Their split intention would be signaled by different elements of the script and the natural friction and fission between the words of the writer and the actions of the actor.
Finally Marowitz says: ” If we revise or even discard certain basic Stanislavsky precepts, we are not dishonoring the Father of Psychological Realism but acknowledging his own belief that in art, the only constant is change.” That is exactly what MChekhov, Meyerhold, Vakhtangov, Grotowski, Strasberg, Meisner, Mamet and Macy have done – we are all just honouring his goal of a truthful way to act.