A Window into the Past - 1978

My wife suggested I post this.

It is the first chapter of the work I did in 1978.
This was lost in the flood of 97' in Ashland, OR and recently found.
The audience would have been a young theatre artist just beginning their search.
This is what I so wanted to share and talk about back then. Do you remember me then?

What a flash! For your amusement and edification and thanks for visiting. Viva La 70's.

______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________

The Transparent Actor
June 1978
A Holistic Perspective
by Patrick B. Chew
                                                                                                            

Chapter One:

Understanding the Here/Now

"There are many ways to approach the task of acting. There are as many valid professional methods of success as there are successful professional actors. This fact can make the task of the student actor, aspiring to be professional, a very personal struggle with the very fabric from which we are made. It must be clear that the study of acting is very much the study of one’s self. In a QUALITY characterization one can manipulate ones traits, deeds, and communications to the very specific demands of an artificial situation as if such continuums were truth. To the quality professional actor in the moment, it is truth. The situation is real and the events are heartfelt. The student actor seeking such a level of excellence must develop keen skills in self expression and self awareness.

The writings that follow are not an attempt to tell you how to act or how I act or how Stanislavsky acted. I seek to share tools, observations, images, concepts, ideas, exercises that I have collected in my personal struggle for an understanding of acting. It is my hope, if the reader is a professional or student actor, that you apply these tools and find them useful and enriching to your craft.

It is my belief that the most efficient starting point to learn acting is to explore the human experience of the instant of Here/Now. Not past nor future, history or projection; but right in the middle of the split instance life is lived. A person can witness a movie and be entertained and astounded, but that makers of the film had to create the film frame by frame. Life is a fluid continuum of experience which is far more complex that the series of stills that is a motion picture. I will try to introduce the majority of variables that comprise the here/now experience of life and then explore how these variables holistically work together to create ever changing continuums of experience.

Here/Now is a common experience we all share, yet few give it much attention. Most folks focus their consciousness on past, present (but not here/now), and future. That inner monologue, chattering away every waking hour. We seem strongly indoctrinated as a culture, to believe only in experience that fits into words or continuums of words. Most are taught to exclude as fiction all qualities of experience that cannot easily be put into words or symbols. If it is not conveniently in our belief system it does not exist. I am here to tell you this is not the case. Words are simply too slow. They take time in continuum to convey a message.

Meaningful communication solely through words is a slow process; hence, the actor may start living the mere creation of the symbols rather than the appropriate quality of life experience. Controlling at will, the qualities of one’s life experience has become the foundation for this study of the professional task of acting. One can talk about the past and plan for the future; however, one can only experience here/now.

I have found here/now to be the ring in which acting takes place. The following are some images that have helped me in understand here/now as a useful concept:

1.     The WHOLE is greater than the sum of the parts.

2.     Let all stimuli flow through you rather than confronting it. Don’t judge. Experience!

3.     All illusion works for a reason. Know the reason and the illusion becomes a tool.

4.     The WHOLE: Principles within self are the same as in the entire universe. Know yourself and you know the universe.

5.     Call it a limitation and that is what it is!

6.     Experience is not what happens to you, but rather what you do with what happens to you.

7.     As you perceive it, so it is.

8.     There is no right or wrong! Only what doesn’t work, what works, or what works better!

Actors working under these assumptions develop an awareness ore feeling for, what I call “the truth” of any given here/now experience. The truth is simply what is! It cannot be judged, only experienced.

In theatre, the playwright creates a continuum of stimuli for the actor to experience. The playwright creates the truth and the actor renders this continuum of truth with his or her life. In a performance situation, the actor must be able to create and react off the given stimuli in the split instant it is intended, with no time to think. If the actor has to think of what to do, that moment of thinking is placed in the past, unused, dead air. Here/now, one can only do one thing. If the actor is thinking, that is what the audience sees no matter what the actor believes the audience is seeing. Each time this happens, there is a distracting licker in the texture of the piece as a whole. This is why I feel an actor should be aware whether he or she is delivering the mere symbols of the playwright or actually giving the here/now living experience offered by the play. I might add, rehearsal is for thinking, performance is for doing.

The word “holistic” represents the realm of thought and philosophy that tries to understand how whole systems can work together to create continuums of experience, within the limitations of time and space. The human body is such a system; experiencing life here on this planet between birth and death.

A play is such a system; creating for the one experiencing it, a continuum on the stage or wherever, between the opening and closing of the curtains. Economics, Government, Culture, Food Production, Sex, Chemistry, Physics, Language, Educational Systems; all these systems exist within the limits of time and space, having given experiential qualities. When an individual goes through such a system of experience, by choice, he or she intends to alter in some predetermined way, the quality of their experience here/now. Experience is not what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you. This brings up the complex question of control which I will deal with specifically in a later chapter.

The word “holistic” comes from the Greek word “holos” meaning whole. It is also derived from the idea of holism, “That which emphasizes the organic or functional relationship between parts and wholes." 1 The play is a whole system and the actors are the parts that work in relationship to each other to create the whole here/now experience perceived by the individual audience member. The work holistic is defined as, “The theory that whole entities, as fundamental and determining components of reality, have and existence more than the mere sum of their parts." 2 When a play is truly working, this magical more is experienced by actors and audience alike; however, I am sure we have all experienced our share of plays that didn’t work as a whole. Some parts worked and some didn’t. In an artificial system such as a play, when one part isn’t working right, it affects the whole system. When the system works together as a coherent organization of parts, the quality of the experience is good. As parts falter, the quality declines. In theatre, quality of experience is a big thing! It’s what we sell!

It is within the recesses of the actor that the quality of experience happens. That is what creates a play. Hence, the actor’s body is her or her greatest resource. Holistic philosophy considers the body a dynamic energy system in a constant state of change. However, human beings have shown themselves to be more than just their bodies. Each is a complex balance of mental, physical, and spiritual aspects that are integrated into one’s indivisible experience of here/now. Each body affects and directly is affected by environmental and social factors. The mind/body/spirit cannot be fragmented or isolated in two parts, for it is a single, constantly changing continuum of experience; a group of systems, working as one. It is only when we intentionally limit here/now, that we can focus on only part of the whole. This is a tool. Experiencing life within the limitations of these systems I’ve mentioned is how this abstraction can take place.

A holistic approach to acting is based on the assumption that a human system, as an integrated and organic whole, has a reality independent of its physical parts. This greater reality cannot be perceived or understood until there exists an awareness of many of the components which help to create the whole human system. Place yourself as the whole entity in question. The following are some facts about the way human being perceive their experiences. They might help you in beginning to explore the style of acting.

Modern behavioral Science has discovered a marked difference between the functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The left brain, controlling the right side of the body; also controls the logical, intellectual, word, and time oriented side of self. The right brain, controlling the left side of the body; also conducts the actor, dancer, lover, artist, open, deathless side of self. Though both sides of the brain have different functions, the two focus with the rest of the bodily systems to create the single expression of an integrated entity working toward a common goal. Some “one” is pulling your strings. Is it you?

An understanding of these two modalities of the brain is a very important tool for the actor creating a role. For example, European styles of actor training have developed as a left brain process involving highly refined techniques. American actor training seems to come more from the right brain and it’s ability to understand the inner self and its expression. In such cases only one side of the brain is fully developed, while the other side is left to its intuitive best to keep up. The less aware or experience the performer is, the more evident this imbalance becomes. Neither style of actor training can fully prepare the actor to live a whole experience on stage. Such training allows the actor to deliver only part of the living message intended for the audience by the playwright. Large parts get lost, altered, or left out entirely as it travels from the playwright’s mind, through the written word, through a director’s concept, dragged under an actors craft and skill to finally arrive at the senses of the audience. It is the actor’s challenge to bring life to the written word, despite all the limitations between the playwright’s imagination and it’s fulfillment in the actors for the audience. A noble quest since most people can barely bring life to the spoken words of day-to-day living.

So, what is “Acting?” Viola Spolin opens her book, “Improvisation for the Theatre”: “Creative experience. Everyone can act. Everyone who wishes to, can play in the theatre and become stage worth.” Shakespeare wrote in his play, “As You Like It”: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women on it is merely players”. Neva L. Boyd states in her book, “Play; A Unique Experience": “Playing a game is psychologically different in degree, but not in kind from dramatic acting. The ability to create a situation imaginatively and to play a role in it is a tremendous experience, a kind of vacation from one’s everyday living. We observe that the psychological freedom creates a condition in which potentialities are released in the spontaneous effort to meet the demands of the situation." I personally feel that the acting experience is a here/now life experience, following the same rules and limitations.

A play is a predetermined continuum of here/now experience. To be better able to communicate such an experience, the actor should be aware of the three interwoven levels of communication. The first: interpersonal communication, which is totally within self, but can be perceived by others sensitive to body language, energy, etc. The second: interpersonal communication, which is conventional languages or organized systems of symbols representing common experience between persons. The third: transpersonal communication, which is the ability to perceive inside and outside one’s self without the use of the five senses. This is the level at which ESP and such experience takes place. All humans are active on all three levels all the time. Since actors are for the most part human, they would do well to gain an understanding of these three levels and how these levels express themselves. Interpersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal ways of communicating are apparently all quite different. The actor should express the playwright’s message on all three levels, for it is the synthesis of the three which creates the message received by the audience. Since the actor must transmit on all three levels, the quality of the performance as a whole will be altered, if all levels aren’t sending the appropriate information, to communicate the intended message. If an actor is saying his or her lines and thinking about the party after the show, or feeling the pizza for dinner, or is upset about some other issue, this person is altering the intended message in a perceivable way, hence lowering the quality of the production as a whole. A high quality production is a delicate fabric of living experience intended to entertain or enlighten its audience as it floats before them.

Groups working with a holistic approach to acting would deal with problem solving the expansion of personal and group consciousness. Whatever the game, exercise, or technique used, each must also include these four principles:


1.The release of unexpressed feelings or emotions.


2. Centering the mind/body/spirit to a neutral state, hence creating a place to work from and back to.


3. Focusing on the development of new behavioral or motor reflex patterns for character or self.


4. Development of a self-selected belief system based on actual feeling, living, experience. (A belief system is an abstract organization of symbols and experiences which represent that individual’s concept of truth, whether it’s true or not.)

The goal of any holistic exercise must be the development of one’s center, ego strengths, perceptual awareness, empathetic response, communication techniques, social and human skills, and to heighten one’s intuition about the nature of others.

The following chapters will explore the individual’s experience of life as perceived through the trinity of the mind/body/spirit at the instant of here/now. For I have come to believe it is in this state of being that acting and life take place."