Modernist Art - A New Approach in Theatre - Essay Example

Modernist Art: A New Approach in Theatre The backbone philosophy of modernism is seen as an exploration of the intimate relationships that are shared between the constructed image and its audience. In other words, modernism is all about finding and legitimizing the connections between human emotions and physical conceptions as these conceptions are identified and expressed.1 Scholars define modernity as “a condition of living imposed upon individuals by the socioeconomic process of modernization.”2 Thus, modernity can be understood as a conceptual framework of individual expression at the same time that it can be considered a reflection of society as a whole. This suggests that it is comprised of intellectual ideas as well as by the development of new processes, techniques and materials. Modernity has been described as the “dialectical relationship ... which modernism consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, positively or negatively reflects the effects of capitalist development.”3 The modernist ideology is thus revealed to have a number of different contexts bound together and interacting with our social understandings contributing to our intuitive and overt sense and understanding of the world around us. With the arrival of modernism, the realism and humanism of earlier periods melts away as performing artists focus more upon style, technique and spatial form in an attempt to find a deeper expression of human experience, such as is seen in the ‘radical theatre’ approach taken by Peter Brook. The use of the word ‘radical’ in place of modern is deliberate when it comes to Brook’s theater. The Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines the adjective as “believing or expressing the belief that there should be great or extreme social or political change” and the noun in terms of “a person who supports great social and political change.”4 Toni Sant claims “radical theatre aims to make extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions or institutions,”5 thereby giving a description that is essentially modern in its meaning yet descriptive in its term. In his pamphlet discussing the various forms of radical theatre, Richard Walsh identifies three distinct approaches to modern theatre that can be generally classified as aesthetics defining politics, politics defining aesthetics, and aesthetics obscuring politics – “the social and political dimensions of theatre were truncated to allow an exploration of the encounter between the theatrical medium and the individual perceiving mind.”6 During the nineteenth century and the advent of the modern, theatre took on shapes and forms that would not be recognizable today as realistic despite their claims to the contrary.7 Advances in stage set design that included more and more realistic trompe l’oeil encouraged a greater degree of naturalism in the acting performance, all set within the proscenium-arch picture frame of the stage.8 Realism throughout the nineteenth century and into the early portions of the twentieth century was heavily influenced by the new sciences that were emerging, taking the emphasis off of rationalism or melodramatic displays of emotion. “The terms of Zola’s naturalism required the actor to perform as though completely unaware of the existence of an audience, presenting a fragment of that character’s physiological existence as a series of symptoms that exposed his social and biological history.”9 These changing approaches to acting in light of a changing world contributed to the development of the modernist movement, which was initiated in theatre in the early twentieth century by essentially four men – Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Brecht and Artaud – who each focused in different ways upon the idea that theatre is always symbolic. “It assumes that everything that happens on stage stands for something else. This is true even of the most naturalistic piece.”10 While each of these men placed emphasis on different aspects of their productions and the importance such emphasis had on the final outcome, each recognized the essential nature of the actor in this process. “Each helped to open up acting and to liberate it from old traditions. Each saw the actor as a creative artist in his own right.”11 Their influence on theatre opened up new ideas for theatre and helped pave the way for Peter Brook to bring forward his own modern approaches. Brook’s approach to the actor built off of the ideas of the earlier Modernists, yet brought these aspects to the forefront through his approach on stage. “All theatrical performance starts from the assumption that a performer is using her body to represent a virtual body. The actor’s creation of a virtual body transforms an actual place demarcated as a playing space into a virtual place. Real time is transformed into virtual time for the duration of the performance.”12 Performances that don’t take this into account take on elements of what Brook referred to as Deadly Theatre. According to Brook, Deadly Theatre refers to all types of theatre that is based upon the ‘right’ way of doing things, the prescribed way of acting, the determination of the ‘one right way’ to produce and present a text. “The Deadly Theatre takes easily to Shakespeare. We see his plays done by good actors in what seems like the proper way – they look lively, and colorful, there is music and everyone is dressed up, just as they are supposed to be in the best of classical theatres. Yet secretly we find it excruciatingly boring – and in our hearts we either blame Shakespeare, or theatre as such, or even ourselves.”13 As early as 1946, with his production of Love’s Labour’s Lost, Brook demonstrated a willingness to take a new approach to Shakespeare that embraced the elements of the modern. Rather than following the somewhat dusty routine of Shakespeare productions, in which it was considered necessary to ‘play what is written’14, Brook chose to costume his actors in Watteau-eighteenth century clothing (consisting of a number of pleats in the back), yet opted to costume one character slightly differently. The character called Constable Dull was dressed as a Victorian policeman because of the image Brook had of him as a London bobby. The change in costume from Shakespearean to Victorian was only one instance in which Brook pointed out the symbolic notion of what is written. He applied this concept equally to the text as it was written. “What is written? Certain ciphers on paper. Shakespeare’s words are records of the words he wanted to be spoken, words issuing as sounds from people’s mouths, with pitch, pause, rhythm and gesture as part of their meaning. A word does not start as a word – it is an end product which begins as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behavior which dictate the need for expression.”15 To illustrate his approach to Shakespeare’s plays, Brook points to the lack of stage direction included in the texts. “The best dramatists explain themselves the least. They recognize that further indications will most probably be useless. They recognize that the only way to find the true path to the speaking of a word is through a process that parallels the original creative one.”16 By keeping this in mind, Brook has slowly evolved his own approach to theatre that increasingly celebrates the involvement of the actor as actor and keeps the creative process at the forefront of the production. Like Love’s Labour’s Lost, Brook’s approach to Measure for Measure (1950) was characterized by a certain license given to the actors as the play progressed, such as the breathless length of time that passed in silence before Isabella finally asked for pardon for the man who had tried to rape her in exchange for her brother’s life. These changes, pauses, costume and set design changes to the traditional way in which these plays had been presented emerged as a natural result of the way in which Brook had his actors approach the process of the production. This approach enabled Brook to always be aware of how the subtle nuances of a text could emerge when one allowed the actors to explore the ideas that naturally arose from working in close proximity with the text rather than simply allowing themselves to be limited by the text. “In a living theatre, we would each day approach the rehearsal putting yesterday’s discoveries to the test, ready to believe that the true play has once again escaped us.”17 This required not only actors that had been trained in Method acting, in which the only way to examine a part was through the experience of it, but also a different approach to directing. When describing his role as a director, Brook indicates he “needs only one conception – which he must find in life, not in art – which comes from asking himself what an act of theatre is doing in the world, why it is there. Obviously, this cannot stem from an intellectual blueprint.”18 To avoid the imposition of too much intellectualism in his productions, Brook explains he typically begins a play with an initial, inexplicable hunch regarding something about the play. “That’s the basis of my job, my role – that’s my preparation for rehearsals with any play I do. … I have no technique … I have no structure for doing a play because I work from that amorphous, non-formed feeling, and from that I start preparing.”19 Without this hunch, he says he cannot make a success of any play, yet it is also essential that a play have originating elements upon which the team can build. In this sense, then, good theatre emerges not only as the result of a good acting team and a good director adopting a novel approach, but also as the result of a solid text that has managed to capture the essence of humanity without dictating the same. For Brook, everything that happens after this initial hunch is first felt happens as a means of further defining the hunch until it becomes a cohesive whole that transmits the play to the audience on a experiential level for actors and audience alike. “What kind of costumes? What kind of colors? All of those are a language for making that hunch a little more concrete. Until gradually, out of this comes the form, a form that must be modified and put to the test, but nevertheless it’s a form that’s emerging.”20 Actors become part of the process during rehearsals. Even here, Brook takes a modern approach to directing in that he doesn’t greet his actors on the first day of rehearsal with a speech regarding what the play is about and how he plans to approach it.21 Instead, he indicates that it’s important for the actors to feel comfortable with themselves, each other and with the director to allow them to explore freely what their part is about. This exploration leads to the production of a great number of possibilities through which the hunch begins to take on that final form the team is working toward. “You see forms that you begin to recognize, and in the last stages of rehearsal, the actor’s work takes on a dark area which is the subterranean life of the play, and illuminates it; and as the subterranean area is illuminated by the actor, the director is placed in a position to see the difference between the actor’s ideas and the play itself.”22 As the extraneous bits of interpretation are discarded and refined, bringing the hunch into sharper and sharper focus, the production of the play becomes at once a faithful interpretation of the words as written and intended by the author and a new interpretation that is unique and modern, completely in context with the living, breathing world. “The form is not ideas imposed on the play, it is the play illuminated, and the play illuminated is the form. Therefore, when the results seem organic and unified, it’s not because a unified conception has been found and has been put on the play from the outset.”23 The creative process that gave birth to the text has been used to give birth to the performance creating in its wake a performance that manages to energize both to a higher degree than the traditional approach seems capable of accomplishing. This approach was summarized in Brook’s description of the process of autobiography as well as theatre: “I side with Hamlet when he calls for a flute and cries out against the attempt to sound the mystery of a human being, as though one could know all its holes and stops.”24 It is impossible for one playwright to capture every aspect of each of his characters within the text of his play just as it is impossible for one director to know the various approaches that might be taken to a single character on stage to provide the ‘one true’ aspect that was intended. Instead, Brook insists there are a variety of approaches that can be taken to each character that vary depending upon the actor playing the part and the team with whom they are acting, the set they are acting in and the various other essential aspects to a production that might be changed to reflect a new point of view or a changing audience mentality. It is this concept of involvement for all levels of the production that brings Brook’s work into the radical realm and that has given rise to a whole different genre of theatre. This changed approach to theatre also gave Brook the concept of changing the text of a play to more fully appeal to the changing audiences of the twentieth century. Pointing out that few people have the patience for the archaic speech and royal genuflections of earlier times, Brook’s alterations can perhaps best be examined by looking into his various productions of Hamlet over the years. His first production of the play was held in 1955. Unlike later productions, this was a full production of the text. “I was so respectful that I didn’t do anything at all but leave it to speak for itself, which is a great mistake because plays can’t speak for themselves.”25 However, his most recent production of the play (2001) featured a highly condensed version that still managed to gain critical acclaim despite the controversies. More than half of the play was cut out, several characters were entirely cut or were played by the same actor and several scenes were rearranged. “Since his reverent ‘Hamlet’ of 1955, Brook says he has come to feel that it is perfectly legitimate to rearrange works whose form was not their greatest virtue.”26 The cuts made included most of the political and courtly sections, and with them characters who had little to no direct association or importance to the unfolding of Hamlet’s lines. One of the more obvious scene movements is the ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy. While many of the more often quoted lines have remained unchanged, Brook’s changes not only reduced the play’s run time, but condensed the tragic aspects of the play, refining it and defining it in surprising and demanding ways. The changes made to the play were wrought using Brook’s method of involving the actors in an active exploration of what the play means. By ending the play with Horatio rather than Fortinbras, in which the first lines of the play are repeated, Brook focused the play on the concept of reconciliation and consolation. “Ending is hardest of all, yet letting go gives the only true taste of freedom. Then the end becomes a beginning once more and life has the last word.”27 The 2001 production arose from years of workshop and rehearsal work in which Brook explored the play in many of the ways discussed above. Natasha Parry, the actress who played the part of Gertrude (and Brook’s wife in real life), is quoted by Bloom: “It’s not like some directors who are heavily into the details from the beginning. For him it’s like big overall splashes of color, and then it gradually gets pinpointed. By the time we had our first public rehearsals everything was still being worked on. It’s like a permanent trying things out.”28 Like his other plays, Brook’s hunch for Hamlet was an exploration into what makes a classic. “Is one looking above all for an experience in the present? In that case every single play, whatever its background, whatever its period, must seem to the audience while they are watching it contemporary.”29 For Brook, the definition of contemporary means creating a space in which an individual audience member is able to believe completely in the reality of what is being expressed at that moment, which sometimes requires some significantly new ways of looking at things. By making the changes he made in this and other plays, Brook was able to intensify the complexity of the play in true modern fashion without losing its meaning or its ability to challenge the audience and actors. Reducing some of the extraneous matter of the play and reducing the amount of courtly speech enabled Brook to keep the audience’s attention focused on what emerged as the dominant theme of the play. Yet to retain some of the confusion and complexity of the play, thereby symbolizing Hamlet’s confusion and doubt, Brook combined several characters within the same actor, such as the Ghost and Claudius. “Thus deprived of familiar landmarks, Brook’s Hamlet must agree to recognize the truth beneath the changing features of illusion, say, in the image of the ghost that presents itself to him to demand vengeance … For all that, illusion (even if it is omnipresent) is itself a deception in the play.”30 This approach has helped to define modern theatre. “I wrote in my book The Empty Space that the theater has to go forward. It can’t live in the past or even the present.”31 While it can be argued that Brook’s work is difficult to understand or that he takes too much license with traditional texts, those who have a willingness to pay attention with an open mind are able to experience new aspects of plays they thought they’d long ago deciphered. New elements emerge that make the play real to not only the contemporary audience, but also to those actors and actresses selected to take part in the process. Brook’s approach still remains as effective now as it was when he first developed it, as the critical and audience acclaim for his most recent rendition of Hamlet testifies. When one approaches a solid text with the willingness to explore its ideas and encourage creativity on all levels, hidden depths become clearer and the translation into modern conventions becomes seamless for all concerned. References Arvers, Fabienne. (April 2001). “Bard to the Bone – Theater Review.” ArtForum. Accessed 28 December 2006 from < http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_8_39/ai_75830809> Bloom, Mary. (27 January 2001). “What is a Classic? Peter Brook on ‘Hamlet.’” International Herald Tribune. Brook, Peter. (1987). The Shifting Point: Theatre, Film, Opera 1946-1987. New York: Theatre Communications Group. Brook, Peter. (1995). The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate. New York: Touchstone. Brook, Peter. (1999). Threads of Time: Recollections. New York: Counterpoint Press. Clough, Sarah. (2006). “Take Care: Theatre in the 1950s.” The Caretaker. Sheffield Crucible. Croyden, Margaret. (2003). Conversations with Peter Brook: 1970-2000. New York: Faber & Faber. Gordon, Robert. (2006). The Purpose of Playing: Modern Acting Theories in Perspective. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Heynen, H. (1999). Architecture and Modernity: A Critique. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts/ London, England. Leach, Robert. (2004). Makers of Modern Theatre. New York: Routledge. Massey, D. (2000). "Space-time and the politics of location" Architecturally Speaking: Practices of Art, Architecture, and the Everyday. Alan Read ed. Routledge: London. “Radical.” (2006). Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Cambridge University Press. Sant, Toni. (29 December, 2006). “Radical Theatre.” Applied and Interactive Theatre Guide. Walsh, Richard. (1993). “Radical Theatre in the Sixties and Seventies.” Pamphlet. British Association for American Studies. Read More