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North European Amateur Theatre Alliance
Organisation for understanding and education through theatre Regional Centre of the International Amateur Theatre Association (aita/iata) |
By Jakob Oschlag
Director
Theatre Advisor of the Danish Amateur Theatre Association (DATS),
and a Member of the aita/iata Artistic Standing Committee,
representing NEATA
To be involved in amateur theatre means to work with theatre in one?s spare time. It says nothing about quality or the lack of it. It merely defines the difference between being a professional and an amateur: paid or unpaid. The merit of an artistic activity does not relate to the concept of amateur contra professional.
And yet there is a difference. And that difference is about choice: One chooses to be an amateur. An amateur is a person who has decided to devote some of his valuable spare time to art, in this case theatre. Actually, spare time is a strange concept. Spare time for what? Mostly it is defined as being free from work, from school, from the children. The amateur understands it as being free to engage in artistic work. It is a commitment.
The amateur is motivated by his commitment. In the course of a day he has had many different experiences perhaps he works in an office or a factory, in a hospital, or perhaps he attends school or university. Possibly he is unemployed. It means that people in amateur theatre come from widely different backgrounds, with different types of knowledge and experience. The very nature of his art, seen in the light of amateur theatre, is to allow and enable his subjective being, his understanding and personal experience, his way of relating to other people, to flow into his artistic work. In that way, an amateur theatre group is privileged in terms of widely different human and professional resources. That very diversity contributes to the artistic potential of the amateur theatre which sets it somewhat apart from professional theatre.
A potential which relates to having chosen to be an amateur, and the wish to utilise one?s personal knowledge and insights drawn from one?s daily work and a whole lifetime of growth. But the specific quality of the amateur can never be taken for granted. It means to be able to give and to take. It means hard work in one?s spare time. It requires courage. Quantity is also a kind of quality as in a large-scale performance where every person knows what he is doing. Projects that will involve several generations, young and not so young, in a combined effort to create one?s own story, one?s own forms of expression, and not just a copy of time past or present. Just as there may be the need for the opposite approach to work in a small tightly knit group in order to experiment and penetrate more deeply, to pass beyond some threshold. That requires courage more courage, perhaps, than most amateurs will acknowledge, and it can only be done in a shared context based on mutual trust.
Any training programme for amateurs should be based on the reality and the daily lives of the participants. It has to take into account that the group will embrace a great diversity of human understanding and experience. Amateur theatre persons should never be pushed into rehearsal and production procedures that rely on methods or the lack of methods that will expose their technical shortcomings. The director?s work is not just to ensure discipline and order, and to make sure that people don?t walk into each other, nor is the actor?s work limited to saying his lines and moving correctly from one place to another.
A Kabuki master once said, ?I can teach an actor how to point at the moon, but the distance between the tip of his finger and the moon is his own responsibility? (here quoted from an article by the Dutch Director Anette de Vries).
A statement which is as concrete as any truth, and yet it has that wondrous, almost magic attraction which is peculiar to art, at the same time obvious and yet quite incomprehensible.
The moon and the movement. Try to make a movement which points at the moon. Pay attention to your arm: How you raise it, does it stretch, how do you point your finger, how far do you lift your arm in relation to your head, do you bend your elbow, and what about the posture of your body? Try. How did it work? Probably not too well - or what?
We shall have to start from scratch with the moon and with you. Who are you? A child looking at the moon for the first time? An astronaut showing the moon to his child? Or Pierrot writing to Columbine in the light of the moon? Where are you? Is it Brecht?s moon over Soho as in The Threepenny Opera or ?Moon over Alabama? from Mahagonny? Is it Lorca?s Andalusian moon? Think about it, and then point at the moon. It was easy right? The movement came by itself. Starting with the ?who, where, when, and why?, you are well on your way to the ?how?. ?How? is the technique the movement. ?Who, when, where, and why? are the moon, the aim and direction of the movement. It denotes the actor?s motivation, purpose, and an inner necessity, as it finds expression in his interpretation of a text, a situation. Techniques are tools available to communicate that interpretation.
Another example and if you work with children you will recognise it: Children on stage, the director in the auditorium repeating again and again, ?Speak louder!?. Or telling something like, ?I?m right at the back and I can?t hear a word of what you?re saying!?. Rehearsal time finished the children running out shouting and screaming, and the director saying in despair, ?Please! Try to be more quiet, I can?t hear my own thoughts!?. Precisely! Obviously children can speak up then why not on stage? Probably they do not know the technique of projecting, and very likely the director will focus on techniques. But if children were taught the ?who, where, and when? and most important the ?why?, their own motivation and the necessity of their actions would easily make their voices reach out beyond the proscenium.
Again, to pursue that same image, it is the question of ?the moon and the movement? that determines the work of playing a role on stage. We could use the terms ?figure?, ?person?, and ?character? to explain (these are not official words from a textbook they are my words, others may use other words or have a different understanding of these terms). When working on a role, the actor will be inclined towards two approaches. Many, especially amateurs, will start with characteristics based on an external observation or description of the role. How he walks, what clothes he wears, any specific features. Often, in this kind of work, the director will support the actor?s efforts, because he himself has an all too clear notion of ?what the role looks like?. Possibly that notion is based on someone he knows or, worse, someone famous or, even much worse, some other actor who has played the role before. In any case, one is about to develop some kind of ?figure?, and the result is usually a mere imitation or clichι. Sadly, it is a rather common approach found in amateur theatre the approach that starts with the ?how? in ?movement?.
The other approach is what I call to start with and uncover ?the person?. To analyse the play, the roles, situations and their context, based on a shared motivation and interpretation. It means to examine the role, and create an attitude towards his expressions and actions. Again, to ask ?who?, ?where?, ?when? and especially ?why?, both in relation to the play as a whole, and its specific situations.
That, it appears, would be the correct way to work with actors, particularly amateur actors precisely because it takes into account the special quality of the amateur theatre and makes use of the actors? personal knowledge and experiences. A creative approach to work based on will, personal motivation, and inner necessity. It does not depend on a more or less developed technique of acting.
And it is not even that we should underestimate the relevance of working on ?figures?. It may contribute to create curiosity and interest on stage, but the ?figure? can never progress beyond being a tool for developing the ?person?. It is only when the ?figure? and the ?person? merge that the real ?character? emerges and that is what an audience will perceive as their experience of the role. A figure without a person remains an empty shell. A person without a figure may not be sufficiently recognisable to reach the audience.
A professional (director) co-operating with amateurs will have to relate to a situation which is quite different from that of working with professionals. In order to employ his know-how and experience (his professionalism), he has to understand how to draw upon the diverse personal backgrounds of amateurs. Very often one will use work with amateurs as a preparation for working with professionals, or perhaps one will start one?s career with work in amateur theatre. Ideally, it should be the other way round work with professionals qualifies to work with amateurs!
Obviously, as a professional, one will have knowledge, experience, and some talent but beyond that one has to be open, to be curious, and have a sense of love and respect for other persons. Yes, that perhaps is the most important qualification of all: love and respect.
This certainly relates to education and training programmes for amateurs. Directors need to be competent pedagogues, but they also have to respect the work of their students, and get satisfaction from the results they achieve. Taking into account their diverse backgrounds, there is also the positive challenge of working with students of widely different ages, whose combined resources should be seen as an asset.
One can hardly expect the technical level that relates to professional work and it is not the aim of training amateurs. If technical skills should be the main objective, one would merely copy production procedures specific to professional theatre. The whole point is to discover which means to uncover, reveal the particular and quite unique qualities of the amateur. They are, as has been said before, to be found on the human level of personal experience and insight.
It is not to underestimate technical skills, but without the moon a movement will remain an empty theatrical gesture. On the other hand, take away the movement and the moon will not exist.