An actor's dreams and doubts: Advent Calendar - December 9

An actor's dreams and doubts Advent Calendar proudly presents: December 9 - Pep Mac Ruairi from the Netherlands. Pep has an amazing charisma and is always fun to be around. The word is her's.

To be or not to be? Just be!

I ran away with the ‘circus’. I couldn’t help it. The lure was too great; the limelight, the colourful costumes, the magical world of illusion. What I didn’t realise at the time was that, in fact, I was embarking on a quest for truth, a journey of discovery of how to act and how to be.

It wasn’t a circus, of course, but an obscure little theatre company. Director Giorgio Gorini (a pseudonym, I later discovered) took me to Poland to do a workshop with a couple of lanky, bearded, theatre makers, who supposedly were former students of Jerzy Grotowski. The first thing they had us do was the ‘spider exercise’: hands and feet on the ground as if to prepare for push-ups, then flip over, so you’re facing upwards, then flip over again, and again, turning and turning, your bum never touching the ground. A good warm-up exercise, you might think. Except it lasted for three hours! In the afternoon they had us endlessly spinning like whirling dervishes. By the end of the day I burst into tears with exhaustion and misery. The workshop leaders were delighted. The whole point had been to break down our barriers, our egos, to make room for something deeper, something more truthful, which would ultimately help us with our acting. The fact that I ‘broke’ so soon was extraordinary! Later I realised similar methods are used in torture.

I was fortunate to work with Rufus Collins, once a member of the legendary experimental Living Theatre. Rufus was into The Method, which draws on the actor’s own memories and emotions. An object, smell or movement can be used to recall a certain event or feeling, which the actor then applies to his performance. Rufus demonstrated this himself. The movement of sliding open a window somehow connected to a tragic event in his life and he got very emotional. But while most of the actors were nearly fainting with admiration, all I could think of was how one would mime the window slamming down on one’s fingers. I’m a big fan of many Method actors, but I did find it a bit worrying that Marlon Brando had to see a shrink every day while shooting ‘On the Waterfront”.

A ‘Neutral Mask’ workshop with Saidi Lassaad was a real eye-opener that made me aware of how each movement, each gesture tells a story. “Presque juste’ (almost right), Saidi kept saying kindly, really meaning ‘total rubbish’. To our credit, neutral mask is exceptionally difficult. Very few people are completely aware of their every move and the message it might be carrying. One evening we gave a short performance. Three of us were sitting on bar stools. We were not wearing masks, but our only assignment was to be as neutral as we could possibly be. A fourth actor then introduced us to the audience, giving details about our (invented) lives. We did absolutely nothing, but afterwards the audience said they could really see us living those lives. They even said that one of us was more ‘into the story’ than the others. That was an amazing lesson.

I once saw an interview with Sir John Gielgud, in which he confessed that he didn’t get all that ‘psychological’ stuff. “I move to my position and say my lines,” he more-or-less said. I’m sure there was much more to it, but I found his comment very refreshing.

After all, theatre is illusion - and all the world’s a stage. So, how do we bring truth and illusion together? I’m still on that quest. However, I’m beginning to see why Lina is so interested in the Meisner technique. Because it’s about being real in the moment, reacting in a genuine way to the situation at hand. It sounds simple, but it requires concentration, relaxation, openness and confidence all at the same time. This is as hard on stage as it is in real life.

The better I get at ‘just being’, the better I become as an actor. And ‘old’ age and experience, of course, nothing can beat those!

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P.S. Just as I finished writing this, I discovered that some of my ancestors were, in fact, circus artists. I guess one can’t escape one’s destiny!