341-1
October 28, 2003
Yesterday I said, Create with realities.And during the class someone, Mamie I think, said You can't be you in the Wallis looking at your scene partner; you must be Clytemnestra in the palace facing Orestes. Indeed.
Begin with realities, the stuff of creation. Your imagination uses realities (the known) to reach the play (the unknown). Imagine and create character in response to environment, people, situation.
Always start with the play. Aeschylus imagined Mycenae. He imagined the palace of Agamemnon. He created a magnificent Clytemnestra. And he imagined and created through a great concern for his Athens. The tribal Athens of the past, which ran on largely unspoken laws of family and blood, kin and community, transformed into the democratic Athens of Pericles: the rule of codified law. The womans world of home and family coming into direct conflict with the mans world of city (polis), of public debate, of war. Aeschylus celebrates the new Athens with The Oresteia, but he dramatizes the great struggle to get thereand what Athenians were losing in order to get there.
Do you have such a concern for your America and her place in the world as she (how ironic to use the feminine pronoun to describe what the Athenians knew was a masculine ethos) reaches past the laws upon which she was founded (The Constitution is the formal statement of law; the Declaration of Independence is a statement of the unwrittenbeliefs upon which those laws are based) toward the new Americaof post-9/11 (pre-emptive war, restrictions on personal freedom in the name of national security, etc.)?
Start with your own realities, but think of these realities as colors in your palate. To create Clytemnestra and Orestes, you dont use the same colors/realities you use to create Kenneth Lonergans people. But the creative process is the same. Start with realities that will set your imagination turning you into Clytemnestra rushing into the palace courtyard to face the assassin Orestes who will come out the palace door any second. Use the Magic If.
If I were Queen of Mycenae&.
If I had ruled the palace/polis for ten years&.
If my daughter had been sacrificed in order to win the war&.
If&.
If&.
Now take each of these ifsand turn it into creative action. Work on it. Struggle. As long as it takes.
If I were Queen of Mycenae. Do you have an image of Clytemnestra that you can work toward? We spent time on this in classwork with Greta. Let the play help. Are there metaphors suggested by Aeschylus? Turn them into action, into motivated behavior. If Praxiteles had sculpted a statue? Work at this as long as it takes. Do it! But for Gods sake do not step onto the stage draped in a fringed shawl that stoops your shoulders and collapses your ribcage and forces you to grasp your fingers against your chest.
If I had ruled the palace/polis for ten years. Aeschylus gives you clues. How does she treat the chorus? What does the watchman suggest? Create the fires lighting up the sky across the country. Shes been waiting for years for this&.
If my daughter were sacrificed&. Empathy, imagination. What do I hold as dear as Clytemnestra held Iphigenia? For thirty-one years I have taught acting in the curriculum that Alvina Krause spent her life creating. (I can use my relationship with Krause to understand/create in my being what the House of Atreusmeans. Miss Krause had been a student of Dean Cumnock, who founded the School out of his own passion for learning.) And now, in order to preserve our way of life, we are on the verge of sacrificing that curriculum. The day that happens, I will howl up to the heavens, I will join my heartsong with Alvina Krause, who will be howling somewhere too.
I can imagine/create this theatrical reality by activating my very real personal reality and by letting my imagination expand, intensify, extensify it to the proportion of The Oresteia.
Our country of compassionate conservatism is contemplating amending the very bedrock of our written code of laws to make sure that its gay citizens will always be kept outside its pursuit of happiness. Etc. Etc.
Clytemnestra prepares Agamemnons bath&
Clytemnestra flings a net over him&
As he shrieks and struggles, she takes an axe and hacks him to pieces.
Blood fills the bath, runs along the floor.
By the time of The Libation Bearers, Clytemnestras has been plagued by a dream& What reality forms do such dreams take in todays understanding of psychology and guilt and retribution? Katie, did you create that dream? Did you associate with where such dreams exist in todays world? What realities did you use? What metaphors, images, stories, photos, etc., did your imagination use to transform your realities into the realities of Aeschylus?
Paint a portrait of Clytemnestra standing on the palace steps welcoming Agamemnon home.
Paint a portrait of Clytemnestra returning to face the chorus after killing Agamemnon and Cassandra.
Paint a portrait of Clytemnestra after her dream.
&facing Orestes after Get me an axe to kill a man with.
Let your actors imagination turn those portraits into living behavior.
NOTE: I am not talking about sitting around and thinking about issues that somewhere in your contemporary being affect you somewhat. Or putting your feet up on your coffee table, taking a drag on your cigarette, and coming up with really good metaphors. I am talking about taking any idea, any image, any issue, and turning it into motivated, illustrative, passionately activating, behavior&.until (a big word) you are carried along by the force of the current you have set into action. Until you are Clytemnestra compelled to rush into the courtyard by the screams of servants, heart beating, breath coming shallow, with the sure knowledge that whatever the dream was pointing toward has at last come to this very moment. Realities. Actually put into action.
Until you do this and the actor creating Orestes does the same (hasnt he come to the moment his whole life has been leading toward?) there is little point in attempting to work on what happens when these two mighty forces face off in front of the palace.
Do this, work on this, keep at it, let nothing keep you from it. Until the passionate concern that fired Aeschylus into magnificent creation fires your own artistic, concerned, creation. If this isnt your goal, why bother? If this isnt your goal, do you belong in this class?