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Excerpts from
"Classical Tragedy and 19th Century Theatre" by Louis Jouvet

[Excerpts from classes Louis Jouvet gave at the Paris Conservatoire d'Art dramatique, where he taught from 1934 to 1941]

On the profession of teacher
LJ: [...] The thing that interests me, is not to give out well-varnished first prizes, but to give you the contact with yourselves, about things that I have experienced before you, reflections that I've made being a stage actor for thirty years, and that I'm applying to what you are. I would like you to feel within yourselves my experience. That's what the tradition of a profession is, whether it's a manual profession or another. There is in a manual profession, in addition to the technical experience, a specific sensibility. It's not only that you should make a certain thing in a certain way because that's how it should be. When the craftsman says: That's not the way to do this, he has profund reasons to say this, it is a perfect knowledge that the craftsman has of either the material he's working with, or the use to which is destined the object he's making, and that only experience can give him.
What you must learn, in three years (and the profession of stage actor would be the greatest in the world if you would learn this), it's to know yourself. The "know thyself" of ancient philosophy, it's the whole of the actor's profession, all his art. To know oneself in relation to Alceste or Marguerite Gauthier is not something that is given to all people who study philosophy.

***
Style
LJ:[...] there are different styles like there are different authors. When you'll have learned these different styles of the different authors, you'll have the secret of diction. You shouldn't play Marivaux, Musset, Beaumarchais, Racine in the same manner.
You'd understand that if you'd have had to play something by Bernstein, written with suspension points, interjections, and something by Giraudoux, where there is a phrase that commands by its style a different mechanism of the actor's sensibility. The mechanism of the actor's sensibility, the way he uses his sensibility, is dependant on the way the scene is written. You don't behave the same way, in regards to your sensibility, in a line by Marivaux or in a verse by Victor Hugo. But it's almost always what you'll see nowadays in the performance of this repertory.[...]

***
The 3 elements of dramatic performance
LJ: [...] You can take a piece like this, verse, there are three elements in it, like there are three elements in any dramatic performance: there is a text, a phrase of a certain length, a certain wavelength. That's the first element.
The second element: it's the feeling there is in the phrase, the sensitive idea that is contained therein.
The third element: it's the actual breathing out of the phrase, that is to say, its outward emission.[...] These are the three elements that are essential in a performance. You can begin by the feeling, by the breathing, by the length of the phrase, it's always the same problem. If you begin simply like actors who are inspired by breathing the phrase, that breathing will give you the right feeling. If you feel it accurately, your sensibility as you are saying it can't help but give you the right breathing, the diction, that is to say, the length of the emission.
Everything is tied together in this, but you must think about it, what I mean by this is that you should control your sensibility while you're saying the phrase, you shouldn't go from one phrase to the next like an express train speeding through the signals.

***
The personal feeling of the actor vs the feeling of the character
LJ: [...] The mistake you're all making, is that you think that we need to see your own feeling to see the character. When a musician plays the notes right, that he's got a good instrument, well-tuned, that his notes are on pitch, he gives the listener a certain impression. The feeling must come from the notes you're hearing yourself play, but if you put your own feeling right away as you're playing, you do what the gypsy violinist does, he exaggerates, but he's not playing the piece. That's true for everything that is written, for all written theatre, theatre that has a text written by an inspired man, by a poet. You don't have the right, you don't have the need to add feelings to it. [...]
The text shouldn't be taken as a vase for the actor to put his feelings into, but as a vase for a feeling that will grow by itself, if the text is said like it should be. [...]

***
Inner state and dramatic mechanism
LJ: [...] It is impossible that you think in the same sense as the author thinks. The actor has no thought and doesn't need to be clever to act. But he must give the impression that he thinks. To give this impression, there must be on the sentence a direct emission. Once the line is spoken, there is a little inner triggering effect, there is a little beat. That's not a pause you take while waiting to say the next line: "Je ne me souviens plus des le�ons de Neptune"; and then you continue: "Mes seuls g�missements font retentir les bois", we feel that, within you, inwardly, not in your thought, but in your sensibility, there is no change in your inner state between these two lines.
In real life, if you were saying this you'd use a series of successive bursts, pulsations, that would come from what you were feeling. It's from the feelings that your ideas come. You must find that.[...] That little beat, that little register shift that we often ask you to do when you go from one idea to the next, you're not doing it. You're saying everything the same way. When we say: think of what you're saying, it always means the same thing, that within yourself you're not working on the feeling; it's that your feeling is always on the same tone. You must learn to fragment your feeling, if I may say, to make it shift within yourself.[...]

***
Dramatic mechanism or how to "place" a scene
LJ: [...] The identification between the actor and the character, it doesn't exist. You cannot live your scene every night. Even if I would concede that you have the sensibility that would allow you to live such a scene, there would be nights where you still wouldn't be able to play it. So you must find, like a violinist, like any performer, you must find the nuances, and place them. To achieve this you must scoop out from the text the sincerity of feeling, place that feeling before you say the text; then you have the right sincerity, the right freedom to say it, at the same time that you have the capacity of controlling yourself while saying it. [...]

***
LJ: [To Claudia] Analyze the circumstances, imagine the characters, the scene and the different feelings of the scene, the different phases the characters go through, it's like a series of corridors, of roads that zigzag, that make all sorts of designs. Those roads go one way, meet, criss-cross, make a particular design, a design that looks a little like those used by dancers, or people at riding school, who trace dance figures on the floor.
There is a similarity between the steps of a dancer and the successive feelings in a scene. They have a design. That's what we call the mechanism of the scene.
It's a mechanism that must be rehearsed a long time, like the dancer does in his imagination the dance he has to perform. In the same way, the actor, without saying the words, once he has understood a scene thoroughly, that he has taken it apart thoroughly, must be able, in his imagination, in his mind, to play the scene.
And the scene then becomes what the dance is to the dancer, a series of phases, a series of roads, a series of steps with each their own length.[...]
The actor believes that rote memory is enough, and the articulation of the words. That type of memory isn't enough. There is also the memory of the movement of the scene, the memory of the feelings that create the phases, the successive evolutions of the scene. [...]

***
Actors
LJ: [...][To Nadia] Hermione as a character is a little bit too strong for you right now because she's a tragic princess.
Nadia: Hermione is also a young girl.
LJ: You are right, but remember that in casting you'll fall victim to this sometimes. You would want to play right now with an Andromaque, an Oreste, a Pyrrhus, you wouldn't find teenagers that would be adapted to you. To play Pyrrhus, Oreste, adequately, one must have fifteen years of acting experience; there is on the stage a more intense, a stronger presence, in a forty-year-old man than in a twenty-year-old Hermione. And this age discrepancy would create an imbalance, and all the more so since you look young. That's why you'll often see an Hermione that'll remind you of a Wagnerian singer. But that's theatrical convention. The magic and the mystery one could find in theatre in the old days, only forty or fifty years ago, were greater than today because the lighting was limited to footlights that lighted the faces from below, and this gave to the scene more prestige. Nowadays, actors are subjected to harsh lighting. This is one of the reasons why classical tragedy is out of favor these days. It is difficult to stage Andromaque with teenagers, and the movies have used the public to very young actors. Still, one must admit that forty or fifty year old actresses often have more talent than young girls. [...]

***
Stage fright and duality
LJ: [...] I went to see Le Misanthrope, on Sunday, C... said something that surprised me: "It's horrible, it is so hard to play." And he added: "The stage fright is horrendous, it's quite normal though, because you feel entrusted with such a great responsability. You feel you're going to reveal yourself in front of the public." That's really it, in part, and he said something else: "You feel alone." I won't be very adequate in commenting this statement, but I think this is what it means: you feel alone, why? Because you think that you are the character but you're really only yourself. You feel alone because you say to yourself: I'm going on stage and I'm going to be Alceste. I feel all alone because I'm only Jouvet. But if Jouvet enters on stage with Alceste, Alceste stands in front of him. I push him in front of me. I'm inventing Alceste, but I am not him and never will be. You push your performance from beginning to end of the play saying to yourself: I am not the character, but I'm trying to make him stand in front of me with the help of the author's words. And you achieve this necessary duality Diderot wrote about. You feel alone because you think you are the character, but you shouldn't feel alone, you should feel entrusted with a character, with the character standing in front of you.[...]

***
Work on a scene by Musset and the Sense of effort
H�l�ne: [finds it difficult to make her entrance] She's walking slowly, because I think she's thinking about what is happening to her.
LJ: That is a kind of logic for the Theatre Libre.
You're there for a logic that is purely dramatic.
The dramatic logic behind this piece is: someone comes on stage to tell us something. I don't care what you think about it; I want to see. What you think is uninteresting for the spectator. What is interesting is what you show. As soon as you enter, from the way you walk, the way you look, we must think: this is a character who...
What you're thinking is unimportant. You can think about something else entirely: my, I forgot to turn off the faucet in the bathroom. You must get on stage, that's the important thing.
H�l�ne: [Enters and says her line]
LJ: If you wait before you speak, then it means you're in no hurry to say what you have to say.
H�l�ne: [enters again]
LJ: Do you feel the difference? But there's something else I want to tell you. Who will tell her?
Michel: She enters with her eyes down.
LJ: If you enter with your eyes down, it's over. We feel like telling you: careful, the stage ends there, you're going to fall!
H�l�ne: [enters again]
LJ: That's better, but that's still not quite it. Enter toward the public. It's in the eye first of all. Actors who don't have an eye aren't actors. Come toward us, and let us see by your eye that you're going to tell us something. [She enters without saying anything]. Perfect, do it again.
H�l�ne: [she does it again]
LJ: Do it again, but be in a good mood this time. Ring yourself like you'd ring a bell: am I in a good mood? yes? Hop! and you enter.
H�l�ne: [she enters again and says the whole line]
LJ: What do you think of it?
H�l�ne: I didn't get bored saying it. Usually, toward the end, I was beginning to find it was going on too long.
LJ: What the actor thinks, that doesn't hold much interest. You sometime say to yourself: Today, I wasn't too bad. That's the day you were awful.
Our lot is to make an effort on the stage. There comes a moment when that effort is pleasant, but you must always make an effort. You tell me: I wasn't bored, it mustn't be too bad. There is a complacency in this. First of all, you must make an effort. You must find it hard to do something, even if it's simple, even if it's easy. But you didn't have that feeling of effort. You had a feeling of ease. Ease can only come at the end of the effort. If at some point you feel that the effort is correct and that, concurrently with the effort, you have a sensation of ease, that's something worthwhile. That's the same feeling a sportsman gets when he feels that he's making good strides, at the same time that he's really going at it. [...]



All excerpts from:
Trag�die classique et th��tre du XIXe si�cle
by Louis Jouvet
Gallimard
1968

Translation: SylvieL