Ciclo biológico

I have suggested that in order to develop an action-based approach to writing dramatic verse, it is necessary to understand how actors might interpret and use such verse actively. However, when it comes to the issue of action-playing, I have also identified a lack of clarity and consistency in contemporary attitudes towards interpreting dramatic verse for performance. My aim is to build on Barton’s work of ‘marrying the two traditions’ and offer a framework in which the relationship

between verse-speaking and action-playing can be understood more clearly. Such a framework should avoid both the ‘vague and woolly’ approaches to verse and action described by Gaskill, and the reductive and prescriptive reliance on ‘appeals to authority’ criticised by Rokison.

The framework I propose is what I call the Verse Psychology Game. In this chapter, I describe three key concepts within that framework:

The first is that interpreting dramatic texts according to Stanislavskian principles of dramatic truth and dramatic action can be regarded as a kind of game, governed by ‘constitutive rules’. Such rules allow actors to make informed judgements about the ‘success’ or ‘appropriateness’ of their performance choices, whilst still allowing considerable scope for interpretive freedom and creativity. This casts the

playwright in the role of “gamewright”. The ‘playwright-as-gamewright’ can use this understanding of the acting process to make informed judgements about the

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performative potential of a dramatic text; that is, the extent to which a text allows or affords active performance choices.

The second key concept is that of dramatic hyperactivity: a ‘heightened’ or ‘intensified’ form of action-playing. Such hyperactivity will not resemble the behaviour of people in everyday life. However, within an appropriate dramatic context, such behaviour might still be considered ‘logical and coherent’ and therefore truthful. Moreover, certain texts might require ‘heightened’ performance choices. In other words, hyperactivity might be considered more truthful in certain dramatic contexts than ‘naturalistic’ performance choices. Plays requiring

hyperactive performance are considered to be specialist versions of the

Stanislavskian acting game and I argue that actors engaged in such versions of the game require specialist ‘tools’. My contention is that metrical dramatic verse can operate as a specialist ‘tool’ replete with hyperactive potential.

The third component of the Verse Psychology Game is what I refer to as the Motion in Poetry Metaphor. The key concept here is that the rhythms of metrical dramatic verse can be understood and experienced in terms of purposeful movements of the human body, and that these movements can, in turn, be understood and experienced as embodying the psychophysical sensations of specific dramatic activities. The Motion in Poetry Metaphor is an example of Conceptual Metaphor as discussed by Lakoff and Johnson, who demonstrate that the use of metaphor is not just a poetic device, but an essential part of how we as human beings “understand and experience”264 _{ourselves, our ideas, and the world}

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around us. Familiar examples of such metaphorical concepts include, “argument is war”265_{, “time is money”}266_{, “more is up”}267 _{and “life is a journey”}268_{. Such}

metaphors give voice to experiential truths269_{. That is, when we use the conceptual} metaphor, we don’t just say that ‘argument’ is war, we experience it as such.

My contention is that the metaphorical concept ‘verse rhythm is physical

movement’ has often been used to understand and experience verse rhythm270_, but that the full dramatic potential of this concept has not been utilised. The metaphorical nature of the concept has rarely been explored, and it has been applied to the discussion of verse rhythm on an ad hoc basis rather than being employed systematically. Furthermore, this concept has not been linked to another metaphor concerning the relationship between physical movement and dramatic action-playing. Vladimir Mirodan identifies a metaphorical concept at the heart of the Laban-Malmgren System of actor training: “psychological action is physical action”271_{. Utilising this metaphor, actors learn to understand and experience} dramatic activities as purposeful movements of the human body which can be described and categorised according to Laban’s system of Working Actions. For example, playing an activity such as ‘to charm’ might be understood and

experienced as a Gliding (Light/Direct/Sustained) movement, whereas playing an

265 _{Ibid., 4.} 266 _{Ibid., 7.} 267 _{Ibid., 15.} 268 _{Ibid., 44.} 269 _{Ibid., 175.}

270 _{E.g. Robert Beum and Karl Shapiro, The Prosody Handbook: A Guide to Poetic Form (New York: Dover} Publications Inc., 2009), 1; Wright, Shakespeare’s Metrical Art, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 21; Donoghue, The Third Voice, 266; Eliot, Selected Prose, 73; Peter L. Groves, Strange Music: The Metre of the English Heroic Line (Victoria, British Columbia: University of Victoria Department of English, 1998), 39; Derek Attridge, Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 3; Berry, The Actor And The Text, 108; Michael D. Hurley and Michael O’Neill, Poetic Form: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 18.

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activity such as ‘to intimidate’ might be understood and experienced as a Punching (Strong/Direct/Quick) movement. Thus an actor’s engagement in action-playing is regarded not merely as a ‘psychological’ process but as an embodied,

psychophysical process, rooted in experiential truth.

If the rhythm of a particular line of metrical dramatic verse can be understood and experienced in terms of a particular physical movement, and if that physical movement can be understood and experienced in terms of a particular dramatic activity, then metrical dramatic verse has the potential to embody dramatic action. This is the Motion in Poetry Metaphor. If the rhythms of metrical verse can

generate experiences of physical movement in a manner that is beyond the capacity of ‘naturalistic prose’, then this allows for the possibility of the dramatic function of metrical verse being, not only active, but hyperactive.

To approach the task of interpreting dramatic verse for performance using all three of these concepts is to play a game of Verse Psychology. To compose dramatic verse in accordance with the principles of the Verse Psychology Game is to assume the role of ‘playwright-as-gamewright’. Throughout this discussion, I limit my examination of an actor’s approach to dramatic verse to what Bella Merlin calls “mental reconnaissance”272_{; that is, to the work of the actor in making preliminary} performance choices in response to a particular dramatic text. In light of the above discussion, I prefer the term ‘experiential reconnaissance’, but, whichever term is used, I do not explore later stages of the acting process in which actors, directors and other practitioners collaborate to refine, challenge and alter performance

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choices in the shared space of the rehearsal room, nor do I discuss the

interactions of actors and audience members as part of a live performance on stage. There are two main reasons for this: the first is the need to place sensible limits on the scope of this inquiry. Questions of rehearsal and live performance are, no doubt, important and worthy of further investigation, but it would not be possible to give them proper consideration as part of this thesis. The second is that my primary purpose in discussing the acting process is to explore it as a playwright who is adopting an actor’s perspective in order to better understand the dramatic potential of metrical verse. My assumption is that ‘experiential

reconnaissance’ is the portion of the acting process with which the ‘playwright-as- gamewright’ can engage most readily.