Salome is only one of many opera characters whose passions drive her to ex- treme measures. To perform her and her ilk effectively, you have to expand your own empathetic abilities and your willingness to explore and share the depths of the human soul. This takes courage and lots of practice with special tools like the Magical if. (In chapter there is a detailed discussion of how to use the Magical if to heighten each feeling you need to the kindling point that will be- lievably motivate your character’s actions.)
In some productions and in some late twentieth-century music-theater pieces, you may be asked to stretch yourself even farther than you must for a character like Salome. You may be required not only to be intensely histrionic but at the same time to perform difficult physical actions, do apparently absurd pantomime, or sing nonsense syllables. To perform these pieces you may need to add training in dance, martial arts, pantomime, or even circus skills to those traditionally required to be an actor-singer. However, as long as your character is intended to be believable, the techniques in this book will provide a useful basis for your work.
Summary
The gap between you and your character can be closed by a clear analysis of your character’s when, where, who, want, why, and what, to which you apply the Magical if. You use the Magical if to stimulate your imagination to lift you into your character’s world.
On a more fundamental level, any gap between you and your characters, as well as between you and your audience, is closed by your shared humanity. It is your shared humanity that provides the common universe of feelings that make communication possible. It enables librettists and composers to create your characters and their music, it enables you to find yourself in your characters, and it enables audiences to respond to your characters with empathy.
Exercises
EXERCISE 1. (I/G) Changes**
Objective: to explore how different situations conjure up different feelings
that in turn evoke different behavior.
The more you can use your imagination to stimulate a variety of feelings and physical behaviors in yourself, the more easily you can stimulate the feel- ings and behaviors you need for your characters. This exercise is intended to en- gage your creativity and, by imposing different “filters,” to alter the way you to feel, behave, and sound.
You cannot do this exercise wrong. Feel free to make your own variations on the suggestions listed here, or even to invent new ones. Pay close attention to everything you experience. Have fun.
Instructions:
. Choose a piece of clothing that you seldom use—perhaps something given to you by someone you no longer like. Put it on. How does wearing it make you feel?
Let the feelings affect the way you move: the way you walk, sit, comb your hair, etc. (Since you may get a variety of feelings from a single piece of clothing, you can do this exercise several times exploring a different feeling each time.) You can repeat this exercise with something you borrow. Each person in a group can bring a piece of clothing to exchange.
Make up a simple sentence that expresses the way the clothing makes you feel. Say it several times, overtly expressing the feeling. If different feelings are aroused, say the sentence different ways.
Sing a phrase from a favorite aria or song. Color your voice to express the way the clothing makes you feel.
Look in a mirror. What “kind of person” does the piece of clothing make you look like? Make gestures, say sentences, sing melodies that fit “that kind of person.”
. Put on some music. Move to it—walk, gesture, dance.
a. Imagine different physical circumstance and let them affect the way you move. Choose a different age: you are three years old; you are eighty. You are a twenty-one-year-old of the opposite sex.
Change your physical characteristics: your left leg is rigid; your neck is a
rubber band; your arm is a rope.
Change locations: you are on the moon, in the Sahara desert, under water. Move to the music as if you are a different personality: the czar of Russia, a
model for Vogue magazine, an Australian aborigine, Carmen, Fagin, Fal- staff, Evita, Lulu.
Combine several of these different imaginary circumstances: you are Eliza
Doolittle on Mars when she was three years old.
Move in couples or as an ensemble, if you’re in a group. Create a street
people’s carnival, a giant’s social dance, a sports team.
b. Sing as you move. Alter the kinds of sounds you make and the way you make them to reflect your physical circumstances or character.
. Go through a part of your day with a restriction that will generate an al- tered perspective. For instance, you can only crawl; you can only use one hand; your tongue is thick and heavy so it takes up your whole mouth; or you only have one eye. (It is wonderful to practice going through part of a day with both eyes closed, but please, only try being “blind” if you use a seeing guide.) Or: you can understand English, but you can only make grunting, guttural noises in re- sponse; you can understand English, but you can’t speak at all, or you can only respond in singing; you can’t understand English at all. (To create the feeling that you can’t understand English, listen incredibly intently to what everyone says; hear it as sounds, syllables, noises. The harder you try to understand, the less you will.)
* * *
Exercises – involve intensifying your feelings.
EXERCISE 2. (I/G) Exploring**
Objective: to plunge yourself into different Given Circumstances using the
Magical if; to explore how different Given Circumstances arouse different feel- ings and give rise to different actions.
Instructions:
Try these activities in which you change one or more elements of your Given Circumstances.
. Eat a meal as if:
• You are famished, and late for an urgent appointment. • You are famished, and you have three hours to waste.
• You are a tourist eating at an outdoor restaurant in a foreign coun- try; people begging for food surround your table.
• You are a starving beggar at an outdoor restaurant, where you were given a meal as an act of charity; other starving beggars are watching you. . Brush your teeth as if:
• Your dentist has warned you that if you don’t brush thoroughly your teeth will fall out.
• Three other people (who are they?) are waiting for their turn at the sink. (It’s the only one in the house.)
• You have never used a toothbrush before. . Get into bed as if:
• You’ve been looking forward to it for hours.
• You want to stay up, but you have to get up early tomorrow. • You are in an old hotel with fleas.
. Do steps – again, but this time as if: • You are a child.
• You are a young teenager. • You are an elderly person. . Walk into your room and see it as if:
• You are an expert interior designer.
• You are your mother, your father, a professional cleaning person or your landlord.
• You are a burglar desperately seeking something valuable.
• You are an FBI agent, suspecting that a smuggler occupies the room. . Do step again with a room you imagine belongs to:
• Your sibling • Your parents • Your dentist
If you are working in a group, you can practice steps and using two people. One person can play the entering character, the other the occupant.
When you are finished, analyze your experiences. Did your feelings change? What did you notice that was new? Did you find yourself moving differently? Would you say you were yourself or a character? Why? What was different?
EXERCISE 3. (I) Private Scripts**
Objective: to allow different circumstances to arouse feelings, and to allow
those feelings to be manifested in overt behavior.
Instructions:
. Set aside free time in a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Choose a feeling that you want to be able to use in a song you are singing or for a charac- ter you are developing. Think of an experience in your life in which you have had that feeling—even a hint of it will do. If you can’t find an experience that has the feeling you want, search for one in which you had some kindred feeling— happiness for ecstasy, desire for lust, dislike for repulsion.
Once you have remembered an experience, dredge up as much about it as you can. Exclude nothing. The smallest detail—the color of the shoes you
wore that day, the smell of the space—can sometimes trigger the most intense memories.
. After you have recalled the experience and the feelings it aroused, write a description of it in the first person. Use evocative, descriptive details and in- clude everything that might be pertinent.
. Use what you have written as a script, and silently read your words slowly to yourself. Let your feelings come.
. Read the script aloud with as much feeling as you can. Allow yourself to make gestures.
. Read the script aloud with as much feeling as you can and record it. Lis- ten to the recording. What parts are most believable? Explore the feelings under- lying the parts that you find least convincing. Try recording yourself again.
EXERCISE 4. (G) Public Scripts**
Objective: to allow different circumstances to arouse feelings in front of
others.
This exercise takes “Transparency—Face and Body” (chapter , exercise ) to a new level. It allows you to explore feelings that are conjured up by someone else’s experience, and to share them in public—the essence of playing a role. It also helps you to develop trust in yourself and in the other members of your group. As in the previous exercise, you may use it to explore a feeling you need for a particular piece or role.
Instructions:
. Each person in the group chooses an experience from his life that aroused strong feelings. It must be an experience that he is ready to revisit and is willing to share with the group. (Be cautious about using potent experiences that oc- curred in the very recent past as they may be too strong; let your intuition be your guide.) An experience that aroused feelings of joy is just as useful as one that aroused sorrow. Each person writes a brief but evocative description of his experience. A single page is plenty, but it should capture the essence of the ex- perience, so that as another person reads it, the feeling(s) in the experience may come welling up.
. Pair off; sit facing each other with your knees almost touching. In each pair, one person reads his own essay silently to himself, experiencing the feelings as fully as possible; the other “listens” with intense, silent empathy, using all his senses. After the first person has finished reading, switch roles. When you are the reader, do not make any attempt to mime or act out what you are reading. After both of you are finished, quietly discuss what each of you experienced.
. Working with the same partner, one person reads his essay aloud with as much feeling as possible while the listener gives total, intense, sympathetic at- tention. When you are reading, concentrate on being expressive with your voice, not on acting anything out. Let your body take care of itself. Switch roles. After both of you have read, discuss your experiences with each other. What did you discover? What feelings came across when you were listening to the silent read- ing? Were they different from what you received from the spoken reading? How was reading silently different from reading aloud?
. Each person reads his experience aloud to the entire group with as much feeling as he can conjure.
After everyone is finished, have an open discussion. Explore how the three kinds of readings were different and why; did the readers allow the feelings ap- propriate to the experience they were describing? Were some feelings harder to reach than others? How is this exercise relevant to acting?
. Each person trades papers with his initial partner. Repeat all three steps using your partner’s essay. Feel your way into your partner’s experience.
After everyone is finished, have an open discussion. How was reading some- one else’s experience different from reading your own?
EXERCISE 5. (I/G) The Outcast**
Objective: to arouse feelings and the impulse to action by projecting your-
self into an imaginary situation.
You may do this exercise in your imagination using the Magical if, or you may try it out with improvisations. For either approach, make your Given Cir- cumstances specific, and give yourself permission to enter those circumstances
as if they are real. (If you are not already familiar with how to improvise, you
may want to read chapter before doing this exercise.)
This particular situation is intended to be pertinent to both Carmen and
West Side Story. Instructions:
. You are a member of an amateur performing society, of which you have been the leading singer for several years. The society holds auditions for each pro- duction, and the casting is announced at a party a week later. The next produc- tion is a piece you have always wanted to do. It has a leading role that is perfect for you. On the evening of the auditions you have other obligations, so you can only be there long enough to sing; however, you do very well. Since there is no question in your mind that the part is yours, you begin to memorize it. What if:
• On the day before the casting party, a friend calls you and leaks the fact that someone else got the part. (How do you feel? What do you do?)
• The person awarded the role is someone with a magnificent voice with whom you were close in college and who went on to have the professional singing career that you wanted for yourself. You haven’t been in contact for years, and you didn’t know that she had moved to your city. (How do you feel? What do you do?)
• Since you aren’t supposed to know that someone else was cast for the role you desired, you can’t very well skip the casting party; after the cast is an- nounced, the chosen performer comes over to you full of smiles and warmth. (How do you feel? What do you do?)
. You are the aforementioned singer who has just come to town. (What caused you to move? Did you move to be with your spouse who got a new job? Did you move because your career is in shreds?) How do you approach your old friend?
EXERCISE 6. (I/G) Carmen Scenario: Carmen as Outcast**
Objective: to use the Magical if to explore some of the feelings you might
use to act Carmen.
You can imagine the following scenario using the Magical if or you can ac- tually try improvising it. When you are exploring your character, don’t worry about behaving like someone else’s vision of her, doing what you think ought to be done, or what others have done. You do not need to be original; you need to be expressive and believable.
In this scenario you will employ some details based on your research to taste how it might feel to be a woman in an outcast group. Since it involves Given Cir- cumstances that are probably outside your daily experience, you will have to ex- tend your imagination farther than in the previous situations.
Instructions:
Behave as if:
. You’re a sixteen-year-old gypsy. All your life you have been expected to pull your own weight by cooking, sewing, baby-sitting the younger kids, and tending the goats that travel with your group. Today for the first time you are working in a cigarette factory sorting tobacco leaves. (How do you feel? Are you excited? Proud? Curious? Scared? Uncertain?)
. You’re sitting at a long table in a close, hot room. You are surrounded by women chewing tobacco and spitting as they sort the tobacco leaves. You were placed away from anyone you know by the overseer, who is a fat, dirty, foul- mouthed older man. You have heard that he is violent, cruel, and lecherous. Ear- lier you saw him hit a woman down the table for not working fast enough. You are aware that as he paced back and forth he has been staring at you all morn-
ing. (Try to imagine as many details as you can: feel the heat; smell the tobacco; hear the sounds of the other women talking and of the overseer’s footsteps.)
. It’s time for a break. As you stand up, your back tired and arms shaky, the overseer grabs you by the arm and pulls you aside. (How do you feel? How do you react?)