Other tidbits from meeting Mr. Berkoff

• He totally mocked The Importance of Being Earnest - mimicking the famous “Haaaaaandbaaaag” line and comparing to being a combination of glue, dog shit and honey, or like one of Salvador Dali’s watches.
• Also went on a mini-rant on how he hates Phantom of the Opera and its unnecessary extravagance.
• He hypocritically blasted the growth of ‘The Director’ in theatre today. Hmm…
• He discussed how when creating movement motifs or pieces how he is initially inspired by music, and always begins there.

I will add more to this as I remember more…

Berkoff the not so jerkoff.

I was lucky enough to attend a 2 hour ‘workshop’ by Steven Berkoff on Tuesday (He is currently in HK performing his adaptation of On The Waterfront). I say ‘workshop’ because the man was too tired/lazy (you pick) to do anything physical, and instead gave us a 2 hour talk and Q&A session about his process and his view and theories of theatre. Berkoff spoke about his theory of sacrifice - how different forms of sacrifice have trickled through drama since its beginnings in ancient Greece until today’s theatre. He mentioned the literal human sacrifices that were made in ancient times, and how it developed into discussions, narrations and recollections of such sacrifices which Berkoff believed to be the first theatrical performances. He attributed this style to plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. He then discussed how they continued through medieval theatre, Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and eventually to the practices and theories of Antonin Artaud and his Theatre of Cruelty. 

But I’m going to skip to where he began to discuss Tennessee Williams. Berkoff believes that Williams was one of the few American playwrights who had elements of ‘sacrifice’ within his pieces. What Berkoff means by sacrifice here I believe, is not only the psychological, emotional  and physical sacrifices characters make within the play which play the audiences heartstrings, but also the sacrifices the actors taking part in the production make of their individual personalities in order to fully embody their characters. While Berkoff’s ideas are seemingly quite different to Stanislavski’s, they seem to agree with this role of the actor, which makes me quite aware of the universality of an actors role.

I also was lucky enough to share a 30 minute cab ride with Mr. Berkoff, and I took the opportunity to ask him to give me some advice for my process with The Glass Menagerie. He joked about how miscast I was for the role of Amanda, but he went into a helpful little ramble about his interpretation of her character. He talked about her immense sadness and torture, and how strong she is in the way that she continuously pulls herself out of her horrible situations with optimism and as he put it “lightness and beauty”. With regard to her being middle aged and me being 17, he told me to at least initially disregard trying to appear older, as it will never feel genuine to me. He said that as long as I capture her motivations and the immense sadness of her character, it would come through and the audience would either use their imagination to see me as older. As I already mentioned, such advice is similar to what Stan the man would probably have given me. But it was amazing to have it given to me by a living legend.

(Interestingly, Berkoff starred in “The Glass Menagerie,”at the Greenwich Theatre in England with Helen Cherry in 1971 - and didn’t mention it to me when I discussed the play with him. I forgive the guy - it really was clear to me that he’s aging!)

AMANDA WINGFIELD [the mother]:

A little woman of great but confused vitality clinging frantically to another time and place. Her characterization must be carefully created, not copied from type. She is not paranoiac, but her life is paranoia. There is much to admire in Amanda, and as much to love and pity as there is to laugh at. Certainly she has endurance and a kind of heroism, and though her foolishness makes her unwittingly cruel at times, there is tenderness in her slight person.

“I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”

I will come back to this later to describe why this quote from the play has actually begun to take upon a much larger impact on our production and process.

Things to Do

Thanks for putting this up. I’m in on this too :) (P.S. Spell Menagerie right :P) And I’ll bring my glass figurines tmrw.

pleurosis:

- Photograph of father

- What-not/Display case

- Glass Mengarie

- Glass unicorn

- Pitcher of lemonade

- Plate of macaroons

- Jim’s hat

- Amanda’s hat

- Amanda’s bag

- Amanda’s gloves

- Yearbook

- Programme

- Polishing cloth

- Bowl of glass figurines

- Blancmange

- Candelabrum

- Matches/lighter

- Newspapers

- Wineglass

- Tom’s coat

- Amanda’s costume

- Amanda’s coat

- Jim’s costume

- Tom’s costume

- Laura’s shoes

- Laura’s hairband

- ‘Gay decievers’

- Jim’s pen

Whose line is it anyway?

Most recently we’ve been experimenting with improvisation, after finding ourselves relying a bit too much on the text. While Stan our man suggests that by closely analyzing the text, one can find an amalgam of things: subtext behind lines, stage directions (blocking and tone) which can give insight into characters motivations, it actually can hinder you if you’re not fully prepared. For example, in a rehearsal last week, I found that I was really struggling to get to grips with my character’s motivations in a scene, as well as to get a feeling for the atmosphere of the scene as a whole, her interactions with the other characters, and ultimately how the scene fit into the message that we believe The Glass Menagerie tries to depict. I felt so insecure that I felt the need to read every single stage direction and follow it precisely - so much that the scene became very robotic. I was most definitely not doing what Stanislavski would have liked. None of my physical actions had a conscious and controlled beginning, development, and end. There was no intent or motivation behind them - I was only moving in a certain way or speaking in a certain tone because the script told me to. How horrible! How idiotic of me! But it’s quite scary how easily one can try to rely on a script to do all the work for you when you’re struggling. An alumni from our school stopped us - and proceeded to reenact the entire scene on his own without a script for us. Despite being a bit comical (as he played each character in the scene and added quite a few obscenities), within just a few seconds, I  was able to see what I should have been doing the whole time. It really didn’t matter, at least in the beginning stages of our rehearsal process, what I said. I really needed to understand my character’s motivations - how she wanted to use the words to get at another character. How she wanted to use the distance between her and another character to create tension and show her disappointment and anger.

We tried the scene again. Without scripts. Without trying to remember where the blocking was or what line came first. We let the emotional ‘track’ that the scene follows guide us, and we found that the lines and movement came naturally - as they came from a ‘genuine’ place. By genuine, I don’t mean that in this moment we were exploring our emotional memory, but I mean that we understood where our words and actions came from, and what their purpose was in the moment we performed them.

I hope, perhaps after a table reading or line reading of another scene, to perform such an exercise again, and see if it produces the same success for me and my fellow actors.

Music Notes:

1. A Fiddle in the Wings [1,2,5]
2. ‘The Glass Menagerie’ [1-2, 3-5, 7]
3. ‘All The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise [5]
4. Tango - Minor and Ominous [5]
5. ‘Dardenella’ [6]
6. Waltz Music: ‘La Golondrina’ [7]