I really thought summer would afford more time to blog. But that is not happening. The combination of a couple of writing projects, the play and various and sundry demands, has taken me away from this site. But this morning there is a bit of time to get to a thought that has been brewing for a few days.
My good fortune to be involved in a professional theater production has permitted me to observe top flight actors engaged in their work from the earliest stages of the play's production. And I have also been able to reflect upon the way in which I have approached the work of my own small role. The idea that comes to mind is de - 德 - which I have written about before, and which I prefer to translate as "Integrity."
First, a philosophical diversion. Many sinologists (at least of my acquaintance) tend to prefer to translate de as "virtue" or "potency" or, even, "power." They point out that an internally-generated moral force, which is implied by de, radiates outward and has certain effects in the world, and it is those effects, the good consequences of conscientious action, that are the core of the meaning of de. I will not dispute these sorts of assertions, because I am not a translator but merely a commentator. But I will say that the emphasis on the external, worldly effects of de tends to, I believe, draw more upon Confucian uses of the term. And that makes good sense, since Confucius and Mencius were most concerned with engendering proper behavior toward others. My own understanding of de is derived more from Daoism. And, thus, I tend to look more at the internal, or immanent, nature of de. Each thing has its own unique characteristics, and when a thing or a person lives up to those unique characteristics, when it or he or she allows what is naturally inherent to be expressed in everyday activity, regardless of the effects on the world at large, that, then, is de; and "integrity" seems to get at that best.
I am guided to this understanding by a passage in Zhuangzi that does not use the term de, but which I think defines de:
...the real is originally there in
things, and the sufficient is originally there in things. There's
nothing that is not real, and nothing that is not sufficient.
Hence, the blade of grass and the pillar, the leper and the ravishing
beauty, the noble, the sniveling, the disingenuous, the strange - it
Tao they all move as one and the same. In difference is the whole; in
wholeness is the broken. Once they are neither whole nor broken, all
things move freely as one and the same again. (23)
And it is this sense of de that I now see as central to the work of acting.
The actors in the company work from within. They do not construct a model of the characters they are playing and then lay that model on top of their own person. They do not work from the outside in, from the character to themselves. Rather, they move in the opposite direction, working from their own inherent characteristics - their feelings and voice and gestures - outward to the character they are portraying. I have come to see this in various ways. First, with one of the actors I can see how subtle the transformations can be. I speak with him off stage, have sat and talked with him at various social events when he is not in character, and I have come to gain a sense of him as an individual. When I watch as he develops his character for the play I can see very clearly how he roots that presentation (representation?) in his own personality. There are moments when I see him as he is, and other moments when I can discern how he is moving beyond himself to express the character as written and conceived by the playwright. But the movement is always from the inside out.
I have also seen the basic mistake I was making in my own acting. Coming into rehearsals I had created a back story for my character and developed what I thought was his voice and gestures. But I was working from the outside in, not rooting it in my own characteristics. This worked for a while, until the director called me on it. He noticed I was becoming too dependent on a set of predetermined gestures. The entire thing was too studied, too "stagy." That's when it clicked in my head. I needed to work in the manner of the others. First be myself in the part and then let the part move out from me to become its own presence. And for me that should be rather easy. I am a college professor and I play a college professor. I do not have to reach very far find within me the stuff of a college professor.
And that, I think, is the de of acting: letting what is inherently real and sufficient express itself and thus move as one and the same in Way, which in this case is the microcosm of the stage.
Of course, that is the intellectualized account. Actually performing Integrity is another thing altogether....
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