3

Prologue
This is the story of an English actor in Russia
ot the end of the twentieth century.

t is an account of a ten-month actor-training

programme at
Moscow's State Institute of Cinematography (otherwise known
as VGIK), a training which I undertook as one of ten Englishspeaking actors in September 1993.Up until this point, I'd been
working in Britain for a variety of theatres and in a variety of
companies, and on the whole the work had been rewarding and
interesting. Yet all the tirne I felt as if I had an unrnined searn of
c:reativity that wasnever accessed in the short rehearsal periods
of rnost theatres or in the instant action of television. My
training in Britain had certainly been very challenging. $,fter
three inspiring years as an undergraduate in the Drama and
Theatre Arts Department of Birmingham l-Jniversity, I'd spent a
pired time on a one-year postgraduate course at a
rather le
drarna school. At the end of one term, I remember sitting
opposite rny acting tutor who said, 'You're going to find it hard
to get work when you leave here. You're so dumpy, dowdy, plain
and common.' That was when I grew the first epidermis of the
thick skin needed in this marvellous profession. I was a little
disappointed that rny Rosalind, or my Mrs Pinchwife, or my
Nora hadn't been commented on. Yet - despite my tutor's warnitrgs - within a month of graduation, I'd secured rny first iob.
Most actors experience some degree of humiliation, often on
a rnore public scale and usually followed closely by a complete
incomprehension of what the whole thing's about anyway. And
when we're in those circurnstances, we have to remind ourselves:
There is art in octing. There must be, or it's a dead profession.

BEYOND STANISLAVSKY

And it's the actor's responsibility to him or her self to rernember

that art, and to work upon and value it. And that requires trainitrg. Or to coin a certain phrase: Life-long Learning. And this
book is about such training. Psycho-physical training.
While the terrn rnight sound esoteric, the reality isn't. Psychophysical training is one in which body and psyche, outer expression and inner sensation, are integrated and inter-dependent.
The brain inspires the emotions, which then prompt the body into
action and expression. Or the body arouses the imagination,
which then activates the emotions. Or tlre emotions stir the brain to
propel the body to work. All the components - body, mind, and
emotions - are part of the psycho-physical rnechanism which
makes up the actor: psychology and physicality are part of one
continuum. 'Psycho-technique' was a term coined by..strnislavsky and developed by Michael Chekhov; it was the complere
" integration of psychology and physicality which formed the
basis of the Russian actor-training as I experienced it in Moscow.
And this is where my account can fill in a srnall blank on a large
canvas.

During the final stages of his life, Stanislavsky devoted hirnself

to unlocking the psycho-physical nature of acting and finding a
truly integrated psycho-technique. This period of Stanislavsky's
work has not gone unrecorded. In fact a significant part of
Stanislaosky in Focus,r a. thorough study by American writer,
Sharon Carnicke, examines these final stages. She pays particular
attention to the Method of Physical Actions (a term being used
more and more frequently in contemporary Western practice),
and beyond that to what became known as 1A.ctive Analysis'. In
many ways, the Method of Physical Actions and Active Analysis
are very similar in their reHearsal techniques: rather than using
sedentary textual analysis or imaginative visualisations, the actor
now accesses a character through exlierience. In other words, by
getting up and doing it through a process of improvisation. However, there is a crucial difference between the two approaches.

The Method of Physical Actions is concerned with finding

logical line or 'score' of individual actions through a scene, while

PROLOGUE

Active Analysis is an holistic system integrating body and mind,

and most importantly spirit (as I'll discuss in further detail in
Chapter 1). 'What exactly is spirit?' you may well ask; but turning
to the works of Stanislavsky won't help very much, as Soviet
censorship made sure that he kept to a minimum all seemingly
esoteric references. In stark contrast, the idea of action was seized
by the Soviets as being in line with their Marxist dialectic: it was
physical, visual, provable, scientific. Hence the Method of Physical Actions was keenly welcomed and promoted by politicians_
and practitioners alike. And it's certainly a rehearsal approach
adopted in America and not unheard of in Britain; it even
appears on A-level Drama syllabuses.
1{.ctive Analysis', though, is a cornparatively unknown phrase.
Stanislavsky died before the first students of his Active Analysis
had graduated, and he was too sick in his last years to maintain
his own accounts of the work. What this incompletion means is
that the 'system' - as Carnicke explains - has had to pass from
fott to lore. (Though Stanislavsky would undoubtedly balk at the
idea that it was ever considered 'fact' in the first place.) Certainly
the 'lore' of Stanislavsky's system continued irnrnediately pfter
his death, with his assistants, prot6g6s and students furthering
his work according to their own biases and understandings. And
it's being constantly explored and perpetuated in Moscow today
whether it be in drama schools or rehearsal rooms or laboratory
studios. The nature of 'lore' is that it is based in practice rather
than theory and, as Carnicke suggests, it differs from the available published sources in that it accornmodates much of Stanislavsky's 'integratiae thinking'.' Blut as Carnicke points out, the
trouble with this lore is that 'English descriptions remain incomplete and fragmentary, when set against the tradition of
Russia's lore.'
My experience in Moscow was a'hands-on' training in the
integrative approach to acting proposed by Stanislavsky. The
practitioners under whom I studied combined their disciplines in
a synthesised, holistic way whereby the actors' emotions, imagination, body and spirit or 'superconscious' as Stanislavsky

- -----a

BEYOND STANISLAVSKY

sometimes called it - were stimulated without their even realisitrg. It was a truly active analysis, engaging script, character and
actor all at the same time. I can seize the opportunity now to feed
that experience back into the English language and keep the lore
developitrg. In Moscow, I was a comparatively open book, I was
hungry for new approaches. While of course I questioned and
challenged the work that I was undertaking, I also had sufficient
experience in the British acting profession to compare and

contrast. At the time of my Moscow trainirg, I knew nothing

of Stanislavsky's later work, and I'd never even heard of the
Method of Physical Actions. I simply found that the Russian
tutors used little cerebral analysis of text in rehearsals; everything was discovered through improvisation. It was only on rny
return to England that I found out through research that what
I'd experienced in Russia was 1{,ctive Analysis'.
oranoe
while I was involved in the training meant that I wasn't trying to
fit my experiences into a particular system or structure: I had no
personal agenda, or superior knowledge. There was no need to
bend rny results to fit the proposed methodology; I sirnply did
what was suggested, wrote copious iournals and, at a later date,
analysed, notated and labelled.
As I've said, there's no definitive explanation of Stanislavsky's
system: even Stanislavsky
Stanrslavsky didn't have one, his theories
theories were still
in a state of on-going development when he died. tlnderstanding
the 'system' is now dependent on contemporary practitioners'
lore. Since society is in a state of continuous development, so too
is theatre, and so must any (system' be for getting inside representations of human behaviour. In other words, the changing
nature of lore is legitimate, as it prevents method becorning
museum. The acting process described in this book is based on
the work of three particular actor-tutors with whom I studied:
Vladimir Ananyev (Scenic Movement), I(atya I(amotskaya

(Actor-Training) and Albert Filozov (Acting 'Master'). Their

disciplines correspond to Working on Your Self, Working in the
Ensemble and Working on the Role, each of which constitutes an
important aspect of the actor's on-going development. All of the

PROLOGUE

tutors had trained as actors in Moscow, and - as will be revealed their work is heavily influenced by Stanislavsky. But in many
ways Stanislavsky is only a starting point: Michael Chekhov and
Jerzy Grotowski also form an intrinsic part of much of the work,
along with a multitude of other influences. The combination of
these three practitioners - Ananyev, I(amotskaya and Filozov was timely and serendipitous. Their unique methods and personalities homogenised into an actor-training which embraced
action, emotion and experience. Although this account is a
personal journey through a very particular method, I ardently
believe that many of the elements can be applied by most actors,
whether they be engaged in toothpaste cornmercials or Hamlet.
To begin with, I'll address the heart of Physical Actions and
Active Analysis to try and understand how Stanislavsky got there
in the first place. Then the meat of this book is devoted to a
hands-on assessment of a contemporary actor-training. I conclude with a brief look at the application of the training during a
season at a British repertory theatre imrnediately following my
return. If I highlight the difficulties as much as the successes, it's
not to underrnine the work in any way, but rather to infer that
this account is by no means intended as gospel.
Using various aspects of the Russian approach in the time
since, Ir.returned, I've put the work to the test in a diversity of
environments with varying degrees of success. I've acted, I've
directed, and I've led workshops for professional actors and
actor-students (both undergraduate and A-level) itt Britain and
abroad. In other words, I haven't taken anything at face value;
I've challenged, questioned, and sometirnes blatantly failed. To
cover the range of circurnstances in which this approach can be
used, I've included exercises and ideas that may be applied to
text, improvisation, audition or workshop. At the core of the
whole training is Stanislavsky's Active Analysis os f haae interpreted it. And it's important to remember that: this is only my
interpretation of others' interpretations of their own tutors.
Albert Filozov trained under Mikhail I(edrov, who was Stanislavsky's Assistant Director at the time of his death: so, if you like

BEYOND STANISLAVSKY

and for what it's worth, this account is three degrees of separation from Stanislavsky!
The fact that 'systern' has now become lore doesn't imply a
watering-down of the principles. Given the fashionable 'postmodern perspective' - i.e. that there is no grand narrative, there
is no obiective truth then experience can be the only true
teacher. And that experience is what I strive to access for the
reader in this book. I could have provided a simple handbook
of exercises. Flowever, as Michael Chekhov points out in his
Foreword for To The Actor, it requires considerable collaboration
on the part of the reader to practise the exercises and thereblunderstand their potency. By adopting a highly subiective stance
in this account, I hope to take you part-way on that collaborative
voyage. While such an intimate 'voice' might not appeal to
everyone, I simply didn't want to offer a handbook. f specificall--v
- wanted to invite that 'shared experience', so that through
-y
illuminating the difficulties 'and highlighting the benefits of
psycho-physical training, you might take away something rnore
from Beyond Stanislaasky than iust a provocative read. And so
the journey through this book is a personal struggle with a
strange and intangible craft. The lofty - or humble? - intentioir
is to reveal to the actor the holistic nature of our art.

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ACT I
Myths, Methods,
Systerrrs and Superstitions
Why bother with Stanislavsky?
hen it comes to acting there are many myths about methods
and suspicions about systems. What did Stanislavsky say?
When? Why? Who adopted it? Who adapted it? Who decreed it?
Who decried it? And what's the relevance of it all today? Before
answering any of these questions, it's important to remember
that Stanislavsky was first and foremost a practitioner, an amateur
of theatre in the true meaning of the word. He wasn't a professed
theoretician: his reluctance to publish his ideas (a reluctbnce

eventually vitiated by financial need) indicates -that he didn't

want hismrords to be taken as gospel. That aside, there are certain
elernents of his theories which are as pertinent today as they ever
were and ever will be, as he was simply untangling, and as far as
possible systematising, natural human responses. 'We should also
remember that he was an experimenter: he didn't confine his
acting and directing to naturalistic Russian plays. He tried his hand
at operetta, symbolism, Shakespeare, Molidre. Despite popular
belief, his search for 'truth' - whatever that might mean - was as
much a search for stylistic and theotrical truth as it was for psychological truth. For him, theatre was a laboratory, and if somebody
didn't mix the chemicals, there would never be a reaction.
The reason why we should still bother with Stanislavsky today
is that rnaybe it's only now, at the dawn of a new millennium, that
his ideas are starting to make sense. For the last century, practi-

IO

MYTHS, METHODS, SYSTEMS, SUPERSTITIONS

tioners from Brecht to Brook to Barba and beyond have been

arguing that theatre is dying. Ask Joe Public why he doesn't go to
the theatre, and the answer will probably be 'Because it's boring!'
And why is it boring? Because the art of theatre acting is just as
stagnant now as it was in the 1960s, when Brook despaired of
'deadly' theatre. If we don't invest theatre with real humanity,
the resonances of live performance quickly diminish. And this
was what Stanislavsky was seeking - real human emotions on
stage, an end to which he thought all actors should address
themselves if they really want to keep theatrical art alive. He
knew that every gifted performer possesses the appropriate raw
materials for the tas : it was just a question of finding 'the right
bait'to lure him,or her.3 The trouble was that he was only too
aware that we can't consciously manipulate our ernoti@,,,'.5ret
herein lies the inherent contradiction of the acting process. We
' need humanity on stage, based on true connection with our heart
and soul, but how can we turn that humanity on at 8pm each
evening for a six-month contract or at five seconds' notice when
the director shouts 1{.ction!'? This contradiction provided the
stimulus for Stanislavsky's endless investigations into acting
techniques, as he grappled to find the very bait with which to
ensnare those capricious emotions.

'W'hatts

wrong with affective rrrerrrory?

Given Stanislavsky's interest in ernotion, you could be forgiven

for thinking that his main contribution to acting practice was his
introduction of the term 'affective memory'. Affective memory
has received a lot of bad press over the past few decades. It was
Stanislavsky who certainly brought it into acting terminology
though doubtless the great actors were using it long before he
gave it a name. Since then Lee Strasberg has been tarred with a
brush of vitriol by many practitioners for arguably basing the
American 'Method' on emotion recall. But if the heart of vibrant
acting is true human content, why does 'affective memory' cause
so much concern and consideration? To some extent, it's fair to

![/.HAT'S WRONG WITFI AFFECTIVE MEMORY?

II

dlat if you find you have an analogous situation which prerarts you (without any effort or inner contortion) with a trigger
fu a character, then it's a gift and you're crazy to ignore it.
Hmuever, you only have to take a brief look at some of the scienilitrE ideas promulgated since the late l9th century - from around
ftc same tirne that Stanislavsky began his own serious explora'
- to see that the use of affective rnemory quickly becomes
ra5r

le.

rtffective memory implies that the imaginative remembrance

".'6f thingS past can cause present-tense changes in an individual's
pryichology- And in fact in everyday life, we're constantly using it
Nrr rnake all manner of maior and minor decisions. The psychoilogfut Magda B. Arnold describes affective rnemory as playing a
wry important part in the appraisal and interpretation of everynN,nirg around us, calling it 'the matrix of all experience and
acfron'.a She goes on to say that, of course, it's intensely persnlnel, as affective memory is the living record of the emotional
life-history of each individual person: it reflects his or her unique
eryleriences and biases. This is one of the dangers of affective
mcmory Because of the intense subiectivity, Arnold actually
edsises against relying on affective memories, as they contirtrally
distort the individual's judgement.s This also applies to the actere aligning a character with the actor's personal
l|rg: PKrce
memories can lead to a distortion both of the writer's original
'Who's to say that
imention and of the actor's creative emotions.
an actor will even be able to locate at

will an appropriate affective

rternory, when often we unconsciously suppress an emotion at

sorrrce through our own involuntary self-censorship? Stanislavsky hirnself wrote that the more an actor violates an ernotion,
the rnore that emotion resists and 'throws out invisible buffers
before it and these . . . do not allow emotion to approach that part
of the role which is too difficult for it.'6 Recent experience of a
television shoot in which I had to play a beaten-up young mum
rerninded me of that danger only too well: the more my brain
nagged me that the script said, 'The tears begin to fall', the mor!
those invisible buffers pushed the emotion away from me. And

12

MYTHS, METHODS, SYSTEMS, SUPERSTITIONS

the situation can perpetuate itself: the more the buffers are developed, continues Stanislavsky, the harder it is for the emotion to
appear when it's needed and the rnore an actor then has to appeat
to 'old stencils and stagey craftsmanship'. And we all know how

dreadful those 'stencils' or dry imitations of feeling can look

looming large on a TV close-up . . .
Another lirnitation of affective memory is that every time rn
event is recalled, the individual's perception of it shifts slighdg
so that the affectiveness of the memory constantly changes. This
is, after all, the positive use of affective memory in some psyche
therapy: a patient is invited to relive over and over again in detail
a disturbing experience. Eventually, the point is reached at which
the memory has been transferred from the left-hand brain, where
it exerts subconscious control over the patient's life, to the rightto
hand brain, where it can be rationalised and 'diffused
the suspicions surrounding affective memory, Th6odule Ribog
the scientist from whom Stanislavsky adopted the terrn, eyerr
went so far as to doubt its very existence, stating that 'the errr>
tional rnerrrory is nil in the majority of people.'7 If the very nuiln
who coined the phrase says that, then what are we rnere actor'-s
supposed to think?

Throughout his life, Stanislavsky maintained that his systern

was nothing more than an application of natural laws of biology
and behaviour to the conventions of the stage.8 Along with this,
we have to remember that he was reacting strongly against
formal theatrical traditions. He didn't want his actors declairning
their roles, as was the customary practice on the internationel
stage. He wanted them to invest their characters with real errxF
tions, or rather with human truth: obviously he thought thnt
affective mernory could be a springboard into that trutfrWhether or not affective rnemory exists, is reliable, is accessible"
or creatively helpful, there's another far more significant Gorts
sideration when it comes to analysing emotion. What promtrrts
it - is it the mind or is it, in fact, the body?

\MHAT IS AN,EMOTION?

r3

What is an ernotion?
Even with the early (and by current standards, fairly primitive)
investigations into emotion, the emphasis was clearly on body, not
mind. In 1884, WilliamJames wrote his famous essay, What is an
Emotion? - an essay with which Stanislavsky was probably familiar. James described how the entire circulatory system acts as a
'sounding board' within the human body, 'which every change of
our consciousness, however slight, may make reverberate'.e He
went on to say that regardless of whether any outward change
appears, tension within our inner musculature adapts to each varying mood. So, if every emotion rnakes a biological irnpression,
each individual could be described as possessing a physiological
compendium of emotions imprinted on his or her musculature.
The conclusion that James drew from his findings was that the
various permutations and combinations of these organic
activities make it possible that every shade of emotion, however
slight, has a unique bodily reverberation. So muscle and mind
are completely interdependent. This was certainly something
that influenced Stanislavsky as his enquiries into acting practice
developed away from memory to body. If e suggested that -the
power of a muscular memory was dependent on the strength of
the ariginal emotional experience, which makes the most ordinary sensations the hardest ones to locate. In other words, when
we experience moments of great emotional tension, the muscles
preserve the memory of the sensation rnore lastingly than they
do with daily experiences. r0 Yet it's often daily experiences we
need to portray on the stage. How many times has the simple task
of pouring a cup of tea turned a perfectly decent actor into a
lump of physical clumsiness? Indeed, in one of his most farnous
exarnples in An Actor Prepores, Stanislavsky's semi-fictional
director, Tortso\ invites his students to look for a brooch in a
curtain, using the exercise as an illustration of the unnecessary
complexities we add to the most simple of actions on stage.
While this chapter in no way offers any deep scientific analysis
of ernotion (there are plenty of excellent books which do that),

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MYTHS, METHODS, SYSTEMS, SUPERSTITIONS

I want to look at some of the ideas which Stanislavsky would hav-e

known about.rl They might give us clues as to why he moved
from affective memory to physical actions in the development of
his system. In What is 6tn Emotion, William James famously
challenged the belief (commonly held at the end of the l9th
century) that external stimulus - real or imaginary - arouses
emotional response, which in itself leads to a corresponding
action or expression. Or to put it more directly, (1) we meet the
bear; (2) we feel afraid; (3) we run. By way of a challenge, James
postulated that (2) and (3) were reversed: we meet the bear; we
run instantly before we've had time logically or emotionally to
assimilate the situation, and only then do we register our feeling
of fean In other words, he suggested that the instinctive physical
reaction (runnirg) to the stimulus (the bear) caused the emotion
(fear). Itis our sensation of biological activitis, t$ktng place
within us a/ier the action but before we've had a chance consciously to recognise what's going on, which es the emotion. So to
some extent the sequence really has a fourth stage - ( I ) the stimulus leading to (2) the physical action, swiftly prompting (3) the
physiological actiaity, rapidly perceived as (4) ant emotional stq,te.
If in fact the natural sequence of biological activity in emotion
is stimulus / physiological reacti on / emotion, then the use of
affective memory on stage does seem to be an extremely bizarre
practice. Distilled to its most simplistic, the basic premise underlying affective memory goes like this: (l) I meet a theatrical bear;
(2) I recall the moment in my life when I saw a real bear and
remember the details of all the sensory stimuli which surrounded
that moment; and finally (3), if my memory is sufficiently porent,
I'll begin to experience the fear towards the theatrical bear which
I originally experienced towards the real bear, and in that state of
genuine re-experienced fear, I run. Phew! The process surrounding affective memory is both relflectiae (as my attention is turned
to the past) and reflexioe (as f focus in on my own sensations).
The actual on-stage reality of being here, now, with this partner
and that audience, is superseded by the actor's independent
recollection of a personal event, an event which might not neces-

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FROM EMOTION TO ACTION

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sarily have anything to do with the action of the play. There's

certainly a belief that affective memory can assist an actor in
penetrating a complex character during t}re rehearsal process, but
relying on this tool in perforrna,nce can be limiting, unhelpful and
often very difficult.
Looked at it in terms of the whole of Stanislavsky's life,
affective memory was really only a tiny part of his investigations.
After years of trial and error, he came to realise that true life on
the stage would never arise from the dernonstrational acting
which adorned the l9th-century theatre. Or from the director
superimposing activities on the actor (as he himself had done in
his early years). Ot from dredging up emotions through a process
of affective memory. Or frorn intellectual analysis of text through
round-the-table discussions. He had to discover an alternative
technique, and, indeed, by the end of his life, he believed he'd
found a possible solutioq to the doing/feeling dichotomy Instead
of considering true emotion as the end-product of an acting
technique, he sought to crystallise a process in which experience
of an emotion might be an inevitable by-product.

Frorn ernotion to action

j

t'-.

StanisllVsky acknowledged that emotion (or feeling) forms only

a part of a" human being's intricate mechanisrn, which also
comprises body (or will) and rnind (or thought and irnagination).
These three centres - emotion, will and thought - Stanislavsky
narned the 'inner rnotive forces'. If emotiotl Das so elusive, perhaps it could be more effectively stimulated, not trrlrough directly
assaulting the emotion-centre itself, but indirectly,by provoking
the will-centre (the body) and coercing the thought-centre (the
imagination). In other words, if the performer actively did
sornething and imaginatively committed to what he or she was
doing, appropriate emotions would arise accordingly. After all,
emotion isn't static. As Daniel Goleman proposes in his assessment of Emotional fntelligence, iqJl emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has

16

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MYTHS, METHODS, SYSTEMS, SUPERSTITIONS

instilled in us.'r2 He goes on to point out that the very root of the
word emotion is motere, t}re Latin verb 'to move', plus the prefix
'e' to indicate 'move away'. This suggests that there is a tendency
to act implicit in every emotion. And attention to action was the
underlying principle of Stanislavsky's final experiments: if
emotion was to be aroused on the stage, stillness (be it inner or
outer) had to be replaced from the very first moments of rehearsal by sorne kind of action (be it inner or outer). As he declared
to his opera students in 1935: 'Now we shall proceed differently
We shall create the lin_e ofphysicol action,,' 13 believing that this line
of physical action would engage the actor's body, which, in turn,
could ignite the life of his or her humanity and spirit.
This transference of attention from inner emotion to on-stage
action was described by his actor-protg6, Vasily Topq6kov, as
'one of Stanislavsky's greatest discoveries'r4, though it"'wasn't
really so much a 'discovery' as a culmination of a iourney which
can be traced throughout his life. It led to an approach which is
most commonly known as the Method of Physical Actions or, in
its later development, Active Analysis. In both cases, the actor
was drawn towords physical actions and a,Dcr,y from worrying
about ernoting in performance, so that the process actually freed
up the actor's subconscious, inducing it to work spontaneously
and creatively.tt Through this forword-mooing impulse, all the
physiological, psychological and emotional components of the
actor's apparatus were aligned almost effortlessly, making it a
truly psycho-physical technique, where body and psychology
(brain, emotions, and imagination) were mutually dependent.
Sounds wonderful, but how do you do it?

Finding the physical actions

ft's quite possible that without his previous exploration of
round-the-table textual analysis (focusing on the thought-centre)
and his notorious affective memory (focusing on the emotioncentre), Stanislavsky might never have reached the conclusion
that it was in fact t}re body (via the will-centre) which was most

FINDING THE PHYSICAL ACTIONS

r7

accessible to the performer. With both analysis and affective

memory, the actors were really starting at one remove from the
stage experience. They were sitting round a table or conjuring up
imaginative memory: they weren't actually experiencing the
encounter. The potential of the Method of Physical Actions,
however, l"y in its immediecy.r6 The actor didn't ask, 'What
would I do ifI were in this situatior?', but simply said 'Here I am
in the concrete reality of this stage environment, so what do I do
now?' Paradoxically, it was by acknowledging the actuality of

being in a theatrical situation that the actor's imagination was

liberated, rather than being constrained within pretend

circumstances. This was the magic of physical actions.
But what exactly were they these physical actions?

Basically, physical actions were an organic blend of several of

the existing elements of Stanislavsky's system, including inner
actions, objectives and activities. They were expressed through
small, achievable tasks of an outer nature (which could be as
simple as 'I turn on/ off a light switch') and an inner nature
(such as 'I charm you', 'I intimidate you', 'I reject you', etc.).
What was important about physical actions is that they were
usually directed towards the on-stage partner or they created an
effect on a partner. So, I turn on the light switch to make the
roornirhbre comfortable for you and then it is easier for me to
charm you. O., I turn off the light switch so that you can't see
me and then it's easier for me to intimidate you. On the one
hand, these achievable tasks could encapsulate great psychological complexities. On the other hand, their simplicity and
directness was such that they could be accomplished effortlessly
by the actor. This meant that carrying out physical actions wasn't
an end in itself, but rather it set in motion the actor's transition
from everyday life into complex psychological and emotional
experiences pertinent to the play in hand.l7
The rehearsal technique for finding the line of physical actions
was in fact very simple. It was no longer a question of engaging
in extensive textual knowledg" and prolonged discussion of a
play; instead the actors were asked to come to a rehearsal, read a

I8

MYTHS, METHODS, SYSTEMS, SUPERSTITIONS

after which there would be some brief discussion of the structure and content of the scene - and then thel'
would get up and improvise it. 18 After each improvisation, the
actors considered what they had done, both in terms of the line
of physical actions and the sensations which had arisen out of
those actions. They then assessed how appropriate those actions
and sensations were to the characters and the scene. And at each
scene through

subsequent rehearsal, they made the necessary adaptations to the

physical actions to enable them to draw closer to the experience
of the characters and the intentions of the playwright. They
didn't worry about directly changing the sensotions. They didn't
think, 'Oh, I must play it happier here, angrier there.' They iust

changed the physical actions to try and find the ones which
would arouse happiness, arouse anger or whatever the appropriate sensation might be. Doing it was the key to understanding it.
There was nothing particularly new in this approach. Extensive improvisation had actually been instigated by Meyerhold in
the 1905 Theatrical Studio, much to the exasperation of the
Moscow Art Theatre's co-founder, Nemirovich-Danchenko. At
the time, he was astonished that Stanislavsky could endorse. a
process, which demanded nothing more of the actors than to
rehearse 'as the spirit moves' them.re Meyerhold had overthrown
analysis, psychology and reason, and instead had drawn the
material for the production from whatever the actors intuitively
presented without any knowledge of the characters or the overall
tone of the play. Although Nemirovich-Danchenko was outraged, it's clear to see how Meyerhold's anarchic method in the
1905 Theatrical Studio pre-ernpted the techniques promoted by
Stanislavsky some thirty years later. Once more, in 1935, analysis
was subordinated and the improvisation of words and actions
became the main rehearsal principle.
It's important to realise that, with the Method of Physical
Actions, these improvisations were fr from generalised or
haphazard: for Stanislavsky, identifying truthful physical actions
required just as much attention to detail as with round-the-table
analysis. After all, however simple the actions might b., the

FINDING THE PLAYwRIGHT,S TEXT

r9

actors still needed to break the scenes into bits and objectives, to
give a logic and consistency to their actions and feelings. What
this meant was that each time the scene was improvised and the
appropriate actions identified, the sequence of physical actions
(known as the 'score') was noted, adjusted and ultimately fixed to
form a skeleton for the scene. Once a precise score had been
identified and fixed, it could then be repeated and invested each

time with the actors' own colours, to the point where habit
became easy and ease became beautiful. It's quite possible that
the final 'score' bore a strong resernblance to the kind of prompt
copy that Stanislavsky forced upon his actors during his early
days at the Moscow Art Theatre, or even to the results of endless

of

collaborative round-the-table analysis. Flowever, the

process of discovering the score of physical actions was significantly different. The perforrners didn't act out the director's predetermined choreography, neither did they sit at a table with
their heads in the scripts and a pencil in their hands: 'No, we
remained on the stage and we acted, we searched in our action, in
our ovn natural I'ife, for whatever we needed to prornote our

hours

ob jectiv e.'20

Finding the playwright's tex

Note that Stanislavsky says that the search for physical actions
began by looking 'in our own natural life'. What this rneant was
that with the irnrnediacy and spontaneity of the early
improvisations, choracter wasn't a primary concern. Instead,
Stanislavsky insisted that the actors started with themselaes and
their own justification of any chosen action. He believed that if
they drew on their personal perspective of life, habits, artistic
senses, intuition, or whatever was needed to help thern execute
their actions, they would find that their own nature would guide
them towards the first stages of characterisation. A dynamic,
immediate connection with the physical actions would provide
them with a rock-solid, hurnan foundation for the creative process, from which a fully-rounded interpretation could develop

r
20

MYTHS, METHODS, SYSTEMS, SUPERSTITIONS

and grow, rather than superficially putting the character on like

an overcoat.

Starting with 'themselves' certainly had a significant effect on

how text was used in rehearsals, particularly with Active
Analysis. The script was, of course, the starting point for locatirtg
the line of actions in terms of the initial read-through and
discussion of a scene, but then (fot a while) the playwright's
words ceased to be 'holy'. During the early rehearsals, the author's
exact text wasn't required, but rather the actors used their own
understanding of the ideas and actions ernboiied in the play.zr
Little by little, through improvisation and continuous rereadings of the script, the words the actors used to express ideas
and actions drew closer and closer to the playwright's text, to the
point at which they were dead-letter-perfect. What waq important for Stanislavsky was that the actors found their own iourney
towards those words, rather than learning them by rote. FIe
believed that 'between our own words and those of another, the
distance is of most immeasurabl e size. Our own words are the
direct expression of our feelings, whereas the words of another
are alien until we have rnade them our own, are nothing rrroJe
than signs of future ernotions which have not yet corne to life
inside us. Our own words are needed in the first phase of physical
embodirnent of a part because they are best able to extract from
within us live feelings, which have not yet found their outward
expression.'zz In fact, Stanislavsky actively forbode the memorizing of the playwright's text. He even went so far as to consider
that those actors, who depended on the words of the script,
betrayed their reluctance to embody fully the characters' life and
express it through physical actions. He was confident that if the
actors simply discovered what physical actions they needed, they
would reduce their dependence on learning the spoken word and
bring the play truly to life.23
That doesn't mean that Stanislavsky left the actors floundering
in their improvisations. There would come a time in rehearsals
when he felt that the actual text was now necessary to the actors.
At this point he gradually fed them from the sidelines - like a

\VHERE DOES EMOTION FIT IN?

2T

football coach - with the writer's words. The actors grabbed

these words hungrily because, by this stage, they knew that the
author's text expressed a thought or carried out a piece of action
far better than their own words could.za The result of this process
was a seemingly effortless passage from (l) the actors' improvised speech, through (2) the director's side-line promptings
from the author's text, to (3) an ultimate state of knowing the
lines because those were the words that the actors needed. They
didn't have to learn them in a formalised rnanner. By working
this way, Stanislavsky believed that the actual speaking of a text
could become the 'creation of the living word'zs with its roots
running deep into the actor's soul and emerging as an expression
of his or her true inner action.
Summing it all up, Stanislavsky described the Method of
Physical Actions, and Active Analysis, as being carried out simultaneously by all the intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and physical forces of our nature. This isn't theoretical, 'but practical researclt,
for the sake of a genuine objectiae, which we attain through
physical actions.'26In other words, it was a kind of textual analysis
which was carried out by the actor's entire being, and not solely
the brain. This led to a synthesis of the actor and the play, rather
than the dissection of the text. This synthesis connected natural
physicat rphenomena to a creative technique, and that creative
technique could then be used to tackle theatrical ortffice.

Where does ernotion fit into all this?

William James proposed that in life the external stimulu.s - let's
call it 'the bear' - is the catalyst in the emotion process. It's
exactly the same on stage: the first link in the chain of reaction is
the external stimulus, be it atmosphere, music, set, props, partner
and audience. The root of these stimuli is of course the play-text,
but in the actual mornent of on-stage encounter, it is the fleshand-blood negotiation of the environment (music, audience,
partner, etc.) which breathes life into the action. If an actor's
contact with the partner is not unlimited, it's quite possible that

22

MYTHS, METHODS, SYSTEMS, SUPERSTITIONS

t
:

there will be absolutely no truthful engagement with his or her

own body, emotions, imagination or humanity. In that case, the
audience may be presented with a very aesthetic construct
wonderful mise-en-scine, lovely delivery of text, beautiful line of
movement - but the actor is really giving nothing more than
forrn without content. And in fact it's possible to see it all the
time, even in the West End or on Broadway; actors playing in a
bubble, without really listening to each other or their surroundings. They may be picking up their cues and therefore
seeming to listen to each other, but the space between them isn't
reverberating, isn't alive, isn't in a state of constant adaptation. I

repeat, it's contact with the environment which stimulates

ernotion. As James puts it, 'The most important part of rny
environrnent is rny fellow man. The consciousness of his attitude
towards me is the perception that normally unlocks rno$:of my
shames and indignations and fears.'z7 And loves, and joyt, and
pleasures - both social pleasures and artistic pleasures.
In dramatic terms, the attitude of one's fellow man - i.e. what
do people think of me? - becomes part of the pursuit of objectiaes
and actions. An objective usually stems frorn the desire to change
the on-stage partner's attitude towards you, and distilled down-to
its essence it's often to do with one of two primary instincts:
attraction tonntrds ('I want you to love me') or repulsion from ('I
want you to fear me'). Suppose the actor's obiective is 'I want to
get rny partner to leave the room'. The actions employed by the
actor to achieve this obiective may be, for exarnple, 'to offend
him', 'to provoke him', 'to threaten him' or 'to repel hirn'. Each
of these actions is a tactic employed in an attempt to provoke the
partner to alter his attitude towards the provocateur, so that
ultirnately he wants to leave the room. At that point, the provocateur's objective will have been achieved. Just as affective
memory informs our moment-by-mornent decisions, the pursuit
of objectives also underlies all human behaviour. All our actions
in life stem from desires or needs, the most fundamental obiective, or super-obiective, being 'I want to survive.' To obtain that
super-objective, we have to execute a whole series of smaller

PAST, FUTURE, PRESENT

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obiectives: 'I want to solve the murder investigation because

I need to impress the boss. I want to impress the boss because
I need to keep my job. I want to keep my job because I need to
earn money. f want to earn money because I need to buy food.
I want to buy food because I need to eat. I need to eat because
I want to survive.'
The extent to which we try to achieve an objective depends
upon our appraisal of each and every situation in which we find
ourselves with any other person. We assess, sometimes almost instantaneously, the importance with which we endow the meeting
and how deep our need to change that person's attitude towards
us. I walk into the audition room and I so badly want this film iob
that I make sure I do everything I possibly can to change the
director's attitude towards me. I don't want him thinking, 'Is she
right for the part?'; I want him to believe, 'Wow, she's the one to
play in this movie and guarantee us Oscar nominations'. Our
appraisal of a situation sterns frorn the spontaneous assirnilation
of our past experience (affective memory) and our projected
future (imagination). Or as Magda B. Arnold suggests, 'Anything
that is appraised as good here and now will result in an impulse
towards it. And what is so appraised depends as much on
memory and imagination as it does on the here-and-now experi.tr""r.!f,'''So the past, present and future are working together all
the time to determine our actions and decisions: 'I don't want
to be a temp any more' (affective mernory) - 'I want to live in
Hollywood' (irnagination); 'Oh, and by the way, I really like this
director!' (present-tense appraisal). The value we give to a situation produces within us a particular emotion, and that emotion
then prornpts us to take specific actions. All the time, we're subconsciously and instantaneously organising our emotion according to our evaluation of the situation that produced it. In other
words, the emotion produced by the way in which we appraise a
situation leads us to take a specific, of 'organised' pattern of
action. Or as Stanislavsky put it: 'a line of physical action'.

24.

MYTHS, METHODS, SYSTEMS, SUPERSTITIONS

If it happens in life, it

can happen on the stage

As human beings, we are constantly and spontaneously determining objectives and setting in motion orgonised patterns dbehaaiour - or lines of physicol action - to achieve those objectives. So
once again, there's a natural, biological and psychological backdrop to the processes proposed by Stanislavsky for getting inside
a role through Active Analysis. Pursuit of objectives is discussed
very clearly by ptychologist I(arl Pribam, who calls obiectives
'Plans'. If somethi g stops us in an important situation from
achieving our Plan (or obiective), then anger, frustration, maybe
even fear can arise. This emotion can either open us to make
further attempts to achieve our Plan, or close us completely. If
the blocking of our Plan continues, Pribarn describes how we
either enter a state of considerable regression or we alter-otlr Plan
. to a version we feel fairly confident we can successfully achieve.ze
fn each scenario - whether we're blocked or whether we're successful in attaining our objective - emotion arises. Although Pribarn
is discussing human behaviour in life, it corresponds precisely to
the pursuit of dramatic objectives on the stage. Does the
character within the play retreat from a blocked objective or alter
the tactic and begin another assault? Either way, the psychologists' analysis shows that emotion is an unbidden by-product of
persevering with a Plan or objective through a line of physical
actions. In other words, play your action, pursue your objective
and you can't help but feel the emotion. Active Analysis places
you at the heart of t at pursuit, putting you in a position where
you're constantly developing a dual consciousness. Dual consciousness enables you to commit physically and imaginatively to the
actions in hand, while simultaneously assessing how relevant those
sensations are for the character and the scene. So part of you is
doing the action: part of you is watching the action. Through this
dual consciousness, the actor can gradually align his or her real
sensations with the given circumstances of the playwright's text.
Pursuit of action can be wholly absorbing. This leads to another paradox: if a person (or actor) is completely absorbed in an

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FROM LIFE TO STAGE

25

action, then not only is his or her attention deflected frorn the
emotion, but also the emotion actually increases for the very
reason that the person (or actor) isn't concentrating on it.30 So
we'll find that we're being emotional on stage, because we're
being actiae: we no longer need to fake the emotion or squeeze it
out like a tube of toothpaste. The psychologists' perspective Boes
to reinforce the fact that Stanislavsky's shift from emotion to
action (in the Method of Physical Actions and Active Analysis)
was a true alignment of biology with art, and nature with nurture. This endorses the protest against those who pigeon-hole
Stanislavsky's theories as cerebral, obsolete, and theoretical. Far
from it: they're artistic, vibrant and practical. Above all, they're
transferable from one genre to another, as it's simply a question
of human interaction. And I would argue that any genre of
theatre is essentially about human communication at sorne level
or another. Psycho-physical acting isn't concerned purely with
the genre of psychological realism. It's an approach to acting
encompassing all styles and '-isms', because it's concerned with
body and psychology feeding each other on the inner,/outer continuum discussed by practitioners as diverse as Meyerhold,
Grotowski, Brook and Chaikin. Physical Action is an orgbnic
method of interaction both within the actor (in terms of will,
thought and feeling) and betpeen actors (in terms of dramatic
dialogue). In the realms of science lies the drama of objectives
and obstacles, the pursuit of needs and desires: it's a natural
instinct, not a theoretician's conceit. The question is how to put
it all into practice in a rnanageable, logical and inspiring actortraining, and so get to the heart of Active Analysis. It was at this
point that my journey to Moscow revealed all. So without further
ado, let's go there . . .

27

ACT 2
Working on Your Self
What do you rnean - 'p"y"ho-physical'?

tT.h" ten-month Russian training was geared towards developI ing an actor's psycho-physicality. Well, what on earth does

that mean? In a nutshell, the basis of psycho-physical acting is

that inner feeling and outer expression happen at the same time.
In other words, whatever emotion you rnay be experiencing,
your physical response to that emotion is instantaneous. And oice
oersa,: whatever physical action you execute, the inner sensation
aroused by that action is spontaneous. That doesn't necessarily
mean that if you feel upset, you show that sorroq as we all know
that in everyday life we often hide or disguise or deny our-real
emotions. What it does mean is that there has to be a genuine and
dynamic.tbnnection within each actor between seen action and
unseen sensation. Let's be clear that at this stage we're dealing
with actor-training and not with what goes on inside an actor
during performance. I'll come on to that shortly. But we have to
wake the actor up before we can arouse the character.
Many practitioners divide acting into 'inner / outer' techniques
(for example 'Method' actirg) and 'outer/inner' techniques (for
example 'character' acting). But in reality these distinctions
aren't so clear. In effect there's no diaide between body and psychology, but rather a continuurn; as we go about our ddily lives,
different experiences stimulate us at different points along that
continuum, not simply at one end or the other. What we're doing in psycho-physical actor-training is simply harnessing all
those natural responses and channelling them into the artificial

28

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

circumstances of the stage, so that, when we're playing a character, the inner / outer dialogue takes place truthfully and simultaneously. Then, and only then, will an audience really understand
what's going on before their eyes. As Michael Chekhov describes
it, we are 'transforming the outer thing into the inner life, and
changing the inner life into the outer event.'3r And the continuum between inner and outer - body and emotion - is the crux
of psycho-physical co-ordination.

Are you listening?

The whole process should be very easy: after all, we do it all the
time in normal life without even thinking about it. On stage,
however, the connection between outer experience and inner
sensation is incredibly elusive, because the degree of sensflfivity
required by the actor demands that he or she lives entirely in the
moment Or as Stanislavsky puts it, the actor has to lay 'the totol
bestowal of all his powers on the transient 'now', without a
thought of how he will act and sustain himself until the fifth or
sixth act'.32 As most actors know - especially if a role is particularly demanding - it's not always easy ,o sweep the troublesome
parts of the play from your thoughts and simply get on with the
scene in hand. Even if your mind doesn't wander to the dodgy
scene in the second act, it's extremely difficult to listen truly
to the words of your partner in the actual moment that they're
spoken. Too often we unconsciously wait for cue lines, or
go through the motions of rehearsed reactions. Real listening
doesn't rely on the ear, but rather on the whole of the actor's
body and psychology, and to engage in this all-consuming activity of real listening, the actor needs to be in a state of consta,nt
inner improaisation. What that means is that, as you listen to the
words spoken on-stage, you allow those words really to touch
your heart; this in turn prompts the right response, which
(ultimately) is the playwright's text. Putting it another way, the
words on the page become exactly the words you need in order to
express yourself truthfully, rather than simply being a series of

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learned and rehearsed responses. Nothing preconceived or

repeated is brought into the stage-space: every impulse is born in
that moment, in that 'transient now'. It goes without saying that
this kind of constant improvisation has to remain entirely within
the realms of both the playwright's text and the director's
overview: it's the actor's inner adaptation, not an invitation to

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motive forces comprise the 'emotion-centre', the 'thoughtcentre' and the 'action-centre', and the dialogue that goes on

I
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ARE YOU LISTENING?

cornplete anarchy.
Inner adaptation needs supreme attention to the other actors
on-stage: the slightest change in your partner's tone or the
subtlest turn of the head will create a different response within
you every night if you're really listening to your partner. But the
listening doesn't stop there. In fact, it doesn't even start there.
lf it's essential for you to listen to your on-stage partner, it's
even more irnportant to develop the ability to listen to yourself.
And this requires the absolute complicity within each actor of
the'inner motive forces'. As I discussed in Chapter 1, the inner
between these centres is a very subtle one. If you want to tap into
this dialogue as an actor, you have to understand how your body

affects your psychology, and how your psychology affects your

body in everyday life.
'a
Sinoe,;$sychology' is fairly arnorphous, ungraspable con@pt, the easiest way into this process is through the body, which
isn't amorphous and is utterly graspable. Fine-tuning the body
will help us to fine-tune the other parts of our psycho-physical
mechanism (imagination, emotion and will). If the k.y to what
Stanislavsky calls the 'life of the hurnan spirit' on stage really is
the interplay between what you do and how you feel, then we
need our creative tools to be this finely tuned. Tuned to the extent
that the subtlest gesture can inspire an emotional response, or the
gendest shift of emotional sensation can arouse the body. While
most actors would undoubtedly like this fine-tuning to be an
inherent part of their natural talent, in reality it often isn't and a
thorough physical-training programme seems not only to be inevitable, but essential. To this end, Stanislavsky suggested daily

3o

WORKING ON YOUR SELF

exercises for the actor, such as those practised by the dancer, the
athlete or the musician. The intention was that, like our fellow
artists, the constant repetition of certain exercises would ensure

that the muscles could be conditioned; through this physical

conditioning, Stanislavsky believed that the 'creative state' - the
realm of inspiration - could be developed. If an actor regularly
practised these physical exercises, the 'creative state' could
become the natural state for the performer, for ultimately (ts
Stanislavsky insists) all such training 'must become habitual'.33
After all, any technique is only useful once it becomes second
nature.

Finding a suitable psycho-physical work-out

Most actors are lazy when it cornes to physical

"

p
tion.
We're more than hrppy to participate in sport or dance or workouts at the Bym, or even a quick stretch before a performance,
But the kind of psycho-physical preparation required of acting,

which after all employs the complex and simultaneous combination of body, mind and emotions, is rarely practised. The
training offered in Russia addressed this very task: to condition the
muscles of the body in readiness for expressing the spirit of the
character: this training constituted much of the work led by
Scenic Movement teacher, Vladimir Ananyev. Ananyev had a
pithy little epigram stating that 'in the beginning was the word,
but the word was false', and so he turned to the simplest human
mooement as the most immediate means of expression. As
Stanislavsky advised, nr actor, like an infant, must learn everything from the beginning, to look, to walk, to talk, and so on',34
and from the start of his training programme, Ananyev set about
teaching the actor to do this very thing: to 'walk again'. This he
did through a series of simple physical exercises, believing that
through the thorough breakdown of technical movement, then
slowly but surely the actor can rediscover just how intelligent and
versatile the body is. And more than that: he or she can penetrate
the sophisticated interplay between body and emotions. Once

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A PSYCHO-PHYSICAL WORK-OUT

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youlre armed with this new insight, you no longer have to depend
upon the brain to do all the detective work on a script; instead,
you can turn to th'e body '.s connection with the text, as a channel
for discovering a character. At the end of the d"y, Ananyev believed that sirnple physical tuning can enhance complex psychological sensitivity.
The roots of Ananyev's work were fairly eclectic, ranging from
martial arts, tumbling, gymnastics and Meyerhold's Biomechanics to classical dance, eastern philosophy, Michael Chekhov's
principles and yoga. So the exercises in this chapter are definitely
Ananyev's idiosyncracy rather than any closely defined interpretation of Stanislavsky or Chekhov. Added to which, this account
is definitely my interpretation of Ananyev's exercises, which in
itself further perpetuates the 'lore' of actor-training as I discussed in the introduction. Ananyev himself had trained as an
actor at Moscow's State Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS), before

working in the experimental, almost underground, Theatre of

Plastic Drama from I97+ to 1988. As his understanding of
psycho-physicality increased, he began to coach dance, plastic
movement, stage-fighting and pantomime in various dramatic,
musical and puppet theatres throughout Moscow, and eventtially
throughout Europe.
By- ffe'time I met him as the Scenic Movement pedagogue at
the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), Ananyev was
also Associate Director of Moscow's Theatre of Clowns. This
was no small coincidence, clowning being an important discipline
for combining bright fantasy with broad physicalit5r. As Michael
Chekhov points out, 'Clowning will teach you to belieae in
phateaer you mish'3s, and you need this kind of imaginative
liberation when you're dealing with the complexities and inhibitions so often tied up with physical expression. And Ananyev
certainly invested much of his teaching at VGIK with his
knowledg. of physical theatre. He encouraged the actor, like the
clown, to explore the psychology of a character through bold
physicality. Incorporating n oaernent into psychology in this way
proved to be extremely important. One of the fundamental

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WORKING ON YOUR SELF

problems for us as actors is that the primary tool for creativity our selves - is also used each d"y for a range of activities, most of

which are not particularly creative. How do we turn an

instrument of everyday mundanity into one of potential genius?
This can be very difficult for many actors, particularly in our
rather cerebrally-orientated British culture: body and psychology quickly become separated, rather than integrated. This
might explain why some actors shy away from physical warmups: there's a kind of fear that muscular stiffness is a reflection

that other acting tools - emotions and mind - are atrophied too.
But as Michael Chekhov suggests, when the body does become
integrated into our psychology, 'this sarne body which we use the
whole d"y through for going here and there . . . is a different one
when we are on the stage.'36 And the subtle adaptation of our
own everyday body into that of a created character is intq-ral to
psycho-physical acting.
Physical adaptation was at the heart

of Ananyev's work. He
wanted to help us find ways of 'transcending' our everyday
physicality and personality, and to find a path into each new
character that might take us by surprise and excite us as performers. His training prograrnme assailed this 'transcendence''in
three particular ways. First, by developing each actor's physical
vocabulary through exercises and improvisations. Secondly, by
finding a way of accessing personal energies and resources rarely
used in daily life. (This corresponded to Michael Chekhov's
'higher consciousness' and focused on energies that might,
through their rnetaphysical properties, raise the actor's work to a
truly artistic plane. Although this may sound frighteningly esoteric, it could in fact be hugely liberating, and I'll discuss it in
further detail later in this chapter.) Thirdly, Ananyev seemed to
propose that, by harnessing this 'higher consciousness', flD actor
could break away from his or her own particular mannerisrns and
clich6s to develop a character's 'creative individuality'. Although
I'll also go on to explore this at greater length, let me sum it up
by saying that in fact Stanislavsky and Chekhov believed not
in three inner motive forces, but in four: the will-centre, the

POSSESSING YOUR PERSONAL SPACE

33

thought-centre, the emotion-centre, and the spirit. I'm aware

from experience that the concept of 'spirit' and 'spirituality' can
ring alarm bells in some practitioners, but all Stanislavsky and
Chekhov were suggesting was that our daily, conscious life is the
tip of the iceberg: the realrns of the subconscious are vast. By
creating an environment in which we allow ourselves to delve
deeper into that creative subconscious - or rather, by freeing
ourselves from the dominance of our analytical brains (which
aren't always that intelligent anyway) - we can begin to access a
kind of 'creative spontaneity'. A state in which we can experience
flashes of inspiration, when we do things on stage that we didn't
know we were going to do, or that we didn't even know we were
capable of doing. In this state of creative spontaneity, the temporhythm of the character (or the 'creative individuality') starts to
take on a life of its own. It's nothing spooky or schizophrenic, it's
simply unexpected and inspiring. And - most importantly - it all
lies within the confines of the text and the artifice of the stage; in
no way does it send you to the therapist's couch. But I will return
to all this in due course .
Possessing your personal space

All 'these concepts of 'higher consciousness' and 'creative

individuality' rnay seem fairly remote and of little relevance to an

actor doing three lines in an episode of a TV soap. On the
contrary. Just as a pianist can apply arpeggios to Mozart or

Mantovani, and the port de bra.s will help a West End chorus or a
Pina Bausch ensemble, so the 'psycho-physical work-out'
developed at VGIK proved to be as applicable to pantomime as
to Shakespeare. As with any technique, the first step is always the
hardest, and the starting point in Ananyev's psycho-physical
programme was the painstaking return to simple movement.
This occupied the first two months of the ten-month programme. Two or three sessions were held per week, each of
which lasted from Iy, to 2 hours, and the regularity of these
sessions in the early stages was essential if every actor's body was

34

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

to engage fully in the tough re-learning process. (Ideally, they

should be held daily.)
Each class began with a physical warm-up conducted by
Ananyev, the first stage of which involved us all assuming a
'primary' or 'vertical' position. For Ananyev, this was a very
specific pose not unlike the statue of Yuri Gagarin in Moscow,
and at first it wasn't particularly comfortable. With the feet together in parallel, the weight of the body was shifted slightly
forwards onto the balls of the feet, as if the ten toes were lightly
gripping the floor. I(eeping a feeling of extension up the back of
the calves, the knees were gently pushed backwards and turned
outwards, with the hips also turned out from the pelvis, like an
open book. The sensation in the upper legs was as if the feet were
actually in lst position, not parallel. This created ?_glse of
dynamic tension up the legs: although the feet were "'p6inting
forwards, the thighs were opened out from the hip joints at 45
degrees. As for the rest of the body the pelvis was slightly curled
forward as if the 'tail' was tucked underneath, and the stomach
was gently drawn in. The extension of the chest went in three
directions - forwards, upwards and open to the sides - with an
expansive, but not inflated, feeling. The extension of the shoulders went in two directions: slightly back, and downwards. The
elbows were bent away from the body a little, with the flats of the
palrns placed lightly on the outsides of the mid-thighs to allow
the air to circulate between the body and the inner arms. (Your
arms should feel as light as wings in repose.) The eye-line was
focused just above the horizon as if there was a rose opening in
front of the throat beneath the chin. The image of a cord extending from the top of the head to the heavens allowed the
actor's spine to elongate and the energy centre in the solar plexus
to feel active and open. Added to all this was - a smile!
Although it could feel rather phoney at first, the smile served
two specific purposes in terms of psycho-physical awareness.
In the first place, Ananyev incorporated into exercises elements
of eastern philosophy (also an essential aspect of Michael
Chekhov's practices and much of Stanislavsky's early work with

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A FEELING OF EASE

35

Leqpold Sulerzhitsky in the Moscow Art Theatre's First

Studio). If the actor smiled, he or she could begin to open the
seventh chakra - the Hindu energy centre in the crown of the
head. This could provide a conduit through which higher
consciousness (ot inspiration) might enter the human body,
igniting like fireworks all the energy centres down the spine.
Secondly, and rather more tangibly, the smile created an atmosphere of fun, which was the key to assimilating knowledg.. This
echoed Michael Chekhov's 'Feeling of Ease', which is 'related to
humour, a crtlcial aspect of art. The more hearty gaiety the actor
brings into all his exercises the better.'37 There's no doubt we all
found that a great deal of physical and mental effort was required
to re-educate our physicality, and as Stanislavsky maintained,
'When an actor is making too much effort, it is sometimes a good
idea for him to introduce a lighter, more frivolous approach to his
work.'38 And so, Ananyev insisted on a smile!
Although the various cross-tensions of the 'vertical' position
felt strange at first, it was surprisingly empowering. In fact, it
resembled a relaxed prone position, the kind of position you

naturally fall into lying in bed: it's just that we were doing it
standing up.

The position was very important for Ananyev in terrns of

creating character. Our natural standing posture usually lies
outside the vertical line of the spine: either falling forwards or
leaning back. Unless we identify our natural perversions of the
vertical position, we'll never be able to create characters which
canl. 'transcend' our everyday physicality. We'll always be dragging them back to and caging them within our own individual
unconscious physical contortions. Because the vertical position
aligns the spine with all its energy centres, it can be incredibly
invigorating. At the same tirne, it gives the actor a physical 'blank
canvas'. Once we'd adopted this position, a very simple but
remarkably revealing exercise ensued. Each actor leant as far
forward in this position and as far backwards as possible without
falling over or losing the line of the spine. The psychology of the
physical exercise is to explore how I feel inside, when I possess

36

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

my personal space (leaning forward), when I find my neutral

space (standing in the vertical position) and when I retreat from
my personal space (leaning backwards). On stage, the actor must
always possess his or her own personal space, even if the character is either retreating or pro-active. It's by possessing our
personal space that we put ourselves in the maximum position of
activity: I can advance, or I can retreat at a moment's notice. Even
if the character is a couch potato (therefore clearly existing in the
relaxed space), the actor must be in possession of his or her space
within the character's retreating posture.

Re-negotiating the body through joints and straight lines

Having explored the sensations of the entire body existing within
its own space, a process of re-negotiating the details of the'body

began. The first step was to understand the rnost basic

movement: the movement within the joints of the skeleton.
Although it may sound obvious, we wouldn't be able to move
very far without our joints, and yet so often we allow them to
stiffen or atrophy (particularly our spines), ir our tendency to
concentrate on developing muscles and physical strength. Now
was the tirne to tackle this head on. In the rnain sessions of the
first few weeks, Ananyev focused intensively on isolating the
action of a single joint - such as a wrist or ankle or hip. To clarify
the exercise even further, the movement was restricted to only
one joint at a time and the trajectory could only be in straight
lines. It was a matter of breaking physical action down to its absolute simplest. What was important though was that, even in
these early stages, exercises weren't locked in the realm of dty
technicality: the imagination always had an active part in the
physical work. So, in this instance, we were to imagine that our
bodies were like the small wooden figurines used by artists in
preparing drawings, so that a vivid irnaginative picture could
help with the physical task of isolating individual joints.
Theoretically the exercise was extremely simple. Each actor was
to describe a series of straight lines through the air, each straight

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JOINTS AND STRAIGHT LINES

37

line being led by a particular joint with the rest of the limb
following like a kite-tail. Every movement had to be very specific:
so, if we were focusing on the wrist joint, for example, it wasn't
a question of observing how the hand flexes forwards and

backwards from the wrist, but how the wrist joint itself can
describe straight lines in the air. Inevitably this movernent does
involve the hand flexing to and fro as it follows behind the wrist
like a watch-chain, but the wrist joint is the focus, not the hand.
The important thing to remember in all this is that the point of
the exercise wasn't simply to execute the movement, but to allow
a" sensation of the movement to permeate the whole body. After
all, this is the basic premise of psycho-physical training: the
body, imagination and ernotions are all working, atl the time,
whether the exercise is apparently technical, ernotional or
imagination-led. If the actor allowed the sensation of rnovement
to be as significant as the execution of rnovemen! it soon became
clear that each ioint could arouse a profoundly different feeling.
For example, if the knee was leading, the quality of the movernent rnight have a certain gravitas; if the middle ioint of the
forefinger was leading, the movernent rnight be nimble and
intricate. So a feeling of solemnity on the one hand (kneb) or
mischief on the other (finger) could swarnp the whole body, just
from'the starting point of a single joint.
Concentrating on limited movernent (simply one joint cr,t a time
in a straight line) was crucial for developing psycho-physical
awareness, and yet horrifyingly difficult. I found that having
lived in my body for some twenty-odd years and worked as an
actor for five of those years, it was strangely humiliating suddenly to discover just how little I actually knew about that body.
Ironically I found that returning to a movement as simple as
isolating one ioint seerned to freeze the body at first, not free it.
But as Michael Chekhov says, 'Realise that the joints are not
given you to make you stiff, but on the contrary to enable you to
use your limbs with utrnost freedom and flexibility."n The joint
is the simplest cog in the machine of the body, and yet under-

standing its movement proved to be extremely hard. The task

38

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

was actually made easier by repeating the exercise in pairs. With

one actor as the figurine (usually with their eyes closed so that

they could intensify their personal circle of attention), the other

actor took the role of artist or sculptor, and moulded the figurine

by manipulating iust one joint at a time. The 'figurine'

had
surrendered the decision-making part of the brain, as the choices

about which joint to move next were now being rnade by the
sculptor. This allowed the possibilities of the body to be rnore
freely explored. All the 'figurine' had to do was to subrnit to
tlne sensation of particular movements, and to notice how outer
movement affected inner emotion or feeling. It was funny how
much easier it was to awaken a sense of psycho-physicality when
you didn't have to take responsibility for your own body's

movements.
Focusing on straight lines quickly revealed just how littlp our
bodies actually move along a flat plane. Bending the lower arm to

the upper arrn (ro that the hand meets the shoulder) was a
movement on a curoed plane, therefore outside the realm of this
exercise, and so other possibilities of rnoving the elbow joint had
to be explored. This basically meant discovering that the only
way for the elbow to describe a straight line was to move the
entire arm through space. Sirnilarly, the knee wasn't allowed to
bend, the head couldn't turn, and it was certainly r big no-no for
the jaw to yawn wide open. In fact the natural predominance of
body movements proved to be on a curaed plane. Taking the time
to rediscover the body in this way felt both wildly frustrating and
strangely privileged. While the question sometimes nagged,
'Why do I need to know that the body hardly uses straight lines?',
I was aware that without this physical knowledge - and furthermore, without the opportunity to discoaer this knowledg" - I was
blurring the edges of my own understanding of the basics of
psycho-physicality. In other words, by painstakingly developing
physical co-ordination, we were preparing ourselves for the
tougher task of developing psycho-physical co-ordination: that
is, the effortless connection between inner sensation and outer
expression.

WAVES AND PHYSICAL PLASTICITY

39

Waves and PhYsical PlasticitY

Having spent several sessions exploring in detail isolated movements on a straight line, it was time to introduce the curaed plane.
At this point, the artist's figurine (with moving joints only) was
exchanged for the image of a plasticine model, like Morph or
Wallace. This meant that we were no longer limited to just our
skeletons: we could now picture muscles, sinews, and tendons,
and in fact the softness of the plasticine image enhanced the
sensuality of the curved movements. We were still restricted to
one isolated limb at a time, but now the elbow could bend, the
knee could genuflect and the torso could bow. And with this
increased physical vocabulary came an increased range of sensation. To thrust your head forward in a straight liner like a turtle
from a shell, could arouse a sensation of strange curiosity, of
peering at the world: the movement was essentially outwardflowing. In contrast to that, bowing your head forward on o
curaed plane could arouse a sensation of humility, contemplation,
and reverence: the movement was essentially inward-flowing. It
was important that the approach to this intense training was slow
and precise to allow the actor time to experience this kind of
sensation of movements, as well as how those movements provoke
differema: emotional qualities. This was enhanced when we
worked once again in partners: like the 'figurine', the 'plasticine'
actor was able to relinquish the decision-making part of the brain
to the sculptor. This left him or her free to experience both the
sensation of the pose and - importantly - the m.ooen ent through
space to achieve that pose. It's only when technical movement and
inner sensation go hand in hand that psycho-physical awareness
can develop.

These early sessions focused on the significance of joints and

their isolated movement on both straight and curved planes. The
next step was then to put a series of joint movements together to
form a physical pazse. Why bother doing that, then? Well, the
wave is the basic impulse of all natural and human existence.
'We're
constantly involved in the continuing sequence of (1) action,

l.r

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40

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

(2) reaction, (3) decision, whether it's in private experiences

social encounters. Someone greets us in the street (action), we
like that person (reaction), and we choose to greet them back
(decision). The psycho-physical wave sequence is at the root of
our ordinary, spontaneous lives. The trouble is that, as with many
of the things that we do spontaneously in real life, when we try
to apply it to the artificiality of the stage, it ain't so easy. Psychophysical waves are complex; they involve us completely, in terms
of our emotions, our imaginations, our decisions, as we take
information from the world, chew that information around and
spew out our response to it. So in actor-training, rather than
tackle psycho-physical waves head or, we can approach them
first by assessing their tangible, physical properties. And in that
way we can begin to unlock the rnore complicated:,Gtre,Jnents of
their psychological properties. If we start like this - with something physical and manageable - eventually we ought to be able
to understand what's going on in our spontaneous responses. We
can then apply that understanding to the artificial conditions
surrounding our on-stage interactions.
As with all the other exercises in Ananyev's training'programme, the first step was to break the wave down to its simplest
execution. So, to begin with, exercises were often confined to one
part of the body, such as the arm. The way to explore the wave
rnotion in a single limb was for each actor to hold both arms out
at right angles in front of his or her body like a Native American
chief with one arm placed on top of the other. A wave motion
was then directed along the top arrn by isolating and activating
single joints in consecutive order. It began with the elbow, then
the wrist, then the knuckles, then the joints of the fingers, and
finally the finger tips. By laying one arm on the other, it was
easier for the actor to keep the wave on a horizontal plane,
making sure that the task was executed as precisely as possible.
This is in fact an extremely difficult exercise, especially as most
actors find that they simply can't isolate the finger tips. What
frustration arises when we discover how little control we have
over our own bodies! And this single exercise quickly highlights
!

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ARTICULATING A WAVE MOTION

rck
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+r

just how difficult the actor's task is. If we can't even isolate and
control simple ioints, how on earth can we begin to understand
the complex nature of the inner 'psychological waves' of action,
reaction, decision? If the smallest physicol task challenges us,
how can we begin to control the intangible elements of our craft?
Articulating a wave motion through the entire body is even
harder. To make it a bit easier, Ananyev suggested that the actor
stands facing a wall. First the head is gently thrust forward on
the horizontal plane so that the nose touches the wall; as the head
is brought back into line with the spine, the shoulders are thrust
forward to touch the wall. As the shoulders are returned to
neutral, the chest is thrust forward and so on through the
stornach, the groin and the knees. If using the wall isn't very
helpful, the actor can lie on the floor while an obliging partner
passes a stick underneath the various parts of the body - first
under the head, then under the shoulders, the chest, and so on.
Each part of the wave is executed by raising the appropriate
section of the body off the floor in sequence. And this is why the
wave movement is so crucial: it's about executing a series of
individual actions in sequence to make a natural and lopiical flow of
movement. This is at the heart of both the Method of Physical
Actions and Active Analysis. Every action must corne from what
predb&d it and lead to the next logical rnoment. That doesn't
mean that thb actions are predictable or unimaginative; but the
spectators have to belieae what's happenitrg. They have to understand the cumulative sequence of action / reaction / decision. Iq
as actors, we skip a stage in the sequence of physical actions, our
on-stage activity (inner and outer) will seern contrived and
artificial. That's why a mastery of basic physical waves can have
profound knock-on effects in terrns of psycho-physical control.
Ananyev complicated the wave exercise even further by asking the actors to stand in the middle of the room (without the
guidance of floor or wall) and to execute the sequence freestanding. We did this exercise many times during the year, often
badly, usually frustratingly so. If it's regularly practised - and
perfected! the wave movement should eventually feel quite

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

natural. And a sense of ease with the wave movement is really a

prerequisite of this kind of trainirg, since waves are central to
psycho-physical (i.e. inner,/outer and outer / inner) co-ordination.
It demands great patience, control and attention to execute waves
precisely and sequentially. Once again, it also requires an awareness of tlee space through phich the limb rnooes, as well as the
movement of the limb itself. For Ananyev, space was an important partner, with which an actor can work as closely on stage as
with any human partner. It's through space that we connect with
ou.r fellow actors and with the audience; it's by filling space that
we create atmosphere and energy, and so space becomes another
essential component in psycho-physical awareness. (This will
become clearer in Chapter 3.)
And in this way, isolations and their co-ordination into wave
rnotions formed the basis of early psycho-physical'oit$4&nittg.
What emerged after the first two weeks with Ananyev was that
this kind of training is a long, slow process. Although much of
what we were doing was in principle very simple, it all felt
terribly strange. But the goal is that everything which at first feels
alien to the body will eventually become habit, and habit makes
everything feel easy. Basic psycho-physical training is working
towards a sense of ease, since that sense of ease will ultimately
become artistically beautiful and aesthetically pleasing for both
performer and spectator alike.

The psychology of re-learning

The journey from the alien feeling to the 'beautiful ease' is often
frustrating and - to be perfectly honest - plain boring. The first
stages of developing a psycho-physical technique can present
problems, particularly to those actors who have already had a fair
amount of film and stage experience, as they quickly crave results.
The problem at VGIK was that some of the actors in our
English-speaking group were used to taking the necessary shortcuts demanded by brief rehearsal periods or, as in the case of
television, by no rehearsal at all. The consequence of which was

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RE-LEARNING

43

that they found Ananyev's process pretty slow, and they assumed
that the exercises were all too easy, with little to show for their
efforts in the early stages. understandably, they grew impatient,

but inevitably their impatience impeded their development. One

fact remains inescapable: these exercises have to be as simple as
possible, otherwise we start to cheat ourselves. Or as Michael
Chekhov puts it, 'If we start with complicated exercises, our
bodies will change them so that they become comfortable. We
must defeat our body through simple basic means.'
In many respects, Ananyev didn't see his Scenic Movement
discipline as 'training', but rather as a process of physical 'liberation': liberation from our individual clich6s, habits, muscular
atrophy and physical inexpressiveness. This liberation can only
be achieved through re-educating the body, and re-education can
only be achieved through the simplification of movement. Actors
who were frustrated by the slowness of the training programme
were - subconsciously - trying to circurnvent their own limitations. Re-education of any sort, particularly of the body is
neither easy nor particularly enjoyable. It's especially painful if
we're experienced performers, as we don't even like to hear about
our physical limitations, let alone try and confront or change
them. But for Ananyev, that was exactly what the struggle of
learning,was all about: 'You take information, you analyse its use,
you test its use for you personally and you use it until it becomes
second nature. But look how long it takes for a child to learn to
walk, eat, talk - and that's starting from zero- How much harder
to unlearn before you can start to releartt.'
What emerged from the experience of those actors who
became frustrated with the Russian training was that the very
process of physical re-education is in itself a psychological
challenge, in that it requires the actor to make a particular mental
adjustment towards the physical exercises. Michael Chekhov
anticipates this problem: as he points out, the psychology of
someone who exercises for artistic purposes is quite different
from the someone who exercises without knowing that 'repetition
is actuolly the growing power' . He stresses that it's important not

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

to think that 'f'm doing something which is becoming stale and

dull for me'. Instead, each time we do the simple lifting and
lowering of the arm, w must 'do it with a fresh approach and a
desire to do it again and again, as if for the first time'.ar This is
the key idea: that repetition is the growing power. After all, that's
what rehearsal is all about, and interestingly the Russian word for
'rehearsal', not unlike the French, ir repetitsia. In fact, the
psychology required for exercise is exactly the same as that
required for performance: that is, the participant needs to live in
the moment, in the 'transient now', and to fill the activity with as
much imagination as physicol precision. Again, Michael Chekhov
addresses this combination of technique and imagination, by
suggesting that we approach a physical exercise with the psychology of a creative person, rather than as an athlete or tq'.C.,lljlician.
In this way, the exercise 'will not be somewhere else, antt'We, as
creative persons, be here. The exercise must be where our
creative spirit is'. Every simple task we undertake has to be done
with a fresh approach, 'so that each small thing is an accomplished piece of art' .42 If we do consider each small exercise to be
'an accomplished piece of art', then the training programrpe
itself actually becomes the psycho-physical process, and not just a
means of dezseloping psycho-physical versatility, In other words,
the result is here and now in the exercise, rather than somewhere
in the future when we hope to reap the benefits of the hard work.
Endorsing this theory, Ananyev believed that when there is a
'very exact process', that process could be presented to an audience at any moment and there would be something interesting to
watch, so that, the process itself becomes the result. To maintain
this 'very exact process', he advocated that 'it is better to go
slowly and feel as though you've achieved nothing, than to push
on and achieve wrong results.'
From the very beginning of psycho-physical training, the
imagination (the thought-centre) and the body (the active willcentre) are necessary ingredients in exploring basic isolations and
wave movements. I suggested in Chapter 1 that when imagination and body work in unison, the third motive force - emotion,

DYNAMIC MEDITATION

+5

or feeling - is inevitably aroused. In terms of Ananyev's work,

the simplest exercise can begin to energise and integrate the
entire psycho-physical apparatus comprising body, mind and
feeling. It became clear among the group in Moscow that, in the
cases where particular actors didn't fill the exercises with
imagination, boredom ensued. In fact, these classes weren't at all
popular with some of the English-speaking actors who found it
difficult not to perceive result in terms of final product, rather
than process. It was a bit like a piano student who gets impatient
with scales and arpeggios and gives up before he's had the chance
ro develop the skills he needs for tackling the concerto. The
pronounced reaction provoked among mature, experienced performers confirmed the fact that, if an actor is going to engage
successfully in intensive physical re-education, he or she may
well need to adapt their psychology and outlook before physical
training can really take effect. Or to put it slightly differently,
before we can begin to transform ourselves physically towards
our characters, we have to transform ourselves psychologically
towards our craft. Easy to understand, but much harder to do.

Dynarnic rneditation
In fm$^Ananyev had various strategies to assist an actor with his
or her psychological transformation, strategies which (itt the
words of Michael Chekhov) may 'occupy and electrify' the body
and, therefore, activate the emotions.43 The first task was to
nurture an environment, in which the participant's attention
could be diverted away from the difficulty of learning new
techniques, towards finding a kind of pleasure in the work.
Ananyev believed that when an actor is conscious of the limitations and 'inadequacies' of his or her own body, it's very
difficult to develop any degree of physical versatility. There's a
You're
voice inside your head, saying 'That looks stupid
doing that exercise wrong . . . Everyone else can do it . . . You're
no good . . .' Most of us are haunted at some time or another by
a critical inner voice. And it's totally unhelpful, because it's

46

WORKING ON YOUR SELF

impossible to play (act) and judge at the same time: they are quite
simply contradictory actions. To play is outward-flowirg, interacting with the partner and the environment; to fudge is inwardflowing, analytical and self-reflective. So we have to find ways of
silencing our critical inner iudge.
One way to do this is by creating a state of 'dynamic meditation', a state in which the creative aspect of our psyche isn't
disturbed by our boring old reason and fudgement. Developing
this kind of creative relaxation once again requires us to invest
technical exercises with an emotional and imaginative quality. To
help with this, Ananyev used music during most of his movement
classes, fot, as Stanislavsky believed, 'our feelings are directly
worked upon by tempo-rhythm.'4 Because of its emotive potential (via the speed - ternpo - at which we do sornething and the
intensity - rhythm - with which we do it), ternpo-rhyth'r_p was a
vital part of Ananyev's work. And so he selected music with a
wide range of different tempo-rhythms and, consequently, a
wide range of varying emotional appeals. This music was sometimes very rhythmical, sometimes very humorous and usually
fairly emotive, to some degree even manipulative. It was used to
form a backdrop to the technical exercises, encouraging us to
experience the way in which the body responds to varying
melodies and tempo-rhythms, and how those physical responses
arouse nurnerous inner sensations. Often Ananyev drew upon
film-underscoring by composers such as John Williams and
Vangelis since, in its original context, this kind of music had been
used evocatively and provocatively to stir a spectator's emotions.
And here it was used to inspire the actors as they executed
technical exercises.
In many respects, we were encouraged to use the music as
another on-stage partner, just as we were with the space.In other
words, we were to strike up a kind of dialogue with the music, so
that our physicality was liberated and unselfconscious, not unlike
the ways in which dancers react instinctively to music in a
nightclub. Our mental concentration wasn't locked blinkeredly
into the technicalities of ioints or waves; instead, our bodies were

OPENING AND CLOSING

47

the driving forces, responding freely, but intelligently, to the

of the music. Of course, the focus of the exercise was

still on isolations or waves or whatever the particular exercise
might be, but the emphasis had changed. It was no longer a question of intellectually breaking down a" specific movement and
trying to execute it physically; now, the mu.sir inspired the body.
So we could shut up our brains for a while. In this way, a state of
dynamic meditation could be developed, in which the body was
free to expand its vocabulary; there was minimum interference
dynamics

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from the mind and maximum enjoyment of the movement. In this

state of dynamic meditation, even the simplest exercise (such as
the 'figurine' or 'plasticine' partner exercise) could arouse a
remarkably profound sense of serenity and exhilaration. The
smallest physical movement was endowed with a powerful emotional life. Michael Chekhov describes this kind of sensation as a
'Feeling of Beauty', created when the actor begins 'with simple
movements and "listens" attentively within hirnself to the
pleasure, the satisfaction, limbs experience while moving?.+s

Opening and closing: the gateway to the trniverse

Step by step in the course of this training, move ents were combined andareomplicated in a slow progression towards psychophysical versatilitSr At this stage in Ananyev's programme, the
emphasis was primarily on how physical movement arouses
emotion, i.e. how the changes in our body affect our inner feelings. But as we know, the premise of psycho-physical activity is
that the impulse might go either way - from inner mechanism to
outer expression, or vice versa at any point along the continuum.
We also know that this inner,/outer dialogue is a complex one.
And as practitioners in the art of human behaviour, we somehow
need to develop our ability to understand the complexity.
'Wave
motion symbolises our interaction with the big wide

world. It illustrates our assimilation of the information we

receive and our unique response to that inforrnation, through the

process of action / reaction / decision. This instantly illuminates

48

WORKING ON YOUR SELF

another principle of psycho-physical activity - the movement

from centre to periphery, and from periphery to centre. If the
wave motion originates from my centre, it's an indication of the
information I'm giaing to the world. I walk forward: the wave
motion in my legs goes from hip to knee to ankle to heel, and the
world clearly sees that I'm taking a decision, making an action,
and rnoving in a particular direction. If a wave motion originates
ot the periphery, it's an indication of the information I'rn receiaing
from the world. I walk backwards: I'rn less confident, I don't
know where I'm going, I'm receiving information from my
surroundings. The wave movement in my legs is from periphery
to centre, as I check out where I'm going through -y toes, my
ankles, my knees, my hips.
Closely allied to the wave movements of giving information
(centre to periphery) and receiving inforrnation (perifftiery to
centre) is the extent to which I open myself up to the world, or I
close myself away from the world. In effect, there are only two
actions in life - to open and to close, and in between lies the
universe. In every moment of our lives, we are drawn towards
something (having a cup of tea, buying a blue coat, making loye)
or we retreat frorn something (going out in the rain, discovering
a spider in the bath, opening a bank statement). Our instantaneous attraction to or repulsion from sorneone can affect a whole
myriad of responses. Waves movements, central and peripheral
activity, opening and closing are intricately interwoven. To combine these complex psychological activities, Ananyev introduced
a very simple but evocative exercise. It was based on the
principles of a torch beam, although a different image could be
used, such as the expansion and contraction of daisy petals. The
joy of the.exercise was that it combined physical action, imagination, and communication with a partner, in an extremely direct
way. Each actor was to imagine that the bright gold centre of a
torch beam was located about three centimetres below the navel
from which six 'shutters' extended. The arms and legs constituted four of the shutters, the head was the fifth and the coccyx
was the sixth.

THE'TORCH_BEAM' EXERCISE

+9

Accompanied by various styles of music, the actor began to

explore both the physical and the inner sensation of opening and
closing the six shutters. The options were various, but finite. The
right side could open or close; the left side could open or close.
The upper shutters could open or close; the lower shutters could
open or close. All six shutters could expand. All six shutters
could contract. Added to this, the expansions and contractions
could be complete or partial, giving an infinite repertoire of combinations. If the actor engaged imaginatively as well as physically
with the exercise, contrasts very quickly became apparent
between harmonised movements (where all the shutters moved
in the same direction) and conflicting movements (where sorne
shutters closed and some shutters opened). The lower shutters,
for example, might be fully closed (with the knees bent together
in a knock-kneed way and the pelvis tucked under the body as if
the tail shutter was furled beneath) whilst the upper shutters
were partially opened (so that the arms were semi-extended and
the head slightly raised). The physical contrast between upper
and lower shutters within this movement could provoke a feeling
of inner conflict, oS the actor's psychology was torn between
opening and sending out light to tfr" e.t ritorrnent, and contracting and withdrawing light from the environment. By exploring
combinations like this, a whole spectrum of sensations and psychological nuances could be experienced and accessed.
In theory, the exercise seems simple, but it's imperative that
the shutter movements are articulated very precisely if the actor
is going to experience the true inner sensations aroused by extreme openness (brightness), extreme closedness (darkness) and
the myriad of degrees in between. Ananyev was quick to correct
positions if an actor's arms were flung too far back when fully
open, or if the head was thrust backwards beyond the vertical of
the spine when the 'head shutter' was fully extended. Sometimes
an actor unwittingly shifted the centre of the torch from the belly
up towards the chest or down towards the groin: again, this
would undercut the technical precision needed for the exercise.
Here we go back to the issue of physical re-education: although

5o

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

the torch-bearn movement seemed easy, individual bodies were

quick to adjust the positions to make them more comfortable. So
we had to be alert to our bodies' surreptitious cheating.
After exploring the torch-beam movement on our own, a dialogue with a, partner was introduced: one actor would 'communicate' with an opening or closing of his or her (shutters', and
a fellow actor would reply with his or her own expansion or
contraction. Again, seemingly easy, but again a whole new set of
conditions arose. The consequence of working with a partner
was that another person's objective and status had now been
introduced. This was no bad thing as it diverted the actor's
irnmediate attention from him or her self, and directed it towards
the partner with the result that each individual's inner / outer
activity became more spontaneous. What happened now''was that
the external stimulus of the partner's contraction or "$*nsion
provided the first component in the action / reaction / decision
sequence. My partner contracts (action), I feel protective (reaction), I contract too to show that I'm not threatening (decision).
Or my partner contracts (action), I feel powerful (reaction), I
expand to rny full extension to intimidate (decision). A wave was
being transmitted between the two participants, based on opening and closing
(MV experience of using this exercise with novice studentactors is that they suddenly find that they're rnirroring their
partner's movements, so in fact for a while they become less
spontaneous and more self-aware as they try to be more original.
This isn't a problem: the mirroring simply illustrates that the
particular dialogue that they are engaged in is a co-operative,
friendly one rather than an antagonistic excharg, which they
might perhaps experience with a different partner on a different
occasion. Fear of imitating is a passing phase. The more you
relax into the torch-bearn dialogue, the more you surrender up
your brain and let your body do the talking.)
Introducing the idea of dialogue to the exercise contributed
further nuances to the opening and closing. Opening all the
shutters to a partner could arouse either a sense of pride and

I
I

PAUSES

d
t}
f

m-

or

rr

tt

rn

J
rL_

power, or the opposite

a feeling

5r

of nakedness and vulnerability.

In turn, when all the shutters were closed, the sensation could be
one of fear and defence or, by contrast, a feeling of comfort and
security. It all depended on the impulse received from the
partner. And of course that impulse will change according to
whom you're working with. Whatever the multitude of emotions
and nuances might be, isolations and wave movements remained
the basic physical vocabulary at the root of the dialogue. With
very little effort a technical exercise had been transforrned into
drarnatic action. In one simple task, all aspects of the actor's
psycho-physical motor were activated: body, imagination,
emotions, and the radiation of energy between partners.

- through the pauses

In all the exercises explored so far - joints, curves, waves, torch
beam - there has been one essential ingredient, which in many
Cherez pauza,

ways gives each exercise its meaning. And that ingredient is the
pause. On stage, an actor is always in dialogue: with the audience,
with the other characters, the music, the space, the atrnosphere,
or with his or her own self, We've already said that this kind of
inner / outer dialogue is a complex one. It becomes even more
complex if we don't know how to listen to it, and it becomes
almost irnpossible if we don't take the time to listen to it. And it's
the pause that provides us with that valuable listening time. For
Ananyev, any dialogue, whether it be spoken text or movement,
could only acquire any rneaning at all cherez pauza - 'through the
pause'. ft's the basis of the actor's art, our tool for really experiencing the subtleties of physical and ernotional sensations, and

assimilating that inforrnation into our psycho-physical apparatus. Only through the pause can we truly understand what's
going on both within ourselves, and between partners and ourselves. It's not cerebral understanding, it's inner understanding.
In some respects, it goes even deeper than that into what
we might call 'spiritual' understanding. Echoing the vocabulary
of Stanislavsky, Michael Chekhov and Grotowski, Ananyev

52

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

maintained that the pause was 'the only door into the spiritual
world: only when the actor stops, might he or she sense the inner

rrrovement. t
A pause is a very specific moment: I'm sure we've all watched
performances in which we yearn for the actors to get on with it

and stop indulging in a quagmire of inner life'. At the other

extreme, I've worked with directors who have screamed in
rehearsals, 'Pick up your cues! I could drive a bus through that
pause!' But here we touch upon the difference between speed
and pace, and sometimes the one gets rnistaken for the other. As
often as I've yearned for actors to 'get on with it', I've also wished
on other occasions that they would slow down and allow the
reality of the situation to touch them in some small way, instead
of heading for the curtain line as if it's the last call at the bar. It's
not a question of pauses having to be 'earned', as if 'Seeding
through the first scene means that you've deserved the right to
relish the second scene. It's more a question of understanding
that a pause is an inherent part of the tempo-rhythm of a play.
The true life of a dramatic text depends as much on the silences
as it does on the words, just as our heart depends as much on the
pauses between the beats as it does on the beats themselves. It's
an uncomfortable feeling when our heart starts pounding if we're
nervous or excited or we've exerted ourselves physically: the
beating needs to slow itself down and the pauses need to be
longer. It's really no different with life on the stage.
But if the pause is such a specific movernent, why is it so and
what exactly is it? As far as Ananyev was concerned, a pause had
the potential to be as articulate as an action: it was neither an
empty space nor a diffusion of energy. And perhaps this is where
the idea of truly'earning' a pause cornes in: an'earned' pause is
literally a 'pregnant' pause, one that's full of life. As Michael
Chekhov stresses, a pause cannot exist as a ause: it has always to
be the result of what's iust happened, or the preparation for
what's about to happen. And ultimately, 'the most beautiful
pauses are those which are the continuation of somethitg, and
then the turning point or preparation for. . a new action.'46 In

h-

t
I

ACTI

N,/REAC TI

N,/D

E C IS I O

53

Ananyev's Scenic Movement, action and pause were inextricably

Hnked: just as moments of silence turn sound into music, the
pause turns random movement into action. It's an essential part
of psycho-physical development, as a pause in the action is
crucial for interpreting all the information that De receiae from the
outside worldInformation comes to us in the form of various sensory
perceptions that we have of the world at large, and also in the
form of exch.anges of energy with other people. Ananyev explained

that'we have to develop the ability to understand where that

information-energy comes from and how it affects emotions,
actions, thoughts. Each movement may stop in space, but the
energy continues like a ray, a beam, through space and onwards.'

This receipt and communication of information, this transference of energy from outside world to inner being and from
inner being to outside world, is yet another application of natural
behaviour to the circumstances of the stage. If pauses are an

intrinsic part of our heort beat, so inner/outer activity is an

integral part of our breathing: in other words, a movement which
passes from outside to inside to outside (peripheral-central=
peripheral) corresponds to our instinctive breathing pattern. We
breathe in oxygen. We take it into our lungs. We breathe out
carbon.dioxide.
This relates directly to the action / reaction / decision wavesequence in which we're all involved in every moment of our
lives. First of all, I 'inhale' my partner's action; Michael Chekhov
called this 'an absorption of experiences'47: a movement from
periphery to centre. In a pause - which might be split second
or momentarily sustained - I assimilate the information. This
assimilation (ot inner reaction) will provoke one of my inner
motive forces. It might be an impulsive reaction (action-centre),

or it might set me thinking (thought-centre) or I might be

instantly amused or distressed (emotion-centre). Based on which
centre was most proactive in my reaction, I 'exhale' my resultant
decision; Michael Chekhov called this 'an expression of self': the
movement from centre to periphery. Of course, all this assimi-

54

WORKING ON YOUR SELF

lation and exhalation needn't be a great rnoment of pontification

and suspense: it can, and usually does, happen instantaneously.
Taken to its grand conclusion, the rnetaphor of inhaling
information and exhaling expression encapsulates the entire process of acting. The actor inhales all the details of the character,
studying it through the text and allowing it to percolate through
his or her body, mind and emotions. Then there's an extended
pause of three or four weeks, during which a lot of assirnilation
goes on. After this time, the actor exhales the character as a fully
realised, expressive perforrnance.

Psycho-physical technique and the inner rnotive forces

The bit in the middle - between breathing in and breathing out is the pause. And Ananyev's work convinced me that .p,egFes are
necessary for actors if we're really going to 'hear' the complex
dialogue within ourselves. In fact, this complex inner dialogue
soon became the next point of focus in Ananyev's training. He
approached the developrnent of psycho-physical sensitivity
through two distinct branches of co-ordination: physical coordination (which as we've seen was addressed through isolations
and waves) and inner co-ordination (which involved the inner
motiae forces., or centres). These, os we know, are the thoughtcentre, the ernotion-centre and the will- (o. action-) centre.
Stanislavsky hirnself advocated that the k.y to uniting inner
action and outer expression is understanding the interaction
between these three centres, 1S 'they support and incite one
another with the result that they always act at the same time and
in close relationship. When we call our rninds into action, by the
same token we stir our will and feelings. It is only when these
forces are co-operating harrnoniously that we can create freely.'48
To ensure that the centres do 'co-operate harrnoniously',
Stanislavsky challenged practitioners 'to evolve an appropriate
psycho-technieu', which would take advantage of the
interdependence of the inner rnotive forces. The purpose of this
psycho-technique wouldn't be just to arouse the centres as an

rNNER MOTTVE FORCES

55

in order to 'stir other creative

elements'. (These 'other creative elements' could well include
.spirit' or inspiration, which we'll look at in due course.)
end,'in itself, but to harness them

Ananyev rose to Stanislavsky's challenge. In an attempt to

evolve 'an effective psycho-technigu', he turned once again to
the wave movement as the essence of inner dialogue'. He
suggested that when we're dealing with psycho-physical
behaviour, we need to locate the point at which a wave begins, not
simply in terms of external physical movernents ('Is it my hip? Is
it my shoulder? Is it my elbow?'), but also in terms of the inner
wave. What he meant by that was the sequence in which the
centres (action, emotion and thought) connect. Again, it seerns
fairly obvious, but how can you do it when it all sounds so
ungraspable? FIow can we catch an emotion? How can we label
an impulse to move? How do I know whether it was rny head
or my heart which provoked rne to do something? Ananyev
addressed himself to these very questions. To try and translate
the potentially esoteric concepts of intellect, will and emotion
into something tangible and accessible, he divided the whole
body into three sections, each of which corresponded to an inner
motive force. The first section, the head, represented the
ntre; the second section, the chest and torso, repretho
ernotion-centre; and the third section , pelais, cr,rnts
sen
and legs, represented the action-centre. This is nothing new' as
Michael Chekhov had already proposed these divisions. FIowever, Ananyev went further.
Within each of the general sections, he suggested that qualities
of the other centres could be found in more localised areas. The
thought-centre (the head) featuredfeeling in the eyes (consider the
nuances of emotion we betray through our eyes); thought in the
nose and ears (consider the curious cat poking its nose into every
crevice, and the eavesdropping neighbour with the glass to the
wall); and oction in the chin and mouth (consider Desperate Dan
and his spade-like chin, having 'rnore brawn than brains'). The
emotion-centre (or feeling) (the chest and torso) is more complex
as it involves energy centres (referred to in Eastern practices as

56

WORKING ON YOUR SELF

chakras, a term with which Stanislavsky was probably familiar

through the teaching of Leopold Sulerzhitsky). Therefore, it's

easier to consider the emotion-centre in its totality, rather than
breaking it down into areas. The will-centre (or action) (the groin,
arnrs and legs) featured feeling in the knees (consider how our
knees shake involuntarily when we're nervous) and shoulders
(consider how we carry our tension in our hunched shoulders);
thought in the feel (consider tapping of toes and kicking of heels)
and hands (consider how we gesticulate when we communicate
our thoughts); and actiori in the hips (consider the root of sexual
expression) and elbows (consider elbowing people out of the
way).

Armed with this rnatrix of body parts and energy centres, w

embarked on a series of improvisations. To begin with these were
very simple. For example, we rnight walk around the reiff.n:.with
the head leading the movement as an exploration of the thoughtcentre. The back might lead the movement as we explored the
qualities of the emotion-centre. The left hip might lead the
rnovement in an exploration of the action-centre. Once we'd
tried this, a more localised part might be singled out, so that the
chin might lead the head in art exploration of 'action in the
thought-centre'. The hand rnight lead the torso in an exploration
of 'active thought in the emotion-centre'. The knee might lead
the lower body in an exploration of 'feeling in the action-centre'.
At first, this sort of exercise encouraged fairly generalised
movement, although it was still very enjoyable: as we walked
around the room with the movement stemming from the hips
(the action-centre), w all started to swagger confidently like
cowboys. As we walked around the room with the nose leading
the movement (thought in the thought-centre), we all poked
about like nosy neighbours.
Quickly, though, the exercises became more complicated,
focusing on curves and waves. We rnight, for example, explore a
wave movement through the arm, as it journeys from thought in
the hands, through action in the elbows to emotion in the
shoulders. Or a wave movernent involving the middle section of

MATRIX OF BODY PARTS

57

the body, as it progresses through emotion in the chest, action in

the pelvis, and emotion in the knee. Other times, improvisations
were completely free, so that we could move entirely where and
how we wished. All the time, however, a kind of dual consciousness was in operation, whereby part of the brain constantly

observed the rnovements, trying to catch which centre ernitted

an impulse to move. Was it an emotional impulse, an actionbased impulse, or a thought-provoked impulse? While the brain
was doing this bit of analysis, the body carried on executing
the movernents as freely as possible, usually responding to the
accompanying music. Identifying which centre initiated the
rnovement wasn't always straight-forward: as Ananyev reminded
us, 'the part of the body which expresses the movement may not
be the centre which goae birth to the movement. The actor must
be in touch with the connection between the birth of the irnpulse
and the expression of the impulse.' Gee whizz, human beings are
complex .
Although this compendium of body parts and centres wasn't
intended to be exhaustive, it provided a means of alerting the
actor to the way in which particular parts of the body can express
thought, feeling and action. It was a direct means through which
concepts (like emotion) were made manifest (through
int4
knees and eyes). Once again, it was a question of
the'
decoding ways in which we behave in everyday life and applying
them to the stage. In deep thought, for example, we rnight trace
patterns on the floor with a toe (the feet being an ally of the
thought-centre). If we want someone to know how determined
or intransigent we're going to be about sornethirg, we jut out our
elbows (the elbows being action-centre allies), by thrusting our
hands on our hips or in our pockets. In deep sorrow, we might sit
hugging our knees (which are ernotion-centre allies). The ioy is
that this information can have an instant practical use: taking the
television close-up, for exarnple, you can subtly convey to your
screen audience whether you're being thoughtful, emotional or
pro-active, iust by radiating your energy from your nose, your
eyes or your rnouth. It's a very 'hands-on' means of unlocking

\VORKING ON YOUR SELF

s8

and applying intangible issues to acting practice. But, however

useful it may be, dissecting the body like this was only a prelirninary exercise. It didn't take long in Ananyev's classes to
realise that the centres communicate with each other almost
sirnultaneously. This was revealed through a series of irnprovisations.

Summaty of the Psycho-Physical Warm-up

The Psycho-Physical Warm-up develops the actor's inner/outer
co-ordination; i.e. the co-ordination between inner experience and
outer expression. This is connected to the transference of information
between the environment (the periphery) and the individual (the
centre). lf the actor can begin to 'hear' this dialogue, he or shq,,Ggl..o,,
develop his or her awareness of personal psycho-physicality andtfid
continuous, inner wave motions of action/reaction/decision. Through
this awareness, the actor's future on-stage interaction may become
more vital and spontaneous. The key component in all this is the pouse.

o The Vertical Position

Feet in parallel
Ioes lightly gripping the floor
Extension up the colyes
Knees in two directions - slightly backwards and rotated gently out
to the sides
Hips open like a book
Ioil tucked under the body
Stomoch drawn in (though not tensely)
Chest in three directions - forwards, upwards and out to the sides
like an open book
Shoulders in two directions - slightly back and downwards
Elbows out to the side
Polms lightly resting on the outside of the mid-thighs
Arms bent, with the sense of air circulating between inner arms
and body
Eyeline at the individual's own horizon (not too high, not too low)
The sense of a cord gently pulling the crown of the heod to extend
the spine
Smile

SUMMARY OF PSYCHO-P,HYSICAL \MARM_UP

]ver

o': lsolations

;to

One joint at a time in a straight line (like an artist's figurine)

(lndividually and in partners, with sculptor and sculpted)
A series of joints in a cunred trajectoty (like a plasticine model)
(lndividually and in partners, with sculptor and sculpted)

o Wave motions
Through one limb
Through the whole body

Opening and Closing

The Torch Beam exercise, with six 'shutters' (two arms, two

legs,

head and cocc;o<)

(lndividually and in dialogue with a partner)

lnner Motive Forces, or Centres

'

THOUGHT
(o. Mental-centre)
HEAD

THOUGHT: Nose
FEELING: Eyes
ACTION: Mouth & Chin

FEELING
ACTION
(or Emotion-centre)
(or Will-centre)
TORSO
PELVIS/ARMS/LEGS

(lt

is simpler

to

consider this centre

as the entire torso)

Fingers & Toes

Shoulders & Knees
Elbows & Hips

Using this matrix:

ag
Co

the movement in an exploration of a single centre

of body-parts lead the movement in an exploration of
fdialogue'
the
between centres
leads

The Object Exercise

Exploritory improvisations becarne a central part of the Scenic

Movement programme, as technical exercises became rrrore
complicated. They were invariably accompanied by music and
could last for anything from five minutes to an hour. In most
improvisations, Ananyev gave us neither text nor visual rmagery

for stimulation. The challenge for the actor was to

take

inspiration from the movement of the body itself, and from the
sensations created by that movement as the centres spontaneously interconnected. Occasionally, we Dere given a specific ob-

-w-

6o

WORKING ON YOUR SELF

jective, which would then focus the activity of the inner motive
forces on a particular task. One such improvisation proved to be
quite revelatory in understanding the connection between
psycho-physical technique and the inner motive forces. f've used
it on several occasions with actors and students alike, and each
time, the outcome has surprised and delighted all. I've called it
The Object Exercise.
F'irst of all, we were asked to find our own space in the room
and to place an item of clothing on the floor in front of us. We
then had to endow this item, whatever it might be, with great
value or importance, though, at this stage, we didn't have to know
why it was so irnportant to us. For the next fifteen minutes, we
were to allow the music, the space, and the object to affect us in
whichever ways aroused us. But, despite how important this
object was to us, our underlying objective throughout',the whole,
exercise was to preaent ourselaesfrom touching the object.IJnder no
circumstances could we come into contact with it at all. This
objective instantly established an inner contradiction: if you have
to prevent yourself from doing somethirg, it suggests that part
of you wants to do it, and part of you certainly doesn't. There's
a dynamic set up between attraction and repulsion, between
desire and denial, between opening up to and closing away from
the obiect. During this exercise, the contradiction would stimulate the inner motive forces in a multitude of ways, as long as we
engaged imaginatively with the objective and the object. It's the
sort of exercise you can't talk about too cerebrally or think about
beforehand: you just have to get stuck in.
This exercise revealed a very important truth: when you're in
a state of dynamic meditation, your imagination develops a vivid
life of its own. Throughout all our exercises, Ananyev reiterated
that we mustn't impose any kind of conscious narrative on our
movements. However, if we found that a narrative developed
almost unwittingly, we were to be brave enough to follow those
imaginative ideas, seeing what emotional and physical discoveries
we made. During rny first exposure to this particular 'object'
improvisation I found that, by listening to the music and to my

THE OBJECT EXERCISE

each

rt

ve

at

no w
re
.n
1S

le

6r

own body, my irnagination suddenly and bizarcely 'transformed'

rny inanimate sweater into the head of John the Baptist. This
certainly wasn't an irnage that I'd consciously chosen, but it
appealed to me and so I accepted it. In doing so, I began to
experience a spontaneous 'conversation' with the obf ect. Without
imposing anythitg, I discovered that at every mornent in this
crazy dialogue, there was a justification for why I valued but
couldn't pick up the 'disembodied head'. Sometimes I wanted to
touch it, then I wanted to reject it, then to ignore it, to embrace
it, to kick it, to lick it, to stroke it, to spit upon it, to fondle it.
Sometimes I hated it, sornetimes I worshipped it, sornetimes it
fascinated me, other times it bored me. It was all very strange
because it wasn't as though I imagined black hair, dead eyes, a
bloodied mouth: I simply saw the folds of my sweater. Strangely,
they meant as much to me as if I were Salome and they were the
locks of John the Baptist's hair. Following Ananyev's incentive to
be brave in one's imaginings, I'd awoken unexpected, unpremeditated reactions, some of which were emotionol, sorne of which
were rationol and sorne of which were irnpulses to action. It was
a startling moment of Eureha! for me. It felt as though for the
first time in my acting life, I'd truly experienced the uninhibited
dialogue of the inner motive forces. I'd dared myself to allow my
body to lead the improvisation instead of my conscious mind.

'Ouch! My brain htrrts.'

Although moments like this were truly inspiring and creatively
invigorating, they were relatively rare, and the development of a
psycho-physical technique was by no means easy. Much of the
problem has to do with 'our heads getting in the way'. until we
reach the point as actors where we've learnt to trust the decisions
made by our psycho-physical apparatus (body, imagination and

emotions), we usually rely on our brains (or thought-centre) to

do the hard work. We think the brain is our most intelligent facet
(it isn't, our bodies are far cleverer, otherwise we'd die in our
sleep). More significantly, we think the brain is the centre that we

6z

\MORKING ON YOUR

SED.F

can most consciously control. This is exacerbated

in a learning

environment (like a rehearsal room or drama class) where

nothing has quite become second nature yet. So it's unavoidable
that the head has to do a lot of the assimilation work. The
exercises that Ananyev proposed often required us to identify
which centre (thought, emotion or will) inspired an impulse to
action. In other words, w were being asked to analyse att exercise
and engage with it at the same time. It was irnpossible. All the
inner activity went straight to the thought-centre, as it tried to do
the analytical work, and that in itself short-circuited the exercise.
I was besieged with questions: 'If we've got to identify the
motivating centre, and if we need our rational minds to make
that identification, how is it possible for any spontaqaus interaction to take place between the centres? Surely the,,gjg.3d will
always and inevitably be the governing force?'

To some degree, that's true, but what became apparent in

psycho-physical training was that this initial appeal to the
thought-centre was simply part of the learning process. It's a bit
like a musician who has to dissect a musical score intellectually at
first in order to l.earn the notes and the dynamics. Once he's dohe
this preparatory work and he has an analytical grasp of the score,
he can begin to release this technical knowledg" . from his
conscious mind From thereon in, he can allow his creative brain
to be more organically employed in expressing and interpreting
the music. It's an unavoidable paradox of learning: acquiring
technique seems to be intellectual, while creative performance
has to be integrated. Michael Chekhov clarifies this paradox,
saying that 'If this division of thought, feeling, and will seems to
be intellectual and dty, it only seems to be because when you feel
that you can really manage these three levels concretely, you can
plunge into the realm of ideas, or you become absolutely filled
with the realm of feelings. You can live in the realm of the heart,
as well as the realm of the will.'ae We have to go through this
process of dissection followed by reintegration if we really want
our psycho-physical awareness to evolve. As Michael Chekhov
promises us, 'th s tempor ary anatomizing will lead us later on to

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FREE IMPROVISATION

such a composition

63

of things in us, such a harmonious compo-

sition, that we shall be able to discover in ourselves many things

which want to be awakened, but we.don't fusually] allow them.'
Setting up an environment of dynamic meditation and free improvisation helped to accelerate the move from 'temporary anatomizing' to'harmonious composition'.
Free irnprovisation and the Psychological Gesture

At this point, I should clarify the exact nature of free improvisation. The prernise behind Ananyev's psycho-physical training
that once the actor had begun to liberate the body, he or she
would find that the body stimulates the imagination, which in
turn provokes stories, which in turn stimulate emotions. These
stories aren't superirnposed by the actor; they just arise from the
mental and emotional impulses which are activated once the
physical body starts to rnove. This requires a very delicate handling of body and imagination: we mustn't allow our minds to
manipulate the story, and neither must we curb the natural flow
of our fantasies. It's a matter of nurturing an imaginative
narrative without forcing it, and, if a narrative arises spontaneously it's about having the courage to follow and develop it: this
had bdbn my experience when rny sweater turned into 'the head
of John the Baptist'. Sometimes these spontaneous stories may
have specific imaginative settings, such as catching butterflies,
crawling through muddy tunnels, bidding a sweetheart farewell
or awaking on a new planet. Other times, they may simply be
emotional or physical impulses that follow one after another, with
no specific setting but a sequential logic of their own. In either
case, what's important is that the actor doesn't consciously predetermine the choices made, but simply fans the creative flame to
follow the unfolding story. As David Mamet puts it, 'Invent
/
nothing; deny nothing.'so
I discovered that the success of free irnprovisation was dependent on the thorough practice of technical exercises such as isolations and wave movements. Through these technical exercises,
was

64

WORKING ON YOUR SELF

the body acquired its own versa,tility or 'intelligence'. The free

irnprovisations then provided a tind of laboratory in which the
actor could test out this newly acquired physical intelligence. It
enabled him or her to percolate all the sensory information
received from various sources (be it music, actors or the space
itself) through the whole psycho-physical instrument and then
channel it into uninhibited expression. In terms of Scenic Movement, the nature of free improvisations corresponded to Michael
Chekhov's approach to'Psychological Gesture'.Sl
Chekhov saw each individual psychological state as 'a combination of thoughts (or Irnages), Feelings and Will-Impulses'. He
believed that the actor could filter all that information about a
character into a simple repeatable movement. So the Psychological Gesture is a self-contained cornbination of one physical
posture - followed by a transition - followed by a secorciffihysical
posture. Chekhov usually used Psychological Gesture for unlocking a character: you find a small repeatable sequence of pose,/
transition,/pose, which surns up the superobjective of the character to give you an encapsulated, bite-sized way of expressing
the character's personality. To be most effective, a Psychological
Gesture should combineform and moaement using varying tempi,
amplitudes, directions and speeds as you move from the first
static form to the second. For Michael Chekhov, the combination
of the three stages - forrn, transition, new form - harrnonised the
interaction of the inner rnotive forces. Form (thought) prompts
movement (action) with the consequent arousal of sensation
(ernotion). By studying and practising the Psychological Gesture,
Chekhov rnaintained that you could experience its 'threefold
influence upon your psyche'.s2 Through the simple choreography of moving from one pose to anothet, you could activate all
your inner motive forces - provided the positions were carefully
chosen. fn fact, some actors use a Psychological Gesture just before an audition or performance as a quick and imrnediate means
of reminding themselves of what the character is all about.
Michael Chekhov then took it a step further: Psychological
Gesture needn't be a single isolated moment, but rather as 'an

PSYCHOLOGICAL GESTURE

65

incessant movement'. He suggested that the actor construct a

series of Psychological Gestures which, once familiar, could be
,repeated and expanded. So you start with your first Psycho-

'logical Gesture, move to your second, then add your third,

fourth, fifth and so on. Soon 'you will feel yourself so free that
you will not need to start again frorn the first Psychological
Gesture, but can go on indefinitely, adding one Psychological
Gesture to the other, creating them and their organic connecdons, spontaneously and entirely intuitively."' And this was the
premise from which Ananyev's concept of free improvisation
grew. Of course, Ananyev constantly reminded us to pause during these sequences, in order that we could listen to how our
inner impulse was directinB uS, and allow our bodies to determine
what the next gesture would be.
Chekhov wasn't the only significant influence in Ananyev's
free improvisations: he also harnessed many elements of Rudolf
Laban's dance-movement work. Central and peripheral movements, bound and free flo*, a constant variation in direction,
tempo and amplitude, were all incorporated into the vocabulary
of repertoire. What was important was that the emphasis wasn't
simply on acquiring physical vocabulary, but rather developing
psycho-physical experience. As each actor's body became more
verSatiler, and the psycho-physical mechanism became rnore
liberated, a greater number of spontaneous narratives arose. The
narratives ensured that there was always a task or an objective
behind the free improvisations, so that the movernent (whether it
be expressionistic or plastic or completely realistic) never became
purposeless. When all the elements of technical exercises, free
improvisation and the inner motive forces were combined in this
way, it became clear that Ananyev's discipline wasn't really a
mooement class, but actually an octing class led by the body.

66

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

Frorn abstract to everyday

'We

worked like this for a number of weeks - reminding ourselves

of the intricacies of our own instruments, tuning them up and
testing them out. Then, after a while, the work subtly shifted from
actor-training to the first tentative steps of building a character.
One d^y, Ananyev asked us to remember a monologue. I chose
the speech from Act III, Scene I of lfenry I/f, Part 2, when
Queen Margaret addresses Henry with the words:
Can you not see? Or will you not observe
The strangeness of his altered countenance?
With what a majesty he bears hirnself
How insolent of late he is becorne , '
How proud, how peremptory, and unlike himsd#.:.i..
We know the time since he was mild and affable,
And if we did but glance a far-off look,
Immediately he was upon his knee,
That all the court admired him for submission;
But meet hirn now, and be it in the morn,
When everyone will give the time of d"y,
He knits his brow and shows an angry eye,
And passeth by with sdff unbowdd knee,
Disdaining duty that to us belongs.
Small curs are not regarded when they grin,
But great men tremble when the lion roars;
And Humphrey is no little man in England.
First note that he is near you in descent
And should you fall, he is the next will mount.
Me seemeth then it is no policy,
Respecting what a rancorous mind he bears
And his advantage following your decease,
That he should come about your royal person
Or be admitted to your highness' Council.
By flattery hath he won the commons' hearts,
And when he please to make commotion,

FROM ABSTRACT

To EVERYDAY

67

'Tis to be feared they all will follow him.

Now 'tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;
Suffer them now and they'll o'ergrow the garden,
And choke the herbs for want of husbandry.
The reverent care I bear unto my lord
Made me collect these dangers in the Duke.

If it be fond, call it a woman's fear;

Which fear if better reasons can supplant,

I will subscribe and say I wronged the Duke.

My lord of Suffolk, Buckingham, and York,
Reprove my allegation if you can;
Or else conclude my words effectual.

Ananyev then applied a series of exercises to the monologues,

the text qf which remained entirely in our heads (i.e. unspoken!)
during the course of the irnprovisation. As ever, a musical background was provided at first to create a state of 'dynarnic
meditation'.
First of all, we had to decide which was the predominant
centre in the text. In other words, was it a thoughtful or emotive
or action-based speech? We then chose a corresponding pait of
the body from the matrix of centres and body-parts, with which
we were'now familiar. It could be the wrist, knee, shoulder, ear or
whichever part befitted the text's overall tenor in terms of its
predominant inner motive force. We then moved around the
space, all the time going through our monologues in our heads,
with that one part of the body leading the movement and the rest
of the body following like a kite-tail, responding to the changing
dynamics and directions. The character of Margaret was very
manipulative in my chosen speech, her manipulation having both
an analytical and an active aspect. So I used my hand as the instigator of movement, the hand being the expression of 'thought in
the action-centre'. What was clearly important in this exercise
was that, however abstract the movement may be, it must always
be specific. You have to be aware of your physicality on-stage and
set up a kind of dialogue with your body in order that the

68

WORKING ON YOUR SELF

movement doesn't become generalised and, consequently, not

understood by the audience.
This first exercise was reasonably simple and led to a shift
from mind to body as a way into a text. The second exercise built
on the first, only this time, as the irnpulse of the speech changed
from mornent to moment (i.". from action to feeling to thought),
a series of dffirent parts of the body initiated the moverrrent,
selected according to their centre-qualit5r. So if the character was
being impulsive at one point, one of the action-centres in the
body might lead - chin, elbow, hip, butt. If the timbre changed
to a more contemplative tone, a thought-centre might lead the
movement - nose, fingers, toes or the whole head. I discovered in
this exercise how surprisingly flexible my chosen speech could
be. The subtext of many of Margaret's words is emotizse, and yet
her 'manipulation' bears the qualities both of intellectual cunning
and of inciting her partner to octioz. This cornbination of action,
irnagination and emotion meant that I was able to explore the
whole range of centres and body-parts through this speech, with
varying degrees of success.
In the third exercise, we progressed from what had been fairly
abstract movement towards a much rnore naturalistic activity. We
'spoke' our monologues internally whilst applying three very
specific externol actions: walking, sitting and turning. At this point
the idea of 'character' was overtly introduced in that, although
each actor was obviously using his or her own body and movements,

the choice as to whether to walk, sit or turn stemmed from the

decisions and motivations of the character. This exercise proved
to be extremely fruitful in exploring Margaret's character: while
the more abstract exercises had unlocked her 'subtext', the
simple naturalistic activities relocated that subtext in Margaret's
compressed and rather introspective style. The progression from
abstract, plastic movement to naturalistic activity was seamless
and remarkably enlightening. The naturalistic movements in no
way felt pedestrian, as they might've been had we begun with
them. Instead, they'd acquired a kind of creative composure,
inforrned by the preceding, more expressionistic exercises.

APPLICATION TO MONOLOGUES

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In the fourth exercise, the three activities of walking, sitting or

turning 'were repeated, but this time, the motivation to move
stemmed directly from the inner motiae forces. In other words, there
was a matrix of actiozs (sittitg, turning, walking) and qualities
(wilfully, thoughtfully and emotionally). The permutations of
these changed from moment to rnoment according to whatever
rnotivation lay behind the text. What this exercise highlighted
was how the centres throughout the body can often be in conflict:
your thought-centre might propel you to sit, while the impulse of
your emotion-centre might be to turn. Alternatively, your actioncentre might have the energy to pace, while part of you wants to
sit and contemplate. Although this exercise was interesting, it
wasn't wholly successful for me, partly owing to the problem
we've touched upon before. Technical exercises inevitably call
upon the brain to do a lot of the analytical work, and even if
you're trying to engage in an exercise to integrate the centres, it's
nigh on impossible to by-pass the brain. In fact if you're being
called upon to make conscious decisions and observations in an
exercise, how can you possibly avoid the thought-centre dorninating and ensure that your psycho-physical co-ordination is
spontaneous? The answer is: you can't - it's part of the learning
process. You have to go back to Chekhov's belief that 'temporary
anatohizing' will ultimately lead to 'harmonious composition'.
Exercise Five explored the speech for the final time, combining
all the preceding etcercises and varying them as and when it felt
appropriate. The freedom of this exercise proved to be very
helpful, as it encouraged exciting shifts frorn abstract to naturalistic movement, frorn the prosaic to the poetic, frorn technique to
imagination, as the content of the text changed from mornent to
mornent. An exercise like this can unlock problematic points in a
play, since you're free to explore both text and character in a
range of ways - from broad expressionistic gesture to detailed
naturalistic activity. This liberation enables you to sniff out the
tools or physical processes which may be effective in activating
your own personal psycho-physical expressiveness. The exercise
demands that you constantly shift between precise technical

7o

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

execution, liberated abstract movement and a direct, concrete

transference onto the text of various everyday activities. This
constant shift allows body and brain to work together more and
more harmoniously. Once again, Ananyev's work in this field
closely resembled Michael Chekhov's application of Psychological Gestures: Chekhov invites the actor gradually and carefully
to make Psychological Gestures resemble realistic, naturalistic
acting. 'By doing this slowly, step by step, you will have a long
chain of gestures whose first link will be a purely abstract, purely

musical, rhythmical one,

in close connection to your sub-

conscious creative impulses, and whose last link will become the
gesture of everyday life, concrete, and naturalistically true. The
long series of gestures in between will be a slow transition from
the 'abstract' to the 'concrete' gestures'and words.?s+ This transition from abstract to everyday can liberate the actor's rrtfud and
activate the imagination.

Dialogue with an object

By the end of the first semester, it

was clear to see how Ananyev

had taken us through the slow breakdown of technical rnovements in isolations, co-ordinations and physical waves, to the
more complex interaction of the inner motive forces. This had
involved our exploration of abstract plastic movement and
naturalistic everyday movement, and we'd begun to focus on the
relationship between the physical actor and the irnaginary character in reference to a text. To a greater or lesser extent, we were
becoming psycho-physically awake. During the second sernester,
the work progressed in three particular directions: (i) mime (or
pa,ntornirn) and the role of real and irnaginary objects; (ii) exploring the intangible communication of energy between two
actors (Stanislavsky called it 'irradiation'ss); and (iii) the development of 'creative individuality'. I'll go on to explore each of
these in turn.
For Ananyev, the discipline of Pantomime ,in actor-training
was of paramount importance. The Russian word pantomim

DIALOGUE WITH AN OBJECT

7r

refers to classical Mirne, and has nothing to do with the British

Christmas Pantomime tradition

of Principal Boys and Widow

TWankeys. And the work of Jean-Louis Barrault and Marcel

Marceau had certainly been great influences on Ananyev. He
believed that Pantomime had the capacity to strengthen your
imagination, and a strong imagination could give clarity to your
acdon on stage. Most actors know how difficult any level of

ma

Pantomime is, and yet if the simple task of drinking from an

imaginary cup exposes our creative skills, how much more so can
working with imaginary murders, ghosts, and daggers in mid-air.
Through physically describing invisible objects, Pantomime can
provide the actor with the freedom to strike up a relationship
with anything: with music, with the space, with the floor or with
imaginary people. As Ananyev claimed, i{ll the actor is restricted
by is his or her body and his or her imagination, and the aim of
my work is to expand both of those.'
It was to this end that much of the second semester was
devoted. Many classes incorporated isolations and co-ordinations into traditional pantomimic 6tudes, such as pushing and
pulling imaginary ropes, marking out invisible walls, or opening
non-existent doors. I'd done this sort of work before at drama
schogl and university, and I'd always found that I was hopeless at
it, and quite frankly it bored me silly. But there was a difference
here. In the past, the focus had been on the monochrome
repetition of difficult and rather empty, technical tasks, as we'd

all stood obediently in a line flexing and relaxing our hands

against an invisible wall. But Ananyev's approach was techni-

colour, as there was always an imaginative backdrop. In other

words, it wasn't just the analytical brain doing the work; once
again, all the inner motive forces were drafted into the exercise.
The result was that we were diverted from the rather pleasureless
execution of dry technique, and irnmersed in creative obiectives.
So, marking out an imaginary wall became an adventure through
a labyrinth, with sudden chasms over which rope-bridges hung,
and where our hands might plunge into warm water one mornent
and into a termites' nes't the next. Sometimes, an Aladdin's cave

72

WORKING ON YOUR SELF

was discovered, with rocky surfaces into which doors to secret

passages would suddenly open and treasure chests could be unlocked. Physical development was effortlessly combined with imagination, spontaneous narratives, and a rare old serving of fun.

But it wasn't only invisible objects that were taken into

consideration: Ananyev believed that eaery stage object, whether

it was real or mimed, could be endowed with certain imaginary
qualities. To some extent, I knew this from the exercise where my
sweater turned into the head of |ohn the Baptist. With this kind
of imaginary freedom as an actor, you can respond to any obiect
with the same attention that you'd respond to a human partner.
And focusing all your attention on an object can often alleviate
potentially difficult given circumstances. Stanislavsky touches
upon this when he refers to the powerful emotions that have to
be called upon if you're playing the part of a murderertWather
than fretting about the fact that 'you've never murdered anyone
so how can you possibly play Macbeth?', he suggests that you
divert all your attention to the murder weapon. His words of
wisdorn are worth quoting here in full: 'The only thought .
with which you should enter the circle [of attention] is yqur
knife. Concentrate on the physical action: examining the knife.
Look at it closely, test its edge with your finger, find out whether
its handle is firrn or not. tansfer it mentally into the heart or
chest of your rival. If you play the villain try to estimate the force
of the blow that would be needed to thrust the knife into your
rival's back. Tty to think whether you would be able to deal the
blow, whether the blade should have been a little stronger, or
whether it would stand the blow without bending? All your
thoughts are concentrated on one object only: the knife, the
weapon.'s6 With this kind of concentration, the dialogue with an
object can provide you with a powerful irnaginative inroad into a
character's psychology without ever having to conjure up or
squeeze out any kind of affective memor5fr,
Continuing the work we'd done with the internal monologues,
we went on to integrate inherently physical exercises into scenes
that we were working on in text-based Acting classes. During one

LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

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73

session when I was playing Sonya in (Jncle Vanya, Ananyev noted

a stran:g,e contradiction between rny inner intention and my outer

At the moment in Act II when Sonya steers Yelena's

conversation onto talking about Doctor Astrov, I'd been
absentmindedly stabbing an apple with a knife. Seeing it from a
action.

spectator's perspective, Ananyev declared that at that point he'd

simply stopped believing me, as the contradiction between
Sonya's internal feeling (love) and rny external action (stabbing
the apple) was too acute. That's not to say that contradictions like
that are not only permissible, but also fundomental to interesting
drarna; it was just that the particular rnoment he'd isolated
revealed that my inner life as an actress was not fully awake. The
prop should be a partner, and as such it can texture and colour

the performance. Ananyev made a sirnilar observation a little

later in the scene, when I drank a slug of vodka from a srnall glass
on the table. He drew my attention to the fact that this was the
glass from which, only minutes before, rny beloved Doctor
Astrov had drunk, so the object itself could feed my^-inner life as
Sonya. My sip might be like a secret kiss, touching the glass that
I knew his lips had just touched. You can even work like this with
the entire atmosphere of a room: the person Sonya dearly loves
has j,ust been sitting in this room with her, so everything has an
aura, a.specialness. In order to texture rny perforrnance as Sonya,
I could let this specialness subtly permeate rny actions, not overstating or telegraphing the connection, but simply alerting
myself to the relation between objects, atrnosphere and inner
sensation. These are the kind of details which will subconsciously resonate for an audience.
..,,.1.:.

Levels of consciousness
Ananyev sought various rneans by which we could texture our
work, and develop a deep connection between ourselves, the
other actors and the obiects inhabiting the on-stage world. To this
end, he concentrated much of the second sernester on evolving a
sense of non-verbal cornmunication. This was based on the

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WORKING ON YOUR SELF

notion of 'radiating' Prona energies and building a sense of what

Stanislavsky calls 'communion' or 'irradiation' . Pritna is a Hindu
word, which, in a nutshell, describes the energy that radiates
from your emotion centre, and is focused in your solar plexus.
Tapping into this energy may sound terribly weird and esoteric,
but in fact we're responding constantly to the energy that others
are unconsciously radiating all the time. All that Stanislavsky,
Chekhov and Ananyev were trying to do was to awaken the actor
to how potent this energy is, and how energizing on-stage
activity can be if we even glimpse the tip of the iceberg of this
kind of communication.
To alert us to these energy fields, Ananyev introduced sorne
very sirnple exercises, which were not entirely unfamiliar to rrle,
but I'd never experienced quite the sarne results before. One such
exercise involved an actor standing, with eyes closed, and,holding
the palms of his or her hands out, as if they were pressed up
against a wall. One by one, the rest of us placed our own palms
on the subiect's hands and said our narnes. The hands remained
in contact until the point at which the subject had sensed the
other person's energy, and then he or she broke the contact. This
was the easy part of the exercise. The next part was a little
harder. Each member of the group anonymously placed his or
her hands on the palrns of the subject, who - with eyes still
closed - attempted to identify the energy of the unknown communicator. Of course, there were other factors besides energy
that '6elped with identifying the hands, such as size, heat and
texture, as well as the sound of the footsteps approaching or the
smell of a particular perfurne. Despite all these factors, the
cornmunication of energy was to some extent discernible. This
was certainly the case when Ananyev placed his own hands on the
subjects: the transmission of energy through his palrns seemed to
cause subjects' hands almost to vibrate. The exercise went one
stage further: instead of actually touching palrns with the
subject, a Eap of several centimetres was left between the hands.
The subject then had to identify the energy being directed from
the other person through the space towards his or her palms.

ll

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ENERGY TUG-OF_WAR

75

There was no doubt that Ananyev had developed his own

energy communication to a significant degree, and this was
demonstrated for me one day in another exercise. The group was
divided into male (A) and female (B) partnerships. Whilst
Partner B's eyes were closed, Partner A tried to move B around
the room by placing his hands no less than fifteen centimetres
from B's body. In other words, there was no direct contact:
simply by radiating energy through the palms of his hands, A
was to lead the 'blind' partner B around the space. unbeknownst
to the blind B, Ananyev occasionally 'interfered' with the
communication between partners by exerting his own energy
through his palms, in an attempt to break the connection between A and B. After some time, the exercise was then repeated
the other way around, with the sighted females guiding the blind
males round the roorn with no other contact that the energy
radiated through their palms.
Personally, I was almost incapable of budging rny partner a
millimetre with my radiated energy alone, but I experienced the
most extraordinary sensation when -f was 'blind'. I found it a very
difficult exercise as, from start to finish, I struggled to silence my
conscious mind. There was a voice in my head which insisted on
discredlting the notion of irradiation', believing it to be a load of
old noriiehse. I tried as hard as I could to 'hear' the energy
commands of my partner A, and move when I thought I felt an
impulse, but I was never really sure and I suspected that I was
probably making the whole thing up. Besides which, it's not the
kind of exercise where 'trying hard' really helps. Then, in the
midst of all my blind stumbling around, oblivious to my partner's
guidance, I suddenly felt this huge surge of energ)r. I was
overwhelmed by tremendously physical sense of confusion or
" being pulled from one place to another in
turmoil, oS if I was
some kind of energy whirlwind. It was such a disquieting sensation that I had to open rny eyes just to re-orientate myself and
stop myself falling over. As I looked around, I discovered that
Ananyev and my partner were on either side of me - neither of
them closer to me than a ruler's length - and a battle of energies

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WORKING ON YOUR SELF

had indeed been in progress. Each of them was trying to divert

my energy in contradictory directions through the space. There
was a non-physical, non-verbal tug-of-war going on, which I'd
experienced through the radiated currents pushing and pulling
me around the room. I don't think I'd ever experienced such
non-verbal communication so powerfully before. In fact, this
kind of communication, which is quite alien to a materialistic
culture, opened .tp avenues of consciousness with which we just
weren't familiar. Although the sensation was pretty unsettling at
first, it was absolutely exhilarating. It was a bit like being on a
roller-coaster but without the rubber harness. Tapping into this
level of creative energy (ot 'higher consciousness') requires a
very particular approach, one that isn't necessarily reverent,
but on the contrary - fun. F'or Ananyev, the creative process
must be a g&me. Contact with the emotion-centre mu$' always
be accompanied by what Michael Chekhov calls a 'Feeling of'
Ease's7, so that even darker emotions rnay be explored with a
sense of lightness, a sense of pleasure, a sense of enjoyment and
safety.

Working with higher (or deeper?) levels of consciousness

requires both personal openness and a trust of the process, So
that the actor can transport him or her self into the character's
pains, without that pain being worked into his or her own psyche.
Whatever happens, we mustn't play Ophelia and end up mad. We
can't play Othello and finish up on a murder charge. To this end,

Ananyev introduced into his training programme certain aspects

of psychology to which we could relate in a very tangible,
physical way. Essentially, he was building up a vocabulary of
psycho-physical images with which we could develop our own
consciousness; through that developed consciousness, we could
then broaden our ability to create character. In order to build up
this vocabulary of psycho-physical images, Ananyev drew
illustrations from Dr Eric Berne's structural analysis of human
psychology, referred to in his book The Games People Play.In his
analysis, Berne talks about three ego-states, which co-exist within each human being, and they are the states of the Adult, tllre

ADULT_PARENT_CHILD

vert

+
:-lust
at

oIr

a
s

's a
g
C'eSS

rof
a

porent and the Child.ss I'm sure we all know Peter Pan-type
figures, whose youthful energy remains eternal (Child). Or little

children whose responsible attitude outweighs that of their

elders (Parent). Or certain individuals whose wisdom and
extraordinary insight exceeds their experience or years (Adult).
While we may all exhibit a dominant tendency in one particular
dii'ection, these three ego-states combine to make up our unique
personal psychology. Applying them to the theatre, Ananyev
explored the ego-states through a series of improvisations, which
directly connected with the inner motive forces of emotion,
thought and action. In these improvisations, Ananyev compared
each ego-state with an image and an energy-quality which the
actor could then explore physically. (All the time we were to
remember the other components of tempo-rhythm, amplitude,
dynamic and direction, and constantly punctuate the rnovement
with the pause, of course.) Again, Ananyev's interpretation of
Berne's ideas was idiosyncratic, presenting the actors with a
correlation of imaginative picture, philosophical interpretation
and physical manifestation.

The first of these 'ego-states' was the Adult, which was visualised as a, beam of Light. The Adult was closest to a serehity
which Ananyev allied with higher consciousness or 'God', whatever that might mean to an individual. We physically explored
the idea of Light by irnagining we were standing on a high
mountain, overseeing a landscape of problems, with long rays
extending from our finger tips and other extremities. While we
were engaged in the physical and imaginative process, we were
also to observe what kind of inner sensation was aroused, as well
as which qualities were accessed in each of the centres. How did
that quality of Light affect the emotion-centre? The thoughtcentre? FIow did it affect action? I discovered that a feeling of
incredible calm and powerfulness quickly arose through the
combination of imagining the picture and then physically
embodying it. ft was really rather pleasurable.
The second ego-state was the Parent, which was visualised as
a Point, like a piece of chalking moving from one specific point

78

WORKING ON YOUR SELF

on a blackboard to another. The inner Parent within each of us

plans, manipulates and constructs stratagems) and through its
cunning, it aims to achieve certain results without being at all
capricious. Once again, we explored the image physically, by
making decisive movements of the body from one precise point
in space to another. We could move either one limb at a time, or
the whole body, imagining there was a piece of chalk in the centre
of the solar plexus. I discovered that the sensation aroused by
this quality of movement was purposeful and therefore quite
pleasing, but to some extent it was rather bound or constrained.
Although I felt quite confident, it wasn't a very liberating
experience.

Finally we explored the ego-state of the Child, which was

visualised as the Train of a Dress. The inner Child is
s
and often acts before it thinks, and so its consciousnes
s
behind the action, following after the irnpulse like a chiffon train.
You can see this with real children: they'll be attracted to the
flame for its colour and shape, and then they'll discover that it
hurts to touch it. However, in its higher form, the Child ego-state
is very tintuitivt, 'creative', 'spontaneous' and carries the core of
'enjoyment'.se In fact, the Child is the artist's ally: if an actor can
harness the energy of the Child, that Child quality can become
the accessory to vital creativity on the stage. Psychologist Arthur

Wagner offers the theory that the creative state for the actor
when he or she is in actual performance is 'the natural child ego
state defined by Berne. The adapted child is controlled and
inhibited by the influencing parent, while the natural child is free

of parental restraint and is exploding with

archeopsychic
(archaic, instinctual, perverse) behaviour.'60 In other words, if we
want to find the true ioy of spontaneous creativity on the stage,
we need to get back to our natural Child (a state which often lies

hidden beneath layers of socialisation and adult inhibition).

Through his work at the Moscow Theatre of Clowns, Ananyev
tried to make immediate contact with the Child energy. As
Michael Chekhov points out, clowning 'will awaken within you
that eternal Child which bespeaks the trust and utter simplicity

PERIPHERAL AND CENTRAL MOVEMENTS

79

of all great artists.'61 In Ananyev's physical manifestation of the

Child ego-state, we explored movements from space to point, as

if our, consciousness was always behind the impulse of the
rnovement, trailing after it like a scarf. When I've used this exercise with student-actors, the atmosphere instantly transforms
into one of sheer delight and abandonment; the sensation is
pretty uncontrolled, but exhilarating because of that liberation.
There's a sense that the body'knows' something which the mind
doesn't, and a feeling of unexpectedness dominates the experi-

It's great!
In exploring these levels of consciousness, - Ananyev particularly examined the interplay between peripherol and centra,l
movement. The impulse behind the Adult movement was from
point to space, in other words from central to peripheral; therefore, the energy radiated out from the body beyond the point at
' which the movement stopped. The impulse behind the Parent
ence.

movement'was from point to point, in other words from a central

starting point through the periphery back to a central finishing
point: all very contained and controlled, with a very strong sense

of form. The irnpulse behind the Child movement was from

space to point; in other words, the energy came from the
periphery and was brought to a halt at the centre.
As'f,tve already suggested, the exchange of energies between
central and peripheral movement was important to Ananyev's
understanding of human interaction in terms of giving and
receiving information. The movement from peripheral to central
reflects our receipt of inforrnation from the world; we take that
information and we assimilate it within us. The movernent from
central to peripheral is the way in which we give. information
back to the world, the way we express our personalities, and the
way we as actors express the characters that we're manifesting on
stage. Through experimenting with the various ego-states, the
actor could note the psycho-physical sensations of halting the
energy (bringing it to a point - Child) o. radiating the energy
--beyond the end of the gesture (out into space Adult), or a
combination of the two (Parent), with the accompanying sense of

8o

WORKING ON YOUR SELF

completing the action or continuing the action. But how does all
this relate to the actor's work on a role?

Dual consciousness: frorn technique to inspiration

At the start of this chapter, I discussed the idea of

actors
'transcending' themselves in order to step beyond their everyday
mannerisms into the characters that the playwright has created.
This was really what much of the work on ego-states and psychology was about. It's a question of needing to 'know thyself'
before you can step forth into the character, and this bold step

forward was the final stage in Ananyev's psycho-physical

technique as we experienced it at VGII{. The notion of 'chars. Do
acter' is a topic of great debate arnongst many prac
Do I
I 'becorne' the character? Con I 'become' the cha

sirnply adapt the information that the playwright gives me about

the character to fit my own personality? Many would argue,
David Mamet included, that the whole concept of character is in
itself an illusion, that there's no such thing as character; it's iust
you, the actor, doing those actions on the stage. My training at
VGIK convinced m.e otherwise, and I would sugges't that the
concept of characterisation is what differentiates between actors
who see their craft as a job and actors who see their craft as an:- art.
Many practitioners are afraid of intellectualising or talking
about the process of acting, maybe in the fear that if you talk
about it, you won't be able to do it. There's an inverted snobbery
that analysis destroys creativity. To some extent I would agree, in
the sense that you can't rely on analysis as the only inroad to
creativity. Flowever, I would contend that those actors who don't
spend much tirne investigating their art and investing in their
craft are those who take shortcuts. Either they reduce every
character to the limits of their own everyday personalities or, at
the other extreme, they consciously adopt physical or vocal
characteristics to take the character as far from their own self as
possible, and in the process we can admire their range and
versatility. But there is a third way, one that combines perso:nality

I
I
I
I

t
I
t
I
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PERS

ON-ACTOR_CHARACTER

8r

with character to create sornething entirely new. Of course, as

actors we have to remain grounded in our own concept of who
we are: we can't get away from the fact that we're using our own
bodies, our own voices, our own emotions and imaginations.

Howeve4at the same time, we have to develop the tools to transform ourselves into the creation provided by the playwright and
director, and that creation is not ourselves. tJnless a part has been
specifically written for us, we're not in the playwright's head as he
or she writes the play. So we're short-changing the writer, the
audience and ourselves if we reduce his or her creation to our
own personalities.
In order to assist in the strange but exciting transformation
into character, Ananyev divided the actor into three working
aspects: the Person - the Actor - the Character. The Person (the
Russian word lichnost can also be translated as 'personality')
represented the connection between the individual and his or her
'higher self'. What's 'higher self'? It's the elusive, hyper-creative
part of us, through which we can tap into inspiration and spontaneity. The Actor represented the craftsman or technician, and
the ability to juggle points of attention between what's going on
on-stage, what's going on in the auditorium and what 'the
of the role are. The Person remained constant, undemands
'' .4.,,
chanffi by the variables of audience and performance, as a kind
of holistic, centred being. The Actor, on the other hand,
responded effortlessly to the influences of the perforrnance,
changing and adapting according to unexpected circumstances or
opportunities. The combination of Person and Actor 'held in its
hand' the Character (obroz - often translated as 'image'). The
Character was separate from, but connected to, real life - like a
diamond on a ring. In other words, it had its own parameters but
it wasn't entirely independent. It couldn't exist without the Person and the Actor, and so it would be completely impossible to be
'taken over' by the Character in some unhealthy schizophrenic
way. ft was a creatiae existence, not a psychotic one. These three
components - Person, Actor and Character - worked together in
unison, creating an organic whole during the performance. This

8z

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

union demanded an element of the naiaet6, mentioned by

Stanislavsky to overcome 'carping criticism'.62 For as Ananyev
stressed, and as f reiterate now, you cannot play and judge at the
same time. Ananyev was insistent that if you judge yourself
critically while you're performing, you take yourself away from
the character's words and you fill your head 'with thoughts and
feelings of self, Judgement demonstrates conflict inside the
performer which breaks the union of Person, Actor, Character.'
(I fell victim to this in a big, big way, as we'll see in the following
chapters.)

The Person-Actor-Character combination can be seen to correspond to Berne's ego-states of Adult-Parent-Child. In effect,
the Person is the 'higher consciousness', or 'superconscious' as
Stanislavsky puts it, and it corresponds to 'the Adult' (the
overseer of the creative process). It enables the Actor istbrefts" man and technician to manipulate (with the cunning of the
Parent) the vitality of the spontaneous Child - the Character.
The Person is a crucial part of the creative process on stage.
It binds the technical part of the acting process as patrolled by the
Actor (things like being heard by the audience, not upstaginB qr
blocking your fellow actors, allowing for the coughing fit on the
fifth row) with the aitality and improaisatory nature of the onstage action as expressed by the Child/Character. While the
Actor directs the techniques of breathing, diction, gesture and
staging out towards the spectator, the Character can direct all its
life and energy in towards what's happening on the stage. The
rather holistic Person harmonises the two - the Actor and the
Character.

This kind of 'dual consciousness' is no new thing: Diderot

debates it in The Paradox of the Actor and Coquelin analyses it in
The Art of the Actor. While perhaps the two Frenchmen address
it from a rather clinical, technical angle, the Russian approach is
more united in its inclusion of 'spirit' or 'higher consciousness'
or 'inspiration', or whatever you want to call it according to how
threatening or otherwise these terms may sound. Michael
Chekhov prefers the idea

of

'creative individuality', which he

DUAL CONSCIOUSNESS

83

of 'straddling both sides of the footis not only a creator of the character but also its
lights. It IS
spectator More than that, it has the ability to foretell the
audience reaction, an instant before it takes place.'63 It's a state of
existence which is completely in the rnoment and alongside the
as being capable
describes as

moment at the same time. Many actors do it instinctively, but

there are also actors who either stay well within the realm of the
technical Actor, or who fly dangerously close to complete
consummation by the Character. In order to live as healthy
human beings, as well as inspired and inspiring artists, we have
to develop the ability to nurture and listen to both, and in that

will develop the Person.

Ananyev's training work addressed the trinity of Person,
Actor and Character through the free improvisation work.
During these improvisations, the Actor-technician monitored
the work of isolations, co-ordinations, rhythm, impulses and the
activity of the inner motive forces. At the same tirne, the
way we

Character-artist could express him or her self freely through the

abstract dialogue with the music. Since much of Ananyev's work
appealed to the 'spirit' ("s was experienced in his exercises
involving intangible energies and powers of irradiation') each
actor's Person was encouraged to develop in such a way that we
could,#egin to acquire the maturity to contain the Actor and the
Character within one harmonious unit.
If we were to trace a link between . contemporary Russian
actor-training and the legacy of Stanislavsky and Michael
Chekhov, it would lie in the concept of divided consciousness.
Stanislavsky acknowledged that his own dual consciousness as an
actor 'lent impetus' to his work, describing how he divided
himself, as it were, 'into two personalities. One continued as the
actor, the other was the observer. Strangely enough this duality
not only did not impede, it actually promoted and lent impetus
to fcreativity].'n Contrary to the popular belief that Stanislavsky
was primarily concerned with creating a fourth wall and submerging himself in the on-stage action, he actually came to see
that a kind of divided consciousness was essential for the creative

84

WORKING ON YOUR SELF

process. Curiously, his beliefs are not so different from those

of

the French man, Constant Coquelin, an actor who came from

quite a different school of performance. Coquelin divided the
actor into Persons One and Two.6s Person One existed within the
actor as an impassiae obseruer, who, even in the most emotional
moments, was observing, taking notes and understanding how he
or she could use that experience in future creations. (I've met
actors who do this in everyday life: one actress described how
even when she was in the depths of grief following her partner's
death, she had one eye on how she could use the emotion to
inform future creations.) Coquelin goes on to describe Person
Two as that part of the octor which does all the loving, hating,
grieving and so on. Person One must be cornpletely in control of
Person Two, especially during the performance of a plan,Even in
those mornents where the public is carried away by. tfie "p.rformer's acting, and thinks him 'most absolutely distracted', he
must 'see what he is doing, fudge hirnself, and retain his selfpossession.' Coquelin didn't want the actor to experience even a
shadow of the sentiments he's expressirg, 'however great the
truth and power of his expression may be.
ft's assumed that Stanislavsky held a diametrically-opposed
belief, when he argued that 'if the actor is to be emotionally
involved and pushed into action on the stage by the imaginary
world he builds on the basis of what the playwright has created,
it is necessary that he believe in it as thoroughly as he does in the
real world which surrounds him .'66 But - and the 'but' is big! he goes on to say that this doesn't mean that while he's on the
stage 'the actor must be subject to some kind of hallucination,
that he must lose, while he is acting, the consciousness of
surrounding reality.' On the contraryr'a part of his consciousness
must remain free from the trammels of the play, in order that it
can exercise some supervision over whatever he is feeling and
doing as he plays out the part of his character.' This mutual
existence of technical supervision on the one hand and utter
belief in the reality of the stage circumstances on the other
requires the nurturing of the Person or 'higher consciousness'.

t
I
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FRoM TECHNIQUE To PSYCHo-PHYSICALITY

85

And this nurturing strikes me as being the k.y to psycho-physical

uaining.
Ananyev likened the developing actor to a rose with strong
petals, stem, bud and stamen, and with the actor's Person forming the flower's 'fragrance'. Without strong physical components, the rose can't survive, and yet it lacks its ultimate beauty if
it has no scent. Higher consciousness is he 'fragrance' of the
performer: if we can tap into it, it has the capacity to inform our

work on stage with qualities beyond our own everyday

consciousness. Ananyev started with simple technical exercises
and gradually worked towards a physical expression of psycho-

logical ideas such as Person, Actor and Character. In this way, he

sought to develop our higher consciousness through remarkably
tangible means. We endeavoured to work in a state of dynamic
meditation, allowing our sensation of movements to awaken our
inner motive forces. At the same time, we listened to our psychophysical activity through constant moments of silence, or pauses.
This was no rnean feat, and it wasn't always successful. Nonetheless, bit by- bit the journey from technique to psychophysicality was unfolding.
The ten-month Scenic Movement course culminated in an
Open Class, to which all our tutors and any other interested
parties'rwere invited. Since the emphasis in the work was on
process, not result, this was less of an examination and more of a

demonstration of work-in-progress. The Open Class was to

follow a specific format: it would start with the whole group
demonstrating the regular exercises and itudes, and after that we
were each to choose an aspect of the work through which we
could explore our elementary psycho-physical technique. I
wanted to have a go at what appeared to me to be a rather elusive
aspect of the work: I wanted to try and unite the Person, Actor
and Character and to discover the 'fragrance' of a role. And so I
decided to conclude my year's training with Ananyev by working
on a piece of text. To this end, I chose the speech from Oscar
Wilde's Salome, in which Salome addresses the decapitated head
of Iokanaan (Wilde's name for John the Baptist). Since my first

86

WORKING ON YOUR SELF

Eurekal moment of psycho-physical understanding had arisen

when my sweater 'transformed' into the head of John the Baptist,
this seemed an appropriate place to finish -y iourney.
Summaty of Exercises
Following the Psycho-Physical Warm-up, a series of exercises expand
and develop psycho-physical awareness by harnessing the imagination
with the body. These need not follow a particular sequence or be
seen as at all prescriptive; they are suggestions as to how psychophysical technique may work towards the ultimate integration with a
text. Ananyev himself is constantly changing and inventing exercises,
and any actor or teacher is invited - if not encouraged - to do the same.
All preceding exercises are combined at the actors' discretion.

o The Object Exercise

Using any inanimate object, the actors are presented with the contradictory objectives,'l wont to touch it, but I connot touch it.' (One
actor to one object.) Without consciously imposing reasons behind
the objectives, the actors explore (through the body as much as the
brain) their relationship with the object, by approaching, retreating,
observing, all the time paying attention to the changing inner
(emotional) responses that arise according to the body's physical
relationship to the object. The exercise usually lasts fifteen to twenty
minutes, at which point the teacher/workshop leader informs the
actors that they can now touch their individual objects. lf the actors
have truly engaged with the exercise, it's not uncommon for them
to take several minutes to reach the point where they can or want
to pick the object up.

This exercise benefits from little discussion. lf too much preamble

takes place, the actors begin to ask too many cerebral questions
('Do I imagine the object is something other than it is?' 'Do I have
to know why I can't touch it?' 'What do you mean exactly?') Once
they begin the exercise, all those questions are answered much
more satisfactorily through the experience of doing the exercise,
than through any amount of discussion. NB. lt is not necessary to
preconceive what the object might be: if it's a red textbook, it may
remain a red textbook throughout the whole exercise, or it might
become a magic tome, or a legal document, or a huge slab of

SUMMARY O'F EXERCISES

chocolate, or a bar of gold. lt doesn't matter. By doing the exercise,
the combination of body and imagination will feed the actors in any
way they need. As with most Active Analysis and psycho-physical
preparation, it's experiential, not intellectual. The technical elements
of joints, curyes, waves, opening/closing, and central/peripheral serye
as a backdrop to the exercise, albeit an unconscious backdrop.

Free lmprovisations

Usually accompanied by music to enhance a state of dynamic

meditation, the actors simply move around the space. At the risk of
sounding like a primary school movement-and-music class, it's a
question of the physical exploration of the space and the actors' o\Mn
bodies provoking a growing awareness of inner/outer co-ordination.
Michael Chekhov's Psychological Gestures can be incorporated, in that
the actors imagine a dynamic, physical position; they get into it; whilst
in it, they think up the next position; they get into it. As they do so,
they take note of the sensations aroused by the body's movement
from one physical shape to the next, so that the movement between
statics becomes as important and informative as the static positions
themselves. The process is sped up, so that the. time between each
static is reduced to the extent that the body is eventually in a state of
almost constant motion. However, there must be pauses (however
momentary) between the movements in order that the actors may
sense the psycho-physical experience. Free improvisations can last
from a couple of minutes to half an hour, depending on what key
eGtt're.rt is being explored - straight lines, curyes, \ /aves, opening and
cl6sing, central/peri pheral. Actors usual ly work individually, though
encounters with other actors will also expand psycho-physical
adaptability. NB. lt's important that there is an imaginative objective
behind the movements, otherwise it ends up with a group of actors
wafting round to a bit of music. No doubt, concentration will come
and go within a free improvisation, but it is during e>cended free
improvisations that major experiential break-throughs are most likely
to occur, when the brain shuts up and the psycho-physical integration
of body / i magi nati on/emotions/sp i rit takes over.

Application to Text
The actors work with dramatic monologues (usually worked through

'

their heads rather than spoken aloud).

One port of the body leads the movement as the text is internally
'spoken'. The chosen part corresponds to the governing centre in the
speech - Thought, Feeling or Action.
in

87

woRKrNG oN youR sELF

88

Through the speech, different ports of the body take over leadership of
the movement, as the changing centres in the speech are explored;
e.g. where the character is thoughtful, a finger might lead; as the
character becomes emotional, the shoulders might lead; where the
character becomes active, the groin might lead.
Sitting/wolking/turning are the only actions to be used, the actors using
'their o\Mn' bodies, but the motivations and decisions of the character.
Sittinglwolking/turning actions are led by particular body parts in
relation to the matrix of inner motive forces. ln other words, does
the character 'sit thoughtfully', 'turn actively', or 'walk emotionally'?
lf so, is it the toes, the elbows or the eyes leading the physical action.

Objects and Text

This is simply a question of how, in rehearsal, the actors may pay
particular attention to their relationship with props and fufniture, ...
noting how inanimate objects are significant 'partners' in psych o-"' 'oi"
physical awareness. ln this way, subtle physical nuances may convey
imporcant dramatic information to an audience. Does an actor (or
character?) throw a letter on the floor, or fold it neatly and put it in a
bureau, or rip it up, or discard it and move on to other business? All
these 'dialogues'with objects texture and inform the audience's
understanding of the dramatic action.

LeYels of Consciousness
These exercises should be treated with ezrse and as experimental.

Actor 2 (whose eyes are closed)

round the room, with the palm of Actor I 's hand c. l0- 15
centimetres from Actor 2's body
Silent Commonds; Actor I and 2 sit opposite each othen Actor 2 has
closed eyes. Actor I pictures a simple command ('lie on the floor',
'stand up', 'roll over', etc). When Actor 2 gets a sense of what the
command may be, he or she executes the action. (According to
Ananyev, men are more obedient than women! Women often distrust
the image they have received, not believing in their instinctive
reaction. The actors should be encouraged not to think too much
about the exercise, but just go with gut feeling. lt doesn't matter if
they're wrong - and they'll be surprised at how often they're vety
close to what the silent command actually was.)
Leoding the Blind.'Actor

leads

'SALOME'

89

o Adult-Parent-Child
Through a series of imaginative pictures, the actors move around the
space, exploring the psychological effect created by the particular
movement qualities:
Adult: standing on a mountain top with rays of light streaming from all
extremities (Point to Space - consciousness ahead of the action)
Porent: a piece of chalk on a blackboard (Point

manipulating the action)

Child: the train of a dress (Space
action)

to Point - consciously

to Point - consciousness behind the

Salome
When it came to the final Open Class, my decision to work on (1)
a piece of text and (2) this piece of text was quite specific. My
ambitions with the exercise were high: I wanted to combine the
truth of everyday naturalisrn with the passion and extrernes of
expressionism. I felt that I'd reached a certain degree of physical
liberation, and so now was the time to test how far rny body had

acquired its psycho-physical knowledge by focusing on a

concrete text. I was curious: could I connect the body's kriowledge of Thought, Feeling and Will to the heights of physical
exprbssion and the depths of inner feeling? Just how far had
I tuned myself to the nuances of the inner,/outer continuum?
I was prepared to face a certain amount of hard work, and in all

probability, defeat . . .
It struck rne that Salome was a great piece for testing the
extremes of physical expression on the one hand, and inner
feeling on the other. The writing is wonderfully musical, and yet
at the same tirne, it rings true psychologically. The play presents
us with a young woman (really still a wilful child) who has
demanded an obscenity - a beheading - because, in her heart of
hearts, she understands her erotic power over Herod, and she
wants to put that power to the test. Iokanaan's (|ohn the B"ptist's) rejection of her budding sexuality, and the pain caused by
her unrequited love, have incited her to try and 'possess' him

9o

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

through murder. The flamboyance of the material provided an

intriguing combination of operatic language, potent ernotions
and truthful psychology, which could be explored and expressed
through non-naturalistic, expressionistic movement. I decided to
perform the speech in Russian to explore another dimension of
the dialogue between text and body. Although that might sound
horrendously pretentious, it was in fact rnore of a cop-out than a
pretension. The Russian language is extremely lyrical and
onomatopoeic, So much so that it's much easier to find the
confidence and reverberations in the language to make the hyperbole of Salome's words feel convincitrg. Of course it complicated
matters to some degree, as I'rn hardly bi-lingual. But what it did
do was challenge rny dependence on my thought-centre. Because
the text was alien, I wouldn't be able to rely on the ce.re.bral
appeal of familiar English, and so {ny mind would have to work
in closer collaboration with rny emotion- and action-centres.
The structure of the text itself was dynamic and compelling.
The movement of the speech through desires, passions and the
inner rnotive forces was clear and articulate. Salome begins with
fantasies as to what she'll do with fokanaan's head, followed by
reminiscences of his beauty when he was alive. She goes on to
express her wilful desire to throw his head to the dogs, and finally
she mourns for lost love. It was an exciting iourney to explore as
an actor. Added to the detailed structure, the speech also
provided an opportunity to explore a dialogue with an object - the
head of Iokanaan. As we have already seen with the work on
Uncle Vanya and the 'transformation' of my sweater into the
head of John the Baptist, Anan5rev had explored the process of
endowing objects with an inner life of their own, so that they can
awaken new sensations in the actor. So selecting the object,
which would represent the head of Iokanaan, became a k"y
question. From the start of the speech, Salorne's objective is 'to
kiss Iokanaan'. The head is a treasure for her, a trophy. Yet as
much as she wants it, she's afraid of it; as much as it's beautiful,
it's loathsome. As much as she loves it and wants to kiss it, she
delights in exploiting the power she has over it, relishing the

FINDING IOKANAAN,S HEAD

9r

knowledg. that she can mercilessly abuse it if she wants to. In a

variety of ways, Iokanaan has aroused six of Salome's deadly
sins. She feels lust for his body, anger at his rejection of her,
vanity because all men should love her, pride that he dared to
reject her, greed to have whatever she wants, and envy that his
God was more important to him than she was. The fact that one
object can be invested with so many properties is a potent
springboard for any actor playing Salome. What served as a vital
image for my connection with the obiect was Salome's desire to
bite the head 'with my teeth as one bites a ripe fruit'. These
delicious words coniured ,rp images of devouring the head, juice
dripping vampire-like, as Salome sucks dry Iokanaan's life-force.
The relevance of central and peripheral impulses also carne into
play here: Salome's impulse to action comes from spa,ce/periphery
(with her fantasy of what she'll do with the head) to point/centre
(with the physical presence of the head itself). The provocation
for her action - the head - is outside her, and she takes that information and assimilates what it means for her, coming out with
a series

of physical responses.

Finding the appropriate head took various twists. In the first

rehearsal, I improvised freely - both vocally and physically'in a
kind of Active Analysis - with a fabric rna,nnequin. The result of
this':#as far too baroque and all my energy became focused towards the doll. The mannequin attracted my attention so
compellingly throughout the speech that I didn't really explore
the stage space, and the dramatic dynamics were limited. To try
and expand the spatial relations and to decrease the (embarrassing) literalness of my improvisations, Ananyev suggested
that I act out the speech in front of an imaginary mirror, as if the
mirror were hanging right at the back of the auditorium. We
didn't get rid of the mannequin, but in the improvisation that
followed, it remained on the stage as the corpse of Iokanaan,
while rny main focus was on the imaginary mirror in front of me.
What this meant was that I could keep an awareness of the
corpse's presence, without feeling obliged to look at it all the time
or relate to it directly. I could sense it through different parts of

WORKING ON YOUR SELF

my body: spine, head, side, calf, with the result that the relationship with the object developed and became more complex. The
lure between the mannequin and my self-absorption in the
mirror created an inner conflict between the centres, and an
outer conflict between the physical objects (mirror and mannequin). Through this process of Active Analysis, we made
discoveries about Salome which might have eluded us otherwise.
She became coquettish, self-aware, vain through the split-focus
with the imaginary mirror. The movement seemed to become
more sinuous, with a prevalence of wave motions through the
body and in particular through the arms and back. The combination of the Iokanaan-mannequin behind me and the imaginary
mirror in front of rne created a complex dynamic of space-object
relationships, encompassing the entire theatre area. In a curious
way, I felt my sense of Salome expand: I felt boldef$'fiiore
" confident, almost gargantuan, because my focus had been shifted
from the limitations of the stage-space and expanded to the
whole of the auditorium. It was as if my Salome could conquer
not only Herod and lokanaan, but anyone else who dared to
watch her macabre emotional tango with the corpseless head.
At the second rehearsal, Ananyev presented me with fokanaan's
head in the form of an ora,nge. The decisions I'd taken and the
attitudes I'd adopted in the previous rehearsal with the mannequin were instantly challenged and transformed by the change in
the object. Mainly because it was smaller and didn't look anything like a human being! Because Ananyev's training had developed a sense of constant inner adaptation, I actually became
quite excited by the orange and that in turn enhanced the spontaneity. I embarked on an improvisation with it, making some
further intriguing discoveries. The fruit was instantly more sensuous than the mannequin - it could be smelt and tasted, it
squelched when I squashed it, it oozed when f scratched it. An
original concept I'd had of enacting the speech with a living actor
as a supine Iokanaan now seemed horribly naive, as once the orange
was introduced many more options arose. I could now throw the
head, kick the head, or place it on a pedestal. In the course of the

ATTENTION TO THE INNER PARTNER

93

improvisation, I squeezed the orange and a split appeared. It

looked like a mouth, so I stuck my tongue in. While I was rather
pleased with my sensual improvisation, Ananyev wasn't quite so
impressed: for him, that kind of explicit action wasn't necessary.
FIe rerninded me that the power of the stage lies in its metaphor.
What the audience sees in their imaginations can be far more
graphic than anything the actor may actually be doing.
The metamorphosis of the head didn't stop there. At the third
rehearsal, Ananyev presented me with Iokanaan's head in the
form of an apple, partly because he couldn't find an orange and
partly to remind me that each new object brings with it new sensations. This time, we abandoned all text, which to sorne extent
was getting in the way. Learning the speech in a foreign language
meant that at a certain stage in rehearsals, my exploratory work
was in danger of becoming too cerebral, as the Russian text was
complex. Instead, a free improvisation with music ensued, during which I moved ho*, when and where I wished in response to
the music, the space and the apple. Again, I was quite pleased
with my Isadora Duncan show. However . Ananyev's observation was that my dialogue always seemed to begin with the
externol object, rather than ttre inner voice. In other words, the
impulse to move always seemed to be frorn periphery to centre,
as if 'I''Wds waiting to get information from the outside world and
then responding to it. I acknowledged that usually the dialogue
with a partner - whether that partner was the space, music or
object - helped me to contact deeper feelings within myself. I
wasn't good at trusting rny own inner life. Limitless attention to
the outside partner was easier than limitless attention to the
internal voice. The trouble with this, in Ananyev's opinion, was
that it can lead to externalised, 'needy' acting, which is often less
interesting, both to watch and to do, than in combination with
more reflexive, central-to-peripheral action.
Not one to let an actor get away with anything, Ananyev
insisted that I embark on a second free improvisation, this time
allowing myself time (through the pauses) to listen to what was

really going on inside me, rather than letting the external

94

'

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

influences dictate to me all the time. I instantly felt rather

vulnerable and exposed, although I gradually found that if I
allowed myself to be inwardly open during this exercise, the
physical sensations of doing tlte scena aroused new emotions in the
character. After all, this is the prernise of Active Analysis: doing
the scene teaches you what the scene is about, and one action
feeds and inspires the next in an endless chain of spontaneous
moments. I followed Ananyev's directive to respond to inner
impulse not outer object, and the result was that Salome's complex inner life emerged. How much love there is inside her, and
yet how great is her grief at destroying the one thing she loved,
fokanaan! But she has no choice. The pain that she suffers when
Iokanaan rejects her is so profound that she has to have him
destroyed. She has to obliterate any chance of disappointment
that their future love won't be consurnrnated. It was b
irg
the inner dialogue to exist between - and to be heard by - my inner
motive forces, that I genuinely and effortlessly understood
Salorne's pain. The relationship with the obiect also flourished:
when I got to the end of the speech, I dashed the apple onto the
floor of the auditorium, without thought, just impulse, and the
flesh shot in all directions. ft was my Salome's way of destroying
the spirit of lokanaan.
All the work to date had been on my own with Ananyev's
direction. To some extent, the object became a partner, but you
don't get too rnuch feed-back from an apple! In the fourth
rehearsal, Ananyev cornbined rny Solome project with a fellow
actor who was looking at Peter Weiss's Morat/ Sade. We were to
work together in a free improvisation with music, but my partner
was to relate to me as if I were Marat, while he was my Iokatraatt.
Ananyev provoked us by saying that, if an actor was uninhibited
in his or her inner life and precise in his pr her attention to the
partner, the addition of any given circumstances, however
strange, could lead to insight into and discovery of the character's soul. In other words, if you're in a constant state of inner
improvisation, you can go with anything and react to anything
and learn everythittg. And he was right. What happened was that

FREE IMPROVISATIONS WITH ANY

CHARACTER

95

being released from the text, as well as from any logical given
circumstances, allowed the characters to develop their own inner
tempo-rhythm. Salome became a cocktail of contradictory and
spontaneous responses, full of bright coquettishness and deepfelt anger. But the overriding sensation was that she was actually
very scared of the powerful emotions stirring up inside her, emotions aroused by Iokanaan's responses to her initial provocations.
She's a virgin; she doesn't understand the promptings of her own
femininity. She's confused and tantalised, attracted and repelled,
open and closed, aroused and defensive, all at the same time.
These interesting contradictions arose frorn the freedorn of the
strange dialogue between Salome /Marat and Iokanaan,/Sade.
Flere was a flesh-and-blood living man, so Salorne now had the
possibility to explore in reality what she could only fantasise
about before. A strange mdlange of responses arose for both rny
partner and myself, sparked by our differing objectives and the
various obstacles that we were unwittingly throwing in each
other's way. It's through this kind of free irnprovisation that a
character's 'creative individuality' has the chance to unfold without force and with nothing but 'limitless attention to the
partner'.67 And as we'll see in the following chapter, an improvisation like this can involve a whole host of different characters
froin'j.Fnumber of different plays, all exploring their relationships
in a sort of limbo-land of given circumstances.
The fifth rehearsal combined various exercises: the dance with
the apple, the interplay between the fruit and the imaginary mirror, and the text of the speech. I'd decided to extend the opening
Ah ! to three half-sung vowel sounds to give a sense of ritual: I
thought this would be an original and mysterious way of beginning the speech. Once again, horvever, Ananyev stopped rne.
'Why was I trying to find emotion through text and aoice, when
his discipline was concerned with the interplay of text and body?'
He could see that I was so concerned with giving a good performance that I wasn't so much experimenting, as pre-determining. To
help me connect more directly with my body, he suggested that,
at any point in the text in any way that seemed appropriate, I

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

96

should try and find a physical position which expressed Salome's

solitude. He reminded me that I'd find this moment if I iust
allowed t}re pau.se (physical and inward) to inform the subsequent
action. I felt full of trepidation: I knew I had to (get rid of my
head', to stop my brain getting in the way, and at first I was pretty
sure that I wouldn't be able to do it. Then I suddenly thought,
'Stop caring so much - just get up and do it!' And in fact, through
free improvisation of the speech, I did spontaneously find the
rnoment when suddenly -y body needed to close in on itself.
Embryonically, protectively, almost like in the torch-beam exercise. At this point, with a painful sense of utter loss, the words
tumbled out:

Ah! wherefore didst thou not look a,t me, fokanaan? . . .

Well, thou hast seen thy God, fokanaan, but rne, rne, thou
didst neaer see. If thou hadst seen me thou hadst loaed me.
f saw tltee, and I loaed thee. Oh, hop I looed thee ! f hoe
thee Jt, fokanaan. f hae only thee

My

body discovered a position, which then inspired the thoughts

(as expressed in the concrete form of writer's words), which th-en
fed back an appropriate emotion to rne, the performer. At last I was
beginning to understand that the body has a superior intelligence.

Summaty of the application to text

Of course, evely text will demand a different approach; howeven a
quick outline of the improvisations undertaken with Solome will give
an idea of the kind of structure that may be used in applying psychophysical techniques to text.
Free improvisation using body and spoken word
(ln this instance, with a mannequin as the prone lokanaan.) Such
freedom in the very first stage of rehearsals allows the actors and
director to explore what happens when attention is shifted around
the physical space. This enables the actors to find a means of

'

FROM ACTOR TO

ENSEMBLE

97

expanding 'inner life' to fill the outer theatre space, maintaining an

'inner' connection at the same time as building effective dramatic
pictures. lt's vety impoftant that the actors feel that anything goes at
this stage, that creative freedom is the order of the day. A workshop
leader or director must allow and encourage such liberation, so that
the actors can activate their creative 'Child-state', without worrying
that they have to come up with the ultimate performance/interpretation.

Constantly changing the given circumstances

(ln this instance, by changing the head of lokanaan from a mannequin
to an orange to an apple.) Through exploring the physical and vocal
connections with various stage objects, the actors can allow their
bodies, not their brains, to feed the imagination and awaken artistic
emotions.

Free improvisation with unexpected given circumstances

(ln this instance, the dialogue between Marat/Salome and
Sade/lokanaan.) All these exercises are concerned with continually
changing circumstances, so that the actors develop a state of constant
inner adaptation, so that once the mise-en-scdne is determined, there
will remain a sense of inner play and improvisation within a set
structure.

Froral.'the actor to the enseilrble

The Open Class in itself revealed a few problems. However much
I believed that if a process is correct, you can show it at any
moment and that will be a result in itself, I still felt the need to
perform, to illustrate how far we'd come in the process. I had
yet to mature in my psycho-physical awareness to feel the confidence simply to let go and to allow the audience to be part of the
dramatic experience, rather than spectators of a finished product. This feeling was endorsed by Ananyev's comments following my presentation of Salome; too frequently in my performing,
he saw the actress at work, the craftswoman sharpening her tools,
to the detriment of the character's free expression. He had hoped
to see the quality of rapid change in Salome's character that
I'd spontaneously found in the free improvisation with the

98

\MORKING ON YOUR SELF

Marat/Sade. During that particular improvisation, I'd organically discovered the fluctuation of emotion from scorn to love to
fear, whilst in performance, according to Ananyev, I seemed to display the cleverness of the actress. I still had a very long way to go.
At the end of the dry, the re-education of the body requires a
period of study far more intensive than a brief ten months could
allow. Ananyev's work had set in motion a process of reencountering and fine-tuning the actor's physical instrument.
This began with a Psycho-Physical Warm-up incorporating isolations and co-ordinations; physical wave movements; opening
and closing physically and imaginatively; and an understanding
of the inner waves between the thought-, ernotion- and willcentres using a matrix of body parts. Once the actors' bodies had
xity
been individually prepared, exercises incorporated the
of dialogues with stage objects, music, the space and
owperformer; free improvisations based on Michael Chekhov's
Psychological Gestures; application of these exercises to inner
rnonologues; development of levels of consciousness, through
the potent and intangible 'irradiation' of energies; and exploration of psychological states of Adult, Parent and Child, through
imaginative pictures and physical expressions. All this led towards the development of an actor's 'creative individuality'.
These components comprised the psycho-physical technique
underlying the contemporary Russian training, and connected
directly to Active Analysis. What became clear to me was that a
real state of constant inner improvisation was truly accessible
through the element of play. Although the solo work on Salome
was incredibly challenging and immensely rewardirg, the best
way of expanding your sense of play is by working in an ensemble.

99

ACT 3
Working in the Ensernble
Seizing 'the passionate kiss'

l\ Aost actors yearn to be spontaneous in performance. By that

IV I I mean, they yearn to give the appearance that every word
they utter, every movement, glance, pause, chuckle, tear has
sprung immediately from that moment in response to that
partner, whether it be on the stage or in front of the camera. ft
depends on the style of the piece, of course, but in terrns of
realistic drama or television, the illusion of spontaneity is probably most actors' dream. While in many ways this illusion may
seem to be an impossible expectation, it needn't be so difficult
or rernote. As I discussed in Chapter l, Williarn James propbsed
that the most important part of our environment is our fellowrrlari: And, in fact, we only have to turn to Stanislavsky to discover that the secret of spontaneous reaction on the stage is
simply to pay 'limitless attention to your partner.'6e If you give
absolute attention to every gesture and intonation made by the
person you're on-stage with, you can't help but locate your action
directly in what Stanislavsky called the 'transient now'.70 You're
not thinking about your next line, you're not thinking about why
the audience didn't laugh tonight, you're not thinking about why
your agent took ten per cent of your holiday pay. You are here
and now listening to the person you're performing with, and in
this way, you can begin to hold a vital and truthful dialogue.
In most acting set-ups, we don't often have the privilege of
creating a strong ensemble. Companies such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, Steppenwolf or Theatre de Complicit6 do place

roo

\MORKING

IN THE ENSEMBLE

a g,reat deal of emphasis on ensemble collaboration. But in your

average theatre environment where rehearsal time is limited to
three, four or - if you're very lucky - six weeks, or in much
television filming where rehearsals are more for the camera crew
than the actors, there just isn't the opportunity to develop group
interaction. But for Stanislavsky, the importance of collaborative
creativity was so great that anyone who marred the ensemble was
committing a crime against the very art that he or she served.7l A

strong ensemble can provide the most delicious of working

environments. And it's actually very sexy, in the sense that when
the creative energy is really racing between a company of players,
then the spontaneous communication can be exhilarating and exciting. This 'sexiness' was something that Stanislavsky was
clearly very aware of, describing ensemble interaction as 'even
more powerful than physical attraction. This unity is,'ofi,Gtremendous importance to actors. It gives them great creative ioy. It is
stronger than the most passionate kiss.'7z
This makes it all sound very desirable and very easy. And yet,
most of us know - whether we're actors, directors or teachers that the 'passionate kiss' can be very elusive. After all, an ensemble can only comprise the sum of its parts, and if it's goin$ to
be successful, there has to be an inherent complicity between the
individual actors. Since actors are only human beings and since
(as we all know) human beings have a certain chemistry which
either works between them or doesn't, it's hardly surprising that
complicity within a company of actors can be rather inhibited at
first. Or even non-existent. So how can we go about finding this
'passionate kiss' and creating an interactive ensemble? Again, for
me, the answer seemed to lie in the psycho-physical training as
f experienced it in Moscow. If the work of Vladimir Ananyev
(see Chapter 2) developed the actor's ability to listen to personal
creative impulses, the work of l(atya I(amotskaya extended this
sensitivity to the impulses of fellow actors. I(amotskaya was responsible for a class called Actor-taining, and the great potential
of this training lay in its simplicity and in the directness of its
penetration into the problems of on-stage interaction.

t
F
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CONVENTION VERSUS INNOVATION

IOI

Much as we may desire it, there's no infallible formula for

creating a collaborative ensemble, but that doesn't stop us investigating the possibilities. And I(arnotskaya's work was very much

'active research'. She had devised her Actor-Training programme in co-ordination with the text-based classes of Albert
Filozov, a celebrated actor with whom she worked as a tutor over
the course of seven years (see Chapter +). According to the makeup of each new student-group and along with the plays being
staged by Filozov, I(amotskaya changed and developed the
structure and content of every training programme. This enabled her directly to address the problems presented by each new
group through permutations of the various core exercises that
she'd devised. Because her course design was constantly chang-

irg, this chapter can in no way offer a hard-and-fast A-Z of

Ensemble Building, although it does contain a number of k"y

exercises, which probe certain generic problems. As I've discovered through -y own use of these exercises, they can unlock
a nurnber of the basic inhibitions, which beset a growing ensemble whatever the age or experience of its composite members.
In fact, the underlying principles behind the exercises arose from
the struggles that I(arnotskaya herself had met as an actor, particularly those she'd experienced as a drama student.

Convention versus Innovation

In her teens, I(amotskaya had attended Vakhtangov's Shchukin

Theatre Institute in Moscow, and she vividly described the experience of traditional Soviet training in the late 1980s: 'After my
third year at the Institute, I was very inhibited. I desperately
wanted to be an actress, but when I went out on the stage I was
empty and frightened. In my drama school, every exercise inhibited me more and rrrore, because they used the components of
Stanislavsky's system seporately. For example, the teacher would
say, "Relax your hands. Your legs are very tense. Wb are having a
Relaxation class, so please! Relax!" '

r02

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

During her time as a student, I(amotskaya undertook other

classes involving deeply emotional or involuntary responses
which were conducted under similar orders. One of these classes
was called Otzenkofoktor, which roughly translates as 'Appraisal
of a Situation'. Each week, the students, including I(amotskaya,
were asked to set up a true-to-life situation involving an ordinary

activity. It might be preparing a meal for a sweetheart, for

example, and all the students would bring the relevant props,
foods and costumes they needed to recreate a naturalistic environment. During the improvisation, an unexpected event
would suddenly take place: perhaps the telephone might ring,
and the student would hear a voice claiming that some terrible
disaster had befallen the awaited sweetheart. At that precise
rnoment, the student was expected to react to the situation
'truthfully and spontaneously' - which really meant.,,km-otion-

ally'. I(amotskaya described how over the three-month period of

the course, the on-going demand for instantaneous reactions
seerned to rob both herself and the other student-actors of any
chance of spontaneity. As far as the class-tutor was concerned,
it was essential that the students registered their reaction on
immediate receipt of the bad or shocking news. But I(amotskala
struggled against this. She felt that instant reaction wasn't
necessarily true to human nature: we often find, especially in
extreme situations, that delayed reactions or diverted angers
rnanifest themselves some time after a particular event. And for
I(amotskaya, the reverberation of natural human responses was
surely the raw rnaterial of actor-training. Handling the nuances
of natural responses requires a tutor to pay particular attention
to the individuality of each student. At the Shchukin School,
however, they seemed to be more concerned with every student
being perfect in the exercise. As I(amotskaya put it, her tutors'
expectation was that 'Two and two has to be four. Please, show
me this four!'But emotions aren't arithmetic: what if it's five?
'No, that's wrong. You've made a mistake. Show me four!'
At last, with the final year at drama school pending, I(arnotskaya decided she had to do something to unravel the psycho-

F-.

I
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GROTOWSKI,S TEATR LABORAToRIUM

r03

logical mesh which her formal training was weaving. So she

travelled to Poland to Jerzy Grotowski's Teatr Laboratorium . . .
Given the Teatr Laboratorium's infamous reputation for
physical and emotional extremism, this might sound like a case of
'out of the frying poo, into the fire'. But no. After three years at
the Shchukin Theatre Institute, I(amotskaya spent only twentyfour hours at the Teatr Laboratorium, but her response to the
work there was profound. She took part in The Tree of People
workshop, under the guidance of actors Ryszard Cieslak, Rena
Mirecka and Antoni Jaholkowski.T3 This workshop was part of a
project established in 1978 by Zbisniew Cynkutis (one of the
first members of Grotowski's troupe) and each event involved .rp
to four hundred people at a time. Ary division between leader
and participant, between work and rest, was eliminated so that
the whole experience became a living event, or what Grotowski
called a 'work-flow'; in l(amotskaya's case, it lasted for twentyfour hours. All activities, be they domestic or training periods,
became part of the sarne 'work-flow', and every couple of hours,
two new leaders came into the work-space and began fresh
activities. The participants could join in whenever they felt like it,
whatever the time of day or night and, although there were rest
hours, it wasn't uncommon for participants to stay awake for the
durationl.: so keen was their hunger to try each new experience.
The various groups involved in The Tree of People project consisted of actors, theatre researchers, and members of the public
who were simply there to experience Grotowski's approach to
life as much as to acting. Because of the range of experiences and
backgrounds, the group leaders engaged with the participants in
a very professional, but very emotionally open, way. I(amotskaya
described how the leaders worked with them almost as if they
were untamed animals: 'If you have a wild dog or fox and you
want to befriend it, you take very slow, very small steps. You
pause, because you're afraid of causing it pain, or frightening it.
And the same rules were applied to our work.' Over the twentyfour hour period, there was a series of exercises, beginning with
sirnple eye-contact with one other person and building up to

ro4

\MORKING

IN THE ENSEMBLE

complex and extended improvisations involving the whole group.

(The nature of these will become clearer as I discuss I(amotskaya's own Actor-Training prograrnme). Through these exercises, the experiences at The Tree of People workshop cornbined to
form the first step in awakening each individual to the power of
the ensemble.
Although l(amotskaya's time at the Teatr Laboratorium was
incredibly brief, it revolutionised her approach to her own acting
and formed the cornerstone of her future training technique. All
the physical and psychological tensions she'd accumulated during her forrnal training in Moscow were replaced by an immediate physical and inner relaxation. It was as if the processes that
she'd been somewhat 'force-fed' at drama school were presented
in an utterly simple and totally practical way during that one dry
at the Teatr Laboratorium. Armed with this new kno=ry,#dge, she
returned to Moscow to begin her final year at the Shchukin
fnstitute.

Collaboration with Filozov

I(arnotskaya's intention was to incorporate this simple, direct
and liberating training into her own performance practice. It

wasn't long, however, before she realised it was almost impossible: she now had one kind of approach inside her, while her fellow students were in another systern. She graduated, and spent
the next few years as an actress at the Moscow Philharmonic
Dramatic Theatre, the theatre at which Vladimir NemirovichDanchenko (Stanislavsky's co-founder at the Moscow Art Theatre)
had done a great deal of pioneering work in the late nineteenth
century. During her time there, I(,amotskaya struggled to absorb
the new Polish training into her acting work, but with little
satisfaction. It was during this time that she was cast in the Soviet
music-drama Ekspromt Fantasl by Vitoria Tokareva, in a production which was to be staged at the Stanislavsky Dramatic Theatre.
Suddenly I(amotskaya found herself playing opposite the lead-

THE STATE INSTITUTE OF CINEMATOGRAPHY

r05

ing Russian actor, Albert Filozov, and she soon realised that at
last she was working alongside a kindred spirit.
Filozov took considerable interest in I(amotskaya's description
of her work in Poland, and he was intrigued by the difficulties
she'd had in introducing these simple, yet rather esoteric ideas
into what was still a fairly staunch Soviet environment. Some
time after Ekspromt Fantasy, Filo zov was invited to take up an
acting 'mastership' at the famous State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). VGIK was steeped in the history of filmmaking and acting. Founded in 1919, it had been the artistic
'horne' of the early pioneering cinematographers Eisenstein,

I
I

I(uleshov, Gardin and I(ozintsev. Here Pudovkin had established

his laboratory into screen acting for movies including Mother
(1926) and The End of St Petersburg (1927), and delivered some of
the first ever lectures on Filrn Acting, later published in Britain
in 1935. And it was here that Filozov came in the late 1980s to be
responsible for the practical training of undergraduate students
on both the four-year Acting and the five-year Directing courses.
Having discussed the Polish experience extensively with I(amotskaya, Filozov knew that she passionately wanted to explore the
potenti al of this training. And so he invited her to become his
assistant. In this way, he could provide her with an environment
in which"to experiment and explore, and with a group of talented
young students eager for new experiences. So in 1989, I(amotskaya joined Filozov as a fellow pedagogue at VGIK. While
Filozov worked on playtexts, I(amotskaya started to form a trainittg system based on simple, organic exercises and rooted in
direct contact with an ensemble as she'd experienced it at the
Teatr Laboratorium.
During the first year, Filozov and I(amotskaya worked with a
group of eighteen-year-old Russian acting students, trying to
draw out their indiaiduality. The main focus was on inner process
rather than external result: what was going on inside the students
rather than well-executed theatre presentations. We have to
remember that this was Moscow in the late 1980s and the early
1990s: it was still very uncomfortable for the 'establishment' to

rc,6

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

deal with ideas of individuality, spirituality, personality. The

powers-that-be in VGIK considered the unconventional methods
adopted by Filozov and I(amotskaya to be extrernely hooliganski.
VGII('s Acting Department endorsed traditional Soviet interpretations of Stanislavsky, and fellow acting 'rnasters' still
approached student-work with the aim of producing a formal
result on the stage, a schematic production. In stark contrast,
Filozov and I(amotskaya wanted to release the personality of
their students, enabling them to explore their human freedorn,
their human truth, their individuality. They consciously sought
to break down the formal barriers between master and pupil,
encouraging their students to feel a sense of creative freedom
within the classroom, the like of which the young adults had never
really known before. The intentions were brave, and Filozov and
I(amotskaya pursued what they were doing, despite,tksi{ col.leagues' antipathy, doubt and sometimes blatant disapproval.
In the autumn of 1993, I(amotskaya and Filozov met the
eclectic troupe of English-speaking actors (myself included) who
had begun a one-year study at VGII(: a motley crew of British
and Irish practitioners, strangers to each other and totally alien
to the culture in which they had suddenly placed themselves. Out
of this unlikely band, using the techniques which she'd developed with her Russian students and based on her own discoveries
in Poland, I(amotskaya would attempt to form a collaborative
creative ensemble.

Finding yourself:
circles of attention, five-rninute recollection
The first few stages of I(amotskaya's approach were nothing
terribly new. Her main aim was to create an environment in
which each actor could begin to listen to him or her self and be
comfortable with that feeling. (This is where the Work in the
Ensemble is clearly connected with the Work on Your Self.) To
do this, I(,amotskaya began each session with an exercise based
on Stanislavsky's 'circles of attention', or 'stage attention' as it's

CREATIVE PASSIVITY

r07

more accurately translated. The exercise is very straightforward:

it's quite simply , matter of sitting with your eyes closed and
distilling your attention down to yourself at first, your own body,
your own thoughts, your own breathing and how you're feeling
here and now. Slowly you start to widen this circle of attention
to take in other stimuli: the people in the room, the noises outside
the room, the noises in the rest of the building, the noises outside
in the street, the noises in the rest of the town and so on. In this
way, the exercise begins by focusing on a very definite sense sound - and gradually expands to an exercise about imagination.
Can you hear the cashier at the local supermarket? Can you hear
the child in the school playground? Can you hear the conversation in the call-box on the corner? Although the exercise is very
basic, it's actually a wonderfully focused way of beginning ensemble work: it engages everybody in the same activity while
allowing each individual to explore his or her own frame of mind
each d^y.

Grotowski refers to this as'creative passivity':'The artist

must begin by doing nothing. Silence. Full silence. This includes

his thoughts. External silence works as a stimulus. If there is absolute silence and if, for several moments, the actor does absolutel
, this internal silence begins and it turns his entire
s its sources'.74 For I(amotskaya's work, this startnatu
ing point of tranquillity and attention was paramount, as it instantly focuses the actor inwards on him or her self, It then allows
the actors to take their attentiott outwards to the present moment,
'the transient now' - what's happening here and now with these
people in this space?
This perrnutation of Cirples of Attention was then followed
with an imaginative rnemory exercise. Again this was very simple:
each actor remembered as accurately as possible the first five
minutes of the day, including all the sensory experiences such as
the sound of the alarm clock, the feel of the pillow, the smell of
the coffee, the first look in the mirror, the taste of the toothpaste.
Every time the mind wandered, which inevitably it did as the
brain is very tricksy, it was quickly coaxed back into the exercise

r08

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

by simply recalling the vividness of the senses. (We like sensual

things - it's not a big problem to ask the brain to coniure up
sensory memories.) The exercise needn't focus on the first five
minutes of the day: it could be the first five minutes in this
particular room, or the journey to the rehearsal or the class.
Whatever the task, it should be something fairly straightforward,
with no huge emotional connotations, unless they arise spontaneously from the recollection of simple sensory details.
A combination of these exercises - Circles of Attention and
Fiz:e-Minute Recollection - was repeated at the beginning of most
of I(amotskaya's sessions. The result was that each actor's
powers of concentration and irnaginative recall began to gain in
strength. Even on the occasions when it was difficult to get the
mind to focus, something new was revealed. The exercises became a kind of touchstone for preoccupations or excittlffi'ealt or
anxiety or some other psychological area which made each
individual day particularly special or troubling.
At first, the tirne taken for the two exercises was about fifteen
minutes. Gradually the time was reduced to about five. The more
the exercises were practised, the less effort was involved in
silencing the mind, and eventually it was possible to reach- a
state of deep relaxation and intense concentration within a few
moments. It was a kind of 'Pavlov's dog' effect. In turn, creatiae
passiaity was strengthened: the ideal state to begin creative work
is one in which you, the actor, are so psychologically relaxed, but
imaginatively active, that anything is possible and you can turn
your emotions on a dime. Whatever your director suggests to you
is accessible and easy, because your inner life is putty in your
hands. And no matter which emotion is asked of you - be it
laughter, tears, anger, hatred, ecstasy or even equilibrium - the
sensation of playing with your inner life is both pleasurable and
fun. (This, of course, is the perfect state for working with Active
Analysis.)

SOUND OVER SIGHT

r09

Finding the others - sollnd over sight

So that was the first step in I(amotskaya's Actor-Training.
Taking the time - be it fifteen minutes or thirty seconds - to find
yourself, to listen to what's going on inside you today and to

relax yourself into a state of creative passivity to prepare your

inner instrument. The aim of the exercises which followed was
to bring you (in your highly prepared state of being) into contact
with other members of the group.
Acting is about play. One of our first means of human
socialisation is play. But we find it hard to play as adults: we're so
worried about what others will think of us in terms of how we
'We're
look, what we say, how we move.
vain. So the first stage in
creating a responsive ensemble is to liberate its participants
somehow from the social constraints which, in the course of
time, have inhibited and stifled our innate sense of play. The
most simple and direct ways of addressing this challenge are
(l) to remove sight, (2)to remove speech and (3) to free the actors
from certain physical boundaries. Over the years, I(amotskaya
had observed the difficulty actors have - whether they be firstyear drama students or experienced thesps - in establishing..and
maintaining direct eye-contact with strangers in an unfamiliar
ensern"hil"; During the early exercises, this inhibition was side-

stepped by encouraging the participants to keep their eyes

closed. In this way, she could begin to release thern from critically
observing each other and feeling embarrassed about themselves
in the first stages of getting to know one another.
By taking away speech as a means of communication, I(.amotskaya could release the participants from any kind of cerebral
association with the spoken word. One such exercise was introduced very early on in our course. One dty, we happened to be
working with some of the third-year Russian students, and as we
spoke practically no Russian and as their English was minimal,
I(amotskaya suggested that we only use sounds to communicate
with the others in the group. As usual, we all sat with our eyes
shut, each in his or her own space scattered round the studio.

r
IIO

\VORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

Then we took ourselves individually through the Circles of

Attention and the Five-Minute Recollection exercises. When we
were ready (every actor taking as much or as little time as he or
she needed to reach this point), we each began to emit a sound
expresSing how we felt that d"y. The sound could be anything a wail, a whistle, a hiss, a murmur, a shriek, a sigh. But it had to
be a sound that could be repeated. All the time that we created
our own particular sound, we listened to the noises being emitted
by other group-members who were scattered all around the room.
Once we each heard a sound that attracted us, we were to begin
to move towards it as if towards a magnet or a sonar signal (don't
forget, eyes closed all the time). Having found the emitter, we
were to rnake some kind of basic physical contact with our selected
partner, maybe something as simple as just touching fingers or
faces. This was a canny way of taking a critical stc#)- fowards
developing an ensemble with very little effort. The usual inhibitions of visual, vocal and physical intimacy were side-stepped
because we were all directly pursuing a simple objective. That
objective was: to make physical contact through basic oral communication. Unlike the vibrant theatre games proposed by practitioners such as Clive Barker and Augusto BoalTs, the Russian
approach was surreptitious. It released the actors slowly from the
inside out, to connect them freely with others in the group.
Removing sight and sound is comparatively easy. The biggest
challenge is finding a way of changing everybody" physicality, so
that they're not stuck in their formal behaviour and etiquette. To
do this, I(.amotskaya explored with us 'the animal within'.

The anirnal within

I'd participated in 'Animal Exercises' during my British training,
and never really taken much pleasure in them. It always seemed
to be a case of who could portray the best dung beetle or
wildebeest, so in Moscow I was rather resistant to the idea. I was

surprised, then, to discover just how quickly my whole perspective on the exercise was changed. The task was simple. Following

THE ANIMAL \^/ITI{IN

III

the Circles of Attention and Five-Minute Recollection, we were

to imagine waking up on the planet as if for the first time (again,
eyes closed throughout). We were to discover what our personal
body felt like, how it moved and how it experienced the
environment in a non-human way. The invitation to embody
animals - or rather, non-human 'creatures' - released us from
our individual physical limitations and from social human
etiquette. It wasn't a problem what you touched or who you came
into contact with, as it was all a voyage of discovery for these
strange new beings. For me, this was an important and exciting
departure from previous animal exercises. It didn't rnatter what
the creature was. We didn't even have to decide: we could simply
allow our imaginations to respond to the various movements that
our bodies were researching. We were as free as children to move

how we wanted and to do what we wanted, and if we made

physical contact with another 'creature', we were to understand
our relationship with it. Were we attracted to it, were we
repelled? Were we intimidated? Were we affectionate? To use
Ananyev's terms, did we open to this creature or close from it?
The result of being so wonderfully liberated from polite human
etiquette was that straight away we could build a far strongeV, far
deeper an_d far more trusting ensemble, than the boundaries of
social intercourse might otherwise allow. Taboos were rernoved,
because the freedom of play was incorporated along with the
excitement of exploring the unknown. Creatures intimidated at
this stage by physical contact simply retreated from the others
until the point at which they wanted to engage more actively in
the environment. This activity essentially incorporated Ananyev's
notion of central-to-peripheral movement (giving information to
the world) and peripheral-to-central (taking information from
the world) (see Chapter Z). Those creatures who were more confident or extravert were possibly exploring central-to-peripheral
co-ordination, while those more timid individuals were peripherally taking information (from the environment and/ or other
'creatures') and assimilating how that information affected them
centrally.

IT2

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

The impact of keeping your eyes closed during this exercise is

potent from two perspectives, the more obvious being the
removal of certain inhibitions. The second is that it quickly
deepens your connection with your own self, and in so doing it
develops and enhances your psycho-physical connection with the
exercise. In other words, the physical sensation of being earthbound by four limbs for exarnple, or slithering on your belly, or
balancing on one l.g, permeates the whole body and that in turn
arouses emotional reactions. Having your eyes closed seems to
intensify the experience, just as we'd found with the Ananyev's
early work. My own discovery was that the 'animal' released the
body from its usual habits and clich6s, enabling it to find new
physical expressions and strange new sensations. It was a bit like
experiencing the physical freedom of a cat - the way it lies on the
floor and stretches and twists and contorts and hangs h63rd-first
off chairs, taking pleasure in finding unusual positions, however
uncornfortable those shapes may look.
I repeat: much of this work was familiar to me, as no doubt it
is to many other practitioners, but the emphosrs was new. It wasn't
prirnarily about using an anirnal to find new aspects of a character's physicality, although in later modifications of the exercise
we did work on characterisations. It was about using 'creaturecontact' to develop an ensemble. It also cross-referenced with
Ananyev's work on the Sele
it was using non-human move"r
rnent to explore rhythrns and gestures that were new and unexpected to the individual actors, so that they found themselves
breaking free from the bounds of habits and clich6s.

Frorn I to eye
Exercises involving closed eyes, sound and non-human movement can be extrernely liberatingi as well as being jolly good fun
and creating powerful collaborative energy. But ultimately, of
course, the work has to develop. Having initially side-stepped the
difficulty of establishing intimate eye-contact, I(amotskaya's
second task was to address this very problem. For an interactive

FROM

I TO EYE

II3

ensemble to grow, you have to feel safe. You have to find the
collective state where, as I(amotskaya put it, ''We can look at each
other and we're not afraid of each other, and any reaction is good.

laugh, or cry, or remain silent, it doesn't matter. I'm not

aftaid of my feelings, and I'm ready to express whatever feelings
I have to my partner.'
Once again, it was a question of psycho-physical awareness. In
Ananyev's work, we were each independently discovering that
the greater our sense of physical freedom, the more our psychophysical sensitivity grew. As that psycho-physicality gre\M, our
emotions were more readily accessible. The result of this chainreaction was that it gradually became easier to express whatever
feeling arose from the inner 'dialogue' going on between our own
bodies and our own psyches. I(amotskaya now shifted the
emphasis from self to partner, from inner dialogue to outer
connection. There were three key phases in the early ensemble
training. The first phase, as we've seen, involved Circles of
Attention and Five-Minute Recollection to try and create a state
of creative passivity. The second phase involved 'blind' encounters between different animals or creatures, responding to sound
and touch. It was now time for the third phase - for the actors to
open their eyes! While 'opening your eyes' sounds like a fairly
simple Slr#muction, the speed at which the 'inner life' is disrupted
is quite startling, and the third phase can take sorne time to settle
into. The safety of exploring the world and a group of strangers
from a darkened cocoon is suddenly exploded, and it's not
uncommon to feel a peculiar sense of vulnerability And that's in
spite of the fact that we spend most of our waking lives walking
around with our eyes open anyway.
According to the nature of the group, these three phases can
follow on from each other fairly quickly even within the same
day's workshop. But it's important to be aware of the significant
shift that happens psycho-physically when you do open your
eyes. A whole new nest of vipers is unleashed once you start to
invite one or more partners into a game or dialogue. What I've
termed the 'third phase' was in fact used during our very first

If I

rr+

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

class with I(amotskaya in an exercise which had as its back-drop

an extract from Antoine de Saint-Exup6ry's classic French tale,
The Little Prince.

The Prince and the Fox

During this first class, we worked with a group of third-year
Russian acting students. So there was a curious combination of
students who already had two years' collaboration and a sense of
their own ensemble, and then ten of us foreign actors, unknown
to all, having only just arrived in this strange Russian culture. We
were working in one of the myriad of small acting studios at
VGIK, each of which is equipped with a performance area and
an 'auditorium'; each studio has enough lanterns to'light the
stage and create a powerful atmosphere for even the moTffinsic of
exercises. This was a wonderful facility, as it strengthened the
Circle of Attention for every task, ?S well as giving the actorstudents a sense that any work in training was using creatiae
energy and artistic emotions, not reaching into personal history
(something to which I'll return in Chapter 4). The first exercise
involved the Russians sitting scattered around the floor of the
half-lit stage, while the English-speaking actors remained in the
darkened auditorium. When we were ready, we were each to
enter the Russians' space and find a partner with whorn we would
begin a non-verbal dialogue, much in the same way that
I(amotskaya had experienced it at the Teatr Laboratorium.
What exactly does that mean, 'a non-verbal dialogue'? Well,
it's actually very straightforward. Once we'd approached our
chosen Russian, we were to start off just observing one another,
establishing eye-contact. If we wanted to, we could touch the
other person, simply exploring hands or faces. And if eventually
sufficient contact was established between us, we could try and
find a common game. A 'game' - what does that mean? Again,
it's as simple as possible. A game might be winking or tagging an activity so effortless that it could transcend the language
barrier, which at this stage obviously existed between the

THE PRINCE AND THE FOX

II5

English-speakers and the Russians. But it could be even simpler:

an empathy, a complicity some simple understanding, without
the slightest gesture or indication, would be powerful enough to
know that there was a genuine communication.
The idea which formed the backdrop for this exercise was the
episode in The Little Prince, in which the Prince befriends a Fox.
The Fox says to the Princer'If you want a friend, tame rne!'to
which the Little Prince replies, 'What do I have to do?'. The Fox
then describes what the Prince must do to gain a friend: 'You have
to be very patient. F'irst, you will sit down a short distance away
from rr1e, on the grass. I shall watch you out of the corner of my

say nothing; words are the source of misunderstandings. But each d"y you rnay sit a little closer to rne . . .
If you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you shall
be unique in the world. To you, I shall be unique in the world.'76
This irnage harks b'ack to I(amotskaya's description of the work at
the Teatr Laboratorium, and it was also the essence of the
dialogue between the Russians and the English-speakers on that
very first dry in Moscow. We, the Princes, were seeking some
simple point of contact with our Russian F'oxes, beginning with
observation, slowly building up towards trust, and finally developing a connection or non-verbal dialogue which (if it was truthful and honest) would of course be unique. Because we'd only iust
arrived in Russia, because we had no language and no points of
contact, because we were seeking 'to find our place in their
territory', the image of the Fox and the Little Prince was not only
pertinent, it was also very poignant. The curiosity, doubt, possible
fea4 but ultimate friendship that existed in the fictional relationship between the Fox and the Prince filled the real-life encounters
in the studio that d"y. What the story also did was illustrate how
every exercise the Russian tutors gave uS, however technical
it might b., had an imaginative or even allegorical backdrop.
Nothing was purely technique. In this way, even the simplest task
formed a significant component in psycho-physical development.
And so the exercise began. At first, we were disorientated. The
Russian students were restless and seemed to be laughing at us.
eye and you

will

.WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

r16

it

was because we didn't know the language, perhaps

because we didn't understand the culture, but somehow everything looked different, smelt different, sounded different. The
atrnosphere in the room seemed to be more conducive to doubt
and fear than to trust and friendship. It was hardly surprising
then that it took some time to establish open, direct contact: we
flinched from their overt laughter, we loitered against the walls,
the gap between the darkened auditoriurn and the lit space
seemed too far, too revealing. However, with this kind of exercise
(although I didn't understand it at the time), every expression or
reaction informs the ensemble activity. The Russians' laughter
was sirnply L manifestation of their own awkwardness at encountering us as an alien culture. While it was unsettling to be at
the receiving end, I realised in retrospect that it illustrated how
open they were to their inner feelings; they felt like laughinB, so
they laughed. There was no obstacle, no apology, no block, no
iustification.
My own journey through this exercise was revealing in terms
of the balance between process and result. My 'fox' was a young
Russian rnale, and right from the start our connection was fairly
irnmediate. We were cautious and attentive, but before long we'd
found a simple physical contact which developed into a basic
'rnirrorirg' game. But at the back of my rnind, I felt it wasn't
entirely successful. A srnall voice kept whispering in my head,
'What's the aim of this exercise? Are we all supposed to find a
point at which the whole Anglo-Russian group is joined in sorne
united welcome?' In other words, alrnost as soon as we'd started
the exercise, I'd begun thinking about the obfective, the result,
where we were heading. So the contact with my fox became a
rneans to an end, instead of the process of connection being the
end in itself. Having decided that the point of the exercise was to
unite us all, I tried to rnake similar close, unaffected links with
several other people at the same time. And I wasn't very successful. It soon became clear that I wasn't the only one: there were a
number of us in the group who were trying to impose a narrative
or scenario on the exercise. Little pockets of people were linking
Perhaps

NAVIGATING THE GAME

I17

arms, trying to form circles or start collaborative games. And it

just wasn't working. We were wading through treacle.
After a while, I(.amotskaya stopped us. Watching from the outside, she could see how our collective instinct was to superimpose
a result on the games, as a consequence of which we were forcing
the activity rather than allowing it to develop its own narrative.
The general impulse within this group at this stage of its infancy
was that concrete decisions had to be taken: 'Now we'll play tag.
Now I'll hide from you. Now we'll link arms. Now we'll clap
hands'. We were consciously navigating the game, rather than
letting its course emerge through limitless attention to our
partners. Given that it was only the very first d"y of work, this
was in fact quite a major discovery for rne. I suddenly realised
that I'd spent much of my career as an actor trying to identify
what the aim of a certain garne or exercise was, or what result a
director wanted me to achieve. In a strange way, f'd spent my
creative life trying to please other people, trying to do the right
thing. Which was probably why I wasn't such a great actor: I
wasn't really listening to rny own creative voice. I didn't realise
that the real answer, the real activity, the honest truth, is in this
moment, with these actors, in this space. ft was very difficult foq
me - as with many of the others in the group that day - to trust
the inner process, whereby a game or an activity would inevitably
arise if the simple direct contact with a partner was open and
responsive.

This illustrates the complexity of forming an ensemble: you

have to be very precise in your contact with one partner first.
Once you know you can maintain that degree of attention and
honesty, only then can you open it out to include two, three, four
and finally a multitude of other partners without the real contact
being broken. In many ways, it'd be idealistic to think that
something as delicate and complex as a truly unified ensemble
could have been achieved in the very first session. Nonetheless, it
was useful to experience the trial so early on, and to understand
just how far we had to go and how many obstacles there were to
remove

18

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

SummaJT oI early ensemble exercises

Finding Yourself:
Circles of Attention: With eyes closed, listening to the sounds in
yourself, the room, the building, the street, the town.
Five-Minute Recollection: With eyes closed, recalling all the sensory
details of the first five minutes of the day, the class, the rehearsal.

Building an Ensemble:
Sound Contocts: With eyes closed, emitting a simple sound, and
gradually making physical contact with the person emitrting a sound
to which you are drawn.
Animol Exercises: With eyes closed, imagining that you are a
'creature', awaking for the first time on this planet; exploring
movement, environment, other creatures with whom you come into
contact. When you wish, open your eyes and continue explorations.
The Prince ond the Fox: Half the group are Princes, half are F
The Princes gradually 'befriend' the Foxes, finding a simple point of
contact which may develop into a basic game. Once true contact has
been formed with one partner, connections with other partners may
be developed, gradually and attentively opening up the possibility for
the whole group to participate in a collective game or interaction.
rti:rl"

Walking the oia, nega,tiaa,

Removing obstacles is at the heart of creating a vibrant ensemble,
and The Prince and the Fox Exercise provided the first step in
understanding what Grotowski called the oia negotiao.TT The oia
negatia& was a process of simplification, in which the actor was
not required 'to do somethirg, but to refrain from doing something.'78 For Grotowski, the inner journey on which an actor goes
is almost sacred in its asceticism. FIe referred to it as the technique of the 'holy' actor: it's an inductiae ot:.e, in other words
a process of eliminating blocks. Whereas that of the 'courtesan'
actor is a deductiae technique, concerned with the accumulation
of skills. The idea behind this inductive process is similar to
the psycho-physical technique that Stanislavsky proposed, as

THE 'VIA NEGATIVA'

II9

Grotowski believed that an inductive process would reduce the

time-lapse between the inner impulse we experience and the
outer reaction we express, so that 'the impulse is already an outer
reaction. Impulse and action are concurrent.'7e This is what the
Prince and the Fox was all about: the elimination of blocks,
rather than the acquisition of skills. In other words, there was no
preconceived result being sought; it was just a question of letting
Bo, of submitting to whatever was really going on in each
moment, of allowing impulse and action to be concurrent, and of
walking the aia negatiaa.
As I've touched on in reference to Scenic Movement, this
proved to be one of the most significant and problematic lessons
for those of us who had worked in British theatre, where short
rehearsal periods often preclude ensemble collaboration and invite
swift results. As far as the Russian actor-training was concerned
(and as we've already seen with Ananyev's work), engaging in the
process D&s the result. Yet in spite of its apparent sirnplicity, I

found this an incredibly difficult concept to grasp. It's a dichotomy that's summed .rp by Grotowski, when he says, 'You must
not think of the result. But, at the sarne time, finally, you can't
ignore the result because from the objective point of vieq the
ctor in art is the result.'8O Because of the significance
de
product' in the creative arts, Grotowski goes on to say
of
that Art 'is immoral. He is right who has the result. That's the way
it is. But in order to get the result - and this is the paradox - you
must not look for it. If you look for it, you will block the natural
creative process. In looking, only the brain works; the mind
imposes solutions it already knows and you begin juggling known
things.' So what Grotowski is saying is that we have to engage in
our artistic endeavours without becoming preoccupied with the
outcome: that's the only way we can begin to provoke ourselves
into finding creatively new and unexpected things. Wise words
indeed, but so hard to implement.
One of the most refreshing aspects of I(atya l(amotskaya's
work was that there was no right or wrong beyond the elimination of blocks - when you feel that you're responding to the

r20

\MORKING

IN THE ENSEMBLE

reality of living here and now, then that's right! It's as simple as
that. If here and now you feel uncertain, work with that apprehension; if here and now you feel tired, work with that fatigue.
And yet the paradox of this simplicity is that it illustrates the
degree of complexity involved in truthful on-stage dialogue.
What quickly becomes apparent - if you work attentively in
developing an ensemble - is that it's not iust your partner who
affects your psycho-physicality: the acting space itself gives you a
huge amount of inforrnation.

Two People in the Ernpty Space

in

Scenic Movernent was that the space

through which the body moves is just as important.r.:.as the
physical position itself, So if I raise my arrns in a desperate plea
to God, the sensation I experience as rny hands move from the
sides of rny body to above my head is iust as significant as the
final gesture of prayer. Exactly the same relationship between
space and body exists when you're working in an ensemble.
usually, we're so preoccupied with the 'blocking' of a scene, that
we don't even think about the sensation of moving round the
stage and negotiating our partners. And it's our loss: because that
movement and those physical negotiations can actually give us
far more psycho-physical information than the final position
itself. With this in mind, it comes as no surprise that the early
stages of I(amotskaya's work were concerned with the sirnplest
encounters between ctors in an empty space. The first of these
exercises I've unimaginatively called Two People in the Empty
Spoce. But in fact, this is a misnomer. When a true sense of what
Michael Chekhov calls 'radiating and receiving energy' exists
between two or more people, the space between them is far from
empty - it's actually very full.
In Two People in the Empty Space, two actors entered from
opposite sides of the stage. No word was spoken. The only
communication came through their eyes, through radiating and
receiving the energy between them (as communicated from solar
Ananyev's premise

TWO PEOPLE IN THE EMPTY SPACE

12I

to solar plexus), and through 'reading' the space that

existed between them. So, it was a matter of being attentive to
the way in which the space expanded and contracted as they
plexus

approached and retreated from each other, and how that changing

distance inforrned the cornrnunication between them. Through

paying limitless attention to each other, they were to determine
their relative status and dynamics, and to move anywhere in the
space according to their inner impulses. It might well be that
neither person would feel the desire or the need to move at all, in
which case they could simply stand still. Nonetheless, this stillness should be active and receptive, alert to any changing energy
which might then inspire either party to move. In other words, it
was to be a'creative passivity'. Sometimes they might find that
they come very close, that they touch, embrace, slap, retreat,
circle each other. One partner might move a lot. One partner
might move very slowly. ft was all dependent on the two participants' attention to each other and to the space, and to the tiniest
of changes which they rnight perceive. Each encounter usually
lasted between five and fifteen minutes.
While the exercise may sound rather esoteric, there's actually
nothing very new about it. This kind of non-verbal, minirnalist
corrmunication was referred to by Stanislavsky as 'communion'
iliation', and I(amotskaya's exercises were essentially
using the same kind of energies that I've described in Ananyev's
work. As far as both Stanislavsky and Michael Chekhov were
concerned, these intangible means of cornmunication were
intrinsic to the acting process and to the development of a cooperative ensemble. Chekhov believed that to 'radiate on the
stage rneans to gizse, to send out. And its counterpart is to receizse.
True acting is a constant exchange of the two.'81
With Two People in the Empty Space, it was clear to see how
powerful narratives effortlessly arose out of the changing spatial
dynamics between two partners. All they were doing was giving

out and receiving psycho-physical information through their

eyes, their bodies and their energy centres (located more or less
in the solar plexus). The reason why these exchanges were

r22

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

so powerful both to experience and to watch was that the actor

had to be so simple. ft's back to Grotowski's idea of the aia
negatiaa - the elirnination of blocks. ft's a question of the actors
surrendering their desire to demonstrate or act the externals and,
instead, releasing themselves to what's really going on inside the
relationship. When participants tried to short-cut the process by

overtly gesturing, nudging, winking and generally sign-posting

what they wanted their partner to do, the whole encounter was
rendered void and boring. Radiating and receiving energies
required a naive trust in unseen forces. Not that there was anything particularly Darth Vader about this: we're all engaged
every day in intangible communication picking up on bad
atrnospheres, sensing when our personal space is invaded, being
affected by someone else's good hurnour. But it's not ofte.n that
we focus so intensively on these energies. And trusting iri'tfiem
was no mean feat, particularly with those actors who were still
firmly entrenched in the need to present a 'result'.
It proved to be extremely difficult for one participant,
Claire, for whom these exercises weren't always very successful. One day, there was a particularly frustrating experience when
Claire and I took part in Two People in the Empty Space. The
basic problem was that she didn't give herself time to locate
her 'creative passivity', or (to put it more sirnply) to start from
neutral. Instead, she entered the space very quickly and, straight
away, she made a decision and sought a result. Her decision
was: to befriend me. She walked right up to me and offered
me her hand. When I didn't respond to her invitation, she sat
on the ground and patted the floor, letting me know that she
wanted me to sit down next to her. fntransigently, I still didn't
respond. The problem was that she hadn't allowed what
Stanislavsky calls a 'moment of orientation'. This is a moment of
observing your partner and sussing out what's actually going
on, here and now. (I'll talk about it more in Chapter 4.) Because
we'd rushed the moment of orientation, w couldn't find the
direct inner contact between us, and so truthful communication
couldn't exist.

ACTING IN A BUBBLE

r23

After the exercise, I(amotskaya's observation was that Claire's

'signposting' had been 'cold' and 'empty'. This unsettled Claire,
since she felt that she'd been open and warm with me, and it was

me who had been cold and empty towards her, as I rejected her
invitations and generally greeted her with hostility. In some
ways, she was right. The point of the exercise is that you pay
limitless attention to your partner and respond to whatever he or
she does in an open and spontaneous way. I certainly hadn't been
open to what Claire was doing. In many ways, I was as guilty as
she was. I had gone into the exercise expecting a certain quality
of response: when that didn't happen, I felt myself starting to
iudge the connection (or lack of it). Instead of going with what
she was doing and working with her, I began to have this conversation in my head, saying, 'You stupid woman, why are you
being so phoney? Don't think I'rn going to come and sit down
next to you, just because you're patting the floor telling me
that that's what you want me to do.' I was resisting what she considered to be serious attempts at communication, because I
believed they were superimposed and insincere.
And herein lies a maior lesson about acting, one which was to
take me some time to really learn. And that is: you c&n neaer make
pa,rtner act in the way you want them to. I'm sure
have had the experience of thinking their partners
are making a complete pig's ear of the parts they're playing.
Instead of truly responding to the reality of what's happening on
the stage, the tendency is to start acting as ifthey were relating to
you in the way in which you wanted them to. And this is when
on-stage communication becomes formal and fake. Each actor
starts working in a bubble, as if his or her partner is doing one
thing, when in fact something completely different is going on. If
we want to develop a true ensemble, we have to work with our
partners here and now in the present tense. (Again, this is something I'll come back to in Chapter 4.)
Claire's experience to date had encouraged her to work in a
way where each individual takes care of his or her own work (p"tticularly in television), and truthful interaction with a partner is

r24
a happy

\MORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

(if occasional) by-product. This was confirmed the next

dry when she tried the exercise with actor-student, Danny. Once
again, Claire entered the space with pre-determined choices, as
if (understandably) she was afraid to enter the stage in neutral
and just see where the dialogue took her. She started slapping her
arrrrs to indicate imaginary cold and banging an oil drum in the
corner of the room to initiate some kind of game. In other words,
she was looking for the root of the dialogue in the enaironment,
whether real (the oil drum) or imaginary (the cold), rather than
in the simple connection with her on-stage partner. These
activities rendered it difficult for Danny to strike up any dialogue
with her beyond joining in her superimposed games, which indeed he did. But because the games weren't rooted in a dynamic
connection between the on-stage partners, they quickly became
dull, both for the participants and for the observers.
The exercise demands nothing rnore than paying simple

attention to your partner. I know from experience that that

degree of simplicity can be very daunting, in that it heads
straight for the unknown, or as David Mamet wonderfully puts
it, 'the terrifying unforeseen'.82 At the sarne tirne, it can be hugely
liberating for exactly the same reason - because it heads straight
for the unknown. You don't have to be clever, you don't have to
be funny, you don't have to think up anything wonderfully
original. You iust have to plunge into the empty space, pay
attention to your partner and respond with the lightness of a
child.

Three People in the Ernpty Space

Like Claire, I had many problems with the work in the early
stages of the Russian training. At the time, of course, I didn't
understand the strands that would later become so obvious with
2O:20 hindsight. Suffering under my own preconceptions of
what the exercises should be about, they weren't always successful for rrre, as was the case with Three People in the Empty Space.
This was basically an extension of the previous exercise; once a

THREE PEOPLE IN THE EMPTY SPACE

r25

relationship was established between the first two participants,

a third person entered the space. Instantly and inevitably, the
dynamic between the first two people was affected. ft was very
important at this point that all three participants \Mere fully
attentive to the shifting inner connections, otherwise it was very
easy to begin superimposing a ttarrative of alliances and conflicts
within the triad. That's not to say that narratives were invalid; in
fact, as I've described in Ananyev's work, they were inevitable.
But it was important to be aware of when these shifting alliances
were spontaneous and when they were contrived.
As a spectator, it was very easy to see the difference between
conscious decisions being made within a group, and spontcr,neous
rea,ctions to the given moment. This distinction was particularly
clear with one trio, who interacted as if they were in a game of
chess: one moved, waited for the others' assessment of that
move; the second moved, waited; the third moved and waited,
and so on. Each participant was pre-determining his or her next
move, as a result of which everything was rather generalised.
The moments when they weren't precisely absorbing the 'radiated' information were frighteningly evident. It'd be wrong
to dismiss their interaction completely, as in fact this- trio
was certainly involved in a kind of game with each other. But the
quaffi of their play remained forrnal and formulaic, locked in
the brain, rather than integrated between themselves and the
space.

When actors were really radiating and receiving between each

other, Three People in the Empty Space - just like the previous
exercise with Two People - had the potential to be an extremely
liberating exercise. To have the freedom iust to enter a space with
no preconceived relationships or formulated story to allow your
'inner ear' simply to listen and to respond was very exciting, both
to experience and to observe. If you entered the space in a state
of 'creative passivity' whereby you were ready for anything to
happen, then the subtle changes in mood could be quite profound, according to the spatial dynamics established between
first two participants and then shifted by the third.

r26

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

Where's the fun in it?

Despite the freedom of the Empty Space encounters, there was
another lesson I found ridiculously difficult to learn: that acting
could be fun. These exercises weren't necessarily august and
earnest; there was plenty of room for humour. It was the third
week of the course and up until now, the atmosphere had been
rather austere. After all, this was Russia, this was the land of
Stanislavsky and 'serious acting'. Or so I thought. tlntil I tried
the exercise with a wonderfully playful actor, the aforementioned
Danny, who on this occasion entered the space with a provocative
sense of mischief-making. At this point in the training programme, I was still rather result-orientated, still too intellectual
in my approach. It was difficult at the beginning of each encounter not to think in terms of 'What are the parameters of this.exercise? What are we allowed to do? Can we laugh? Can we touch?'
What I hadn't yet appreciated was that there was only one
pararneter with all these exercises: honesty of communication.
There was no right or wrong. If you felt the impulse to do something, you did it: that was the sole criterion of communication.
This brought into focus even rnore sharply the fine line
between spontaneity and imposition. In working towards the aio
negatiaorl'd becorne so cautious about not irnposing anything on
any encounter that, paradoxically, I was beginning to block
everythitrg. That in turn was killing any sense of play. Danny, on
the other hand, wasn't forcin g a narrative, but he was certainly
encouraging a quality of playfulness. So anxious was f to start
from neutral and not superimpose anything on the encounter, I
impeded any natural flow of communication and I completely
failed to respond to the light and mischief in his eyes. It was as if
he'd said, 'Let's play cricketr' and I'd said, 'Ah ro, we can't,
because we're not wearing cricket whites.' He was offering a
game, and I was looking for the rules. This rendered it impossible
for him to develop any true dialogue with rne, so that when the
third person, Bex, entered the space to join the encounter, she
couldn't understand what on earth was going on. I was blocking

FROM EXERCISE TO TEXT

r27

all the channels of communication between us. At the end of the

exercise, I(,amotskaya reminded us that 'Every exercise is a game,
it's fun. Please don't be so serious! You're not in a serious
profession!'

How can you apply these exercises to text?

Taking things too seriously could certainly have its draw-backs . . .
It's important to remember that, right from the start, I(amotskaya's programme ran in conjunction with Albert Filozov's
text-based work. Therefore, while we were exploring various
non-verbal exercises in Actor-Training, we were also allying
them to the plays being staged in the parallel class. To this end,
we were asked in the first week of term to select scenes from
Shakespeare. That evening, Bex and I diligently selected our
scene, opting for the meeting between Viola and Olivia in Tweffih
Night (Act One, Scene Five, when Viola arrives to press Count
Orsino's suit). Determined to take the work seriously and get our
homework done, we speedily began learning the words of the
text in preparation for the following day's class. This was more
or less in accord with the result-orientated background 'from
which most of us in the English-speaking group had come: learn

the'tcxt, and plan a bit of 'blocking'. Next dry in the Actortaining class, we proudly volunteered ourselves for the presentation of our scene. What followed was an outpouring of
rapidly-learnt text with a hastily pre-determined mise-en-scine: it
was little more than an empty rattling of words with no inner
content and a gaping chasm between action, emotion, text and
partner. Nonetheless, we felt assured that we'd taken the assign-

rnent seriously.
In response to the ernpty 'result' of our approach, I(amotskaya
suggested that we try the Two People in the Empty Space
exercise. In other words, we were to take the minimal given
circumstances and the relationship between the two women, and
explore the meeting without the scripted text. Bex would start off
on her own in the empty space (as Olivia is already in her court)

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

128

was to enter that space (iust as Viola enters the court); by

simply paying attention to each other, we were to allow the
relationship to unfold. Before any action began, we were to take
a moment of stillness to eliminate our preconceptions of what
might happen, and to free ourselves up to respond to whatever
unfolded following the first 'moment of orientation'. Strangely,
the challenge was far more daunting than trying to remember the
rapidly-learnt text. Nonetheless, by rernoving mental obstacles
and 'clearing' the space between us, we discovered that, as the
simple spatial dynamics changed, the status fluctuated between
Viola and Olivia. No effort was involved in experiencing the
shifting emphases of curiosity, suspicion, fear and attraction: real
sensations and emotions arose purely from concentrating on the
radiation of energy between us. It didn't call for any heavy-

and

weight emotion mernory: the action both inner actid$ibnd

,physical action - stemmed from just paying limitless attention to
the partner. These were the early stages of Active Analysis.
Out of this apparent shapelessness, a very clear form emerged.
The point of the exercise wasn't to play out the dramatic action
silently in our heads, but we discovered that by attending to each
other's faces and eyes, it was fairly obvious which part of the
scene was unfurling. Sometimes it was almost as if our thoughtprocesses were plastered across our foreheads for the other actor
to read like a text. Once again, there was nothing new about this
exercise. The process was clearly rooted in the kind of experiments undertaken by Stanislavsky in 1926, when he was working
on The Sisters Gdrard by D'Ennery and Corman. He instructed
his cast to 'Speak the text . . . only with your eyes. Don't speak
aloud one word, but say your lines to yourself.' At this point, one
of the actors, Luzhsky, qluizzed Stanislavsky, saying, 'I think,
I(onstantin Sergevich, what is not clear is how one would know
that his partner had finished a sentence if he only speaks to himself?' To which Stanislavsky confidently replied, 'The whole
question depends on extreme attention to one another
Observe each other constantly and you will always guess when
one finishes a sentence or completes a thought, although he never

SILENT PARTNERS
speaks

it

aloud.'83

r29

And this is exactly what Bex and f discovered

and the freedom was exhilarating.

Of course, this was only the start of the work. It's all well and
good feeling the intensity of Shakespeare's text without the
worry of having to speak any of the poetry, but there has to be a
way of keeping that dynamic inner connection once the words
start to form the ideas. In fact, our intense observation during the
first exercise was a huge help when it came to the second task
proposed by l(amotskaya. This time, we stood about two metres
apart and simply spoke the text in half-tones, with very little
physical movement. (Once again, this echoed Stanislavsky's
practices during his early exploration of psychological action in
I9O7 when he was rehearsing The Drama of Ltfe.) Now the text
did all the work. By stilling the body and responding to the

impulses behind the words, a multitude of rapidly-changing

emotions were released, each of which might flash, recede and
come to prominence if we just paid attention to each other and
lived in the 'transient now'. Bex's face seemed to transforrrr,
sometimes almost beyond recognition, as I became intrigued by
her, bewitched by her, envious of her, hateful of her, suspicious
of her. And in this way, we took the first steps towards finding the
p
physical connection between the space, the on-stage
p
and the ernotions as inspired by the script. During this
slow iourney into the text, we both experienced an intense inner
activity, which was so pronounced that it didn't take rne long to
recognise the hollowness of our initial 'presentation'.

Silent partners
It was now a question of integrating text, body and radiation. To
this end, we applied the Three People in the Empty Space
exercise to the Tpelfth Night scene, with a third actor as a mute
Orsino. During the improvisation, all three of us could move
anywhere we wanted, meaning that Bex and I could both relate
to the silent Orsino as and when it seemed appropriate. She and
I could also use any words from the text if we felt like it. The

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

r30

presence

of the non-speaking Orsino served two particular

purposes, the first of which was that it extended the dialogue into
an ensemble. Since Orsino could also move whenever he wanted,
the tensions and pain within the scene soon became clea4 as

invariably his attention was focused on Olivia/Bex when, of

course, I (as Viola) wanted it turned towards me. The second
effect of the third person was that the integration of the three
centres (thought, feeling and action) came to light. Sometimes
the emotion-centre was predominant, when the energy was being
radiated between partners. Other times the action-centre dominated, as each of us felt physically drawn a,Day from one person
and towards another. And sometimes, through the use of the text,
the thought-centre predominated. We rarely spoke complete
sentences, but iust uttered isolated words if they seemed Recessary in a given moment. Except Orsino, of course, who was'Silent

throughout.

Although there's nothing revolutionary about working

through a scene using only the occasional word, the result of

it as part of a sequence of

exercises had two striking

effects. The first of these was that the process of selecting the
specific words led us to uncovering the subtext of the scene.
The words we each chose at any given rnoment illuminated for
the other actors what we (through our characters) considered to
be at the heart of the encounter. It was a sensational - or experiential - response to the situation, rather than a cerebral one. And
ultimately it's the information you receive from 'experiencing' a
scene that underlies Active Analysis.
The second important factor with this exercise is that you have
to pay absolute attention to your partner. Not only do you have
to hear the chosen word, but you really have to understand how
that word affects you emotionally, intellectually and viscerally.
There were times when we found ourselves repeating the same
word several times, as if we were striving to underline an emotion
or thought, to try and persuade or impress upon the other
character just how significant that word was for us. There was
one moment in particular which struck me with unexpected

doing

13I

SUMMARY OF EXERCISES

force, and that was the point at which Olivia finally began to raise
her veil. Throughout the scene, I'd had a burning desire to see
Olivia/Bex's face and yet, at the last moment, I simply couldn't
watch as she lifted up the veil: all I wanted to see was Orsino's
reaction. When I did look at Bex's face, it had completely
changed; there was a.bizarre neediness, as if she wanted to be
seduced by Yiola/ Cesario. And all I wanted to do was to yell
repeatedly the single word 'Olivia!'. I was starting to understand
the psycho-physical nature of words themselves, and with that
understanding came an awareness of how phoney and shallow
my acting to date had been. How rnany short-cuts I'd taken. How
often I'd put beautiful ernpty form before rough real content.
After four years' training and five years in the business, I was

beginning to realise how extraordinarily complex the ctrt (ts

opposed to the job) of acting is. And it was a painful realisation.

Summaty oI exercises towards Dramatic Action

These exercises may be used in the abstract, or with a play-text
forming the dramatic backdrop. While the nature of these improstill fairly free, the contact is definitely human.
vis

o fi^rb'People in the Empg

Space
Two actors enter the space, moving as much or as little as required,
inventing nothing, denying nothing, and allowing the contraction
and expansion of the space to give them as much psycho-physical
information as the maintained eye contact provides. lt's important
not to indicate or'telegraPh' anything through overt gestures, winking,
beckoning, etc. As long zrs eye contact is maintained and the arms
aren't crossed in front of the body or shoved in pockets, the energ)f
centres will connect and all the 'dialogue' needed by the actors will
be apparent.

o Three People in the E-pty

Space
Two actors set uP a non-verbal dialogue, shor1cly after which they are
joined by a third person. Throughout the non-verbal 'conversation',
the actors note the way in which the expanding and contracting

r32

WORKING rN THE ENSEMBLE

space between them affects the changing relationships and status
between the three. Spectators' obseryations are always interesting,
as inevitably different 'narratives' form in the minds of different
observers.

Silent Partners
Two People in the Empty Space go through the scene silently just
with eye contact.
Two People in the Empty Space go through the scene very quietly
standing 2m apart.

A Third Person is introduced where appropriate, using as much or

as little text as is desired.

Laughter-T ears
As f've mentioned, many of the Actor-Training exerciqqF::.were
_ reminiscent of various practices pioneered by Stanislavsky
throughout the course of his tife. To a large extent, we were
using Active Analysis as a rneans of developing our indiaidual
and our collectioe psycho-physicality. The diversity of responses
which arose from these improvisations illustrated just how many
facets of our psyche we can tap into through experiential learning.
However, this was only the first building block. It was all very
slow and precariorrs, this business of developing an ensemble and
awakening a psycho-physical process. ft required constant nurturing during the ten-rnonth programme, if we were really going
to prepare our inner 'creative state' for performance. And it was
to this end that I(amotskaya had developed her Laughter-Tears
exercise. The parameters of the Laughter-Tears exercise
couldn't have been simpler. You all laugh together, then you each

cry on your own. Once you're crying, you halt that solitary
emotion and turn your attention back to the group.
So how do you do that, and rnore irnportantly, what's the
point?

At the start of the exercise, the group sat in a circle and

observed one another very carefully, as if it was the first time
they'd ever seen each other. It's funny how strange the human

LAUGHTER_TEARS

r33

physiognomy is, particularly if you really study everyone's face,

and especially if the group comprises people you've known for
a long time. Noses are suddenly crooked, eyebrows meet in
the middle, ears seem to stick out, eyes are totally asymmetrical.
Faces you thought you knew so well are suddenly misshapen and
comical. This was the starting-point for Laughter-Tears. Just by
looking at everybody with a new curiosity, each participant was to
find a quality of joy, until the point was reached when everyone
in the group was collectively laughing. It's difficult for a new
ensernble to find the peak of laughter simultaneously, and so it
was important that everyone knew that they didn't have to wait,
trying to sustain their laughter at an optimum., until the whole
group was laughing uproariously. One person's guffaw will be
another person's giggle. The ideal is that the whole group finds a
comrrron height of laughter: in practice, each individual reaches
his or her own personal peak and then rrroves on to the second
stage. What most ensernbles find, though, is that the more they
work together, the easier it is to find a level they all share. (It's
also interesting to note how easy it is to laugh one dry and how
hard it is the next, or vice versa.)
The second stage of the exercise was as follows. When each
indi al felt that they had reached their peak of laughter for
that he or she was to turn out of the circle and begin to find
a quality, or depth, of despair. 'Depth of despair' rnay sound
rather intimidating, but it's not a question of dredging up sorne
deep-rooted childhood fear. Tears can corrre frorn a number of
sources that exist here and now: the physical position you're
sitting in, the coldness of your hands or the curve of your foot.
Even the immediate environment can provoke a sense of sorrow:
during one exercise, I saw a grirny black patch on the floor where
the roof had leaked, and this in itself coniured up a feeling of

despair which, within minutes, converted itself into tears.

Hearing or sensing the sorrow of other people in the room can
arouse an empathic grief within you. Maybe the despair will
corne from a recent memory such as the flash of an image on the
news that rnorning. But perhaps the rnost evocative source is

r34

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

imagination: there was one rather melancholy dry, when it

suddenly struck me that I was too old to play Juliet, and I felt this
bizarre sense of loss for the germinating Juliet who would never
come to fruition. So, it needn't involve a deep plunging into

personal history. If you have an active imagination and an open

heart, anything happening in this roorn in this moment can inspire a quality of tears. But 'depth of despair' needn't be tears it can just be an inner sense of heaviness, darkness, emptiness,
even nothingness. You don't have to weep and wail.
Once this 'depth of despair' had been contacted, it was very
important that the individual stopped the emotion at its nadir.
This was the third stage in the exercise. By consciously focusing

the mind on the Circles of Attention or the Five-Minute

Recollection, it was possible to shift frorn the emotion-centre to
the thought-centre by means of a concrete rational cli$t'Enge
- which was simple and sensory. Laughter-Tears is not psychodrarna: it's psycho-physicol training. Ananyev's work was geared
towards tuning up the actor's body like an instrument. The aim
of this exercise is to tune up the actor's inner life, so that the
highest harmonic or the deepest bass note can be sounded
effortlessly and (most importantly) artistically. Michael Chekhov
talks about 'stage emotions', as opposed to personal emotions. If

you imagine that your real emotions are located inside you in
your solar plexus, your stage emotions are held out in front of
you in the palm of your hand. There you can offer them up to the
world and retrieve them at your will. They're connected to you
as if through the urnbilical cord of your arm, but they're separate
from you, in just the same way that you can look at your hand,
put it in a glove, close it in a fist, or smother it with lotion. Stage
emotions are separate, but attached; we harness them, they don't
control us. There is, of course, a strong therapeutic element to
hearty laughter and deep sobs, and sometirnes we need to experience that kind of cathartic process in a nurturing environment.
But we have to be sure that tlre ortzsr within us is guiding us. We
need to feel safe and healthy with what we're prepared to show
and share with the ensemble and what we'd rather keep for the

AN ENSEMBLE (BAROMETER'

r35

priest or the counsellor. I repeat: this is psycho-physical acting,

not psycho-therapy drama.
Then comes the fourth stage. Having stopped the LaughterTears through Circles of Attention or Five-Minute Recollection,
each individual then began to turn the focus outwards again by
making contact with other members of the group. This usually
involved a kind of free improvisation similar to Ananyev's work
on the Self, and I'll describe it in more detail shortly. In a
nutshell, the height of group loughter was followed by the depths of
personal despoir, which in turn was brought to a halt and then
followed by the outward reconnection with the group. The
premise is actually very sirnple, the practice is really much
harder. But through its simplicity the exercise can act as a kind
of barometer, illustrating the ease or difficulty with which any
given ensemble is prepared to interconnect during its various
stages

of development.

I(amotskaya had devised this exercise during her early

attempts to develop a concentrated ensemble. She had observed
how difficult it was for her Russian students to maintain eyecontact with each other without dissolving into embarra,psed
giggles. So she cannily incorporated their spontaneous laughter
into thuQ,, parameters of the exercise: she invited them to laugh
togethCr as the first stage of their ensemble interaction. What
happened, of course, was that once they were allowed to laugh,
the students no longer needed to laugh. The irony of this was
that finding a point of communal laughter became a challenge in
itself, Addressing this new difficulty -'I can't laugh any more

now you've told me I've got to'- I(amotskaya suggested that they
take the stimulus for their mirth from each other. Once you start
observing farniliar faces closely, suddenly nearly everybody looks
extremely funny, and it doesn't take long for the whole group to
be laughing, without necessarily knowing what it is they're
laughing at.

r36

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

Explorittg the extrernes of ernotions: 'legitirnate over-acting'

To follow intense laughter with deep despair demanded that the
actor's inner instrument was finely-tuned and versatile, to be able
to move rapidly between the extremes of emotion. As far as
Michael Chekhov was concerned, it's just a matter of concentration. If your powers of, concentration are developed, 'then the
ability to laugh, to cry, to be influenced by one's own imagination

come more quickly and easily. It is only a question of

developing and trainin g."o I(amotskaya encouraged actors to
experience the extremes of emotion ("r aroused by LaughterTears) throughout all her Actor-Training sessions. This gave us
the chance to do two specific things: one was to expand the range
and freedom of our own emotional repertoires. The other was to
understand the various levels of emotional energy requi5ed for
different characters. There's a subtle difference betweeh' bveracting and being over-emotional, and training provides the
opportunity to explore those boundaries. Sometimes we have to
'give it large' to know where we've got to bring it back to.
The opposite is true as well: sometimes we underestimate the
difference in energy-levels between everyday emotions and
creative emotions. Stanislavsky argued that a degree of oTJerocting in rehearsals can increase the 'density' of our creative emotions, and reveal the amount of energy required. Talking about
his own work on the character of Famusov, Stanislavsky described how in one rehearsal, 'We all tried too hard. We pressed
the pedal of ernotion at the expense of thoughts and relationships. We were over-playing. But for what purpose? We learnt
what are the limits of our own feelings; for rne, how far can I go
in a state of rage; for Sophie and Lisa, how far in a state of fright;
how far you can go in bitterness and disillusion, Zadavsky. As far
as the plot of the play and the characters are concerned, our
feelings went out in the right direction. But I can say for rnyself
that my anger was not organised. I forced myself too much. I
shouted more than Famusov would have in the given circumstances. In other words, I too was over-acting. Now I know that

will

LEGITIMATE OVERACTING

r37

such wrath is too much for Famusov. But I also learned that the
energy I have been using in rehearsals and performances is not
enough. My Famusov was too soft-'8s In a sirnilar way, I(amotskaya's Actor-Training sessions provided us with an environment for making these discoveries - for testing the limits of our

own ernotions, for defining the threshold of over-playing. We

could then take our discoveries into our text-work with Filozov.
Learning extremes of emotion in the safe environment of
Actor-Training is essential for understanding the fine balance
between stimulating an under-energised emotional life and harnessing an over-active emotional life. It harks back to Chekhov's
idea of developing stage emotions as opposed to ploughing up
personal emotions. As I(amotskaya said, 'If your feelings in life

are strong, you have to learn to lead theni. If you can't lead them,
then it's an illness, it's hysteria. F'or stage work, you mustn't be
aftaid of strong emotion. Quite the opposite: you have to enjoy
it. Having said that, you have to adopt the perspective that "I am
the actor; here is the character." It's fine to be crazy) even
hysterical, as the character. But as the actor, you just have to say
"It's wonderful to have the chance to play so rnadly!" and that's
all. You are an actor: you have to hold the character beneath you,
otherwise you'll lose your head.'
This one exercise - Laughter-Tears - had the potential to set
in motion these two very complex areas of acting practice: first of
all, to open an actor up to his or her own emotional life, and,

secondly, to develop the actor's awareness of the difference

between personal emotion and stage ernotions. Along with the
second, came an understanding of the different level of emotional energy needed on the stage. But it gradually became clear
to me that the Laughter-Tears exercise was also an indication of
another kind of emotional 'liberation'. While it revealed the ease
or difficulty with which tlre indiaiduals could express their inner
lives, it also revealed the ensemble's willingness to expose those
extremes of emotion arrrong itself. For Grotowski, the feeling of
security within a group was paramount. For him, 'this element of
warm openness is technically tangible. This alone, if reciprocal,

r38

\MORKING

IN THE ENSEMBLE

can enable the actor to undertake the most extreme efforts

without any feeling of being laughed at or humiliated.'86

The'total act'
The unity of an ensemble, however, can't be taken as read. In
many ways, the contents of this chapter have been the hardest to
articulate, because rny recent experiences as an actor, workshop
leader and director have illustrated to rne that there's no fail-safe
recipe for building an integrated working ensemble. It would be

wonderful to promise,

if you take a group of

strangers with
different training and experience, and follow the series of
exercises - with eyes closed, with eyes open, the Animals, the
Prince and the Fox, the Empty Space - that after a few sessions
a wonderfully collaborative environment will unfold. Thbse who
work a good deal in trying to develop ensembles will know that
simply isn't the case. Suffice to say, that as much as the ActorTraining exercises are profound and attentive, they can't lead
infallibly to a harmonious working unit: they can only prepare
the terrain. Over the course of the year in Moscow - for reasons
both financial and personal - the size of the group fell from ten
participants to four. What became clear was the degree of
responsibility demanded of all parties involved in handling an
ensemble, especially one which suffers from an acute fall-out
rate. Despite the odds, the nature of the psycho-physical work
was strong enough to reconnect those who did stay, as we
endeavoured to immerse ourselves in 'the total act' of acting.

What exactly is 'the total act'? Well, along with the

uia
negatioa, the'total act' of creativity was one of Grotowski's ideas
which clearly informed the work at the Teatr Laboratorium.8T
The total act demands that every actor gives one hundred per
cent to his or her own work, and to the cornbined identity of the
ensemble as a whole. For Grotowski, the concept of the total act
was essential for the performer as it was the very crux of the
actor's art: 'He does whatever he does with his entire being, and
not just one mechanical (and therefore rigid) gesture of arrn or

[.

FREE IMPROVISATION
leg,'',

r39

nor any grimace helped by a logical inflection and a

thought.'88 This commitment to the total act could also be very

revelatory. In the same way that Michael Chekhov incited the
actor to discover new things by rppealing to his or her 'creative
individuality', Grotowski believed that through total subrnersion
in the creative work, actors could discover those very elements of

their personalities which were unexpected and surprisitrg. But

more than that, Grotowski implied that there's no point even
thinking of being an actor unless you can commit yourself to the
idea of the total act. He described it as the very essence of the
actor's calling, 'allowing him to reveal one after the other the
different layers of his personality from the biological-instinctive
source via the channel of consciousness and thought, to that
summit . . . in which all becomes unity. This act of the total unveiling of one's being becomes a gift of the self which borders on
the transgression of barriers and love. I call this a total act.'8e Far
from being anything damaging or distorting, Grotowski actually
maintained that the outcome of this kind of comrnitment to
creative performance could be remarkably holistic: 'The actor
who, in this special process of discipline and self-sacrifice, selfpenetration and moulding is not afraid to go beyond all norm'ally
limits, attains a kind of inner harmony and peace of
his was the kind of holistic integration that psychophysical acting was about and that Active Analysis demanded. By
committing to the total act, you quickly realise that acting has to
be an ensemble venture. You can't act in isolation, any more than
you can live in isolation. And through that commitment to the
ensemble comes a sense of play inextricably woven into the
experience of free improaisation, which lay at the core of I(amotskaya's work.

Free irnprovisation
I(amotskaya's free improvisation involved setting up an extended
psycho-physical exercise, which might last anything from twenty
minutes to two hours. Before the exercise began, she explained

r40

\MORKING

IN THE ENSEMBLE

the sequence of steps, and it was then up to each individual to

moderate his or her own way through that sequence. At first this
degree of self-moderation can be quite daunting, especially
among young student-actors, who are afraid that they're going
too quickly or too slowly through the sequence) as they don't
want to get out of synch with their peers. It only takes a few
attempts to trust that there is no right way of doing the exercise,
there is no right time scale for reaching the various 'milestones'.
The pace that you adopt today is the right one for you today tomorrow your rhythm may be different.
The joy of extended free improvisations is that it gives each
actor's psycho-physical instrument an opportunity to (integrate
itself'. There are, of course, times when the brain is working too
hard, thinking, 'Arn I doing this right? Has everybody else got
their eyes closed? Do I look stupid?' But then there are wonderful moments when the body abandons itself to its own physicality, like a toddler at play, and the movement itself inspires the
imagination and the emotions. There are other times when the
ernotions lead the actor either to make connections with others in
the space, or retreat into individual experiences. 'What's
important to remernber in these exercises is that there can never
be inactiaity or passiaity. The psycho-physical instrument is very
sophisticated in the number of ways in which it can be stimulated
and provoked, be it through the body, the imagination, the
emotions or the spirit. Even if the body is still, there'll always be
some kind of inner activity. As I(amotskaya said, 'You can't just
wait for something to inspire you. A powerful experience can be
found in sitting in the warmth, the sun through the window, the
dog sleeping, children playing. We have to wake up in every
moment. So in Actor-taini.g, there are many things happening
in a room with just five people - you should be able to find real
contact in every moment.'
The essence of free improvisations was very simple. As
Grotowski puts it, 'Something stimulates you and you react: that
is the whole secret. Stimulations, impulses and reactions.'er The
obiective during these sessions was usually to find some kind of

STIMULATIONS-IMPULSES-REACTIONS

ver5r simple game,

T+T

or contact or non-verbal dialogue, just like

The Prince and the Fox. Nothing was forced upon these games;
they might only last for a few minutes before going on to a different interaction with another partner. The only parameter of the
exercise was that each actor should observe and respond to his or
her partner in accordance with stimulations, impulses and reactions.
All this really meant was that the actors engaged with each other

attentively and playfully, without judging the activity or superimposing a narrative. If the contact became boring, they should
be brave enough to leave that connection and go off and find a
new source of interaction. The only limitations on free improvisations were those imposed by the participants' own irnaginations.
What these free improvisations did was combine each actor's
psycho-physical experience with the ensemble's freedom to play.
As Michael Chekhov puts it, 'Let each successive rnoment of
your improvisation be a psychological (not logical!) result of the
moment preceding it.'ez You didn't have to have any previously
thought-out theme, you could iust move from the start to the
conclusion, improvising all the wa)4 By doing so, Chekhov
maintained that 'You will go through the whole gamut of
different sensations, emotions, moods, desires, inner imprilses
and business, all of which will be found by you spontaneously.'
ft waS"'i'eally very exciting, ?s you suddenly realised how endlessly interesting any situation could be if you just opened up to
all the psycho-physical information around you. In the words of
Michael Chekhorr, iq, srnall hint from a partner - a glance, a
pause, a new or unexpected intonation, a move, a sigh, or even a
barely perceptible change of tempo can becorne a creative
impulse, an invitation to the other to irnprovise.'e3 This process
can be exhilarating and liberating, and it's a great antidote to
being self-conscious in rehearsal or class. By taking the attention
off yourself and diverting it to your environment, it's possible to
silence the emotional chaos in your head. Then you can start to
relish and enjoy the exchange of information between you and
your on-stage partner. Of course, it's a bit harder with a
monologu, but that's another discussion entirely!

r42

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

Testing out a text: Miranda and Caliban

As with the Ernpty Space exercises, free irnprovisations weren't
restricted to non-verbal, non-specific scenarios. As the ten-

month programme developed, they were used to investigate the

characters) which we were exploring in Filozov's rehearsals.
What this really meant was that the contacts rnade between us
during the free irnprovisations were no longer completely free:
the relationships frorn the text now formed a kind of gauze or
backdrop. We still responded, mornent by rnornent, to stimulations, impulses and reactions; it's just that specific given circumstances could now influence our choices. The first piece we
looked at was Shakespeare's The Tempest, the casting of which included myself as Miranda and an actress called Vivien as Caliban.
Because free improvisations frequently led straight o of the
Laughter-Tears exercise, direct and spontaneous lin 'tould
often be made between our responses in the exercise and the characters in the play. I noticed this especially during one LaughterTears experience, in which Vivien was laughing heartily. She
hadn't found the psycho-physical approach particularly easy, and
the way she was really chuckling that d"y gave rne a real sense of
joy. That in turn provoked in rny imagination a possible history
behind Miranda and Caliban's relationship. After all, Caliban
had been Miranda's 'pet' prior to his attack on her, so it was quite
natural that Vivien's laughter could stimulate a sense of the
carnaraderie which might have existed at sorne point between the
two characters. This camaraderie, or rather empathy, was developed"further in another free irnprovisation, duiing which there
was an exchange between Danny (as Antonio) and a wonderful
Irish actor, Tom, (as Sebastian) in relation to Vivien (as Caliban).
In the course of this encounter, f noticed how Danny,/Antonio
and Tom/Sebastian were taunting Vivien/Caliban. As their
taunting grew, I began to get truly worked up. I tried to put an
end to their aggressive teasing of the 'dumb' Caliban, by pushing
Danny,/Antonio away. Quite unexpectedly, he reacted so violently towards me that, for a split-second, I thought he was going

THE CRIME OF JUDGEMENT

r+3

to hit me, and so I backed off. The two men carried on jibing and
goading Vivien/Caliban, who sirnply ioined in with them, apparently oblivious to the irony of their game. Overcome with a sense
of helplessness and powerlessness, I found that all I could do was
to watch and weep.
What was happening in these free improvisations was that
character and actor were surreptitiously interweaving. In other
words, although they were my tears (after all you can't escape the
fact that you only have your own body, your own irnagination and
your own emotions), the reasons behind the tears were those of
the character. In this way, there was an effortless merger of my
actual response to the rea,/ situation with Mirando's response to
the imaginotiae situation. These extended free irnprovisations
provided us with a useful environrnent in which to experience
encounters which don't necessarily take place in the script.
These encounters could illurninate various - and often very unexpected - aspects of the characters by allowing thern to 'live'
within a vast and free range of given circurnstances. The result of
the two responses to Vivien's Caliban, for example, was that in
rny imagination a concrete, emotional history to the Callban/
Miranda relationship had been established. I could then use that
inform my playing of the actual scenes. The ernotional
ween Miranda and Caliban had been raised in a way
that we might never have discovered through a purely text-based
approach.

The crirne of judgernent

Despite the discoveries rnade during these free improvisations individually and collectively - the evolution of the ensemble was
still not without its problerns. This was primarily because the ongoing development of our ind,ioidual psycho-physical technique was
also very tricky. I(amotskaya had striven to nurture an environment in which the actors could feel safe within the ensemble and,
therefore, free to try anything. Ideally, this should be an environment where individuals aren't criticised or judged by their peers,

rt

BAD CHEMISTRY

r45

my partner was watchinB ffie, thinking, 'Why's the silly cow so

angry all the time? I'm offering her words of love and she's looking at me with a face like a wet Sunday.' The chemistry just
wasn't working.

The 'crime' of judgement lies in its misplaced capacity to turn

the acting process into one of success or failure. (It's important
to note that this relates to a training or re earsal process, not to
whether a final production works or doesn't work. That kind of
su@ess or failure does, of course, need serious attention from the
director and the creative team. In training, it's actually of no
consequence whether the actors succeed or not.) As Michael
CJrekhov puts it, the real value of an exercise lies in the actors'
efort to open themselves up to the others in the exercise and to
intensify their ability to observe their partners at all times, 'thus
strengthening sensitivity towards the entire ensemble'.es As far as
this Miranda and Ferdinand were concerned, it was obvious that
the 'effort to open our selves up to each other' was not taking
place. 'We weren't working for each other, we were working for
ourselves, and it illustrated unequivocally that we simply weren't
comrnitting to the 'total act'. As Grotowski points out, 3h.
principle is that the actor, in order to fulfil himself, must not
work for himself, Through penetrating his relationship with
others - Studying the elements of contact - the actor will discover
what is in him. He must give himself totally.'e6'We seemed unable
to give ourselves totally, and it was difficult to see how work on
this scene could progress.
To be honest, I was terribly confused. The whole principle of
the training to date hadn't really addressed the idea of charocter.
We had always been using our own bodies, our own imaginations,
our own emotions as the springboard into non-verbal points of
contact. Now, given the words of Shakespeare - which, let's face
it, weren't exactly contemporary chat-up lines - I(han and I were
floundering, because suddenly the notion of character was very
prominent. But even that was an excuse, because when we were
irnprovising the scene using our own wo ds, we still couldn't
connect with each other, let alone when the complexity of the

r46

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBL.E

poetic language was added. The point of psycho-physical

connection is (in the words of I(amotskaya) that 'Every moment
must be born on the stage - without judgement.' Yet f didn't
know how to switch my brain off. I didn't know how to srop
myself hearing the literal nonsense of I(han's half-learnt lines.
That was until I(,arnotskaya offered what seerned like very
sirnple, yet very wise advice. The irnportant elernent that I'd
underestirnated in my understanding of 'psycho-physical' is the
imagination. It was perfectly possible to accept everything that
my partner was doing, if I just added a sprinkling of imagination.
Or as I(amotskaya put it, 'If he forgets his lines or speaks
nonsense, you must simply imagine he's speaking a foreign
language or he's very nervous! You must only accept him - as
I(han and as Ferdinand. It doesn't matter if you donl.t+believe
every word, but you mustn't judge.'
- This advice cannot be underestimated.

f'm sure most actors at

some point in their lives have acted opposite someone who

simply isn't pressing the right buttons for them. And it doesn't
have to be in a love-scene, of course. An interpretation of any
character can often seem ill-fudged, or off-kilter, or just plain
stupid, and yet it's not our business to preside over our fellowactors. The more we hear the voice in our heads saying, 'If only
they emphasised that word . . . if only they played that action . . .
if only they pursued that objective . . . if only they looked into
my eyes', the more we alienate ourselves frorn the task in hand.
We start playing the for* of the scene as we think it should be
played, rather than the actuality of the scene as it is here and now
between these two actors on this very stage.
In this respect, the free improvisations of I(amotskaya's
Actor-Training proved to be a very beneficial complement to
text-based classes. They provided a fairly uninhibited
opportunity for me and I(han to try and relax the tensions which
seemed to arise when, in rehearsals, we were script-bound to the
scene. There was one particular occasion when I(han and I
seemed to have a major break-through with regard to Ferdinand
and Miranda. As usual, everyone was simultaneously involved in

I
I

t
I

FROM ACTOR TO CHARACTER

r47

the free improvisation; therefore, the room was full of a number

of people, each exploring different relationships and different
aspects of their characterisations. Suddenly l(han and I made
direct eye-contact across the stage. I hadn't been looking for him,
but it was as if he'd shot a dart at me, and I found my attention
drawn instantaneously across the space to where he was sitting in
a half-lit corner. We both felt the potency of this connection, and
within seconds we were oblivious to the other actors who were
exploring their own dialogues in the expanse of space between
us. For some time we didn't move, but gradually - by paying
limitless attention to each other - we discovered that the eyecontact alone was powerful enough to draw us very slowly
together, until at last we were physically close to each other. It
took some tirne to rnake any actual bodily contact, but once we
did, it was a matter of simply touching finger-tips, then cautiously entwining hands. Up until now, I'd found that I had a great
deal of personal resistance to rny partner: I couldn't fathorn it, as
I(han was a good-looking chap, therefore, easy to fancy! But until
this point, I hadn't been able to make any attempt at intirnacy or
closeness with him. No*, all of a sudden, as if responding to
Miranda's spontaneous reactions, I closed my eyes and found
myself submitting to the touch of Khan/F'erdinand's hands. It
was eg.1$,,all -y personal resistance was ebbing away, and some
'quality',of Miranda' was inhabiting my body and connecting
with rny partner. The contact of our hands became more erotic,
but there was still a strong feeling of innocence, as if we were
exploring the first awakening of sexual responses. The skin was
soft. The fingers long. The finger-nails like almonds. After some
tirne, I opened -y eyes, and I discovered that Khan/Ferdinand
was watching me. Straight away, I was drowned in a sea of selfconsciousness, and the sensation I had was similar to when I was
observing Vivien/Caliban: I couldn't tell if what f was experiencing was rny etnbarrassment or Miranda's shyness. Self and
character were one.
There was no doubt that both I(han and I discovered a great
deal of new information about our characters from this extended

r48

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

free improvisation. We were able to invest the intimacy, which

we'd found through this encounter, into our subsequent

exploration of the scene in rehearsals. If I'm completely honest,
though, the Miranda/Ferdinand scene was never wholly
successful. Having allowed myself to judge both rny own work

and I(han's, f'd undoubtedly inhibited any truly organic inreraction between us. f'd walked on dangerous ground: I'd iudged
the creative process, and in some ways the damage could never be
fully repaired. Grotowski emphasises that the 'total act' is
required of all mem ers in a creative ensemble; he goes on to
advise 'fntimate and drastic elements in the work of others are
untouchable and should not be cornrnented upon even in their
absence . . . We are obliged to open ourselves up even towards an
enemy. teT A lot of repair work has to be done once the crime of
judgement has been cornmitted.
,. ..
.....

Summaty of exercises towards Dramatic Text

Through these exercises, the group may strengthen its creative
identity and progress into exploration of the characters in a text.
The exercises provide the opportunity for exploring legitimate overacting and under-acting to find the appropriate level at which to play
aftistic emotions in text-based rehearsals and performance. There is
also the opportunity in free improvisations for characters who never
meet in a play to investigate some kind of interaction, or for scenes
not included in a play to be investigated in a kind of Active Research.

Laughter-Tears
To enable the ensemble to 'tune' themselves psycho-physical, everyone sits in a circle facing into the centre. Through simple attention
to each other; individuals and the group as a whole try to find the
peak of laughter. As the actors find their peak, they each turn out of
the circle and find their personal 'depth of despair'. This may simply
be a feeling of heaviness; it need not be heart-felt sobs. This state
is then arrested through Circles of Attention or the Five-Minute
Recollection. Each individual under"takes this series of stages in his
or her own time, though ets an ensemble works together more

RISING TO THE PERSONAL CHALLENGE

T49

frequently, it may well be that the peak of laughter becomes more

collective and the transition to despair becomes more of a shared
experience.

Extended Free Improvisations

Following Laughter-Tears, and Circles of Attention or the Five-Minute

Recollection, each individual gradually starts to take attention back
to the ensemble and, in their own time, begins to make contact with
one or more group members by finding a simple game or complicity.
Little by little, the actors develop from their own personae into the
characters on which they are working in rehearsal.

It should be noted that while the exercises are intended to develop

ensemble interaction, each individual actor progresses through the
stages of Laughter-Tears and Extended Free lmprovisations at his or
her own pace. Extended Free lmprovisations can involve any number
of stages and permutations: these stages are simply outlined by the
director or workshop leader before the sequence begins, and then,
as and when they wish, the actors move from one stage to the next.
There is no 'right' length of time.

Risingr,to the personal challenge

Creating an ensemble is never easy, and the process can never be
fully,.aSrticipated. I realise that far more acutely now, with the
hindsibht gained from leading group-work myself, than I did
during rny time at VGIK. This particular ensemble was perhaps
one of the most precarious: we were all adults with sorre degree
towards a proof experience and training. We weren't working
'We
weren't working
duction which would ultirnately cornbine us.
towards a degree or certificate which would ultimately validate
our training. We were simply a rnotley collection of individuals,
hungry for experiences and with different expectations. The
odds were stacked against us. Nonetheless, the group survived
various disruptions not least of which was the threatened
outbreak of civil war in Moscow during October 1993, when the
tanks stormed the White House, and we found ourselves under
curfew, spending a night watching tracer bullets light up the sky
like fireworks. All this goes to show the strength that an ensernble

r50

WORKING IN THE ENSEMBLE

it ultimately cornmits to the 'total act'. The

fact that group identity is intrinsic to the development of

can develop when

psycho-physical technique became particularly evident during

I(amotskaya's Actor-taining sessions at a series of Summer
Schools held in Britain in the 1990s. On each occasion, an
international group of between twelve and sixteen participants
formed an exciting and collaborative ensemble, producing collective activity of an unquestionably open and dynamic nature.
My own difficulty with the ensemble work in Russia revealed
that my fundamental problem as a perforrner was one that I
suspect I share with other actors. It was the inability to open
myself up to the ultimate enemy - myself. It was through the
interaction of I(amotskaya's Actor-Training and Filozov's work
on character that this frightening truth was brought to light and
the demon was confronted. In fact, the correlation of ensemble
= work and text-based disciplines became increasingly profound
over the ten months, and the basic principles of I(amotskaya's
work began to bear fruits in rehearsals. Through 'finding yourself in free improvisations towards dram atic action and towards
drarnatic text, psycho-physical ensemble-training developed
elements of play, spontaneity and attention to our partners. This
enabled Filozov to elicit from his actors some exciting and unusual choices for characters through the use of Active Analysis.
But this was only achieved after many daunting challenges, as we
began the ultimate implementation of a psycho-physical
technique - the actor's work on a. role.