David Maler, talks about staging "American Dreams and an Elephant"

    

He was busy writing when I entered the café and walked up to his table hesitantly. “Are you David Maler, the theater director?” We had agreed to meet in the La Paz bar-café in Buenos Aires, still a hang-out for artists and egg-heads. The subject? “American Dreams and an Elephant” and the more evasive subject of theater, how actors are like magicians because they create something from nothing.

“My name is David Maler, I’m 23 years old and I’m from the Dominican Republic. I was born in a little fisherman’s village on the southeast of the island. A very picturesque place, no more than 500 people, and my father is an artist and maybe that’s why he chose the place—no electricity, no television, no phones. I grew up there but also travelled around with him and so I have lived in those two very contrasting environments.

“And then somewhere along the line theater appeared...”

“I was a pretty lazy student, really laid back, but then the school put on a show once a year in our school and that was the only time I would work as hard as I could. It seemed to come naturally. Then when I was 16 I did a musical—Jesus Christ Superstar. It wasn’t a big production but I would drive two hours to take lessons with a singing coach. And I realized that that was the first time I really wante to work for something.

“What kind of theater inspires you?”

“Before I graduated I found through a friend of my father’s an amazing theater coach, called Jack Walter, from the Actor’s Studio in New York. He comes from Method and studied with Lee Strasberg and other key figures in the theater world but developed his own approach. So that’s my way to work usually but this play—American Dreams and an Elephant, being played at the El Tinglado teatro in Buenos Aires City—is diffirent because it is a comedy. I do love Russian playwrites though, for all of the dark turmoil that appears in their plays.

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“Perhaps we might refer also to the internal effect that theater has had on you.”

“We all grow up supressing so many things, but theater has that almost therapeutic effect of allowing those emotions to flow that you have been holding back for so long, although I have always felt that the line should be very clearly established between psychology and theater.”

“Where did the idea for the show come from?”

“Well, Dennis Weisbrot, the author, went to see a play I was acting in. Later on we began working together. But initially “American Dreams” was directed by a woman. A problem appeared concerning the necessay adaptation of the play. It could be presented in any city at any time, but the danger is the possible loss of the strong criticism of U.S. society. Anyway, I dropped out of the project for a while but kept in touch with Dennis. Five or six months ago he called me up and said listen I want to start this up again and asked me if I wanted to direct the play. I re-read it and, well, I was a bit nervious because I had never directed a play before that. So I read it and re-read it until five O’Clock in the morning and then called him up and said: “I’ll do it.” That’s how it all started. “

“How did you go about it?”

“Initially the idea was that everyone would direct his own sketch. But there had to be someone to make sure that a line went through the whole thing. It’s difficult because the show is not lineal: you have four sketches, each completely different. I received a lot of help from the actors telling me how they saw their roles in each scene.”

“In your opinion what is the underlying idea in the four sketches?”

“It has to due with the processes that are taking place in U.S. society, so if you are northamerican you can relate to it more but I think a lot of the processes which are happening are taking place all over the world, globalization, alienation, what is happening at the workplace, information, technology, the effects of war and what that is going to mean for future generations. The show touches on all of these taboo things which are there but we don’t really talk about them. “

“The show appears to have many different messages, not only what is in the script...”

“It isn’t just saying the lines but how you say them. The characters are very cartoonish. Physically we had to make clear to the audience what kind of characters we are dealing with. That called for over the top actions, to the physical actions, to small details, the movement of the hand, how the actors look at the audience. As they say, the eyes are the windows of the soul and in thise case it was extremely important to seek complicity with the audience in circumstances that are very uncomfortable. It is as if the characters were seeking approval. One thing that appears frequently in the sketches is ritual, how actions are repeated robot like and that is a good technique for comedy.”

David Maler, director of “American Dreams and an Elephant.”

On stage Wednesdays at 8pm at the El Tinglado teatro in Buenos Aires City, 948 Mario Bravo. Booking: 4863 1188.

Henri Bergson: "An essay on the meaning of Comic"

At first glance it might appear that comedy is easier than drama; yet an exploration of the nature of good comedy must necessarily lead us to a contrary conclusion. Comedy has its rules; for example the French writer Henri Bergson believed an important ingredient of humor is an involuntary act; likewise the mechanical aspects of life. The following extract is from Bergson's "An essay on the meaning of the comic:"

"A man, running along the street, stumbles and falls; the passers-by burst out laughing. They would not laugh at him, I imagine, could they suppose that the whim had suddenly seized him to sit down on the ground. They laugh because his sitting down is involuntary.

"Consequently, it is not his sudden change of attitude that raises a laugh, but rather the involuntary element in this change,--his clumsiness, in fact. Perhaps there was a stone on the road. He should have altered his pace or avoided the obstacle. Instead of that, through lack of elasticity, through absentmindedness and a kind of physical obstinacy, AS A RESULT, IN FACT, OF RIGIDITY OR OF MOMENTUM, the muscles continued to perform the same movement when the circumstances of the case called for something else. That is the reason of the man’s fall, and also of the people’s laughter.

"Now, take the case of a person who attends to the petty occupations of his everyday life with mathematical precision. The objects around him, however, have all been tampered with by a mischievous wag, the result being that when he dips his pen into the inkstand he draws it out all covered with mud, when he fancies he is sitting down on a solid chair he finds himself sprawling on the floor, in a word his actions are all topsy-turvy or mere beating the air, while in every case the effect is invariably one of momentum. Habit has given the impulse: what was wanted was to check the movement or deflect it. He did nothing of the sort, but continued like a machine in the same straight line. 

"The victim, then, of a practical joke is in a position similar to that of a runner who falls,--he is comic for the same reason. The laughable element in both cases consists of a certain MECHANICAL INELASTICITY, just where one would expect to find the wide-awake adaptability and the living pliableness of a human being. The only difference in the two cases is that the former happened of itself, whilst the latter was obtained artificially. In the first instance, the passer-by does nothing but look on, but in the second the mischievous wag intervenes.

"All the same, in both cases the result has been brought about by an external circumstance. The comic is therefore accidental: it remains, so to speak, in superficial contact with the person. How is it to penetrate within? The necessary conditions will be fulfilled when mechanical rigidity no longer requires for its manifestation a stumbling-block which either the hazard of circumstance or human knavery has set in its way, but extracts by natural processes, from its own store, an inexhaustible series of opportunities for externally revealing its presence. Suppose, then, we imagine a mind always thinking of what it has just done and never of what it is doing, like a song which lags behind its accompaniment. 

"Let us try to picture to ourselves a certain inborn lack of elasticity of both senses and intelligence, which brings it to pass that we continue to see what is no longer visible, to hear what is no longer audible, to say what is no longer to the point: in short, to adapt ourselves to a past and therefore imaginary situation, when we ought to be shaping our conduct in accordance with the reality which is present. This time the comic will take up its abode in the person himself; it is the person who will supply it with everything--matter and form, cause and opportunity. Is it then surprising that the absent-minded individual--for this is the character we have just been describing-- has usually fired the imagination of comic authors? 

"When La Bruyere came across this particular type, he realised, on analysing it, that he had got hold of a recipe for the wholesale manufacture of comic effects. As a matter of fact he overdid it, and gave us far too lengthy and detailed a description of Menalque, coming back to his subject, dwelling and expatiating on it beyond all bounds. The very facility of the subject fascinated him. Absentmindedness, indeed, is not perhaps the actual fountain-head of the comic, but surely it is contiguous to a certain stream of facts and fancies which flows straight from the fountain-head. It is situated, so to say, on one of the great natural watersheds of laughter."

Peter Brook and "The Empty Space"

In one of his most celebrated statements on the nature of theatrical art, British director, playwrite and student of theatre Peter Brook, suggests that acting has to do with a tiny quiver inside one's body. This notion leads him to give us some extremely important advise on the nature of theatrical art. The following quotation comes from the chaper "The Immediate Space" in Brook's "The Empty Space," published in 1972 by Pelican Books.

"Acting begins with a tiny inner movement so slight that it is almost completely invisible. We see this when we compare film and stage acting: a good stage actor can act in films, not necessarily vice versa. What happens? I make a proposition to an actor's imagination such as, 'She is leaving you.' At this moment deep in him a subtle movement occurs. Not only in actors. The movement occurs in anyone, but in most non-actors the movement is too slight to manifest itself in any way: the actor is a more sensitive instrument and in him the tremor is detected. In the cinema the great magnifier, the lens, describes this to the film that notes it down, so for the cinema the first flicker is all. In early theatre rehearsals, the impulse may get no further than a flicker--even if the actor wishes to amplify it, all sorts of extraneous psychic psychological tensions can intervene--then the current is short-circuited, earthed. For this flicker to pass into the whole organism, a total relaxation must be there, either god-given or brought about by work. This, in short, is what rehearsals are all about. In this way actors are mediumistic: the idea suddenly envelops the whole in an act of possession: in Grotowski's terminology the actors are 'penetrated'--penetrated by themselves. In very young actors, the obstacles are sometimes very elastic, penetration can happen with surprising ease and they can give subtle and complex encarnations that are the despair of those who have evolved their skill over years. Yet later, with success and experience, the same young actors build up their barriers to themselves."

Our comment:  The acting experience subjects us to a world that goes beyond the one we know. Everything is different. When we improvise we take possession of a (usually) empty space. We invent characters, bring them to life; we imagine places, perhaps castles or offices or beaches where we have never been. We do things we probably would never do in real life. We are allowed to use our voices in sharp contrast to the way we do so outside the rehearsal room. Instead of fretting and stewing about "what is correct" we set about constructing something believable. And we do it together. What we do depends to a great extent on what our companions do because theatre is a social game. When we think we can't do it, someone claps and praises us for how well we have acted. We think we know how to act and we stumble along as if we were blind, as if we had attempted acting for the first time. Then, as Brook so nicely puts it, "a tiny inner movement" begins...and we are on our way!

Augosto Boal and the need for actors to 'de-mechanise´ their bodies

         Augosto Boal, Brazilian theatre director, writer and theorist, has attempted to transform theatre into a democratic arena in which the spectator becomes 'spect-actor', contributing ideas, taking over roles, and using theatre to confront problems such as sexual harassment, racism, poor pay, homophobia and other forms of oppression. In "Games for Actors and Non-Actors," (Routledge, U.S.A. and London, 1992) he asks "how can emotions 'freely' manifest themselves throughout an actor's body, if that very instrument (the body) is mechanised, automated in its muscle structures and insensible to 90 per cent of its possibilities?"

        "Like all human beings," he asserts, "the actor acts and reacts according to mechanisms. For this reason, we must start with the 'de-mechanisation', the re-tuning (or de-tuning) of the actor, so that he may be able to take on the mechanisations of the character he is going to play. He must relearn to perceive emotions and sensations he has lost the habit of recognizing."

          Boal mentions numerous exercises to achieve "de-mechanisation." For example: "The actors relax all the muscles in their bodies and focus their attention on each individual muscle. Then they take a few steps, bend down and pick up an object (anything), doing the whole thing very slowly and trying to feel and remember all the muscular structures which intervene in the accomplishment of these movements. They then repeat exactly the same action, but this time mentally."

       Boal points out that "people remember emotions that they have felt at a particular moment, in particular circumstances which they alone have lived through and which are similar to their character's own circumstances. These are absolutely unique circumstances which must be transferred and modified in order to match the character's emotions. I have never killed anyone, but I have felt the desire to do so; I try to remember the desire that I had and I transfer that desire to Hamlet when he kills his uncle."

      As in the case of all theories, practice does not always follow the rule. But the essential idea is valid. If we want to play a character who thinks and behaves differently than we do we must first de.mechanise our body to enable it to approach the characteristics of the role we are playing. Then to get a feeling for an action carried out by the character, we must find an experience in our own lives and "transport" it to the situation we are working on, modifying it as circumstances demand.