Reflection on the Looking Glass (Thoughts on being an Actor in our Times)

Reflection on the looking glass

Thoughts on being an actor in our times

by Peter James Haworth

copyright Peter James Haworth 2014

ISBN 978-0-9940007-0-5

Distributed by Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Hamlet's Advice to the Players

Chapter 1 ~ The looking glass

Chapter 2 ~ The impulse

Chapter 3 ~ The reflection

Chapter 4 ~ The play's the thing

Chapter 5 ~ The modesty of nature

Chapter 6 ~ Confidence

Chapter 7 ~ Acting

Chapter 8 ~ The mirror and nothing else

Chapter 9 ~ Words

Chapter 10 ~ Acting bits

Chapter 11 ~ The history of acting

Chapter 12 ~ Shakespeare

Introduction

You might well ask who am I to be writing a book on acting. After all I am not well known. I am not in any popular sense of the word successful as an actor. I am not famous. I am known within my profession. I may even have something of a following amongst some theatre goers, but I am not particularly aware of it. As a matter of fact, I have written the vast majority of this book while being in various stretches of under-employment.

Nevertheless I have my credentials, which suffice me, if not you. And I am unapologetic about not fulfilling some sort of obligation to be famous before writing a book on acting. First of all I am a constant student of acting. I love to watch good acting, I have spent a good deal of my life mulling over bad acting, and I have taught myself a goodly portion of what I do as an actor. Beyond these simple statements I must let my book speak for itself. If it is unfit for reading, then be it on my head. I hope you think otherwise, and enjoy some of the tidbits I have scavenged in my years as an actor.

What I have written is truly a reflection on acting. It roams far and wide, not in structure but in what different actors may find of interest. At times I may be philosophical about acting. At other time, I may offer some advice to those starting out as actors. I must be forgiven for my waywardness. In truth, I do not have enough in my studies to warrant a book about the fundamentals of acting, and another about the origins and function of acting in our society. So I have mixed the two, or more than two, in a melange. Reflections is what this is. I only hope you will find it entertaining enough to guide you through those areas which may be of lesser import to you.   

Hamlet's advice to the players

  HAMLET Speake the Speech I pray you, as I pronounc'd

it to you trippingly on the Tongue: But if you mouth it,  

as many of your Players do, I had as liue the Town-Cryer

had spoke my Lines: Nor do not saw the Ayre too much

your hand thus, but vse all gently; for in the verie Tor-

rent, Tempest, and (as I may say) the Whirle-winde of

Passion, you must acquire and beget a Temperance that

may giue it Smoothnesse. O it offends mee to the Soule,

to see a robustious Pery-wig-pated Fellow, teare a Passi-

on to tatters, to verie ragges, to split the eares of the

Groundlings: who (for the most part) are capeable of

nothing, but inexplicable dumbe shewes, & noise: I could  

haue such a Fellow whipt for o're-doing Termagant: it

out- Herod's Herod. Pray you auoid it.

  PLAYER I warrant your Honor.

 HAMLET Be not too tame neyther: but let your owne

Discretion be your Tutor. Sute the Action to the Word,

the Word to the Action, with this speciall obseruance:

That you ore-stop not the modestie of Nature; for any

thing so ouer-done, is frõ the purpose of Playing, whose

end both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twer

the Mirrour vp to Nature; to shew Vertue her owne  

Feature, Scorne her owne Image, and the verie Age and

Bodie of the Time, his forme and pressure. Now, this

ouer-done, or come tardie off, though it make the vnskil-

full laugh, cannot but make the Iudicious greeue; The

censure of the which One, must in your allowance o're-

way a whole Theater of Others. Oh, there bee Players

that I haue seene Play, and heard others praise, and that

highly (not to speake it prophanely) that neyther hauing

the accent of Christians, nor the gate of Christian, Pagan,

or Norman, haue so strutted and bellowed, that I haue  

thought some of Natures Iouerney-men had made men,

and not made them well, they imitated Humanity so abhominably.

 PLAYER I hope we haue reform'd that indifferently with vs, Sir.

 HAMLET O reforme it altogether. And let those that

play your Clownes, speake no more then is set downe for

them. For there be of them, that will themselues laugh,

to set on some quantitie of barren Spectators to laugh

too, though in the meane time, some necessary Question  

of the Play be then to be considered: that's Villanous, &

shewes a most pittifull Ambition in the Foole that vses

it. Go make you readie.    

Chapter 1 ~ The looking glass

As ‘twere. 1600 — or so. A summer’s day, sometime in the afternoon. What a great and exciting moment in the history of theatre: the opening of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Did anyone have a sense that they were part of a momentous event in human history? Did it occur to the astute audience member that this was a defining moment in the development of human consciousness? Who is to say?

No doubt there were some surprises, nevertheless. There were some fascinating twists and turns for the first audience of Hamlet. Here was a revenge tragedy which hovered over, but refused to indulge in the orgy of revenge the audience was accustomed to — until right at the very end. For us in the twenty-first century, it is not difficult to imagine the bemusement that the people in the Globe theatre might have felt. We can readily imagine watching one of the countless cinematic revenge thrillers of our day — action films as we prefer to call them — regarding with bemusement our muscularly developed hero agonize about whether or not to pick up his — and sometimes even her — oversized gun and blow away those reprehensible forces of villainy once and for all. No doubt the patrons on that summer’s afternoon in London were as nonplused as we would be, that the revenge/action hero kept saying that he wasn’t so sure about facing the prospect of his own death. This was hardly the thinking of a man to be reckoned with. I am pretty sure that the audience was equally surprised how much they liked this prince of Denmark, how much, despite his disconcerting procrastination, they admired his superb mind.

Of course this was one of the greatest eras of artistic endeavour. I happen to think it was the greatest era of theatre by far. Surprises and innovations in playwrighting were the order of the day. But there was another kind of surprise coming midway through the play. An hour or so into the performance, the action screeched to a halt so that the title character, Hamlet, could deliver a manifesto on acting. Our playwright, William Shakespeare, must have been feeling mighty confident and in masterly control of his craft to disrupt his plot, and have everything stop while Richard Burbage, as Hamlet, held forth on the topic of acting. Shakespeare started the scene with this speech, and by the time the audience began to realize that this speech was not moving the story on, and, indeed, had nothing to do with the story, it was over. I think we can safely say that Shakespeare had a thing or two to say about the acting that was going on in London, and maybe even the acting in his own company. You can imagine what he had to say had been building up in him for some time. He may have said such things to his own company, or let loose after a few drinks in the pub. And now half way through his writing career, he gave Hamlet the job of speaking out for good acting, in public, to a paying audience. For my money, this is about as close as we ever get to hearing what Shakespeare actually thought about anything.

You’ve heard the speech before. It is something which actors should read and re-read, and repeat like a mantra before they begin any performance. I don’t, but I’m sure I should.

Right off the top, I want to seize upon one part of this speech especially. That’s where Hamlet says the actors must ‘Hold the mirror up to nature, as it were’. Bear with me while I labour over what has become a cliché, but if ‘holding the mirror up to nature’ has lost its meaning by overuse, all the more reason to pull it apart and examine it again. What I want to get at is that when Shakespeare wrote this phrase, I’m sure he meant that the actor holding up the mirror to nature was to make the audience look at the reflection in the mirror. He makes that pretty clear in the rest of the speech. What else would they be looking at? one might ask. Well, in our day we see, and will probably continue to see actors holding up that mirror, but they chose to stand in front of the mirror so that they could admire themselves, and so the audience might admire them, too. And here I must admit that I constantly feel the insistent pull to impress, to be admired. The fight goes on and on to keep vanity out of the way. It was not Shakespeare’s intention to have the audience admiring the beautiful workmanship that went into the making of the production, not to mention our excellent gestures and intonation, nor even the artistry of an actor holding up the mirror. Shakespeare wanted the audience to be confronted by the image of life, lived before them, not an exhibition of the talent and accomplishment of the actors and the director.

Our artistry, when it is on display in acting and directing and is not invisible, our artistry, when we put ourself in front of the work, is an obstacle to the artistic experience. The artist, in this case the actor, being enamoured of her own artistic sensibility over that of the playwright, suggests to the audience that her talent is what the purpose of the production is. The actor, wanting to prove how sensitive, how funny, how good looking, how trendy and cool, he or she is unconsciously distracts the audience from its prime focus which is on the story, and puts himself right smack in front of the mirror’s reflection. We see this in many forms. An actor’s exhibition of painful and heart felt angst and pain in performance is one example of artistry gone amuck. The consummate gesture, or the special vocal effects that the actor wishes to show off are fairly regular occurrences in the theatre. As Shakespeare points out, some actors have a penchant for getting laughs at inappropriate moments. The drained and emotionally damaged performer staggering forward for his bow is another sight we see from time to time. In all these cases the actor asks the audience to consider his talent, his effort, his technique, his charisma over and above the matter of the play.

Artistry. I once was in a play where there was so much artistry going on in the rehearsal hall, everything was spoken in hushed sacred tones. The director and two lead actors were continually shaken and moved by each other’s work. The tone was so reverential, just entering the rehearsal hall became a big problem. You see, anyone opening the door would disturb this sacred artistry. So a flat was erected to shield the artistes from this intrusion. And all the actors crept in like mice in front of a cat. I have since learned that if a scene is upstaged by someone entering the rehearsal hall, something is very wrong with the show. And so it was with this production.

One could dismiss the effect of all this egoistic/me attention on the audience as pretty minimal, except that it can be quite extensive in its destructive effect on the story. Sure the audience may be impressed. They may remember that one actor over all the other performers, and that’s about as far as it goes. The art form of drama has more to offer an audience than admiration for a performer. If the actor were to spend most of that same energy saying, Look at life, Look at the reflection, Look at this character, then the actor would open a world up to the audience that lays waste to any such concerns about ego and artistry. The audience’s imagination is then charged with the reality of the story and people. They see themselves in the reflection. They experience horrendous human moments in the physical safety of their theatre seats. They laugh at the foibles of humankind. They learn. They know more about people than they did before. Our world improves.

In our times there is no doubt in my mind that it’s the mirror itself, or perhaps I ought to say the holder of the mirror, not the reflection that is the object of our culture’s admiration in most arts, and certainly in acting/drama/theatre/movies, whatever you want to call it: acting. I say this because the whole of the media apparatus today is completely bamboozled by celebrity, only ever stopping its swoon over success when the actor makes the fatal mistake of… making a mistake. It is the underlying assumption of most of the press that the arts are some kind of status ladder. It’s the biggest game of who’s in and who’s out. To have climbed the ladder means you are the receiver of the most gushing adulation. And if you trip, then the press, and the public, descend like frenzied bacchæ to tear you apart.

For example, oh how the entertainment press are mesmerized by money. Salaries. Film costs. Film attendance and profits. Then they love the social angle. Personality conflicts. The romance and divorces of the stars. And need we mention, awards. It is as if the media understand they cannot compete with the storytelling of art, so they attempt to reduce the whole endeavour to the level of gossipy tongue wagging. Even when a great and popular work of art arrives on the scene, they turn it into a celebrity extravaganza. Get a hold of the stars, interview them, write about their private lives, and even ask their advice. Follow them on social media. The work of art itself is tricky to discuss — the audience is best left on its own about this — so the media starts its own tale, artist makes good, wows the public, and enjoys the reward of our adulation. Until we change our mind, that is.

The story I heard (and it might be apocryphal) was that Lord Beaverbrook marched into one of his Fleet Street newspapers in London. He gathered all the entertainment writers together, and laid down the law. Writers in the entertainment department were to only to do one of to things when writing about artists. They were either to make stars or break stars, and he didn’t want anything in between.

Take the idea of having a comeback, for example, something which is entirely a press concoction. It comes from a generic, archetypal story: namely, the prodigal son. In the modern media version the star or artist wastes his talent, goes on the skids, invites the snickers of commentators, and then finally pulls it together to please the common culture once more. What this imaginary tale does is reduce the artist’s life to either being in or out. Comeback from where? asks the artist., I haven’t gone anywhere. I’ve been busy working hard Oh no, storms the press, you were gone, you vanished. Nobody liked you. You went through a spell of bad work. We despised and ridiculed you for it. We made a contemptuous face when anyone mentioned your name. But now you’ve come back. You’ve redeemed yourself. Good for you.

In the eighties, whenever he arrived in Toronto to speak, Edward Albee would get pretty much the same treatment. One would think, just having Albee in town would be something the press might be grateful for. Once they had him in an interview, Albee was asked, "What happened to you? You were so good when you were young. You wrote The Zoo Story, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, A Delicate Balance, and then you disappeared." The implication was that Albee did something wrong. What, I can’t imagine. Albee, like anyone else, bridling at the implication that x number of years of his life were a waste of time, gamely tried to make the point that he never went anywhere. He wrote plays. (Not an easy endeavour at the best of times.) He wrote. He got better, He made mistakes. Sometimes nobody liked what he wrote. But often many people did like it. They just weren’t in the swirling pool of the press’s Charybdis. What does it matter to North American entertainment press, that Europeans like what Albee wrote? What’s trendy about that? How do I score points in conversation telling people that Albee is admired in Belgium? If I even knew that.

I’m dwelling on the anti-artistic bent of the media in our day, all days, and way into the future, because unfortunately this manic status crazed view of art has sucked in much of the artistic community. We can be an elitist bunch to begin with. In the best of all possible worlds, accomplishment and ability would be our highest honour. The actor who has honed her talent and vividly brought to life any number of characters ought to be held in the highest reverence. But status is the real measure of our respect today. Status is more a product of what jobs the actor has landed, or if the show is popular — which is something the actor shares some responsibility for. But the success really resides with the writer, then the director and the producer. As far as I can see, no actor became a star with a bad script.

And then there are the awards? This is an obvious point to make. But…what the Sam Hill are artists running after awards for? In what possible manner does winning an award benefit society, or make people more understanding of each other, appreciate beauty more, and love better? Not a jot. Name any of history’s great artists, and think if anyone can remember what awards they won. Does it matter to us what Beethoven won, which play Shakespeare got the award for best new play, or why the Ceiling Academy passed over Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel for best large painting. This taste for awards, runs counter to the artists’ nascent dreams of using that swelling river of feeling in their hearts to express love, and joy, and outrage and thereby rid the world of corruption, and bringing on an age of happiness and bliss. One doesn’t have to dig too deep into the show business world to see the tyranny of status. Sure, actors have to eat and feed the kids. But they don’t have to believe in the crackerjack box of status and success.

Status is the trap where the artist loses those yearnings and tribulations over the state of the world, and pushes himself forward for reward. Better roles, more money. Security, even. (Ha, I laugh.) And holding the mirror up as it were, the artist says: Look at Me. Look at me in this swell mirror. A poor joke. Idealism slowly eroded by money concerns and a healthy ambitious ego, to the point of expressing exactly those things that horrified that young artist who wanted to change the world by the greatest tool of all, Art.

The culture of artistic status has reached the point where the assumption of importance has crept through and riddled the community. By that I mean, the artistic effort now is to be judged by where the artist did her work, and who saw it. Good art would seem to be more important in a major centre, like our Toronto, than in the chilly climes of Thunder Bay. Follow that jolly thinking further, and that means that people in Toronto, LA, New York, and London are more deserving of art than those people who put the grain on ships for them in Thunder Bay. Now obviously you get paid more to work in Toronto, so that makes it more attractive. However, I feel sad to report I have seen many an actor change the subject when another actor says they were in a great production in Regina. So what? Who saw it? Probably Edward Albee. (That’s where he was, hiding in Regina, and purposely writing bad plays.) Dear God, where do we get off judging some people of this land as more worthy of our talents than others?

Status is like a virus. It’s symptoms are self-importance. Self aggrandizement. Group hugs of artistic fervour. Lack of real achievement. And you catch it from the press.

If I was to open up the newspaper entertainment section and see that the pinnacle of our mass media culture, the Movies was chock full of artistic achievement, I would cease this effort here and now. But real artistic achievement is in the sorry state of showing its sad face only periodically. It is pretty much missing in action. I want to defend it, and maybe we can rouse it once more.

In 1995, I was walking around Prague. I was in the Czech Republic making a television film about Strauss, and I had a fair bit of time to see this beautiful city. Bohemia they call it. That’s where Prague is, in Bohemia. And you and I know Bohemia, because of the art.

I walked around and saw this incandescent city, and later stole off to Vienna. I was there in Vienna for only a day and a half, I’m afraid — cut short because the dastardly concierge gave my room away. As I wandered through the awesome streets