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 March 2001 Issue |
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| Making Actors: A Paean to the Acting Journal | ||||
| In her inspirational book on the craft of writing, A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L’Engle offers a quote from Carl Van Vechten that has given me food for thought in the context of teaching acting. Van Vechten was approached in a restaurant by a young man who fired earnest questions at him about his writing habits. The questions climaxed with this: "Why do you write with a pen or on the typewriter? Why don’t you dictate?" Van Vechten replied, "An author doesn’t write with his mind, he writes with his hands."[1] Over many years of teaching, I’ve wondered why my best acting students have been the ones who kept the best acting journals. I’ve never seen an exception to this, although I’d be very interested to see one. To date, I’ve seen a direct correlation between an actor who performs effectively and one who writes effectively. I assumed that the good actor was a good writer because he was a good actor—verbal, expressive, communicative. However, using Van Vechten’s remark as a springboard, I started to wonder whether the reverse was true. Perhaps an actor, like a writer, thinks with his writing hands. Once I started actively wondering about all of this, of course I began to come across references that were relevant. For example, in a 1966 Tulane Drama Review interview, Moshe Feldenkrais said: |
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| I contend that a brain could not think without motor functions…Most people cannot think clearly without mobilizing the motor function of the brain enough to become aware of the word patterns representing the thought…I may feel joyful, angry, afraid, disgusted. Everyone can, on seeing me, recognize the feeling I experience. Which comes first: the motor pattern or the feeling? I would like to stress the idea that they are basically the same thing. We cannot become conscious of a feeling before it is expressed by a motor mobilization, and therefore there is no feeling so long as there is no body attitude. [Italics in the original.] [2] |
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| These ideas suggest that simply moving one’s hands—as in the act of writing—is allowing a person to think, as well as to know what he is feeling. This would mean that a good actor doesn’t keep a good journal, but that the good writer--the good journal-keeper--is the good actor. The writing itself would be making the actor a good one. It makes sense to me that an actor needs to know what he is feeling, both to be able to rehearse efficiently and to be able to return to specific feelings for performance. From the Feldenkrais interview, I begin to see that there is a physical basis for the notion that the act of writing—of keeping a journal--contributes to the actor’s overall abilities, that the actor’s craft is actually promoted by physically putting one’s hands to paper or keyboard. Another relevant idea came to me from Andrew Weil. The popular Dr. Andrew Weil practices what is now commonly known as Integrative Medicine. This work integrates western and eastern medical approaches to health care, and also emphasizes the integration of mind and body. According to Dr. Weil, studies have shown that writing can play a substantial role in recovery from grief or trauma. In addition, citing a study out of Stanford University, Dr. Weil tells of "growing evidence that stress management through writing can make medical treatment more effective."[3] This information suggests that the writing itself is allowing the writer to contact emotions at a very deep level. This counters the popular belief that a writer is one who feels deeply and then feels compelled to put it all down on paper. This suggests that the writer feels deeply because he writes it down. It makes sense to me that an actor needs to 1) access deeply-felt emotions appropriate to a dramatic text and 2) be able to return from those extreme states to a sense of emotional balance and well-being. Dr. Weil’s information about the benefits of writing brings me to believe that the acting journal makes both of these possible for the actor. Because I believe in the importance of the acting journal, I’ve been sorry to find that many professional actors have never kept one. And I’ve been gratified that actors I’ve trained tell me, even years later, that their journals—class journals and subsequent ones—have played a significant role in their acting careers. Through the Internet, I’ve been able to correspond with some tremendously talented teachers, nationally and internationally, whom I would never have known otherwise. We’ve been able to function as a teaching network for one another for several years now; we formed a loose association called the Network of Cooperating Studios in 1999. [4] We have met together, traveled to one another’s studios, taught and studied under one another. And we also write, write, write. One series of exchanges we had in April of 1999 centered around the acting journal.[5] Michele Cuomo, Assistant Professor at Ole Miss, first brought it up. Her comments made me hopeful that some teachers still use acting journals as a vital part of actor training.[6] |
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| I worry all the time that the exercises done in my classes won't carry over into the acting work. Many of the theatre classes I've taken over the years incorporated games, but there was no rationale for the games. Finally, in graduate school, we went "back to basics" in my first acting class and really dissected some of the game. What I do now in my freshman acting class is play a game, and then immediately discuss it, asking the students to verbalize all they experienced. …[T]he students become more aware of themselves, their habits, their ability to relate to their various acting partners and they hone their honest responses to stimuli. Mary Coy, the voice teacher, and I combine the voice and acting classes in the second semester, so that we can make an immediate connection between the Linklater work and their acting. I've taken Mary's example and have incorporated daily journalizing into the classwork, so that the experiences include further reflection. Michele Cuomo |
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| Later in her letter, Michele also referred to "creating pieces out of their journals." This turned my idea about the journals the other way around. That is, the students were not writing about their performing, but performing what they were writing. Patrick Cronin, long-time Los Angeles actor, responded to Michele’s mentions of the acting journal. He added other perspectives, both past and present, from the classroom and the profession.[7] |
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| Arthur Wagner in the 60's and 70' created an acting process--first at Ohio and later at Tulane and Temple and finally at UCSD--using Eric Berne's Game Theory. I studied with Arthur at Temple and worked with a number of "his" actors…They (we) all had to keep journals of our characters and we had to draw paradigms for every scene and moment and beat, showing the various ego states and how they advanced our knowledge of text and subtext. I actually used and "allowed" my actors to use only Arthur's approach in a production of Pinter's "Dumbwaiter" which I directed. The results were quite good and I find to this day that I still use some of this process in my daily audition and work world. […] Regards, Pat Cronin |
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| Bill Smith, Director of The Acting Studio in Denver, added to the correspondence his own provocative comments about journals.[8] | ||||
| <grin> We're "aging" each other, Pat, with an admission to using journals. I learned that discipline from Bobby Lewis some years ago. "Record every interesting discovery," said Bobby, "every question, in a log, an actor's log, about class, rehearsal, production and yourself and everything you observe." So, on a NY subway, I added to my journal--to or from an audition, or a class or rehearsal. Thoughts, quotes, diagrams, sketches, arguments. I kept 'em all. I don't need to read 'em. The mere act of writing them gave them some permanence…I can always recall... But I delight in the fact that they're all boxed and secured in my basement. I still keep logs, although nowadays, heh-heh, they're called and filed as something like LAPRO-I3.A99 on my computer. The very private process....one which I will always cherish…is old-fashioned, compromised, for better or worse, by the media of this new age. Indeed, I'm training one actor out of many who has that discipline and actually handwrights a personal actor's log. (Coincidentally, she is the best of the best of TAS actors.) Break a leg, Bill Smith |
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| I didn’t know whether the word "handwrights" was a slip for "handwrites" but I savored it anyway. Just as with playwrighting, I like the idea that our acting journals are wrought rather than merely written. I responded: | ||||
| Bill, you wrote, "I'm training one actor out of many who has that discipline and actually handwrights a personal actor's log. (Coincidentally, she is the best of the best of TAS actors.)" I'm not sure this is coincidence! I have seen over the years a direct correlation between how well students write and what kind of actor they are. Don't really know why, but I have guesses. One has to do with the discipline of it, of course, and the patience--then also the ability to organize one's thoughts, or to articulate one's thoughts, the fundamental impulse to communicate one's thoughts. This ends up creating a basis for articulating in rehearsal what works or doesn't work for an actor, or for asking clearly what one needs instead of sulking or flouncing. Also, an appreciation of language, of word choice and turn of phrase. Also, an appreciation for the writing process itself, which sensitizes an actor to writing by others. Also, it gives students a feeling for what it means to do something, anything, in a sustained fashion--i.e. a journal is not something one develops in, say, four weeks, or three months. I could go on, but you get my drift: of course your actress who keeps the journal is the best. For all of these reasons, I think teachers can help "up" the acting standards all 'round by encouraging (read: requiring) acting students to keep journals. |
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| So often I draw inspiration from practitioners of other disciplines. I opened this piece with a writer’s anecdote about a writer. I’d like to close with a passage written by the extraordinary David Wiley, who is both a painter and a poet. The passage is from the preface to his astonishing 1996 book of poems and drawings, entitled The Face of Creation.[9] |
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| ...about the poem which is at the heart of this collection. Vade Mecum means "go with me" and was the term used to describe an all-purpose ready reference carried by students and others in the days when Latin was the language of learning. The modern version of such a book, which we would probably call a journal, might contain quotations, titles, names and addresses, travel descriptions, thoughts, dreams, ideas, poems, letters, unusual words, drawings, information that might or might not be useful. If such a journal is kept long enough it becomes an autobiographical document of sorts, a record of what the writer was doing and thinking at various times, and it may accordingly be used as a mnemonic device, even to the extent of dredging up elusive sensations and experiences not mentioned in the book. |
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| This passage offers me a succinct and eloquent expression of my original thinking about acting journals. The actor, I thought, recorded his "doing and thinking." Indeed, I have given this passage to many an acting student getting ready to keep his first journal. But it is the remark with which Wiley ended his preface that expresses what I think now. |
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| I want to acknowledge my indebtedness to the notebook I have kept all these years…it has led me into some very unusual adventures. |
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| In this remark, the notebook is not where Wiley recorded his adventures; it is his writing of the notebook that allowed him his adventures. This was not a writer keeping a notebook, but a notebook making a writer. From my perspective now, an actor does not keep a journal; a journal makes an actor. | ||||
| Lissa Tyler Renaud, Ph.D. is an award-winning actress, a recognized scholar, and the Program Director and Teacher of InterArts Training for ongoing training and master classes: Actors' Training Project, Voice Training Project and Fun(da)mentals Training Project |
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| [1] Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet [Bk. 1 of the Crosswick’s Journal] (NY: HarperCollins, 1972), 62 [2] Moshe Feldenkrais, "Image, Movement, and Actor: Restoration of Potentiality" in Tulane Drama Review, vol. 10, no. 3, Spring 1966. The quote here is from page 1 of a version of the article supplied by the Feldenkrais Resource Center of Berkeley, trans. and ed. Kelly Morris. [3] See Andrew Weil’s website at www.drweil.com. Put "writing" into the search engine and open the first entry that comes up. [4] Members of the Network of Cooperating Studios include: Patrick Cronin (California, Tennessee), Michele Cuomo (Mississippi), Andy Garrison (Missouri), Lissa Tyler Renaud (California), Bill Smith (Colorado) and Nathan Thomas (Louisiana). All of these actor/director/teachers address the integration of acting, voice and movement skills in their work; they are also interested in a wide range of other professional issues and areas of expertise. [5] These letters were exchanged in the quirky, informal voice so common to e-mail communication; I’ve retained that voice for its charm, along with some eccentric syntax and punctuation. [6] Michele Cuomo, MFA, studied mime with M. Marceau and D. Stein and is certified as both fight director and yoga instructor. A professional director, she has won awards for both her acting and her teaching, and produced five successful New York shows. She is currently Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Mississippi. [7] Pat Cronin, MFA, has made his living as an actor since 1970, working on over 150 AEA productions, over two hundred commercials, TV shows and films, and earning an Emmy nomination. He is currently teaching at East Tennessee State University, where he held the Basler Chair of Academic Excellence in 1999. [8] Bill Smith, MFA, was mentored in his training by Bobby Lewis and Cicely Berry, and boasts three decades of stage and film credits as actor, director, writer and producer. His film Pulse won the 1999 Colorado Independent Film Festival. He founded his successful acting studio (TAS) in 1983. [9] David Wiley, The Face of Creation, (NC: The Paper Plant, dist., 1996), Author’s Preface. |
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| © 2001 Lissa Tyler Renaud. All rights reserved. Please share this text—including copyright information—with interested private parties and for educational purposes. Please refer people who would like to be on (or off) the mailing list for this and/or future mailings. But please contact me for permission before you reproduce, translate, transmit, frame or store this in a retrieval system for public use: acttrainproj@earthlink.net. Thank you for your consideration. LTR/ATP | ||||