Acting in the "Now" Scene

ah one very early on learns never to reduce the credit is given to you and i can just help making their mark o'brien that others have that there he came to our place because he heard it was the year a good place to go he also said it was at that time the only place to go i go that far back in the educational theater in the west coast and waved from ma nothing at all had to begin the first effort that is now i think being so wonderfully and adequately i realized all over america and the growth of our very small monthly interest apartments in what is now i believe in my own mind of the theater in america which is the educational theater not broadway lot of the river the regional theater the educational theatre was first early days we had our own purposes there was an emphasis that i gave to the

work that i was doing our part i think my own need as much as the native anyone else i've been active inactive and colleagues and then semi professional and slightly professionally before i determined on the pitching career when i went into the teaching career i was faced with a simple fact of i wanted to get a sense of over to my students i want to be able to say the things to them that they could realize the value up in order to do that i had to investigate and find out what those things might be you and so i began looking at adding and talking as a result of this certain specific actions occurred the specific actions i know now were ways and means we use the word the technique and as i looked at my program coming out here that given to me i said solid loved to talk on the subject of technique in that now

seem like before we came down he said acting emma now seen her technique and acting in a mousy and i'm going to try to touch on both them because i got socked know unassailable now seen when you use the word technique you're using wood that has got multiple meanings especially in american theater and they're not similar meanings is quite a dichotomy i think possibly one of the most common place meanings behind the word technique is one that the deals and that's an attitude starvation is this something that isn't quite right there's something else quite a bit wrong about technique as a tune in a creative field i think i've heard the word technique sneered at more than any other single word enter the theater a mexican except possibly the word amateur you know what we do have are especially

after we get to be professionals worry well i'm a tour is for these other people in your professional somehow or other you were able to spring like athena from birth no intermediate period the right end of a glorious wonderful field a profession is you never went through the amateur period i think to a technique has a kind of a connotation as well i think it has a connotation by people who are in secure uncertain not sure exactly what it means and how it works but what they're there because either of ability or because their background the training would depend upon me it is a mystical force that they hoped that the gods that be an icy and odds are placed within them so that if the spartans touch all be a light and they will sparkle in the firmament there's another attitude toward technique and i hear this and

see a very great deal among those people who are i think the finest artists in any field of art and this is an attitude of respect to put it this way when i stand in front of a statue in that church in rome it's hard to get to that possesses michelangelo's moses to me this power in stone this tethered thing that arises in lives i look at it and i can have a stir thought and i could have some goose pimples down here and i look and i say to myself i get all of this because that man know how to pick up a humbler than older the one hand and a chisel in another and he knew just the amount of energy put into each time so that their response to the chiseled by the marble was exactly what it wanted to

be he wanted to be that technique would be no moses a couple of seasons ago we had one of the great musical concert i think of a century in our town graduated here either together gorski playing together it was amusing he was an evening all music a much more music and you get one you get those two people at work how those fingers move all the arm swayed how the sounds for thirty years and every bit of movement was i know how movement was a trained disciplined movement that is never going to be a parent no one is thinking oh my is the wonderful little finger keeps working up there way up the neck appear only think of the totality of a music that came out in and off this

and when i read writing like that one note that begins by that fairly well known playwright and sonic here william shakespeare but i am here the mace to maybe hold i had to create a response it comes because a man sat down and knew how to long discipline you know how to use words and put them together in the right combinations and probably what is the most difficult for writing of all this is a technique technique is not thought to hialeah in america as i've come across as i come across those who live and work in the area where i live and work hollywood often it's a little theaters and it's professional theaters and semi professional theaters

and the industry are hollywood it is across the water and i think it's for this reason that we see that are acting today coming out of the british isles that are acting on the london scene than we see on mars so happen in our own particular instance some years ago back in the seventies when times are rather desperate and insecurity and we'll need for some of the solidarity groups work was very much of the floor during that time a group of people formed a theater that they called the group theatre an emphasis i think it's entirely wrong and it should be in the theater group we got sophia group now in los angeles i think that should be around that's more theater than group and they were more group by far i think cynthia lennon the dollar in others they were going after the needs the

satisfactions of the individual and he was paramount to send the doing of this they forgot they individually and connection with an audience forgetting that connection with an audience i'm simplifying this very very much but for getting that need going after the demands and their very real demands of the act the actor who cannot get not only an economical but a personal return from his work she's no act this is part of our write that we will enjoy what we do that we will relish not only the higher that we earn but the satisfactions that come to us when we are at our best well we should be at our best on a stage in front of an audience laboring in on her profession but if we're concerned only with self another the audience then we're not concerned with the means whereby we're going to get the message of our intellects and our emotions of our bodies and our sensations out to the audience when a bit of a concern the technique as a result of the influence of this group

i feel but throughout america there has been a lessening of the means whereby we can best develop the creative it is things that we have gotten into a stick a compelling urge is to create we got with in this technique been paid back on his word and that is unfortunate it can be and should be a word that works very very well for us because we know and understand what it means in believe it it's a way of doing things is what michelangelo new know and talk to him he found out for himself but his technique nonetheless it's what we know is what an actor knows and knows that he knows takes pride in that i think the technique really is one of the most creative acts of my discovery the involvement of technique it is the means whereby we can realize the greatest potential for more creative forces it has the means whereby we

can when we wish bring into being those controlled explosions on the stage that make for great it has the means whereby we can start to do something and no as we're doing it the certainty of the result of doing it not having this trial in there but to stand on stage stage and say to yourself as you hear your own voice as you know what your body is doing a movement you're saying yourself yes i am an affirmation this works i know what works i can make it work it is working now but his technique itself and all the little tiny details i'd go into the multiplicity of the effort that comes out a winner in that wonderful area the stage in front of the other wonderful

area the auditorium little tiny detail by detail a cue is a part of the technique where i live and work we don't like to do much about qs can let them want to take care of themselves and so you can see a show perform for full price goes though simply because people are not trained little late to pick up cues a technique is hell in such a simple thing is a preliminary movement that little indication of movement or sound that indicates to the audience that something more important is going to occur is going to happen that's one we use of thousands of times we look

at it before we do anything about direct attention that is another we had not the last season we have done to take a theater a play called in the case of j robert oppenheimer this is a drama the report from which we have various people on the witness stand with various service attorneys out front for and against it's not the subject material brought people into the theater the subject material and did people return them on and it's turned quite a few office of my whole solar but he was the subject material to help if they had done one simple thing or they would have increased the artistic value they acting value of the play but he's decided and this was the use of a primary movement every attorney

in all the defense against the prosecution or the defense everyone got up from his place all evening long and this is he is the main action of the play jean baptiste and i came back and that's the questions involved in the transcript that was taken from real life that was not to dramatize at the time and they made no attempt to dramatize it their faraway one off on a buddhist at you know icons very few of them up and down just a steady level all the way through because no prosecutor went up looking at is a lawyer turned away from him this final moment this would be right or not is not the point that this kind of a movement before we had a minute shot the question then you walk

instead it quickly four five people doing the same kind of thing repeating the same actions leading that after like an animal in front of a caged heart and looking up and down here and all of them pausing of them getting arrested were these little means whereby we get to me a whole lot of the attention of our audience a preliminary movement who would have more cash on the box office till and we're concerned with this quite concerned that this theater down there has a sizeable deficit every year and we have to find ways i'm on the board of directors down there and this is one of you one of the main subjects we have to deal with in our meetings i have not yet in the society which i find myself that i raise my voice to say it was the guts to do it to say well we'd have more money if you had more poem and our movements and what you

doing amanda i'm sure they would take it as almost well i don't know quite how when you enter it i haven't done but i am sure i am sure that this is one of the main factors that would be in the technique a way of doing things where by the creative artist realizes he's great unspoken show seeing we have a wonderful chance here in america and a broader sense that is involved in the meeting between those of the story here today for hundreds of years that america's been going our forefathers strove to achieve up a place for the coming society that would have the benefits and the privileges that we've got in the doing of this

the terrain the natural surroundings under which they had to to make inroads there to make their way put limitations on therefore their limitations as far as choice of concern of joys of life is concerned activity in life and growing out of that values is concern was very very limited they achieved remarkable things and we benefit from it we pop into a plane over los angeles and then if you are so we're well more than a few hours last night to sum up all night texas last night even up in the sky you know you know you're big that you know but that big storm you put on forest last night it was actually an explosive or something all around here lighting effects every nicely for which isn't the comparison to it and stuff today an opportunity given before to make choices these

joyce is going out of values that we can establish now there's an enormous amount of unrest in our land today and it has obviously motivated multiple reasons one of the reasons for the unrest among other challenges that is coming is that comes to the that the typical state and a set of values that you or people representing today's young people are not the ones that we want we cannot accept that you're going in a materialistic society you replace values there and those are not values that we want to usually done you got a lot of money did you cheat on your income tax all these and getting words to you you know that i'm taking your dialogue i suspect you'll get back to me you don't want our grandkids i'm saying do that more than just the dialogue and we between generations might be going our moral values and that are being said and they're being set for a seminar even worked there was mistaken amnio the paper are we

getting hooked on sound air pollution some are we getting hooked on sound values are being established for us in this country now because we have an opportunity do established values that we've never had before we've got choices the very affluent of our society gives us an opportunity to spread ourselves in any direction if you're born in a country such as india you spend all of your life on the narrow choice of staying alive or die on us poverty level that day to day level your opportunity for multiple choice so drastically limited that it is striking to us who live in this privileged land but we do live in this land and the choices are there no one values are all around you we talk about samoa one of the others there's guys that are being established for you and the same with a hitler established his values are suggestive day by day radio and television day by day in our magazines and are advertising and the writing that were

doing the covers of books we are having value set for us that do not come out his values don't seem to be talking about values but they are values alliance we've got value was established and cigarettes go far beyond the effect the smoke alarms as federal workforce and all sects world smell this and you have the case well let's see that's my generation to be this year we've we progress beyond that values are being established here in this country in multiple ways values that what the dollar will purchase the merger it will buy the idea that the necessities that will buy that is all around us in obviously mean an obvious ways are being established all we've got our chance to do something about the values and returned a law signed because we have downtown

made the music center the dorothy chandler pavilion at the market with human elements and i think probably the single most beautiful theater complex anywhere in the world well on the outside the features on the inside leave a little something i think to be desired we're having a dose of a time bringing all over los angeles county's place we're hungry forty years we've never had a theater as new yorkers had theater or even as sanders is close in theater we've been solidly that motion pictures and by god that's not theater we've had that all the time but we haven't had the other were hungry for it but we're not getting los angeles coming into the theater were getting a segment of los angeles coming in we're getting ucla coming in were getting the gradual community were getting to the college the alumni coming in to the theater were not getting north east south and west coming into our theaters what are some of the values some are other to get over

to our people here is a real value in life semi can make a choice to how i want to bring enjoying the slowness in my life am i going to do it by buying the car this year even though i had one just a year or year a half ago is this the value that i want to this is the value that swapping is right now or is it going to be a value that kind of value can pick up if you're in a city like vienna where the not only loves theater they really cherished you know the shambles that there was there in vienna when the russians left we were in very shortly after this the theater was i mean the city was still in ruins but among the first buildings are completed and working by lord harry where the theaters only go to them when you go to the theater and they think it is just to see the thing happening up on stage with you so it's a theater evening there's a feeling about their dad are you up there that it's a wonderful nice

become an audio the parking for the chandelier for the pictures of the stars of former years up here if you put your hand behind your back on your mission and it's not just lawyers watching the play going on but it's a local theater the whole evening and it's rewarding the kind of anything you say i like this a lot more than it does something to read it which is my life or eight and those living more than just give me a very good feeling there is an enjoyment in theater going american populous does not know that this is not one of the values they chose they're much better as far as music that is not one of it is that we've established and this is a competition that we're really an acting in the mouse scene what is a good idea for our audience is it going to perfect prefer to spend the money on buying those clothes and clothes and clothes and pose in autism this pilot ears giving me the style of the week is that the the replacement society that we live in these values

are being established were you know if you have an opportunity also spanish and we can do and we should do it as well as general motors' cash really has received bringing out for dramatically means is a conflict what's your stronger the the opponent the more the conflict but we got a pretty big conflict at general motors this is the competition we've got to face what we going to do do we want to the values that inherent in a culture that can support art in all of its forms and for us particularly theater art sang that this is one of the values that is the most benefit to you more in this community said you can get as much in its way or more in his way then you can about art that new car we have this joint because now we have the new opportunities on what drew your splendid facilities you know whether the finest the disney world are outside of a few big show places in europe

are on the college campuses of america they are the best the lives they are the best equipped they are the best plan got some of the best people in it we going to people in america are we in america can make choices and those choices cut off or shallow living or living in debt i sure there isn't any question in the minds of all is that one of the ways to get moving that makes those huge amount of time when we're here where we come in over here a number seven is say about one were going to come in and we go over here and very few a seventies about when they're going to go off and in most societies they haven't got very much to say about what is going to happen in between because the choices are limited it's down on the primitive now we have got this chill and for instance or a community was a choice going to be adept and the thing that is going to

come when a man is at his creative best when the theaters function as only a magnificent institution one of the earliest that man ever created on our most ancient on the most honored not invented a growing our past human need we know that this is the year when it's working well ut paul strain that for the life of the people who will come to work backstage the people who will come out here acting in the now seeing is it something with going after intercepting work with working hard on getting oneself to i think so rare rare privilege the salami and the chance of an intense mean rare rare privilege

to commit yourself fortunate is the individual has the opportunity to commit himself ho himself easy for us isn't images of holy hell isn't it twenty four hours a day but we make twenty five album in the theater we do commit ourselves only take weekends off vacations all of what we do we come right back to that black maude the stage door and going over committing ourselves only rewarding activity use a larger then the ordinary concept about it when we think of ok i want to just prepare myself for or profession that i like and hope that i'm going to be very famous in the law there's something more limited stay where they were actually fortunate position crucial i believe the

fortunate we can begin to set values we other positive once said of being acted upon we act and i've got a means a splendid institution all the technical advantages of the last years these thieves this is the peak you know

our now though none of us to not to be aired we've always said this it's a center just continuously through the years there have been times when it is done less well there times when it's done somewhat better it's never had an easy time but that's not really to be expected i suspect who had an easy time have become quite flabby i cry so far we've never had in a real flood venice in the american theater shame steel

gate i think we should all have multiple skills and for the proteins humor i'm the man who is his going on stage and off stage a backstage look around a box office we've got the abilities as it is is we've got to stretch the remarkable thing we there's no end to the stress and we've got our minds is it is that if you only if you're a business and you and a warehouse and you're going to package some good as you go package of so many goods in pullman at a warehouse that had come up time in which that whales in the field of the raptors and you couldn't get anything more am that's on our minds our minds are never fail when every to limit would never stop me are where our metal warehouse or just keep expanding expanding there's this wonderful thing that we can walk into a class and acting

and in the first ten minutes or inside of one hour we can learn something grasp on it accomplish what technique it is a bit of creativity that's there for the rest of our lives we said if we're still around who also greatly in minutes we got this capacity we got to stretch you could be good for all of us but most others can be good and serious work and tragedy and that in comedy we can make we can play in many different genres styles of acting portion of rollout of an actor should be what a caucus tomorrow we've got this capacity skills lots of them like every every actor should be a master craftsman it would show in his articulation a master craftsman of craftsmanship is is not creativity the road toward what we should have that same feeling of pride that they owed them a edgar of the

furniture couple hundred years ago would have when he said that i had the us to about fifteen years ago her father was the fourth or fifth german cabinet maker you know the family going out for generations and went out of respect to his shop and as he showed me around his superb work and his young male around he said so here's a couple pieces i'm not going to say oh he's going to keep it was he took an enormous pride in his craft let's write it should have and we should have that and articulation should be one of those deals where my god we haven't got it all actors i've heard all the tears i've heard the face of the globe and we traveled a fair amount i have to say we win in america on sloppy speech well we are the ports which is the best and sloppy speech where the poorest and articulation and yet the audience should never be

aware of you're mastering the skill we should be master craftsman as well as creative artists multiple skills you see you got it steve or i don't know what the new system is we've always start as farce systems message of thing we call them my father was a minister why we lived in a you know in a small rocky mountain rights community and he was a preacher and rancher farm out there and he often would look around this little tiny town and he would see the methodist baptist the presbyterians the christians we wear them as arranged the catholics look around a semi so many ways to heaven it's strains of view of the

scene there's so many ways interacting there's no one like you think you can teach acting a dozen ways twenty five different ways that are always to always tell him how you want to do and no work i think i don't like the word method i'm too much of a year of an eclectic i'm too much of a thief i will steal anything from anybody can get though mo do anything in the theater make up my own mind just a citizen of the things that you must do we've got to learn how to share ownership well are batteries about every day there's a man show shakespeare he's willing to share ownership with you sometimes century constraints nobody's some of the show we put on here but we have the

write in the theater to share ownership which is very much in your mind right now was this morning's program do you want me to talk to you no justice i'm going to do this this morning but you know we had some trouble getting here last night we have risen over quite we flew over i hear because we couldn't land we assume that you

always manage things much better in texas and they do outspend always good weather and we ended up on austin a million years and that had to come on back here and my eyeglasses were left of my ear well it was when i was going to read something here in the various dialects nigeria is familiar with an independent glass to see if the bigger and i could read i could see my own particular note said i'm going to do this right now without any a ride off the cuff i haven't no blown up a missile or anything this is a speech that that your family quite without other whether it's appropriate to do it right now are not the first two words in it ought to be so i'm not sure whether that's what i i yeah ha ha this is just for dialect all purposes of you i'm going to get very avidly i'm going to shift on the only of the dialect the us from iris i'm eliza now shift from one

no one to the other the first and that i shall i call an awful you just you become optional on a cat out to do be odd not duties that these the testing all was empty is nobler ends the mind to something else the slings and arrows about wages fourteen they got was a guest is your troubles and by opposing end it the back to sleep no more biased bbc we ends up at kansas i was a nacho shocks jack has a consummation devoutly to be wished catch a dream i have rows of the rum or in actually the death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us polls so who would bear that

nixon's kinds of pain the presses raw the program's company that hangs its prized love allies delay the incidence of office and is boeing's the recent marriage of the only takes what he himself more is quite as michael to be a board game you would file bills get the grime and sweat under a really lot but that the day to something off the day the undiscovered country from was born or kevin beekman pauses the wheel and makes us they are those ills and i have down here next was something i think or maybe all shifted to something else at you know that's a deal you don't have to be a creative artist to learn the skill and violence orient there was a good ear and practiced toward mastery and that's

fine and practice what it becomes a creative too as of this morning dialects when it is honest when a ballot is honestly motivated is always seen enriching to integrate in its intensity too and we do so badly to place a limit their duty here in america it will increase the quality of art our creative effort to increase the take at the box office and i am for both of those were certainly having you said this is the sort of become an odd note on which we got the right to teach me me i don't have a series of the practices and these are practices you can get directly out of years to the theater that's

senator can see when they did that the air one box office was going to study garrett and derek's time or kelly sabre and i was an old oil today of course add a mania had a studio in hollywood would say they would with an awful lot of scripts and i'd be acting in his own get at his own series in television what'd he do you so there wasn't a period of years there have severed are dipped in both they were during lame as long and the blackened of them at any other time in its history more out of the red it's there from time immemorial this this is where the vaccine's success is what worked for them or work for us how to get your community i know what i think is the community you know they come in first in just small numbers if you've got twenty five people in your opening night

in you so impress those twenty five people are going to work and you're out to build an audience first of all the products that we have the right and again in this we were not like i'm a healthy person would then sit on the board of directors in which we're choosing a program of horrified place for a season for the mark taper forum and for the ahmanson theatre and all the time that we've been talking to talk about pop star can we get up to direct and get welcome again this that the other thing and the people to sit on that board someone they're all learn the most of them are very very learned and in the profession these are people in the theater in motion picture industry expertise is unquestioned they know what is happening to date on the london stage they know exactly what's happening five minutes ago and the new york stage we talk about the stars that we can bring in and this program and so we bring wonder wonders rosengrant i'm dr david cutler los angeles i wonder what the hell happens to the box office well they've

got all kinds of awards it was beauty or media player on jihad is a spinoff was we say in television from home what you gonna do a spinoff if you don't know them but the basic product we've had one hamlet in fifteen years and i was just this last summer with nicol williamson and some people would never question whether was amasa not it was the obvious kind it was i admit it was unreliable and it was a many doll have let out all by any manner of means but no one is right down to cases and said what we selling them every night on stage on our actors being able to do to the audiences set what's the faces the audiences they know we opened the ahmanson theatre with the eugene o'neill's more stately mansions and the leading role all excitement and interest

emulation by this play that was that has ever been produced and then ingrid bergman she didn't waver so all this great stock so people came to the theater enthusiastic and excited if you watch their faces when they went out you would have spread the results on this that were actually there on the season ticket stubs sail the next year i was a drop of twenty thousand on one season of them and like what is right now north is why we leave kamin excited and they went out and excited like what eugene o'neill was not stupid there was a reason why more stately mansions it in one ever produced and all you gotta do see it and you know it is it's a dull plain wrong when they don't play it on an after all and then as far as bourbon has concern how much charm can you take she's charming there's no question about that justice

rolls out from her she is a she has a lovely lady was not negate that at all set you're going to have more than just charm and we're going to make our heart vehicle go in front of the twenty two hundred seat house you got to have a lot more than that you just can't come down and lean against the brazilian march and arizona voters there was this new in an interesting business note it's more than that and she didn't have the more than that this is what he said the court you know he said it was shocking and a product is exactly what happens on stage by you i'm going to be there i mean we've been sold on selling by publicity gas to sell the show by customs that is

either on our offer more going on the latter now and we are they of the year before ms webber trying to sell hair is enormous sell am in hollywood it's a heron disneyland these are the two big attraction now i want to get to the nude scene uc dossier is a very dahl seem there's a lot of provocative in air oh sure