POETRY AND MADNESS

Why have I called this diary ‘Poetry and Madness’? Quite simply, in this show I play a poet who is believed by those around him, to have gone mad. However it’s always difficult trying to understand your character further.

Mathematicians refer to the knowns and the unknowns. Values which are understood and those that are not. So, at the very least, I have some knowns. I like to think of the rehearsal process as one where you are trying to get this balance to move more and more in favour of the former. Some of these knowns are going to be pretty banal. Some others are harder to come by: what should this guy sound like, look like, how does he move, speak, is he smart, do people like him?

There might be days at a time when it feels like these can be left in abeyance. You can’t just do it all at once. And as you get a hook on what the lines might be, what order scenes come in, then a natural evolution occurs. I look like I this, it feels right. I sound like this, it sound’s right.

So as the banal facts accrue, I am able to make educated choices. Gradual adjustments of rhythm and tempo can, for instance, yield a terrific amount of success in building a believable three-dimensional character.  I like to be on top of my lines enough to allow this exploration. If I know them well enough I can have a great amount of confidence in not just saying them all the same way. Harder than it sounds, this. Some lines stubbornly resist being said in any other way. At the moment, Ivan (my Ivan anyway) seems to spend most of the first half of the play in quite a high state of tension. It’s easy for the lines to end up in a homogenous stew, so it’s important to remain in control enough to be able to find moments empirically – by trial and observation.

So, by experimenting when to push and when to relax, you begin to make character discoveries. For instance, in the asylum, Ivan has to realize at some point that if he just shouts at everyone all the time then he’s screwed. So there is a moment when he realizes that perhaps trying to be as relaxed as possible will make them him. There is no correct answer here in terms of the timing, and the moment Ivan realizes a change of tack is necessary doesn’t have to be the same moment as the audience. In fact it’s probably better if they’re a step or two ahead. They can see the trajectory of a doomed man condemning himself by bad choices.

I also find it very useful to keep lists of facts. Some are easy and obvious: Ivan is male, he’s a poet. We know he’s written a poem about Jesus Christ, that he’s a member of a literary group ‘Massolit’. The book gradually yields more facts and the hope is that with every sweep of a scene or page the more obscure and hidden facts will reveal themselves. Simon is constantly referring to our process as like filling a reservoir. I can only hope that I’m filling it with the right stuff.

I suppose my doubts are coming because this strange sinewy book gives you so many wonderful leads and ideas that at times it is impossible to square them all.

Sometimes it just all feels completely unknown, unknowable. It can be days at a time between being able to look over scenes or moments because there is always so much work to be done on everything. Quite often our rehearsals lurch from scene to scene with no discernable pattern. Great ideas and unlikely links are made this way. The brain does not shut down too much in one direction and the hope is that this creativity geyser will continue to spurt. Everyone is in every rehearsal (16 actors, director, two assistant directors, two or three from video, the same from sound, lighting, stage managers, assistant SM, deputy SM…). That’s a lot of people filling a lot of reservoirs. The downside is that this intense and fully peopled process doesn’t allow for much in the way of introspection. You are doing all of your discoveries in the moment. They are often instinctive choices made on one’s feet.

This is a crucial missing link in my process. I need dream time.  This is where the relationship between the banal list of knowns has room to spread itself and develop, to take on a life of its own. Because, for me, this is where the scaffold of facts is most useful. It’s a proper solid structure from which the more abstract choices might hang. You find yourself able to justify your crazier ideas if that list of knowns is strong enough, has flourished enough. So. I’m just going to have to build myself some dream time, that’s the next thing on my list.

-Richard Katz

Poetry and Madness

I’ve been thinking about inhibitions, how a director enables actors to do things that they might not be comfortable with, and draw them into a world of make believe. These two words are so crucial. Make. Believe. Children understand this so well. “You be the Cowboys I’ll be The Indians.” They don’t need much encouragement to enter these ideas fully and with great passion.

It’s incredible how difficult this leap is for grown ups. Even ones for whom it is how they go about making a living. When you know you are going to be judged not only by an audience, by critics, but by your colleagues in rehearsals too it’s so easy to be inhibited. Why is this?

I think my favourite actors are quite good at knowing when it’s time to be selfish. Selfishness in the correct dosage seems important. It’s so nice when an actor understands that there is nothing else for it but to show that he’s thinking of doing this moment JUST LIKE THIS. There’s always a doorway of truth and potential embarrassment that at some point you have to go through. Today I think I’m on the wrong side of the door. The polite side.

It’s certainly a balance that is hard to strike. All of the nuts and bolts stuff of a rehearsal room from learning your lines through to juggling your props, require some agreement that there is a natural evolution to a process. Coming in on day one knowing exactly how I might play something, being off book and having practiced a neat little tap dance for act 2 might look like I have next to no interest in sharing moments with my colleagues.

But sooner or later you have to step through the door. With a ‘normal’ play it might feel easier because (hopefully) you’ll be digesting the character’s words for a long time even before rehearsals start. But it’s no less daunting knowing that at some point, without the script in your hand or the bedroom mirror to pout into, you’re going to have to look like you mean it.

I suppose this is what I mean about being selfish in the right doses. To take a moment on stage requires just the right dose of this. It’s a person grabbing a moment. Hamlet is selfish. He looks straight at the audience and says “I’m feeling like this and it feels like hell.” What’s lovely is having actors who are able to know when and how to honour that selfishness but not to create so much turbulence that everything else is blown out of the water. Hamlet knows when to be quiet too. I think that the reason make believe is such a wonderful phrase is that it allows for proper engagement. Be the cowboy, be killed by the arrow through the forehead, but the game is as much about the delight in being able to play the moment as it is about honestly convincing anyone that you are dead.

 - Richard Katz

It is, perhaps, harder being in a devised piece than in any other kind of show. There are so many different things to fail at – can you improvise, can you write? Can you look at the subject, characters and story and make instinctive choices about what passages from the book will work well in the theatre? Can you play within the group, knowing when it’s your turn to lead, and when to follow?

And on top of all of this, plain and simple: can you act?

It is really hard at the moment. Stuck as I am playing a poet who people believe to be mad I feel no meaning. No nuance. I know Simon would like a degree of physical engagement, but it’s just not coming.

Ivan’s journey is an interesting one. From party-line poet, through trauma,  mistaken madness, incarceration and finally transcendence. Ivan’s passion seems very important to me – he does everything to the extreme.

One of the tools we use in rehearsals is known as ‘The Seven Levels of Tension’, and it’s a useful shorthand for degrees of physical engagement. For example, with no tension in the body, you are catatonic, perhaps, or asleep. That’s Level One. With the body completely overcome by tension you become rigid, petrified. That’s Level Seven – the level of great tragedy. In between one and seven are the points on the way. Lot’s of people give the levels different names: ‘Californian/relaxed’, or ‘alert/is there a bomb in the room?’.

Instinct would have me nudge Ivan’s tension all the way to Level Seven. The tragic.

When these tools work for you they free up your brain because you don’t need to make any clever decisions. You simply play the level you’ve chosen, meaning intellectual explanations can be explored later on. My problem at the moment is that in the higher states (Ivan spends quite a lot of time up in what we call ‘the passionate’) it can be quite hard to remain open and flexible in improvisations. Great performers are able to play at this level of intensity without it becoming heavy. Even in great tragic moments it’s as if they can still remember it’s a game, they can still play. They’re still reactive and proactive, reaching these levels of physical extremity and engagement while maintaining a sense of ease. This, for me, is essential. Children do this so instinctively. They can engage a level of play that is at once serious and playful. They’re always willing to take the game to the next level.

- Richard Katz