The Subtle Art of Letting go
A conversation with a good friend over a week ago has set off a chain of thoughts, all of them positive. It is easy to underestimate the power of the right person at exactly the right time. Staring at this brave and strong woman across the table from me, smiling and pulling her emotions to her chest, confronting them, dealing with the pain of them and categorically allowing herself to let it all go from her control was inspiring to say the least. Here was a woman who has been thrown around a washing machine of misery mixed with dirty underpants and sharp objects over the last few years and she wasn't showing a single sign of anger or bitterness. She simply glowed with strength and she was more beautiful than I've ever seen her. She's Swedish, I don't need to say more.
I walked away feeling like a great big weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Just let it all go. It's life. All of it. And life is going on every single day. Let it go and smile. Every single experience is a blessing, sometimes the blessing is heavily disguised as a pile of, well let's say shit, but it's always a blessing.
And then the following day my eye was caught by a Guardian Blog about whether we can ever over rehearse. The answer is quite simply, yes. Not because once a production has left the rehearsal room it is finished, far from it. It simply goes on a different journey. Anyone not in Theatre will be unaware of the role an audience plays. The audience is literally another collective character. Everything changes in their presence. But on top of this vital ingredient, in front of an audience with the atmosphere changed and the world set by the director the actors job really starts. This is the point where the director has led them down the path he wants, mixed them in a bowl with all the elements (design, costume, lights etc), given all the departments time to experiment, chew over ideas and steered everyone to the same world and now it's the job of the actors to bring this to life with new energy and ideas. Live, on their feet. Put simply the director must let his vision go and be interpreted by the people inhabiting the world, the characters.
Directors who seemingly cannot let go can make the whole thing incredibly uncomfortable and often their productions become uniform. I bring to light the two directors used as an example for continuing rehearsal after opening night. Katie Mitchell and Peter Brook. Let's start with Katie. Oh Katie. I have watched three of her productions and the overall experience has left me cold. Her productions are beautifully designed and always visually stunning. And then, after that, the most obvious presence is Katie. She squashes her actors who get completely swallowed up in her ideas and are seemingly puppets. You can almost see the strings as she pulls them. You can see the anxiety in the performers, in some cases it literally screams at you from the stage. I spent an entire production of The Seagull desperately fighting my urge to pull the actress off stage and comfort her that she's a great actress, do not let this woman crush your spirit. Not the character I stress, who is going mad, the actress who looked terrified to try anything other than the carefully choreographed emotional expression she was allowed.
And I've seen one of the greatest actors of my generation in various shows, two of them Mitchell productions. It should be stated that he is a fan of her work. But despite his talent and confidence as a performer, what could be emotionally draining performances, and one only needs to watch him in EVERY single other production he has been in to know his credentials, he is lost. Not the actor or performer but the performance and character. No matter what blood and guts is thrown out from the actors facing the audience we can't hear anything except 'KATIE THINKS WE SHOULD ALL CARE ABOUT...' And we can't see anything except 'MY OH MY, WHAT VISION, WHAT PASSION, THIS DIRECTOR IS A GENIUS'. 'What do you mean what was it about? I don't know, some guy puts on a play, his family hate it but it's soooooo impressive, go see, it's Katie Mitchell.' 'And then there was like this dancing scene, above them, I don't know but it looked AMAZING.' Katie Mitchell rocks.
And moving on to our next victim, that master of theatre, Peter Brook. So misunderstood he had to leave his own country and do Theatre in France. What started as a romantic story of a genius, misunderstood in his own time has quickly descended into a mad man whose lost his marbles, and what talent he once possessed. I defy a single person who has seen 11/12 to tell me that was a piece of Theatre, let alone one that moved, inspired discussion or quite frankly entertained. If you find one then you may instantly house them in the box in your head marked 'wanker', because they are simply jumping on the bandwagon that despite recent evidence, holds Brook up as revolutionary.
The problem with revolution is that at some point the revolution you were fronting gets surpassed by a new one. Or you get so stuck in your 'church of' that you become everything you were fighting for. And like all things in life, for a revolution to continue, you have to let go. For an idea to develop past expectation it has to be let go. Otherwise it stays exactly where it is. In the rehearsal room. There is a reason the rehearsal room is not open to the public. It's not actually very interesting. Be at the rehearsed reading on the first day of any rehearsal schedule and you'd be mad if you didn't think you were faced with a talentless, droning, over dramatic bunch of idiots, desperately scrambling to put emotion and power behind black letters on white paper. Next up you start to analyse and extract, then discuss, then try, fail, try again, fail again. Meanwhile all the elements that even the actors can be atrociously bad at forgetting exist are going through their version of the same thing. Rehearsals are stopped because a prop was in the wrong place, the wig keeps moving, your face has swollen in reaction to the glue. Blah, blah, blah. In fact in rehearsal, things can be stopped and interrupted for the most trivial of reasons. Excuses, excuses, excuses. And then comes the day when an audience arrives. A dropped cue no longer means a shout out for help. It means living in the world, in the characters head and thinking as they do whilst trying not to ruin the thread of story as it unfolds in front of peoples eyes. And that's just one very technical way of looking at a performance. Emotionally, there is no room for that thought about shopping, you can't shop, you're in a mad house, or a slave girl, or blind and trapped in your flat whilst con men try and trick you. Believe me, the shopping list does creep in when you're so relaxed about a performance and what follows is a lacklustre performance or a series of errors that quicken everyone's heart and you're reminded that this is a living art. You cannot sleep on the job. Characters very lives depend on your imagination and quick thinking.
I remember watching Robert Lindsay in The Entertainer at the Old Vic, night after night from the various usher chairs (please note that angle changes very little in theatre, unlike film) and it was not a great production, most of the cast were uninspiring. But Lindsay was alive and you couldn't watch anything but him. Every night, he was different. Same character, same world, different performance. He lived and breathed the moment and threw it out into the black cavernous space and he owned everyone in the room. He squashed the cast around him, not from lack of generosity, the poor man was throwing life jackets, and sugar treats and lines out left right and centre, hoping to find a spark of life to no avail. And then he'd be generous above and beyond as the audience failed to clap the mediocre performers around him but gave rapturous applause to him, he clapped louder than the audience put together when it was his co stars turn and hugged the actress who played his daughter in consolation night after night. In her, was fear, she'd set a performance and she didn't have the nuance to change a thing. She is exactly the type of actress that Katie Mitchell needs. Except even Katie isn't stupid enough to employ someone that wooden. Instead she takes the greatest of actors and then wows us by covering them in a giant Katie Mitchell flag and having them act like an actor in a Polanski press junket. 'He's a genius, who would say no?' Well, probably a thirteen year old girl but that's just a technicality.
So safe in the knowledge that I will never work for Katie Mitchell or Roman Polanski, I leave you with the advice to just let go. That includes you Nicholas Hytner, when I come and audition for one of your shows. God damn, and there goes the career at the National. Bloody Katie Mitchell, it's all your fault...
I walked away feeling like a great big weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Just let it all go. It's life. All of it. And life is going on every single day. Let it go and smile. Every single experience is a blessing, sometimes the blessing is heavily disguised as a pile of, well let's say shit, but it's always a blessing.
And then the following day my eye was caught by a Guardian Blog about whether we can ever over rehearse. The answer is quite simply, yes. Not because once a production has left the rehearsal room it is finished, far from it. It simply goes on a different journey. Anyone not in Theatre will be unaware of the role an audience plays. The audience is literally another collective character. Everything changes in their presence. But on top of this vital ingredient, in front of an audience with the atmosphere changed and the world set by the director the actors job really starts. This is the point where the director has led them down the path he wants, mixed them in a bowl with all the elements (design, costume, lights etc), given all the departments time to experiment, chew over ideas and steered everyone to the same world and now it's the job of the actors to bring this to life with new energy and ideas. Live, on their feet. Put simply the director must let his vision go and be interpreted by the people inhabiting the world, the characters.
Directors who seemingly cannot let go can make the whole thing incredibly uncomfortable and often their productions become uniform. I bring to light the two directors used as an example for continuing rehearsal after opening night. Katie Mitchell and Peter Brook. Let's start with Katie. Oh Katie. I have watched three of her productions and the overall experience has left me cold. Her productions are beautifully designed and always visually stunning. And then, after that, the most obvious presence is Katie. She squashes her actors who get completely swallowed up in her ideas and are seemingly puppets. You can almost see the strings as she pulls them. You can see the anxiety in the performers, in some cases it literally screams at you from the stage. I spent an entire production of The Seagull desperately fighting my urge to pull the actress off stage and comfort her that she's a great actress, do not let this woman crush your spirit. Not the character I stress, who is going mad, the actress who looked terrified to try anything other than the carefully choreographed emotional expression she was allowed.
And I've seen one of the greatest actors of my generation in various shows, two of them Mitchell productions. It should be stated that he is a fan of her work. But despite his talent and confidence as a performer, what could be emotionally draining performances, and one only needs to watch him in EVERY single other production he has been in to know his credentials, he is lost. Not the actor or performer but the performance and character. No matter what blood and guts is thrown out from the actors facing the audience we can't hear anything except 'KATIE THINKS WE SHOULD ALL CARE ABOUT...' And we can't see anything except 'MY OH MY, WHAT VISION, WHAT PASSION, THIS DIRECTOR IS A GENIUS'. 'What do you mean what was it about? I don't know, some guy puts on a play, his family hate it but it's soooooo impressive, go see, it's Katie Mitchell.' 'And then there was like this dancing scene, above them, I don't know but it looked AMAZING.' Katie Mitchell rocks.
And moving on to our next victim, that master of theatre, Peter Brook. So misunderstood he had to leave his own country and do Theatre in France. What started as a romantic story of a genius, misunderstood in his own time has quickly descended into a mad man whose lost his marbles, and what talent he once possessed. I defy a single person who has seen 11/12 to tell me that was a piece of Theatre, let alone one that moved, inspired discussion or quite frankly entertained. If you find one then you may instantly house them in the box in your head marked 'wanker', because they are simply jumping on the bandwagon that despite recent evidence, holds Brook up as revolutionary.
The problem with revolution is that at some point the revolution you were fronting gets surpassed by a new one. Or you get so stuck in your 'church of' that you become everything you were fighting for. And like all things in life, for a revolution to continue, you have to let go. For an idea to develop past expectation it has to be let go. Otherwise it stays exactly where it is. In the rehearsal room. There is a reason the rehearsal room is not open to the public. It's not actually very interesting. Be at the rehearsed reading on the first day of any rehearsal schedule and you'd be mad if you didn't think you were faced with a talentless, droning, over dramatic bunch of idiots, desperately scrambling to put emotion and power behind black letters on white paper. Next up you start to analyse and extract, then discuss, then try, fail, try again, fail again. Meanwhile all the elements that even the actors can be atrociously bad at forgetting exist are going through their version of the same thing. Rehearsals are stopped because a prop was in the wrong place, the wig keeps moving, your face has swollen in reaction to the glue. Blah, blah, blah. In fact in rehearsal, things can be stopped and interrupted for the most trivial of reasons. Excuses, excuses, excuses. And then comes the day when an audience arrives. A dropped cue no longer means a shout out for help. It means living in the world, in the characters head and thinking as they do whilst trying not to ruin the thread of story as it unfolds in front of peoples eyes. And that's just one very technical way of looking at a performance. Emotionally, there is no room for that thought about shopping, you can't shop, you're in a mad house, or a slave girl, or blind and trapped in your flat whilst con men try and trick you. Believe me, the shopping list does creep in when you're so relaxed about a performance and what follows is a lacklustre performance or a series of errors that quicken everyone's heart and you're reminded that this is a living art. You cannot sleep on the job. Characters very lives depend on your imagination and quick thinking.
I remember watching Robert Lindsay in The Entertainer at the Old Vic, night after night from the various usher chairs (please note that angle changes very little in theatre, unlike film) and it was not a great production, most of the cast were uninspiring. But Lindsay was alive and you couldn't watch anything but him. Every night, he was different. Same character, same world, different performance. He lived and breathed the moment and threw it out into the black cavernous space and he owned everyone in the room. He squashed the cast around him, not from lack of generosity, the poor man was throwing life jackets, and sugar treats and lines out left right and centre, hoping to find a spark of life to no avail. And then he'd be generous above and beyond as the audience failed to clap the mediocre performers around him but gave rapturous applause to him, he clapped louder than the audience put together when it was his co stars turn and hugged the actress who played his daughter in consolation night after night. In her, was fear, she'd set a performance and she didn't have the nuance to change a thing. She is exactly the type of actress that Katie Mitchell needs. Except even Katie isn't stupid enough to employ someone that wooden. Instead she takes the greatest of actors and then wows us by covering them in a giant Katie Mitchell flag and having them act like an actor in a Polanski press junket. 'He's a genius, who would say no?' Well, probably a thirteen year old girl but that's just a technicality.
So safe in the knowledge that I will never work for Katie Mitchell or Roman Polanski, I leave you with the advice to just let go. That includes you Nicholas Hytner, when I come and audition for one of your shows. God damn, and there goes the career at the National. Bloody Katie Mitchell, it's all your fault...
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