My activity in general, so as well with respect to my work as a theatre director, is primarily focused on practical work. During a production process, I try to reflect, analyze and understand my experiences in practice. Once I grasp a causal chain, I start detailing instructions and exercises for the next rehearsal.
While developing a certain method of working and the respective tasks, I write down questions instead of answers, which disciplines me. Through that technique I realized that it is impossible to repeat or finish those processes that have already started. It is possible, however, to guide a process by shaping it into a result that is visible on stage.
The subconscious is a well from which creative solutions can be drawn. I am trying to fathom the subconscious with a group I have gathered to work on a task with me. My role is to enable contact with the subconscious, to make room for instincts and intuition; simply to start processes that shape everyone’s creativity. I assemble the products of these processes like a mosaic by using intuition to find the links that keep the (newly) formed material together and open up the possibility of communicating with the audience. Putting this puzzle together is fun for me and much simpler than participating in the process itself. But doing one without the other is not possible.
On Monday, February 12, 2001, the following heading could be found in the daily paper ”Der Tagesspiegel”: ”32 SEITEN IM ZEICHEN DES MENSCHLICHEN ERBGUTS” (”32 pages focusing on the human genome”) with a picture of Da Vinci inscribed in a circle on the cover, accompanied by the following title: ”Der Mensch ist entziffert / Das gesamte Erbgut wird veröffentlicht/ Nur wenige Gene Unterschied zur Maus / Hoffnung für die Medizin” (”Man has been deciphered / Genetic map to be published / Only a few genes distinguish us from mice / Hope for medicine”).
Perhaps those several genes that differentiate us from mice hold the code of creativity. I don’t know if anyone can say that they deciphered creativity.
So, without dreaming of deciphering creativity, I want to find the way to the human subconscious and to draw the authenticity of depth from that well. The pearls I find through this process define the play I aspire to.
Here I will explain two exercises and point out certain experiences gained through them.
- ”24 hours of acting” is a concept that takes us to the limits of our endurance and sensitivity. 24 hours of acting: from 11 to 11 – 24 hours of working on a project whose topic and content is revealed to the participants just before the beginning of work. The process begins at 11 o’clock on the first day, and is finished at 10 o’clock on the second day after the performance of results. After the presentation, there is time to reflect, not just on the performance itself, but primarily on the process, from each participant’s point of view.
The aim of this process is performance, executed in a particularly difficult situation, after 23 hours of work, with no sleep or long breaks.
The fact that an audience will come to see the performance is an important factor in motivating the participants. Even when it seems impossible to move on, they find extra supplies of energy that enable them to continue working.
The role of the group is important in overcoming all difficulties. Moments of weakness are not experienced by everyone at the same time, so encouraging each other is of crucial importance. It is necessary to plan the stages of work well and to count on exhaustion, nervousness, unexpected outbursts of certain people etc.
It is important to choose material that can be developed in this time frame: premiere at 10 o’clock, dress rehearsal at 8 o’clock. First time going through the order of performance: 6.30.; rehearsal from 12 o’clock on the first day to 6.30 on the second day; and gathering, getting to know the project and organizing our workspace from 11-12 on the first day.
This time frame is sufficient for going through many variants – working on a one-act play, covering a certain topic, improvising a theatrical collage, working on a dramatization of a story, musical template, pictures related to action verbs, from material to stage setting, staging a dramatic work etc.
This is a type of experimental work, because the participants’ reactions to fatigue and lack of sleep are unpredictable, as well as my own reactions.
Everyone reacts differently when their personal limits of endurance are being tested. These reactions are often ”the killers of competence”. They can certainly affect the quality of results, from lucid details to complete destruction.
Since 1983, I have been conducting these workshops in different intervals, and from 1995 to 2011 I conducted them regularly, twice a year, in May and November. I used this method while directing several plays, so that after this intense experience and presentation in front of an audience, we continued the normal process of rehearsal until the scheduled premiere.
We had to stop working three times before dawn without having finished our final presentations, and it happened for the following reasons: one group argued so much that we couldn’t find a way out of it, the second time we all simply ”hit the wall” of fatigue and weakness so we stopped our work, and the third time, we were unable to put together something worth performing despite our best efforts.
I remember these three experiences particularly well and often analyze them.
I would like to gather a mixed group in Zadar – seven, nine, or eleven people at most – and to work on a project with them intensively, for 24 hours. I would like us to perform this project after 24 hours of intensive work. Then I would gather the same group after three days of break and work with them 8 hours a day + an hour of break for 15 days, in order to create a play. After that, we would do two technical rehearsals and a dress rehearsal. We would have another free day after dress rehearsal, and finally, we would come to the premiere. We would keep performing the play for as long as the audience would be interested in it. In the process of creating a play through this method, I would include a person to setting the stage, a musician, and a person in charge of stage movement. They would all be equally involved in the process so all elements of the play would be created through common efforts.
After about 30 years of not participating in the theatrical events of this city, I have a great desire to direct my first play in Zadar by using this method.
Why this method? What are its advantages and its disadvantages?
Questions I will be asked are an inspiration for answers and new questions while searching for new knowledge.
- Searching for a role in nature
I discovered this complex, inspirational and useful work method while staging the James Joyce Cycle, five plays dealing with the life and works of this author.
Searching for a role in nature includes working on a material individually, in pairs and in a group. The selected material, which can vary depending on the occasion, is performed in nature. The nature is a stage where every role can find its place, by resisting the space or uniting with it. It is possible to carry out this type of work regardless of weather conditions.
Hot summers as well as particularly cold winters become actively involved in our search and often help us find solutions we didn’t expect to find.
My aim here is not to discuss the way I implement this method – the context in which I work, the goals I have in mind, and the way I organize my work day, work week or the complete process of rehearsal.
All I want to show you is one detail – an exercise: ”The actor rescues the drowning role from the sea”. The majority of this exercise is documented, so I can show you some details from this documentary.
”Irishirisirischmurmelquietsch” is the title of the play that found its way to the rhythm of Joyce’s pain.
How to stage a state and not the story? How to make abstraction accessible on stage?
I have chosen the path of searching for roles in nature. The aim was to sharpen the focus and to concentrate on what matters through provocation and using extreme emotional experiences in nature. To find a way to transport those experiences that matter to the stage.
In my opinion, the perfect place for this type of work is the island of Lastovo, or rather, the Lastovo Archipelago. I lived on the Struga lighthouse with the actors, and from that signpost we wandered the fields, the rocks and the sea.
One of the exercises with a strong effect and unforgettable results was assigned to the actor playing James Joyce and the actor playing the intimate in him.
The first actor’s assignment was to swim diagonally from one side of Skrivena bay (”Hidden bay”) to the other. He had to swim for 500 meters, one eye covered with a cloth. He jumped into the sea with an idea to emerge, to swim, and to shout out everything that was troubling him, to give all his pain to the sea.
The second actor, blindfolded, stood on the dock, playing ukulele – the sound of longing, melancholy and sadness, ”dragging” the swimming/floating Joyce to the shore by this sound.
While swimming, the first actor was ”vomiting” the monologue that would later be used in the sixth scene, the monologue which contains sentences full of pain. All these sentences are taken from Joyce’s letters.
When you swim in this direction, about halfway through there is an echo. Every spoken sentence comes back with a delay, up to six times in certain places.
This event shocked, and probably terrified the actor, so he swam harder and harder. He reached the unknown in his subconscious. He cried out his sentences with an incredible energy of powerlessness when he reached the shore accompanied by the sounds of ukulele.
This monologue is infused with this intimate experience in the play, and it captures the attention of the spectator with its authenticity as well as the rhythm and energy of its pain.
Why did I share these experiences with you? I understand human beings in the entirety of their possibilities, their mode of action and their needs. It is impossible for me to find authenticity on stage if I don’t find it in actors themselves, in the existential tension while they’re struggling with the role, while they’re offering themselves to the role.
I think of ways to ”snap the head off”, to ”hit the solar plexus” and to awaken the instincts; to find the speech of the insides, the subconscious, the uncontrolled. The differences between the actors’ neurology, sensitivity and openness to risk enable roles to come to life.
I can’t watch actors interpret roles anymore. The actor who ”understood” the role interprets it by understanding the director’s intentions. I’m sorry, but to watch this, we don’t need theatre.
In the theatre, I want to see the authentic potential life, with its internal steel logic, closed within itself. I want to experience the excitement of this potential life that a certain play dragged me into.
A theatre act cannot be finished, conserved and then just repeated.
The immortality of this art lies in its inability to be repeated and its necessity to operate in the here and now, although the stage network is well-tried and learned.
In search of new methods of work, it is advisable to get acquainted with current research of brain functions and those of the nervous system.
Inexplicable contents of the subconscious have a big influence on our conscious acts. I base my methodology of work with actors on training them to become aware of their subconscious that the role provokes.
In the end, the creation is above the personality of the creator, and it communicates with the spectator on the waves of universal intimacy.
Nikša Eterović
Berlin, July 2013