Alvina Krause on The Comic Attitude

Context:
For the past several weeks I've been working on scenes from Shaw plays with some young actors and I've been reminded of my early work on comedy and Shaw with Alvina Krause. The following notes--which I stole from throughout my teaching career--Krause wrote early in 1974 to NU graduates who had gone to Pennsylvania to study privately with her. They were working on a program of scenes from Shaw for public performance.

Krause's Notes:

The Comic Attitude

You cannot play comedy without it: the comic attitude. You must understand what it is; you must incorporate it into your work. This is difficult to explain, to put into words--that is my problem. It is difficult to do, and that is your problem.
Try it this way: What is an actor?
1. He/She is you. You, with your brains, your senses, your emotions, your physical equipment, your talent (which is the ability to work!)
2. He/She is the character in the drama, as far as it is possible to turn you into that character. You are Joan, Caesar, Tanner, etc.
3. He/She is the communicator to and with the audience of the playwright. (Deliver your lines, your thoughts, up and over to hit the audience, to move the audience, to touch the audience, etc. etc.)
4. The extra dimension--the author speaking through you and through the character you play, to the audience listening and responding.

A most complex art--acting!--You must now come face to face with that complexity for you are to present Bernard Shaw to an audience through the drama he has created for the purpose that motivated him: to change society, the world, through the comic attitude which frees, releases, listeners through laughter and leaves them open to ideas to explore, debate, accept, reject, etc. The comic attitude must be back of all your playing in Shaw. I have said to you, over and over, "Smile! Smile! Behind those lines, smile!" (Do you realize if you cannot smile looking at the world, you will weep?)
[Note from David: When we worked on Shaw, Krause would yell, "Twinkle dammit!"]

Shaw discovered if he wanted to make people think he had to make them laugh first. And so he found and adopted the comic attitude toward the world. You must find it too. It means first of all removing yourself from the midst of the turmoil, confusion, etc. of the world, to a distance from which you can observe the world and see, sense, its absurdity. Then it means, for communication purposes, to turn ideas, rules, concepts, people, upside down, topsy turvy, upset the applecart, let a fat man slip on a banana peel and in the midst of the inevitable laughter. [This is the sentence as she wrote it.]

Take that austere, smug, military Julius Caesar I remember in a niche in my high school auditorium and put wrinkles on him, take the laurel crown off and put a bald spot there, and bring him face to face with Mae West!
Tom: draw that cartoon, add to it until you bust with laughter. Keep that cartoon in front of you while you address the Sphinx until Shaw within you is chuckling, tickling your ribs--until you get that Shavian comic glint in your eyes while you play Caesar. You must be both Caesar and Shaw!
Cleo--do the same: Take a glamorous, smoldering, sexy picture and turn it into a little girl with a smudge on your cheeks and dirty fingernails and a kitten (not a diamond necklace!) Look at it until you are laughing as Shaw laughed--and realize that through upsetting the applecarts of preconceived ideas of greatness you and Shaw are going to strike at rulers of the world-- Nixon, etc.
Ra--you must do the same. He doesn't say, "Fall on your knees". He says "Look at your selves sitting in uncomfortable seats, out on a cold night"--
You better draw your own cartoon. Take a statue of a god, point his eyebrows, stick his tongue out, etc. until you are laughing as Shaw laughs behind the lines aimed at our stupidities. I don't care what means you take to find that comic, upside down attitude, but find it you must or your Shavian play will flop.
Stand on your head to play the British soldier straight from Hell.
Walk on your hands and deliver your lines. Eat peanuts and scatter the shells--do anything that tickles your funny bone to find that topsy turvy world Shaw creates in order to change the world.
Understand I am not asking you for comic gags! God forbid. I am asking you to find for yourselves this spot, this elevation, this distance from which you can see the world with the detached eye that can conceive the characters of Watergate in cartoons. Remember: the cartoonist, too, is a Shaw. You laugh at the distortion and then you swallow hard and your brain clicks.
Tanner--Keep a picture of Shaw confronting Mae West before you, over the audience, as you play (Mae West was pretty shrewd! pretty smart!)
Ann--perhaps you need to keep that image before you.
I can only suggest these possibilities hoping they will touch off your own imaginations, your creative faculties. Try anything which makes you sense this fourth dimension of acting.
Shaw must be electric, upsetting, stimulating. An audience does not get so completely involved in the drama of character that they miss the Shavian aim at the head.
Sometimes I have had actors play characters as comic cartoon strips in order to get to the comic attitude, to release the imagination, to discover the creative mind.
Or try playing some opposite music behind a scene: "I love you truly" or the Wedding March behind the Tanner "I won't, won't--"
Have I touched off the comic attitude in you?

Footnote from David:
In 1979 I went to Pennsylvania to direct my former students, now Krause students, in a production of Shaw's Misalliance. I was scared to death and I worked deadly seriously in rehearsals. So deadly seriously that I smothered any comic spirit that might have flickered in anyone.
Krause resisted coming to rehearsals until the first dress, which was a disaster.
And then she came every night the rest of the week and worked her magic--emphasis on worked. Truly she did anything to release the comic senses of the actors. She was Charlie Chaplin and Merlin and every slapstick clown you could imagine and Mad Madam Mim--whatever it took.
That week I got a lifetime's workshop in teaching and directing comedy, in animating, touching off, releasing comedy in students, in actors.
We have all heard directors say, "Have fun out there" or "Enjoy yourselves".  Way too easy to say that; I watched a true teacher, a true director, translate those easy generalizations into direct, specific behavior, into actions designed to touch off the experiences in actors that would truly allow them to enjoy themselves and to have fun--and in the exact way and for the exact reasons that that particular playwright needed for his play and its themes to be communicated to an audience.
In 1979 Alvina Krause was eighty-six years old. Her partner Lucy told me that every afternoon that week she rested so that she could come to the evening's rehearsal and breathe/knock/infuse comic life into the production.
That week was hard, but the lessons it taught served me for my entire teaching/directing career.

Anton Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard

Question:

I am writing to see if you have anything on your blog about "The Cherry Orchard?" I have a directing proposal coming up on that play and since you are and always will be the Chekhov expert, I thought I'd go right to the source to brush up a little.

The area that springs to mind is remembering that this play is a comedy and treating it as such - without diminishing what is a tragedy (or at least a melodrama) for those who are loosing their way of life. The moments when things break. When the characters are facing true crises - how to balance that with the comedy (and hopefully creating truly revelatory moments; good god I sound like a director).

I remember you saying in acting class that we didn't know how lucky we were to having the time to work on plays as we did - so I tried to take it all the more seriously. Then I got out of college and found out how true it was... then I got over it but not I'm starting to slip back into a yearning for more time to deeply delve into all these great stories.

I'm grateful for the chance to spend with this script again.

Response:

When I was directing Three Sisters at NU, a visiting scholar watched a rehearsal and afterwards said to me, "Oh, you're going for melodrama. May I suggest comedy? For example, Vershinin could have oversized epaulets and big shiny medals--so we'd know he’s a fool. Go for the farce. Chekhov would love it."

I was pretty sure that Chekhov wouldn't love it. (Though I'm pretty sure he would have loved the character of the visiting scholar.)

Chekhov's comedy comes from a juxtaposition of what characters are capable of--or at least passionate about--and something opposite in their makeup: Commanding the classroom or the theatre, Alvina Krause was Yoda and Gandalf and Mad Madam Mim; standing in front of the salad bar at a local restaurant, empty plate in hand, she was a perplexed and overwhelmed child.

Lopakhin the peasant who has become a wealthy businessman buys a new suit to wear for Lubov's return—How does it fit? What color is it? What's the comedy?

Gaev makes an impassioned speech to the bookcase and then, blushing, pops a piece of hardtack into his mouth--or mimes a really great billiards shot. (When my father found himself in such a moment of public embarrassment, he would mime a putt with his imaginary golf club and then walk out of the room.)

Fiers is so old he can barely stand upright, but he's going to walk all the way out to the Act II spot just to make sure that Gaev is wearing his coat and scarf.
And how old is Gaev? As Fiers makes him put on his overcoat, what does Gaev do that says "child"? What's the comedy?

Gaev and Lubov escape into their childhood—but productions that put huge lollipops in their hands miss the comic point, and the source of the comedy. Not to mention the drama.

Yes, there are farcical moments. Dunyasha mimics a young lady's (Anya's?) mannerisms—but when Yasha kisses her earlobe, she shrieks and drops a coffee cup.

And poor Epihodoff--no matter what he does, it leads to disaster. (He sits down. An arrest as he realizes there was a puddle of spilled coffee on the chair. Beat. Slow turn of the head right to his audience. A look that says 'Awful things always happen to me'.)  And in preparation for the moment when he can no longer face life, he carries a revolver.

Always ask: What is the source of the comedy? What is the human behavior source of the comedy?

What’s the source of the comedy in the scene with Trofimov and Anya that ends Act II? It’s a moonlight night. The two young people are left alone on the stage. What would happen in any other play?

Why is it funny that Gaev says he might get a job in a bank? What does he do as he says this that shows the incongruity and points up the comedy?

What's the comedy of the dance party atmosphere of Act III? Be specific.

Behind it all is an entire class of people who have squandered family wealth their generation didn't earn; who are heading for the cliff and who are unwilling and perhaps unable to take any practical action to prevent themselves from going over.

It's funny and heartbreaking at the same time.

Alvina Krause: A Midsummer-Night's Dream

 Question:
I have enjoyed your blog ddowns.  maybe you'll topic the mechanicals in a future post?!


Context:
The writer will soon direct young people in a production of A Midsummer-NIght's Dream.
I thought I'd let Alvina Krause respond to this question in two postings. 
This first post is notes she wrote to us when we were working on the mechanicals for class, which she conducted in her home in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. 
The subsequent post will be notes to a production of MND performed at her summer theatre in Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania.
I italicize words she underlined in her handwritten notes.


Response:
Always start your initial work with questions. Ask the right questions and the creative mind will take off in the right direction. You tend to start off with generalizations about characters you are playing.  The result may be an interesting characterization--which will take the play nowhere, or take it in the wrong direction. Always begin your questions with the play itself. The title is a good beginning.
Why is it called "A Midsummer-Night's Dream"?
Why are the "mechanicals" in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream"?
Each scene in a play is a movement in the direction of the end. Where does the mechanicals scene take the play?
What has this scene to do with Puck's "What fools these mortals be"?
What characteristics must each person have to take the scene and the play to its inevitable conclusion?


Such questions should direct you as you formulate and determine characterizations. Unless you are guided by such questions, the Bottom-Titania scene will come off as utterly ridiculous, ludicrous without being true comedy.
Why does Bottom not realize he wears an ass's head?
Why does he succumb to Titania? 
The logic of fantasy.


Shakespeare is having a glorious time with "Love is blind"--How do the "mechanicals" lead to this scene? Why is it inevitable? You all over-looked the fact that Shakespeare's common people are exactly that--"common"--totally unimaginative, totally literal in every sense. He gives them no flights of fancy. A lion is "roar" not a noble beast. Pyramus: a sword--
Do not let your imaginations take off and endow them with gentleness and romantic, humanistic qualities. 2 X 2 = four, not a magical number that sets the imagination going--simply "four"


Fit the characters to their names--Peter Quince is a quince--bitter, biting--quince. No apple qualities, no peach qualities, etc.--just quince--No human thoughtfulness, consideration, etc.--just quince--Name names, give directions and that's that. Add no motivations other than: Perform Pyramus, Thisbe--meet at such and such a place.
The drama itself is your master plan. Make all the pieces fit into the whole. Ask the questions that will lead you to the inevitable final curtain.


What is comedy?
Clarify your ideas.
A little man, a frail woman, slips on a banana peel. You don't laugh. A fat man slips on a banana peel, you roar with laughter. Why? Both are real falls--Why--
Bottom, Titania--a ridiculous scene, silly Shakespeare--What makes it glorious comedy?
Why is Bottom unaware of the ass's head?
He isn't drunk. He is not goofing off. Then why?
Try the creative "if".  "If" I had a huge hole in my pants, "if" I did not know it----?
Arrive at the reality of fantasy. If the audience cannot identify with this scene, these characters, they will not laugh at the tricks you may pull.
Titania is under a spell, true, but people in love are under a spell.
 "If" you couldn't see the hole in the trousers when everyone else did, "If" you could not perceive the fool under the good looks--etc.-- 
Begin with realism.


What you learn here about comedy will carry over to all comedy if you learn it. I can only open your eyes: you must do the rest.


Cut out extraneous business. Achieve focus through pointed, timed business.
Go straight to the end of the lines with a punch at the end. Do not tack on business at the end. Arrest then move.


Why is the presentation of the play for the Prince comic rather than ludicrous? Because they give the play exactly as they would patch a roof--
Learn to ask the right questions.