Context
More and more Krause was connecting her experience with the Bloomsburg students to her suggestions for my teaching.
And the School of Speech centenary celebration continued to rankle.
Letter
David, don't don't don't let your students in beginning acting perform. They have no instrument with which to perform. A violinist wants a perfect Stradivarius so an actor must want a perfect instrument before he can perform. That instrument is himself: his body (train every muscle) his voice (it must express every character from Hamlet to Lear, every emotion, reach everyone in an audience without effort) senses -- which create the Renaissance world, the Arthur Miller world, unknown worlds etc -- the imagination ------- but I don't need to tell you this. Do it! The trouble with the actors I have here is that they cannot create worlds, they cannot respond to that world or to each other. You saw it this summer. They are only now beginning to perceive (to use their senses to respond to stimuli, to understand through perception what a human being is and how he relates to his world) to play together and that means to actually respond through the senses to each other.
Do not let Juliet speak one word or "emote" one emotion until she actually has seen an Italian sun in an Italian sky and felt its heat on her face, her neck. And for God's sake: she must sense stars in an Italy sky -- stars stars -- that play is full of stars. You train those senses to respond truthfully or I disown you. I have told this group "Work on Act II Hedda Gabler but know that you are not Hedda, you are not Brack, you must create them. Hedda must handle an army pistol as a man does, must shoot in the air because she dares not fire straight; she hears, senses, people gossiping etc. --
Your actors have nothing with which to act until they have trained those senses to respond. Talent in acting is the ability to perceive more deeply than other people do -- They must create an actor's Stradivarius.
If Lynn [Rein. See the December 13 post -- DD] is capable of doing the history of School of Speech why is her article in Dialogue so utterly devoid of appreciation of what that school was. Why is it so devoid of appreciation, of color? It reads like an article written in response to an unimaginative assignment of a professor in an English class "Write a 1000 word essay on -- --". But that wasn't what surprised me most in the last "Dialogue". Lee Mitchell who was McBurney's right hand man in the destruction of the theatre department writes on "foundations of excellence" ---- for the Centennial section. So the "Centennial" is to celebrate McBurney's reign! I get my invitation to the ground breaking the day before the event! But McBurney gets there on time! I have a diploma from the old School and two degrees from the present school. And I knew Dr. Cumnock! ---- Sorry!
It's a beautiful day! Pennsylvania in October. We drove for two or three hours this morning. Intoxication! "Lord, thou has made the world too beautiful this year"
Yes, the class is alive this year. I begin to enjoy teaching again. I still fear "Sea Gull" [A spring production was planned by the new Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble -- DD] but not quite so much as before. Tell JC [a former Bloomsburg student -- DD] of these developments. He might be impressed --
Have fun
A.K.
Showing posts with label Hedda Gabler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hedda Gabler. Show all posts
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Letters from Alvina Krause: Fall 1974
Context
During fall 1974 and winter 1975 my journal was full of questions.
Journal
Me:
[On Creative Imagination, I end the entry with this question:]
What am I missing? Where is my blind spot?
Krause's Response:
Imagination works through the senses. They must be trained to respond.
See the lake -- actually see the color, the form, the movement: See a gull flying over the lake, muscles perceive the movement, the dip, the soaring, Hear the waves, the beat, the tempo, feel the spray.
Enlarge the responses, the lake becomes the North Sea, the water darkens, the roar is loud, the gulls cry out, the spray slaps your face, the clouds are dark, they rush -- Hamlet watches the 7th wave come in, break "To be or not to be"
[Along the left hand margin she wrote "Reality" to bracket this first part -- DD.]
Imagination becomes creative only if the realistic sensory response to a stimulus is vivid enough to enlarge of its own accord from lake to ocean to Hamlet on a parapet --
"To be" will only be words unless touched off by images rooted in reality
"My dear Judge, how mortally bored I have been" -- What must the actress see, hear, perceive -- what must the actress do -- turn a rehearsal table into a Victorian table with marble top, a miniature in a gold filigree frame, a lamp with a decorated globe shade --
Turn a rehearsal prop into Gaev's bookcase through sense response -- begin with your own reality.
Me:
[About a student in beginning acting]
And what do you do with a student who sits caved in, thinking like crazy, uncomfortable with his physical self, unable to let himself create because he is self-conscious even when I get the entire class involved in an exercise? He'll try and then he gives up, collapses. I'm at a real loss.
Krause:
What is his chief interest? What does he know well? To some degree, in what is he an authority? Whatever it is, get him to show the class how -- If he is a camera buff -- Let him illustrate -- Then go to -- If Hamlet had a camera -- what -- how -- Work from the known -- from confidence to --
****
Me:
[A description of work on the Antigone/Creon scene in Anouilh's Antigone and my attempts to get students to create the characters as forces more than as realistic human beings. When I met resistance from the students, I flailed.]
As ever, any light you can shed will be assimilated.
Krause:
Begin with real people, eliminate gradually all small actions, all small intonations. Try it in French, the language of precision. Listen to French drama.
About Antigone's Nurse
She is stripped of everything except the qualities that make her not see, not realize.
Get to the basic motivating force for each one and let that force dominate
Haemon -- a deep love for Antigone -- he would choose death for it. Youth, eliminate all romanticizing about youth and love. Play only the motivating force.
Ismene -- Youth loving life (normal) more than death.
Soldiers -- just that, no more -- no individualities, they await orders, receive them, obey -- play poker while waiting --
Me:
I begin to question for myself. What is the difference between realism vs. Greek tragedy? Greek tragedy vs. Anouilh?
Krause:
[Next to my "realism"] Death of a Salesman. Keep Arthur Miller in mind for realism.
[Next to my "Greek tragedy"] tragic realization "Lo, he is fallen"
[Next to my "Anouilh"] Aimed at the head.
[Next to my "Greek tragedy"] Aimed at understanding through -- ?
Me:
[Observations about Greek tragedy, ending with this:]
But isn't that essentially what the French drama does too? There is a difference -- I can sense it, but I cannot articulate it and therefore I'm not certain how to teach it. Will you help clarify?
Krause:
It's in the aim -- the French insist on that intellectual grasp.
From my summer journal
Try being Anouilh -- with a keen mind, with a deep concern for his country, for humanity, looking from a high tower at his Paris, his France, knowing, realizing that with his talents he had the responsibility to strike a blow against Nazism. Play the Antigone he is creating as he looks at Paris.
****
Context
I send her copies of the notes I post on the bulletin board.
Letter
David,
The notes are to the point. Can you expand each point, illustrate, question? Always test your own imagination until you can trust yourself fully to develop any statement. Feel that you know Hedda and all her associates better than you know your own friends. And trust your own mind to explore, discover.
Talk about characters in drama as real people. As you talk about Eilert Lovborg become Eilert for a few moments.
[...A discussion of students and friends...DD]
I'm glad you have moved to Evanston. Should save time--
A.K.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Letters from Alvina Krause: Spring 1974
Context
Notes posted on my bulletin board about realism and characterization, specifically Hedda Gabler.
Krause's Comments
Remember the place of men in this man's world. Lead straight to the curtain:
Tesman: Fancy that!
Brack: Good God, people don't do such things.
To avoid stereotype men, show them in relation to their world. They are both three-dimensional characters -- products of their society.
And Thea -- more courage than Hedda. Why didn't she fear scandal? "So that little fool has had her fingers in a man's destiny".
And the artist Lovborg. What is Ibsen saying through him? Note that Hedda is always surrounded by men -- an artist, a scholar, a judge. What has society done to them?
Your lecture on Hedda is excellent -- I make suggestions only to balance your drama. Too often it is played as a one-person vehicle for someone.
"Woman's place is in the home" -- and here is a home -- a new home with all the old furnishings. Be sure to emphasize the fact that Ibsen's drama takes place within four walls -- a living room. He goes right to the core of drama. Make your people identify with the objects in that living room -- piano, sofa, bric a brac -- rug, walls -- curtains. Surely there is someone in class who would enjoy improvising the servant, serve tea to Hedda and Judge, etc. -- a sturdy Norwegian with straight spine, never "servile", human, dependable, clear-sighted. Assemble props, have a cupboard somewhere to keep them for the quarter. Encourage students to bring in an essential prop when they play, wear long skirts, suggest that men put on bow ties, wear suit coats --- -- and be human.
****
In my journal she wrote this:
She [Thea -- DD] is all that we call "feminine" -- compassionate, tender, understanding.
"That little fool has had her fingers in a man's destiny" is Hedda's summation -- Ironic!
All that Hedda rejects Thea is. Thea, feminine, dares do what Hedda fears to do. Scandal has no power on Thea's warm, concerned heart
Notes posted on my bulletin board about realism and characterization, specifically Hedda Gabler.
Krause's Comments
Remember the place of men in this man's world. Lead straight to the curtain:
Tesman: Fancy that!
Brack: Good God, people don't do such things.
To avoid stereotype men, show them in relation to their world. They are both three-dimensional characters -- products of their society.
And Thea -- more courage than Hedda. Why didn't she fear scandal? "So that little fool has had her fingers in a man's destiny".
And the artist Lovborg. What is Ibsen saying through him? Note that Hedda is always surrounded by men -- an artist, a scholar, a judge. What has society done to them?
Your lecture on Hedda is excellent -- I make suggestions only to balance your drama. Too often it is played as a one-person vehicle for someone.
"Woman's place is in the home" -- and here is a home -- a new home with all the old furnishings. Be sure to emphasize the fact that Ibsen's drama takes place within four walls -- a living room. He goes right to the core of drama. Make your people identify with the objects in that living room -- piano, sofa, bric a brac -- rug, walls -- curtains. Surely there is someone in class who would enjoy improvising the servant, serve tea to Hedda and Judge, etc. -- a sturdy Norwegian with straight spine, never "servile", human, dependable, clear-sighted. Assemble props, have a cupboard somewhere to keep them for the quarter. Encourage students to bring in an essential prop when they play, wear long skirts, suggest that men put on bow ties, wear suit coats --- -- and be human.
****
In my journal she wrote this:
She [Thea -- DD] is all that we call "feminine" -- compassionate, tender, understanding.
"That little fool has had her fingers in a man's destiny" is Hedda's summation -- Ironic!
All that Hedda rejects Thea is. Thea, feminine, dares do what Hedda fears to do. Scandal has no power on Thea's warm, concerned heart
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Letters from Alvina Krause: Responses to my Teaching Journal Winter 1974
Context
The beginning acting class sophomore year had three quarters of work: Fall -- Sensory Perception; Winter -- Creative Imagination; Spring -- Character Creation.
In Winter 1974, besides two sophomore sections of The Creative Imagination and the junior class in Shakespeare, I also had a freshman class in Sensory Perception. (This class started their acting course winter quarter their freshman year and had eleven quarters of acting--the only time we did that in the thirty-five years of my teaching.)
I include only enough of my journal writing to give context to Krause's responses, written between the lines and in the margins, etc.
To illustrate, at the end of this post I've included a photo of a page of the journal.
Journal
Me:
How much of what is told about "off-stage" action should be improvised?
Krause:
Until the true Hedda evolves -- Until she senses social pressures -- Remember she fears gossip. How do you get to that? Brack does not fear social pressure -- Hedda a woman -- does
Me:
Only enough to give the actor a basic, spinal, total response that can bring him back into the drama?
Krause:
And can lead him to create -- Set his imagination going -- make him perceptive.
Search for the key to the actor's creative sense.
A young man at Santa Maria [Krause directed at The Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Santa Maria CA for summers 1969 and 1970 -- DD] was a promising actor, knew he would succeed -- a year ago he killed himself. Why? [The name of one of her former students -- DD] with far more cause, is still fighting? Why?
****
Remember:
The genius of the theatre has always started with the bedrock of human experience--
(Shakespeare, Chekhov, Sophocles, etc.)
Let this be your fundamental, guiding principle in teaching and you can't go far wrong. You will make mistakes -- unavoidable ones. In the complexity of life and art, teaching cannot be perfect. But if your fundamental principle is true, you cannot go far wrong.
So -- relax, trust your dramatist -- or life, or your God -- Even the fundamental principles of art are rooted in life -- balance, harmony, rhythm, proportion -- go listen to the lake and learn from it!
Build on bedrock of human experience.
****
A page from my journal:
The beginning acting class sophomore year had three quarters of work: Fall -- Sensory Perception; Winter -- Creative Imagination; Spring -- Character Creation.
In Winter 1974, besides two sophomore sections of The Creative Imagination and the junior class in Shakespeare, I also had a freshman class in Sensory Perception. (This class started their acting course winter quarter their freshman year and had eleven quarters of acting--the only time we did that in the thirty-five years of my teaching.)
I include only enough of my journal writing to give context to Krause's responses, written between the lines and in the margins, etc.
To illustrate, at the end of this post I've included a photo of a page of the journal.
Journal
Me:
How much of what is told about "off-stage" action should be improvised?
Krause:
Until the true Hedda evolves -- Until she senses social pressures -- Remember she fears gossip. How do you get to that? Brack does not fear social pressure -- Hedda a woman -- does
Me:
Only enough to give the actor a basic, spinal, total response that can bring him back into the drama?
Krause:
And can lead him to create -- Set his imagination going -- make him perceptive.
Search for the key to the actor's creative sense.
A young man at Santa Maria [Krause directed at The Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Santa Maria CA for summers 1969 and 1970 -- DD] was a promising actor, knew he would succeed -- a year ago he killed himself. Why? [The name of one of her former students -- DD] with far more cause, is still fighting? Why?
****
Remember:
The genius of the theatre has always started with the bedrock of human experience--
(Shakespeare, Chekhov, Sophocles, etc.)
Let this be your fundamental, guiding principle in teaching and you can't go far wrong. You will make mistakes -- unavoidable ones. In the complexity of life and art, teaching cannot be perfect. But if your fundamental principle is true, you cannot go far wrong.
So -- relax, trust your dramatist -- or life, or your God -- Even the fundamental principles of art are rooted in life -- balance, harmony, rhythm, proportion -- go listen to the lake and learn from it!
Build on bedrock of human experience.
****
A page from my journal:
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Letters from Alvina Krause: Creative Imagination and Shakespeare -- Winter 1974
Context
By winter quarter 1974 I was posting notes on my bulletin board. I sent Krause a copy of each set of notes and she returned it with her responses. I include only those parts of my notes that are necessary to give context to her responses.
Bulletin Board Notes on The Creative Imagination
I wrote a long essay about metaphor and the actor with nods to Hedda Gabler and the army pistol and Desdemona as a rose, including this passage written in my best AK manner:
"...What is a rose? Form? all right -- but everything else has form -- what is the exact, unique form of a rose? Can you capture that form in your body, sense it, create it, transfer it to yourself? Beauty? All right -- but what precisely is the beauty of a rose that is not the beauty of any other thing...."
In the margin AK wrote this:
Good.
Continue on the "action" words. On behavior resulting from action --
A rose turns to the sun, sways with the breeze -- droops in the drought and heat --
bends
At the end of the notes, she wrote this:
You are terrific in concepts -- But develop ability to touch off creative action by the use of creative action.
Your fantasy [an assignment in which an actor plays one of a given human being, animal, or object, creating a pantomimed story involving all three -- DD] again needs explicit action.
Use "if" more
Everyone has a pistol within him -- go on develop, illustrate -- its power to destroy
He also has a mouse within him -- who peeks out, etc. --
Everyone has a peacock within who preens his feathers, steps high, etc. --
If pistol, mouse, peacock collide [Hedda Gabler, Tesman, Judge Brack -- DD]
???
****
Context
In her responses to my notes to the Shakespeare class, Krause continued to point me toward illustration by direct action.
My notes on creating the reality of A Midsummer-Night's Dream
In the notes I eventually get to this statement:
"...play the play, play the drama to create the beauty, the magic, the joy of a mid-summer night's dream -- to create the truth in 'Love is blind'."
In the margin she wrote this:
Illustrate:
A night to do as you please, to race into the woods.
You are in a wood, at midnight -- trees, shadows -- crickets -- a cow moos, a bush shivers -- you see a pair of eyes -- owl?
No -- it has horns!
A bit farther on:
You are so right, but you stop short of the images, action metaphors, which motivate -- imagine -- "It is midsummer night -- anything can happen --- you are in a wood -- there's an open space -- a stage --moonlight -- you start out 'to be or not to be' a donkey brays, dances in the moonlight" etc. etc.
Later in my Midsummer notes:
Men -- toss your capes joyfully over your shoulder, stride vigorously through this world, perch that cap with the feather in it on your head and bolt off into the forest.
Krause:
You want --- what? a girl? money? Fame?
Me:
And Bottom?
Krause:
You want to act -- so does Bottom. To act you need a loud voice. So does Bottom. Do it -- No -- a deep voice, etc. etc.
Bottom is anyone who wants to act -- He dreams -- Titania -- Elizabeth Taylor ----
****
Context
My journal
Krause's Comment
Ideas are only starting points -- The good teacher takes them into action.
Hedda is a pistol, Hedda is afraid of society, Hedda tempts Lovborg
etc.
Human beings are made up of opposites -- part reaches to the stars, part follows the herd: be a lark, be a sheep --
Macbeth is a 1) Great soldier, even a poet 2) Macbeth wants a throne.
Honor vs. base ambition
Eagle vs. ?
By winter quarter 1974 I was posting notes on my bulletin board. I sent Krause a copy of each set of notes and she returned it with her responses. I include only those parts of my notes that are necessary to give context to her responses.
Bulletin Board Notes on The Creative Imagination
I wrote a long essay about metaphor and the actor with nods to Hedda Gabler and the army pistol and Desdemona as a rose, including this passage written in my best AK manner:
"...What is a rose? Form? all right -- but everything else has form -- what is the exact, unique form of a rose? Can you capture that form in your body, sense it, create it, transfer it to yourself? Beauty? All right -- but what precisely is the beauty of a rose that is not the beauty of any other thing...."
In the margin AK wrote this:
Good.
Continue on the "action" words. On behavior resulting from action --
A rose turns to the sun, sways with the breeze -- droops in the drought and heat --
bends
At the end of the notes, she wrote this:
You are terrific in concepts -- But develop ability to touch off creative action by the use of creative action.
Your fantasy [an assignment in which an actor plays one of a given human being, animal, or object, creating a pantomimed story involving all three -- DD] again needs explicit action.
Use "if" more
Everyone has a pistol within him -- go on develop, illustrate -- its power to destroy
He also has a mouse within him -- who peeks out, etc. --
Everyone has a peacock within who preens his feathers, steps high, etc. --
If pistol, mouse, peacock collide [Hedda Gabler, Tesman, Judge Brack -- DD]
???
****
Context
In her responses to my notes to the Shakespeare class, Krause continued to point me toward illustration by direct action.
My notes on creating the reality of A Midsummer-Night's Dream
In the notes I eventually get to this statement:
"...play the play, play the drama to create the beauty, the magic, the joy of a mid-summer night's dream -- to create the truth in 'Love is blind'."
In the margin she wrote this:
Illustrate:
A night to do as you please, to race into the woods.
You are in a wood, at midnight -- trees, shadows -- crickets -- a cow moos, a bush shivers -- you see a pair of eyes -- owl?
No -- it has horns!
A bit farther on:
You are so right, but you stop short of the images, action metaphors, which motivate -- imagine -- "It is midsummer night -- anything can happen --- you are in a wood -- there's an open space -- a stage --moonlight -- you start out 'to be or not to be' a donkey brays, dances in the moonlight" etc. etc.
Later in my Midsummer notes:
Men -- toss your capes joyfully over your shoulder, stride vigorously through this world, perch that cap with the feather in it on your head and bolt off into the forest.
Krause:
You want --- what? a girl? money? Fame?
Me:
And Bottom?
Krause:
You want to act -- so does Bottom. To act you need a loud voice. So does Bottom. Do it -- No -- a deep voice, etc. etc.
Bottom is anyone who wants to act -- He dreams -- Titania -- Elizabeth Taylor ----
****
Context
My journal
Krause's Comment
Ideas are only starting points -- The good teacher takes them into action.
Hedda is a pistol, Hedda is afraid of society, Hedda tempts Lovborg
etc.
Human beings are made up of opposites -- part reaches to the stars, part follows the herd: be a lark, be a sheep --
Macbeth is a 1) Great soldier, even a poet 2) Macbeth wants a throne.
Honor vs. base ambition
Eagle vs. ?
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