Observation
Krause's righteous fury at any failing on the part of the school never faltered.
Context
Recent NU graduates had gone to Bloomsburg to study.
For their names I have substituted letters of the alphabet.
Letter (April 1974)
[...A discussion of more students who had written asking to join the Bloomsburg group --DD....]
In heaven's name, do something about the voice problem at NU. You say you have an instructor -- what is she doing, for heaven's sake? RL is the motivation for this outburst. Here is a capable girl, I think a talented one. She is a graduate of what should be a leading school of theatre. She is trying to do Shakespeare, in fact she has played in Shakespeare at NU -- studied Shakespeare. And she has a little flat, restricted vocal mechanism that forces her into tensions that defeat any talent she may have. A graduate of theatre school! And no voice training. Raise hell! This is outrageous! Before I can teach her acting, I must train voice and body. After four years in Speech School! I think she has ability, but why must I teach voice, diction and body movement to a graduate of Speech School before I can teach characterization and all the other elements of acting. As you see, I am profoundly disturbed and angry --
Better master the elements yourself and prepare to teach them in each class -- Breath control, rib carriage, front direction of tones, open throat, "tip of the tongue, the lips, the teeth" ("articulation") --
the balanced body (hips tucked under, weight forward, the supple spine, reach for the stars" etc etc --
Better give five minutes to exercise in each class -- If N and P [the potential new students discussed at the beginning of the letter -- DD] have no training in voice and body tell them to get busy before they come here.
Poor R! Trying to do Juliet with a little, flat, high pitched voice!
Somebody should be shot!
A.K.
****
Context
From the beginning, Krause urged her Bloomsburg students to find venues for public performance in Bloomsburg. ("Theatre doesn't happen in my rec room").
Letter (April 1978)
David,
You must do something, something drastic if necessary. Here are twelve graduates of the School of SPEECH and Theatre. They are highly intelligent, hard working serious students. Only one in the group -- K and his undergraduate work was not at NU -- only one has the knowledge and trained equipment to use effectively his instrument of communication: the voice. A hotel dining room throws them into panic, they resort to vocal strain. Graduates of Speech! These people have spent how much $20,000? for an "education in Speech and Theatre and had no opportunity to learn the basics of communication. Their poor little, squeaky inflexible no-range voices: is this what NU stands for? "Follies Moliere" was a success due to the vitality, the infectious spirit of these Moliere actors -- but it was produced with great strain -- mental and physical -- as they came to hard realization of their vocal inadequacies. Now they are planning a summer season and must compress a year's course in Voice into two weeks! When are you going to insist that training in voice is essential to training in Acting? And that training must be given by a specialist? would music school give a course of that importance to an incompetent grad student like F?!! McBurney got rid of the Voice work [James H. McBurney, Dean of the School of Speech 1942-1972 and Krause's primary antagonist -- DD]. I took over the burden by sending acting students to Music School for Voice training and I took over the application of that training to Speech. But, thank God! I had had good, solid basic training in Voice and Diction. You have not had that training. Therefore, you must have a Voice specialist in Theatre and Interpretation. How dare you send out actors -- and teachers! into the professional world without such training? A lot of good it will be to have a fine new theatre at NU if actors must shriek and screech to fill it. What's more some day some one might just be smart enough to sue NU for a strained larynx due to no training for his craft of acting. Your own work in directing a production will suffer under this handicap.
Can't you get your students to demand this training? Not by a grad student!
All this has been boiling inside me for years as I have had to work with NU graduates. Now it is off my chest, -- at least to you. Are you a professional school or no? If you are: actors must have flexible voices of great range and quality or -- no degree in theatre!
Thank you for your good wishes on "Follies". They really brought off a good production, the audience loved them -- but the last week was Hell! But I love these students!
Be a leader!
Thursday, October 11, 2012
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:
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Letters from Alvina Krause: Creative Imagination Winter 1974
Context
Beginning Acting. Winter quarter Sophomore year 1974. The Creative Imagination.
Letter
Do you remember your attempts at Othello? Horrible! Awkward! Self-conscious, unbelievable -- words without meaning, emotions without motivation -- Why? Because you were not using your creative faculties to become Othello. Your creative faculties were dead. You were a typical acting student -- memorize words, speak them with emotion and that's it --
The objective of the quarter on imagination is to start the creative faculty working again -- to stimulate the creative mind -- to demonstrate what creation is and the glow of it. My exercise worked for me. Scrap it if it didn't work for you. But find it! Did you get people thinking of how their creative minds functioned in childhood & then they got to H.S. & they started to follow the heard [sic]. Did you get your class excited about recapturing this lost faculty? Creating a character is far more difficult than creating a fantasy -- A child can build a universe on the beach sands -- Scatter some objects, fabrics, etc., on the floor. Build a Moor out of them -- While building say he is dark, a different skin, his blood is hot, his heart is warm, passionate, he trusts too much, he loves too much, he is a soldier, a leader, etc. -- Pick the fabrics for each quality -- Devise your own system -- But stir the creative mind!
****
Letter
David,
I can't remember where Complex Oedipus came from! [An article Krause gave me and that I had misplaced--DD] If it is a newspaper clipping probably it came from Lucy's niece in England. If you send it back to me maybe Lucy could identify it. More probably we would need to send it back to Jerry.
Imagination -- Try acting the titles of plays: Gamma Rays...Man in the Moon Marigolds -- alcoholic mother (The college here might have had a good production if they had started with the title) --
a tailor.... a lion.... a Roman Emperor
Or take a title of a play and add other elements in the play --
Rhinoceros ... Paris ... !
Such a process might show students the relation between creative imagination and acting -- Oh yes: Marchbanks (not April or May or August but March) -- an Episcopal minister .... a fireplace or ?
You can't be Marchbanks unless your mind has played with the word!
****
[I'm including this photo because it's the only way I can think of to get facebook to offer it as a thumbnail accompanying these letters as shared status posts on facebook -- DD.]
Beginning Acting. Winter quarter Sophomore year 1974. The Creative Imagination.
Letter
Do you remember your attempts at Othello? Horrible! Awkward! Self-conscious, unbelievable -- words without meaning, emotions without motivation -- Why? Because you were not using your creative faculties to become Othello. Your creative faculties were dead. You were a typical acting student -- memorize words, speak them with emotion and that's it --
The objective of the quarter on imagination is to start the creative faculty working again -- to stimulate the creative mind -- to demonstrate what creation is and the glow of it. My exercise worked for me. Scrap it if it didn't work for you. But find it! Did you get people thinking of how their creative minds functioned in childhood & then they got to H.S. & they started to follow the heard [sic]. Did you get your class excited about recapturing this lost faculty? Creating a character is far more difficult than creating a fantasy -- A child can build a universe on the beach sands -- Scatter some objects, fabrics, etc., on the floor. Build a Moor out of them -- While building say he is dark, a different skin, his blood is hot, his heart is warm, passionate, he trusts too much, he loves too much, he is a soldier, a leader, etc. -- Pick the fabrics for each quality -- Devise your own system -- But stir the creative mind!
****
Letter
David,
I can't remember where Complex Oedipus came from! [An article Krause gave me and that I had misplaced--DD] If it is a newspaper clipping probably it came from Lucy's niece in England. If you send it back to me maybe Lucy could identify it. More probably we would need to send it back to Jerry.
Imagination -- Try acting the titles of plays: Gamma Rays...Man in the Moon Marigolds -- alcoholic mother (The college here might have had a good production if they had started with the title) --
a tailor.... a lion.... a Roman Emperor
Or take a title of a play and add other elements in the play --
Rhinoceros ... Paris ... !
Such a process might show students the relation between creative imagination and acting -- Oh yes: Marchbanks (not April or May or August but March) -- an Episcopal minister .... a fireplace or ?
You can't be Marchbanks unless your mind has played with the word!
****
[I'm including this photo because it's the only way I can think of to get facebook to offer it as a thumbnail accompanying these letters as shared status posts on facebook -- DD.]
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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