Physical theatre

Since all theatre is psychophysical, what do we really mean by ‘physical theatre’?

In theatre, we only get access to the ‘inside’ by means of the ‘outside’ – I mean the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of the person, with ‘inside’ being metaphorical (the real inside is flesh, blood and bone) although the Cartesian idea of a hidden subjective life treats it as literal. Still, it’s clear enough that what goes on in some sense ‘inside’ a person (thoughts, fears, moods, motives…) doesn’t have to show on the ‘outside’ (in their behaviour, actions, vocalizations, facial expressions…) but it may show (and that to greater or lesser degree). So there’s always the implicit question. Why should X be revealed, but not Y? Moreover, why is X openly expressed while Y only emerges in spite of the individual’s attempt to hide it? Drama arises on the basis of this ‘showing through’ or this ‘turning inside out’.

What shows through like this in a drama commonly does so because of the pressures of the situation – which is usually interpersonal and social – in which an individual finds herself. In other words the pressure that leads to something on the inside showing through on the outside isn’t entirely (and often isn’t mainly) something that itself originates ‘inside’. So what’s at stake here is really a complex interplay between three things, one ‘inside’ and two different ‘outsides’. These are the ‘inner life’ of the individual, the ‘outer boundary’ of the organism (where all expression happens) and the ‘outside world’ (the interpersonal and social world). The second of these, moreover, is like the interface between the first and third, in the sense that it both reveals the first to the third and provides glimpses of the effects of the third upon the first.

That’s all a bit too neat, perhaps, but the concept of ‘physical theatre’ can only really be understood in relation to a schema like the one just outlined. This is because athletes and acrobats don’t do physical theatre. Watching athletes and acrobats may be aesthetically pleasing – but in these cases you’re watching the body express its purely physiological self, rather than expressing its psychological ‘inner life’ or, to put this a bit more accurately, rather than expressing its also-psychological life. In other words, physical theatre is really another form of psychophysical theatre (as I suggested at the start).

So what’s the significance of its more ‘physical’ emphasis?

Mostly, when we talk about physical theatre we mean a mode of performance which draws attention to the body’s expressiveness in ways that go beyond the imitation of ‘everyday’ human behaviour. But the clue to the significance of this may lie elsewhere, in so-called ‘physical theatre’ as it provides the basis for an approach to actor training as distinct from a mode of performance. The kind of physically-oriented training as outlined, for example, in Lorna Marshall’s excellent book The Body Speaks prepares the actor to perform both ‘physical theatre’ and ‘psychological theatre’. This is significant because a ‘psychological’ approach to training (I mean the dominant Stanislavski-based or Stanislavski-influenced kind) will not prepare the actor to play in physical theatre, because certain necessary physical skills won’t be developed enough. (In reality, of course, there’s some degree of ‘pick’n’mix’ in all actor training – here I’m talking about the core ideas that lie behind some different approaches to it.)

But the asymmetry here goes deeper. I would argue, in fact, that the physical approach to actor training is better – more effective – at generating psychologically true emotions and feelings than the purely psychological approach!

Suppose you have to play an individual beset by deep-rooted anxiety. You research the character, of course, to try to understand the cause of this anxiety. You may even need to invent the cause, at least in part. But this remains external. You don’t want to follow Diderot in this by merely imitating the external signs of anxiety, for you want your depiction to be ‘true,’ not fake. But how do you get to feel strong anxiety or something very like it?

First, you might try the method of emotion memory, invented by Stanislavski but taken to a limit by Strasberg. Sitting in a relaxed state you try to recall as vividly as you can an incident from years ago in which you felt anxiety or a closely related kind of fear. You don’t try to recall the feeling directly; instead you try to recall as much as you can of the sensual detail of the scene, both immediately prior to and accompanying the feeling. If you succeed in this, the feeling of anxiety or fear will come vividly back to you. In this, you should find a kind of trigger, a sensual detail or two with which you will subsequently be able to bring the feeling back more or less at will. Note, then, the curious fact that you need to start in a relaxed state in order to achieve a feeling that is very far from relaxed. Here, ‘relaxation’ corresponds to a kind of ‘switching the physiological body off’ to let memory do its work.

Second, alternatively, you can try Michael Chekov’s technique of the Psychological Gesture (a technique I explore at some length in Re-Imagining Your Body, pp. 154-162). Here, you first need to find a posture, a kind of self-body-sculpture, that expresses acute anxiety. This is not a naturalistic representation of an anxious person, but a kind of archetypal expression of anxiety itself, so it may well be contorted and awkward, though you must be able to hold it for at least ten seconds. Next you find the appropriate tempo of your transformation into this contorted, awkward shape (which will probably be fairly slow). The Psychological Gesture consists of both the getting into and the subsequent holding of the posture, during which you should have a sense of the transformation continuing inwardly. Throughout, you experience the transformation as a transformation of your psychology. This ‘inner transformation’ is absorbed into you, or more precisely into your body. The feeling remains with or in you and you can recall it simply by performing the Gesture inwardly, that is with your imaginary body. (See Appendix 2 of Re-Imagining Your Body for some discussion of the imaginary or phantom body.)

Leaving aside questions that arise concerning the potential psychological dangers of the technique of emotion memory (as it overlaps with psychotherapeutic practice), I strongly believe that the second, physical approach is a much more effective method of generating actable feelings and emotions. Why?

Because it is the body that remembers.

There’s another dimension to this that I’ve touched on elsewhere. A ‘psychological’ approach to actor training is too rooted in a conception of acting that is only problematically conceived as performance. We need to recover a sense of truthful performance, not just of truthful acting, and understanding the training potential of so-called physical theatre is crucial to this.