Being a C**t

Clotaldo in Life is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca

(with Euan Galbraith & Darren Lightbody) 2004

"Everything that happens is because you are a cunt. That's because I'm a complete wanker, that's because I'm an arsehole, yes. You, you, you kind of almost have a Tourette's view of yourself."

Stephen Fry in BBC2's The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive

Stephen Fry eloquently describing his battle with the crushing lows associated with depression in that brilliant series he did a couple of years ago about bipolar disorder. But he might easily be describing my own view of myself over the past wee while. In fact it's why I haven’t written anything here for a bit. I so miss having the license that acting gives me to step into the soul of another. I miss it terribly in fact. I haven’t acted in 9 months and, like Masha in The Seagull, I find myself in mourning for my life! I do feel ashamed admitting my dependence on it, but as melodramatic as it might sound, it’s true. My world- everything inside and outside of me in fact- seems to get grey, heavy, foetid, decayed when I’m not acting. Not that working on a character can guarantee I won’t sometimes drift into self-loathing- but at least if I am engaged in the exploration of a role I can convince myself that these feelings of negativity may be channelled back into the work. Mercifully they often can, and thereby transformed into something positive…

But without acting my life starts to become shrouded in a thick, sticky, grey dust. Teaching doesn't help, nor does directing. Existence turns into a dreary relentless grind. The only cure is the offer of a part that will allow me to channel all this misdirected energy of negativity, navel-gazing- tying myself up into convoluted knots- back into something worthwhile, something useful. If the offer doesn’t come I'm in serious danger of drifting into a darker, scarier place- perhaps even suicidal thinking- and not be able to claw my way back to the light. And even though it’s never been quite that bad (Thank God!), I know that it so easily could be.

So why can’t I just be satisfied with 'real life' like most other people? Because real life lacks clarity. And if I really can’t be content with that then what’s to stop me devising my own acting project to get me out of this emotional shithole? Well, nothing, apart from the fact that it wouldn't work, at least not for me. I think because I believe it would be not only decadent but grossly self-indulgent and eccentric/verging on the bonkers to attempt the bizarre process of characterisation under my own steam as a cure for this self-disgust without at least some other kind of legitimate stimulus- i.e. a decent and interesting part given to me to work on by others, for the benefit of others. A well-crafted character offers me a portal, or a map that I can trust to renew my faith in the potential for soul expansion. Acting is the most powerful tool I know for achieving empathy and profound spiritual connectivity. Over the past 30 odd years I have grown very used to having the license of a rehearsing/ researching/playing roles I am cast in by directors in order to take me out of patterns of circular thinking and existential despair. It does not help me if I have to invent the character myself. And that’s perhaps why I couldn’t bear improvising. Improv fosters delusional thinking in me- it’s vain escapism. The results of the work are lame and more than likely just primitive products of my own limited intelligence and ego. It doesn’t give me any purchase on the inner blocks in order to create the space for growth. If it is me making it up the rabbit-hole doesn’t lead to Wonderland, it’s leads down a cul-de-sac, and I start disappearing up my own fundament as I try to burrow myself out again. No, I crave a fully-imagined soul to enter into, rather than making one up myself. To feel what he (the character) feels: to see the world as he sees it, to suffer his pain, participate in his sins and triumphs, loves, fears and hopes unleashes my imagination like nothing I could do using my own limited powers of invention. It is delicious to me. It restores my hope and faith in the process of living. I cannot be satisfied with acting exercises, and workshops; and I hate to develop characters from mere observation and imitating folk from everyday life. The results invariably lack the beauty, economy, grace and distillation of a fully-fledged dramatic character that has a potent, inspiring super-objective, a compelling reason for being. Paradoxical as it might seem, I have come to understand that so called 'real life' just isn’t as truthful as Art! In fact, so-called ‘Real Life’ is riddled with obfuscation and lies! I am too afraid of people’s pettiness, their dysfunctions, and their blind spots to trust them enough to want to become them. And I certainly don’t want to have the responsibility of forging this labyrinthine journey into the rock face of another’s psyche without someone else- a genius hopefully! - having gone there before me. I always have Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth in mind whenever I think about the actor’s challenge of interpreting a character. The hero-explorers of the novel at various points encounter the initials “A.S.” carved into the rock crater tunnel walls by Icelandic alchemist Arne Saknussemm centuries earlier. I don’t want to create characters: I simply want to follow their trail, and find them, nothing more- tracking clues like Lidenbrock and Axel did. For me, improvising feels inadequate, silly. Like pretending you are a detective looking for the body, when you committed the crime yourself. I prefer solving the challenging puzzles a master like Pinter, or W.S. (!), has already fashioned for me. In the process I learn how to transform myself into a more streamlined, more articulate, more intelligent, more worthy soul. I feel it makes me a better person. At least a person I want to live with.

-i.e. not a cunt.

I need to act. When I don’t I get diffused, then confused; bored, then restless; irritable, then unbearably frustrated; depressed and angry, then just very, very low- until I can see little point in doing anything at all. Including acting, eventually.

Have I conjured up a picture of myself as the stereotypical, sad, old bastard who wastes his entire life in theatrical self-delusion? Who has misspent his allotted span hiding away from knowing who he really is and never properly growing up? Dressing up and just playing at being? Without a true face, only a mask or series of masks? Quite possibly...

But if acting is just a silly escape- a mere diversion from the concrete realities of existence as others define them, a therapy for children- well so be it. It nourishes me. It fulfils me. And I need it. To stop me being a cunt.

Besides, I know audiences get something from my work when I do it right. What other justification do I have to give if it helps me, and it helps others?

I miss acting so very much.

George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 2003