I have been attending the Actors’ Bothy at the CCA every week for almost two years now. It helped me through difficult times, especially when I first joined and it helped restore my confidence after the company I had helped to found had fallen to bits. Going along for the first time, feeling very vulnerable, forlorn and lonely took a lot of guts, but I am very grateful for how welcome they made me feel. I have since remained a loyal member and during the time I have been attending I definitely feel I have matured as an artist, as a soul, and I feel they have played at least some part in re-stimulating some of my belief in myself as an artist. I’ve grown quite fond of many of the other actors. I look forward to meeting up with the friends I've made there, indulging in social gossip/networking when sharing a beer or two in the bar afterwards, as much as the classes themselves. The staple work we do there under the auspices of the Bothy’s founder, Jimmy Watson, consists of Sanford Meisner repetition exercises. Now I must confess I have only a fitful regard for this particular approach, and find its of limited use, but I continue to attend each week, trusting that the exercises are doing me some good anyway at some level or other. Besides, every now and again we get to do other stuff, e.g. Michael Chekhov (including archetypes and centres and psychological gesture and ensemble-building exercises in the weeks I get to lead), or maybe Rudolf Laban, objectives and super-objectives, play-reading or unitting texts, Practical Aesthetics, improvisation skills, physical theatre or Complicité games. Yesterday, in Jimmy’s absence, Anne Lothian was leading half a dozen of us in a fascinating workshop, the theme of which was actors’ ways and means of accessing and/or generating feelings. Usually I prefer to think of stage emotion as something bred as a natural by-product of executing actions. I have become less and less able to access or employ personal/so-called ‘emotional' memories to fuel feeling states for my characters the older I get. I rely on physical action and sensation, qualities of movement and centres in the imaginary body to coax feelings from the heart that are much more universal and complete somehow. This is a far more dependable and much safer way for me than attempting to remember how it felt splitting up with an ex-girlfriend, or getting my dog put down when I was 14! But we all have our different ways, and there was some discussion about this “Method and madness”, Diderot blah blah blah thing amongst the participants at the start of the evening. But then after a vigorous group warm-up and an exercise in commenting on each others’ posture, body language and physical habits, with each actor taking it in turns to stand in front of our peers to be observed for 5 minutes, we devoted the rest of our time to a fantastic but very simple paired exercise.
As Anne herself said afterwards, its great that we have the luxury of time to explore ideas and techniques. You just don't get that opportunity in rehearsals. So sitting opposite our partner we were asked to repeat a given a ‘feeling statement’, to be directed with increasing levels of intensity, using the simple objective of making ourselves believable/believed by our partner, e.g. “I miss you”, “I detest you” or “You embarrass me”. Since there were so few of us in attendance we had an opportunity to observe the other pairs, rather all do it at the same time, before Lindsey McNab and I finally got up to do the exercise.
She was given the statement “I’m scared”. Starting from a level one intensity she had to build, step by step, up to level ten. As Lindsey partner I was permitted to comment, encourage, and feedback during the exercise according to whether I believed her or not. If I did then she could ascend to the next level. If not she had to go further and deeper with her intention to communicate authentic fear before going to the next level. After 4 or 5 minutes she looked pretty goddamn terrified and had got up to something like level 7 or 8 at which point Anne stopped us! After a bit of group discussion it was my turn.
I had first done a similar exercise over 20 years ago while working on The Deal at the Arts Centre with American Connexion (e.g.“-I want justice!”. “-Well, you can’t have it!” etc, repeated again and again as way of galvanising us into playing our objectives at full pelt for every unit in the text). Yesterday I found myself secretly praying I might be given a statement such as “I want to hurt you” or “I want to maim and/or kill you”, anticpating this might be practical preparation for getting a soaked up in Titus’ toxic rage, the role I am currently in the midst of rehearsing with Strathclyde Theatre Group, but in the end that was deemed too similar to “I detest you” which we’d already seen my friend Kenny do with Robert.
I was given the sentence: “I love you”.
Now I’ve known Lindsey over 10 years. I first worked with her when playing her husband in J.B. Priestly’s Time and the Conways at the Arches in 1999. She was also in an Alison Peebles film with Karen 3 or 4 years ago, so I suppose I know her quite well. I like her; she’s a kind and caring person, quite beautiful, but I wouldn’t say we were what you would call particularly close.
By the time I’d reached up to level 6 tears were appearing in her eyes. By 7 she had flung her arms round me as I repeated “I love you” with greater ardour, longing and intensity. I had started by focusing on her sparkly green eye make-up and then moved onto her face, then her tender vulnerability, then her heart and her inner light, her soul... Going ever deeper. My entreaties became directed, in my imagination, to an amalgamation of all the women I have ever loved, my profound gratitude to them for what they had meant to me, a desire to bless and affirm them for the gifts they had brought of themselves and the love I had shared with them, but then it began to morph into a deeper, even more universal love for God as expressed in my connection with Lindsey as another human soul. Images of me being a fountain of love radiating light from my heart and flooding her spirit. All the while I was telling her “I love you” it felt like the most honest and candid I had ever been in my life. We ended up kissing passionately. When Anne brought the exercise to a close Lindsey slowly pulled away from me, laughing as she wiped away her snot and tears. “My God,” she said, “Why haven't I got a fucking boyfriend who can say that to me!?”
There was some applause from the group before Anne said, “Wow, Mark… You look like you’ve done that before!” And of course I have, but to be honest never with that degree of intensity. In life we hold back from expressing things with that much crazy passion and ardour, and unless we’re bonkers we don’t spend 5 minutes saying the same thing over and over again even to those we love! This exercise permitted one's guard to be dropped and the backlog of a lifetime's emotion burst out of me and it didn't let up.
The extension exercise involved both of us being physically held back by the rest of the class as we struggled to get across the room to the other. I had Robert, Kenny and Ralf- all much bigger, younger and stronger than I trying to restrain me as we repeated our “I love yous” and “I’m scareds” and Lindsey was restrained by Anna and Elaine at the other end of the room. In the end nothing was going to hold either of us back from embracing again, and that is exactly what we eventually did once we'd managed to wrestle free.
All very luvvie and self-indulgent to an outsider I’m sure but what a tremendous exercise!
The reason I mention all of this is that it is this ‘level 11’ intensity that is required for my Titus. His emotions are experienced at increasingly potent levels as the action of the play progresses. Just as you think he has reached the depths of existential anguish and hellish torment there is still another level to go. It would be very easy to peak too early leaving me nowhere else to go; or the opposite- never really connecting with the authentic emotion at all. Yesterday’s exercise wasn’t just self-indulgence because there was an action associated with it which was 'to be believed by the other'. Titus’ journey strains credibility at times, and the challenge for me is to carry the audience along on that roller coaster of increasingly heightened grief and woe. It took yesterday’s exercise to make me realise that there is no point in me trying as a pacifist Quaker to play murderous hatred because what really lies behind Titus' martial persona is actually a wounded soul clinging onto a fierce and violent love for his emperor and state, for his nearest and dearest and his unshakeable devotion to the ideals of Honour and Justice. There is a deeply poignant and profound loving heart which is actually exquisitely tender and beautiful despite all outward appearances to the contrary. Titus may be old, pig-headed, hideously violent, battle-scarred and ugly on the outside, but he is ablaze with an intense fidelity to Love. He is simply limited in his means of expression in the Yang-dominated culture of the Roman army, slaying Goths for 40 years.
But what I communicated with such fervour and conviction yesterday evening to Lindsey- a feeling in my body, in my emotions and in my soul- is actually the same as what lies at the heart of Titus. He personifies a hugely amplified, unstoppable force of nature, a deluge of Divine Love that floods the Empire. Everybody feels its compelling power. It is a fearless love that hopefully increases an audience sense of aliveness because all it is about is giving, giving and still more GIVING, with no thought for the consequences; transmitted through each and every cell- through my eyes, my words, my feelings, my touch, an unadulterated and distilled presence- an incandescent furnace of energy and power capable of burning up and transmuting everything. This for me is the key to Titus' soul. It is absolutely counterintuitive to the traditional idea of him being the hate-filled, blood-lusting Avenger archetype. It is Nuclear Love. I’m pretty sure Peter Lamb, the director, will disagree with me- but just in case you happen to be reading this Peter I want for the next wee while to look into this in greater depth, and hopefully bring you round!
Having said that it’s still early days of course. Peter is still blocking the play and we’re all still struggling to get off-book. The interaction and the nuances of character relationships- particularly between myself, Lavinia, Marcus, Lucius, Tamora and Saturninus- are far from clear 19 days before opening night. It is still very much a work in progress, and I know I haven’t even begun to skim the surface. Others are much further on than I by all accounts. But by the end of this week we’ll have had the chance to run the whole thing and see what needs most attention. It would be foolish to hope for much at this stage; after all it’s been almost 3 weeks since I last rehearsed Act 1, and I can barely remember anything about it! No, my main focus in the next week or so has got to be remembering lines, cues and moves, although I would like to think I will be able to attend to what others are doing around me too, and maybe capture some of the flavour of Titus’ depth of feeling and passion. I long for this to be a very intense emotional experience for every member of the audience in performance. This will demand superhuman levels of emotional and physical stamina fromme, and an intense focus from the audience if that goal is to be attained, but nothing gets my juices going more as an actor than the carrot of impossible objectives! :-)
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