On Science and Drama

I am wrestling with a couple of notions at the moment.  One of them has to do with paleontology and astronomy, and the other has to do with the assimilation of desired performance.  These are two disparate topics but may be suitable for one thousand words or so.

Often one reads that remains have been found of some hominid or dinosaur and along with that discovery comes a whole scenario of new and different ideas on how things were then and their effect on us now.  Then astronomers will find hundreds of earth-like planets circling “nearby” stars and reach conclusions about them and their ability to sustain life as we know it on this planet.

With all due regard to the length of time they've thought about it and the depth of understanding that these people have, one must remember that they are voicing an opinion of what they think the new findings represent.   And we all know about opinions: they are like anuses, everybody has one and they all stink; except of course one’s own.  So I am going to keep mine out of sight.

There is a theory that petroleum was rained down upon the earth as some other cosmic entity passed nearby and that that petroleum obliterated some forests causing the vegetation to become coal; that that petroleum drained into places on the earth and sat here undisturbed until humans found it and a use for it.

This theory is like so many others; improvable and seemingly far fetched.  But one has to ask, what about gold, what about other mineral deposits, why are they concentrated on only certain portions of the earth?

Then there’s the origin of the Earth-Moon combination.  One recent article claims that there was a planet somewhere near where this combination is now and that an intruder, smaller but still of substantial size, and this planet collided in a plastic collision, i.e. not like billiard balls but more like two blobs of custard.  The smaller split off toward oblivion but was caught in the gravity of the larger, which had adjusted its orbit around the sun to suit its new mass.  Thus we had new and different planets, one orbiting the other and both orbiting the sun.

OK, so we have all of these theories thrown at us by scientists and we love it.  It gives us something to occupy our minds and make us feel smart.  There are scant few instances where this type of knowledge is useful on a day to day basis but it’s fun.

It is a good thing when scientific inquiry leads to results.  There have been many advances in understanding the Earth and environment, the ocean and the air, the effect of harvesting from the earth and the sea, the effect of burning millions of tons of carbon based fuels.  There may be a price to pay for living an artificial life, creating an environment that is controlled.  Right now it is like our national debt, looming out there but we put off dealing with it for the present because of what it will take to do so.

On the other topic: my coursework, in my personal course on acting and plays, is making me aware of new aspects of theater and film, new to me.  My appreciation of good films; scripts, acting, directing, lighting, sound, and editing has likewise taken a leap forward.  The course will have had me view 25 films, some of which will not be for the first time, either before or after reading the author’s criticism, positive or negative, about them.

A few of these have little redeeming value.  Audiences have a way of overcoming marketing hype and either recommend it to others or not.  Marketing is vital for the opening and for some time thereafter but the opinion of the audience quickly takes over and a film costing $95 million may only gross $15 million or less.  This was the case in three of the movies reviewed so far. 

While another, which didn't get marketed actively for a variety of reasons, won several Academy Awards for many aspects of it.  Not a loser in a commercial sense but a huge winner in an artistic sense.  The actors were not well known, except for the male lead, and neither was the director but the performance they produced was remarkable.

My approach to learning lines has changed already.  It is still somewhat mechanical, by rote, but with the added aspect of allowing the character to come through much earlier in the process.  Not only come through but to learn the scene in its entirety right from the start of the process.

The words as written by the author are still inviolable but they are not separate at any time during the assimilation of the script from the dramatic situation that they are describing.  The character has to be allowed to think in terms of his action, conflict, and subtext as well as that of the other characters in the scene with him.  

In all of the study of the course materials, the same underlying principle comes through; the actor becomes the character.  The more completely this happens the better the performance.  Thus the character learns the lines, not the actor.

The effort required to become the character is well spent before any of the other preparation steps.  But, just like real life, the character’s take on the situation can change as his understanding of the others in the scene deepens or changes.  The character is not static, not fixed, not a statue but a real, living human being (in most cases) and subject to the emotions, vulnerability, and reactions of others.

The successful actor becomes the character during all phases of preparation for the role and allows the character to develop on his own, not at the behest of the actor portraying him.