The Structure of an Actor's Work : An Introduction

The primacy of emotion

In 1956, at a very tender age, I started working at the Arena Theatre of São Paulo, of which I was the artistic director until I had to leave Brazil in 1971. At this time, the Brazilian theatre was completely dominated by Italian directors, who used to impose pre-established forms on every play performed. On stage we used to hear Portuguese spoken with an Italian accent. To fight against this, in concert with

the actors, we created an Acting Laboratory in which we set about a methodical study of the works of Stanislavski. Our first (and only!) guiding precept, at that time, was that emotion took precedence over all else and should be given a free rein to shape the final form of the actor’s interpretation of a role.

Muscular exercises

The actors relax all the muscles in their bodies and focus their attention on each individual muscle. Then they take a few steps, bend down and pick up an object (anything), doing the whole thing very slowly and trying to feel and remember all the muscular structures which intervene in the accomplishment of these

movements.

Sensory exercises

The actors swallow a spoonful of honey, followed by a pinch of salt, and then a pinch of sugar. Then they enact the same thing without the original stimuli. They must try to recall the tastes, actually experience them again, and physically manifest all the reactions which accompany the absorption of honey, salt, sugar, etc. This exercise is not about mimicry (smiles for honey, grimaces for the salt etc.), but rather about genuinely experiencing the same sensations ‘from memory’. The same can be done with smells.

Memory exercises

We did easy versions of these every day. Before going to sleep, each of us would

try to remember minutely and chronologically all that had happened during the day, with the maximum detail – colours, faces, weather, everything – revisualising almost photographically all that we had seen, rehearing all we had heard. On top of this, on their arrival at the theatre actors would often be asked what had happened in their lives since the previous day – and they then had to deliver a detailed account to the rest of the group. The exercise became more interesting when several actors had taken part in the same event – a festival, a reunion, a show, a play, a football match. The versions would be compared, and, when there were differences, we would endeavour to arrive at an objective version of the facts or try to understand the reasons for the differences in the accounts.

Emotion exercises

There is a wall between what the actor feels and the final form which expresses

it. This wall is formed by the actor’s own mechanisms. The actor feels Hamlet’s

emotions and yet, involuntarily, he will express Hamlet’s emotions in his own way: with his own physiognomy, his own tone of voice, etc. But the actor could also be in a position to choose, out of a thousand ways of smiling, the one which, in his view, would be Hamlet’s; or out of a thousand ways of getting angry, the one which, in his view, would be Hamlet’s way. To make this choice possible, one has to start by destroying the wall of mechanisms, which is the actor’s ‘mask’. The bourgeois theatre of São Paulo by contrast used to reinforce the mannerisms and automatisms of each actor (their ‘trademarks’) and onto these the characters would be glued. The ‘stars’ would always play themselves – the ‘stars’. We wanted the converse – we wanted the actors to start by nullifying all their personal characteristics in order to let those of the character flower. These exercises were intended to abolish the so-called ‘personality’ of the actor – his mould, his pattern – and assist the birth of the ‘personality’ of the character and its mould or pattern. But how does one arrive at this new mould?