I had a teacher who said to me "If an actor has forgotten what it is like to play as a child they should not be an actor'. What the child sees is transformed by imagination. The pattern in a carpet can become a world; a staircase a mountain; and everywhere there are secrets. I grew up without television. I am sure its absence bent and angles the way I see. What did we do? Read books, sang, and went to bed early. From when we were very small my mother would make theatre with us. So the idea of 'making' your own theatre is something that I grew up with. Every year she would write a pantomime. She would rig up two curtains at the end of a long corridor to make a minuscule playing space. For two weeks we would construct props and costumes, refuse to rehearse when called, play with grease paint in her makeup box and induce a minor yearly nervous breakdown. Cinderella's coach was a transformed tricycle that was painted silver, had a cardboard rococo window attached and trundled a majestic four feet across the stage pulled by ropes running into the kitchen. I do not remember going to the cinema much. My father was fond of renting Laurel and Hardy on 8mm, which I found terrifying. I was convinced that they hurt themselves in their stunts and pratfalls. Playing them backwards at speed was the highlight of the evening. That seemed a lot funnier and more reassuring somehow. The child's imagination is what continues to feed you, I think, perhaps because it is fed by an immense curiosity, perhaps because of the wonder. It bends the way you see; it keeps alive an important secret life. Although we MADE theatre, I never envied my mother's role as a director. I don't think it even occurred to me to do so. I was always playing; playing meant imagining; playing involved making; and playing was something that was more fun when you were doing it together with others. That was all I still think of myself principally as a player, a performer, and an actor; an actor who also directors. Though I tend to think of directing as 'making'.
When asked, "What do you want from a director, then?
Simon McBurney answered: "I only require one thing."
"What is that"
"Confidence. Confidence with which to make us believe that we see a world in a pattern on a carpet; or a staircase as a mountain; and secrets everywhere."
NEW IDEA: First and second rehearsal: hide-and-seek and make a show. Then read the play two times in a row standing up and moving.
1 comment:
Good post.
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