Sam Pout
10 Aug 2022
The following are some brief ideas I had in response to a play I saw the other night. It reminded me of the importance of an actor’s corporeal awareness when telling their character’s story, and how the significance of weight extends from their body into their surrounding world. My thoughts are a mere response to what I saw and refer to conventional performance. They don’t claim to be right or wrong, but I hope they stir thought for actors and directors in terms of their practice whether they disagree or not.
The one thing an actor can’t do on stage which others can, is see themselves. What actors can do, which no one else is able to, is feel themselves; a good actor allows an audience to feel despite being metres away. When discussing weight in terms of body, I mean the effort an actor engages when using their body to interact with others or express a character’s feeling. An actor’s awareness of their weight, and how they move it infers an emotion, reaction or interruption in thought; it essentially suggests an intention which dialogue may not.
Take a simple walk for example, effort required to move our weight alters the rhythm, speed, sound, buoyancy of our steps. These are all influenced by our mood or whatever occupies our mind. It’s common knowledge that a person’s walk is as unique as their fingerprint, so surely how an actor utilises their weight infers a similar individuality. Seeing a show recently reminded me of the importance of Laban’s theories, it’s not exclusive for dance or physical theatre, Laban is essential for any person embodying another on stage. Body language can be so much louder than we think: when we’re tired our eyelids seem heavier, when we’re happy, we express using hands as they feel lighter. A moment of depression may leaden an actor’s arm where if they act drunk, their weight may be in compete limbo. Laban effectively details the different intentions behind movements and the efforts used to achieve them, if not already acquainted with such a theory, I heavily suggest people look in to it.
What is also concurrent with this idea is our relation to gravity. Often if someone is given heartbreaking news, they have to sit down because they momentarily lose their balance. Arguably, an actor’s centre of gravity should move in a similar pace of the dialogue. Often this is the case, but sometimes it’s clear an actor is awaiting their cue for the next line, not actually listening and responding to their opposite actor(s). It’s as if their bodies and mind are running parallel to the theatre, and not quite within it. Facial expression is one thing, but how can the rest of a body infer feeling; a flicker of the pinkie can be as expressive as a smirk, it just depends on the moment in which it happens. A character’s intention may change mid sentence or even mid word, they may want to display this or not, but a corporeal response to a moment fuels story as much as dialogue, even more so, as stated earlier, bodies often infer a subtextual truth.
Essentially, what I’m suggesting is that an actor needs to be aware of how their character’s emotional and psychological condition manifests through their body, and how much effort, if any, it takes to perform an action inferring intention. I’m not for a moment commenting on the actor’s awareness of their character, of course they would do the work and research to embellish their performance. But a lack of physical awareness may deceive the audience into thinking that they aren’t aware, or at least limits the effect of storytelling.
All of the above also extends out into the objects actors use within performance. The recent production I saw was very epic in scenographic design, with one reviewer describing the space like an amphitheatre. This sparsity of design adds significant weight to an object’s relevance to story. It’s important that these objects are not treated like casual accessories, they are as instrumental as an actor and so the mass of an object is integral for empathetic experience.
Consider the film Inception, each character has their own totem which no one else is allowed to hold, if so, the weight and feel of the object would be known to others, threatening the integrity of their separate realities. The same can be said for theatre, if I see a bag on stage, then I should be able to infer the reason of the bag based on its function and size. If it looks light and is swung about, I might guess the character is going on a quick break, if it’s a duffel bag bursting at the seams, I might read a more serious excursion, moving house, or even escape. The recent production saw a character become a refugee against a persecution of her family, causing her to leave home with her possessions and child. The bag used to infer this situation was a very clean, hollow looking duffel bag. As the actor moved around the space, the bag swung in the their hand due to its lack of weight. Like Inception, the weight of the bag was visibly light, thus opposing the integrity of the character’s emigration, thus limiting the cathartic moment. If it was intended that I purchase this moment, I couldn’t because what I saw opposed the story, I couldn’t empathise with the idea of leaving home.
The weight of an object, and how an actor interacts with it is just as essential as their own body, it offers a tangibility of the world being depicted. Often, particularly within contemporary theatre, objects are symbolic of an idea or another character. Macbeth may worship a dagger, not because it feels good, but because it represents his ambition and how to achieve it. The dagger may feel heavy when first holding it, but in the act of killing, it would feel so light it would seem an extension of his arm. The bag mentioned above, if appearing light, suggests frivolity, vacation and indulgence; if heavy, it can suggest oppression, evacuation and even an evasion of persecution.
What I may be suggesting, is that an actor must characterise an object as they do themselves, if they do not, how am I to believe its existence within the dramatic world. Simon Stephens talks about the mutuality of experiences, he says “When the world replicated on stage gets too close to a world in which we have lived then we actually end up distanced from the play.” (53). How then do we enable an empathy when a show is depicting a world far away from the performance’s context. Stephens goes on to say “I recognise the experience of scoring a goal not from my own life but from my narrative of what life is like.” (ibid.); his empathy whilst watching John Donelly’s The Pass’ stems from his ideas and feelings on football. If applying this concept to the idea of weight, then our obtained experiences of feeling, whether burdened by a heavy object or a sudden weightlessness, allow us to engage with the world on a stage separate to our own. Not because we share the same narrative as a character, but because we understand the feeling of what we see. We may not immediately understand why a character reacts a certain way, or shifts intention, but seeing how their condition dictates weight, their own or of an object, is a visual key into understanding their condition, consequently allowing us to understand the significance of their circumstance - good or bad.
The movement of weight, and the effort behind it, is a key to empathy.
Works cited
Stephens, S. A Working Diary. Methuen Drama, 2016.