Thinking about the ensemble

What does it mean to create an ensemble?

The word “ensemble” gets tossed around a lot these days, whether its theater, dance, music, the circus, vaudeville, or whatever…It’s a word that is watered down, misconstrued, misused and abused to a point where you think just about anyone and everyone is making an ensemble or creating ensemble-based pieces.

To confuse matters, many theater companies even have that word in their name. I worked at Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City …in fact, just google that word and you might find a lot of theaters calling themselves “ensemble” this or “ensemble” that…It seems anyone can lay claim to it.

Well, yes, but aren’t they an ensemble? I mean, if I cast a production of Hamlet, aren’t all those actors working together in a collaborative way? Haven’t they formed as a group to work harmoniously together to create a work of art?

Sure, but…

Okay, etymologically, it’s just French for “the same together” and then somewhere around a hundred years ago it started being used for musical groups and then became an adjective to describe a particular way of being—as in ensemble acting, defined by merriam-webster as “emphasizing the roles of all performers as a whole rather than a star performance”.

Ah, there might lie the difference…between ensemble as a group of artists to a way of working...

As a director casting Hamlet, I’m going to want a specific Hamlet for my vision of that well-defined play—this is why we go see Ralph Fiennes or Liev Schreiber or Kevin Kline’s Hamlet. It is a star vehicle. Sure, the rest of the actors are just as important and there have been some great ensemble-based Shakespeare pieces (ala Peter Brook) but mostly, that is a play about that central character with others revolving around him. Many plays are like that. This is a simplistic way of looking at it, but bear with me for the illustration of the point.

I’ve been re-reading my Joseph Chaikin book THE PRESENCE OF THE ACTOR and he understands the ensemble to have two principles:

“The first is empathy: one actor, instead of necessarily competing with another, instead of trying to take attention away from him would instead support the other…There comes a point when you no longer know exactly which actor is in support and which actor initiated the action; they are simply together.

“The other has to do with rhythm, with dynamics, and with a kind of sensitivity which could be rhythmically self-expressed…”

He then goes on to talk about a singular person’s inner rhythm, going on all the time, which adds a certain energy to the room and sometimes these rhythms are in battle with each other, contrary to what is being said. It’s this dynamic and idea of rhythms which fueled much of Chaikin’s work with the Open Theater.

It’s also important to note that many ensemble-based works were focused on physical theatre, rather than text-based theater. The truth is, the elements of theatre become an ensemble, working as a harmonious whole—text, movement, music, design—all having equal importance. It creates a multi-layered experience.

The problem I’ve seen with some ensembles, especially as they form theater companies is a limited view of the ensemble. They see only the acting ensemble as an ensemble, rather than viewing the director, playwright, designers, dramaturg, and stage manager as integral parts of the collaborative process.

One can even extend the idea of the ensemble to include the audience as well as the theatre-makers (as Grotowski did…).

Few ever do this.

The reason is simple: we like the comfort of the fourth wall. It protects us and keeps us safe.

Chaikin also said that we should never be too comfortable as we make our art, always pushing ourselves…This is why he concocted so many exercises during rehearsals, exercises that he used and discarded like paper plates.

Constantly forcing yourself out of the comfort zone and creating new ways of surprise is one reason why few people actually make ensembles and/or do physical-based theatre work. The work requires more time and energy and we live in a country that is very much about “get it up fast” and is concentrated on the end product of the opening night performance. Also, simply making traditional theater is hard enough as it is, why add to to it?

Ensemble-based work is usually more focused on the process, the experiential aspects of theatre-making, not the end product. Most producers are not down with that, which is why you don’t see it much in regional theaters like at Seattle Rep. Sure, you will get the rare mainstream success like Metamorphosis on Broadway, but this is the exception to the rule. Ensemble-making usually happens in alternative circles, those with little or no money (like the downtown or lower east side of NYC). The positive is that these forms of theatre-making are very conducive to those alternative groups who are usually the disempowered ones in the economic/social spheres of the city.

But I think I’ll write more later in this blog about my thoughts on physical theater (what Joane Schirle of Dell’Arte calls “total theatre”) and “devising” theater, another catch-all phrase getting close to distortion by its usage, since there are so many different types of companies and methodologies behind devising (Mary Zimmerman, Ann Bogart, Ping Chong, Richard Foreman, Theatre de Complicite, Soujourner, etc.).

As I delve into the beginnings of building my ensemble for 7 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT and the many thoughts I have about what theatre is for me, what we’re making and why…It is no surprise that I am filled with a little bit of fear of what lies ahead, but only in the sense of adventure…as if I’m getting into my car and heading across country without any map, just knowing the general direction.

"Make Art" Says the Irish Folksinger

Did you ever go to a concert and were disappointed because the musician/band just didn’t sound as good as they do on the CD?

Yeah, that so didn’t happen last night when we went to go see The Swell Season at The Moore Theater.

(The Swell Season is an Irish band fronted by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, the actor/musicians who starred as Guy and Girl in the movie ONCE. If you haven’t seen that movie yet, you should totally go out and rent it. Their song, “Falling Slowly” won the Academy Award for Best Song. Not bad for some scrappy Irish folks making a movie on the fringe.)

Some people just have a presence on stage that is not always easily captured in any fixed medium.

It’s sorta like when you tell someone a story or a joke and then say, “I guess you had to be there…”

(Unless you’re a crappy storyteller, then that’s just an excuse.)

As a performer, Glen has immediate presence and connection with the audience. As does Marketa.

Maybe it has something to do with trusting your self. Or with trusting your material. Maybe its confidence.

Maybe it's indefinable.

Of course, this idea of presence is not just something related to music, but also to theater. Joseph Chaikin wrote a whole book about it (which everyone in theater should read). Some actors have immense presence and charisma while others are practically invisible. It’s not just talent or the fact that they are a star. It’s something else. It's awareness of the present moment. It's joy. It's focus and conentration.

It’s why when you videotape a theatrical show, it’s just not as good as the live version.

Oh, and on a personal note…

Last weekend I found out some disheartening news from my mom. Turns out all this time I’ve been thinking I was part Irish, but I’m not in the least bit Irish. My redheaded, firecracker of a grandmother is part Welsh. Not Irish.

That’s just not as much fun. You can’t call yourself “one of the fightin’ Welsh” or say that you’ve got “the luck of the Welsh”.

I’m still going to keep on celebrating me St. Patty’s Day, though!

Ah, Paris!

I’ve been reading some of the Theatre of Cruelty by Artaud lately, partly for leisure and partly for work (but then that’s par for the course for me when it comes to books on theater or plays). Other than the fact that he was a total madman (no really, he did go crazy for various reasons too many to mention here), he was also a genius and true poetic visionary. He despised theater that was just a carbon copy of so-called life. He thought virisimilitude (ie fourth wall realism) was anethema. His idea was to have images and theater that jarred the audience, that made some kind of impact in their psyche and gut.

One of his big statements was: NO MORE MASTERPEICES. And by that he meant this reverance and idolatry for the text which we have (like the sanctity of Shakespeare, for example).

On a sidenote: Right now I’m sitting in the Air France lounge in Paris and sipping my cappuccino and contemplating whether I should try the champagne. I must say it felt very chic reading Artaud on an Air France flight while eating croissants and listening to the French singer Carla Bruni. One thing I love about this extremely short visit to the city of lights is that I get to use all the French I know, which to date is two words: “Merci” and “Bonjour!”.

I've also been reading Joseph Chaikin's book The Presence of the Actor and the text of his production of The Serpent, which his theater compnay, the Open Theater, workshopped and produced in 1969. It's truly an amazing piece of work, though hard to read in places only because it is a physical and ensemble-based piece. I’ve only seen clips of the show in bits here and there.

Part of my reasons for reading some of this stuff is that I’m still percolating ideas and images for my show scheduled for the fall, 7 Minutes to Midnight.

In the introduction, though, Chaikin says something that is quite appropriate for one of my recent posts:

“All entertainment is instructive. It instructs the sensibility. It needn’t give information in order to instruct. In fact, information can more easily be rejected than the ambience of entertainment.”

The power of “instructing the sensibility” cannot be overestimated. As I read The Serpent, I kept thinking of how universal the themes were that they explored: sin, redemption, crime and death. Yet the lens in which they viewed these things was filtered by the time and era in which they lived (the late 1960s). It’s a powerful piece.

Also, I just read a brilliant paper by my brilliant PhD candidate wife about mimes and performers in ancient Rome. There were many points about the paper which struck me but one curiosity was that it seems that in Greek and Roman times, great actors were exempt from war service. Makes you wonder if those who were pacifists immediately started to learn how to act, juggle, dance, sing and/or be a mime in order to avoid hostile situations.

Can you imagine the pressure to perform well in light of being shipped off to war?

“Sorry, Sorex, but you’re not as funny as you used to be…off to the war with you!”

In a more current view, it’s like dodging the draft for the Vietnam War by joining the circus instead of fleeing to Canada.

Which begs the question…if a mime falls in battle and no one is around to hear it, does he make a noise?

(Okay, I know, that is an ugly and bad joke which should not be let of the house but kept grounded like a bratty child, but there is a reason I’m not writing jokes for stand-up comedians or sit-coms…so deal with it.)