I'm back from Dance camp, and catching up on the TAL discussions.
I just want to harp one more time on the point that old plays--
really old plays: The Mysteries, Shakespeare, Commedia, Restoration,
Romantic-- everything up to the invention of the spotlight and
darkened auditorium, in fact-- were written with the intent
that the actor would engage the audience As A Scene Partner.
Sometimes it might be just for a single-line aside. But these
plays are filled with speeches directed at the audience, punctuated
with rhetorical questions, and the authors who wrote and the
actors who spoke those questions expected the audience to answer
them! (Just as the audience answers similar questions in modern
agit-prop or some varieties of religious plays.) The Shaksper
list is discussing this (again) at the moment. "Expert"
opinion seems to be that about 20% of Shakespeare's lines are
intended to be directed at the audience, and that the ability
to gauge which lines are "for" the audience and to
ride and guide the emotional response they generate is a high
level skill that the author trusted his fellows to exercise---
in the service of the play.
Some of the scholars discussing this assume that the New Globe's
architecture and emphasis on "historic practice" has
influenced modern actors to re-explore direct address. There
is something to this: the trial scene in Merchant of Venice
I saw at the New Globe several years ago was emotionally shattering.
The audience was the jury, and sympathies veered wildly back
and forth. You could FEEL the shame sweep over the audience
as we realized that we had just colluded in a bit of cruel bigotry.
When the audience can see itself, and hear itself, and takes
an active role, it is Our emotional journal, not just that of
the Characters on whom we seem to be eavesdropping.
It is clear from the Olivier film of Richard III that direct
address was part of Olivier's technique, though he limited it
to 5% or at most 10% and reserved most of it for himself. But
it was practiced by the Yellow Springs Shakespeare Co. I saw
as a child in the 50's, and the experience of it shook me to
the soul.
I know it is customary now for Method trained actors to scorn
artists who break the 4th wall as coarse or phony, but in my
experience the ability to engage the audience as a scene partner
does not prevent the same actors from being totally within the
4th wall two lines later. The classics demand both, and descriptions
of great classical performances include the physiological signs
of interiority and active listening: flushing, blushing, blanching,
weeping, and a full spectrum of laughter. (9/7/04)
by 
