The Revolution Continues: A New Actor in An Old Place

213 Pages·2015·0.91 MB·English

by  Susan Bryce Russell

Florida State University Libraries
Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2008
The Revolution Continues: A New Actor in
an Old Place
Susan Bryce Russell
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FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF VISUAL ARTS, THEATRE AND DANCE

THE REVOLUTION CONTINUES: A NEW ACTOR IN AN OLD PLACE

By
SUSAN RUSSELL

A Dissertation submitted to the
School of Theatre
In partial fulfillment of the
Requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded:
Spring Semester, 2008

Copyright 2007
Susan Russell
All Rights Reserved
The members of the committee approve the dissertation of Susan Russell defended on
October 23, 2007.

__________________________
Carrie Sandahl
Professor Directing Dissertation

___________________________
Carline Joan (Kay) Picart
Outside Committee Member

___________________________
Mary Karen Dahl
Committee Member

Approved:

_______________________________________
Cameron Jackson, Director, School of Theatre

________________________________________
Sally McRorie, Dean, College of Visual Arts, Theatre and Dance

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee
members.
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My Dissertation is dedicated to my mentor, Dean Emeritus Richard Fallon, who has
fought the windmills and dragons since 1930.
Viva Don Quixote
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT......................................................................................................................v

INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................1

1. CHAPTER ONE: A METHOD FOR THE MASSES................................................26

2. CHAPTER TWO: A PLACE FOR THE ACTOR.....................................................83

3. CHAPTER THREE: A PRACTICE OF REVOLUTION........................................131

CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................188

APPENDIX...................................................................................................................194

BIBLIOGRAPHY.........................................................................................................196

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH........................................................................................205
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ABSTRACT

I believe that acting theories are theatrical performances of societies, and a
dominant acting theory is a performance of specific systems of power that control and
regulate a culture. By observing the rules of a dominant acting theory, and by observing
the actor’s condition, as in how the actor’s body and mind are constrained, encouraged to
be creative, or forced to repeat a set of actions, it is possible to “read” the power systems
that either constrain or liberate a people. Concerning the production of a play, if a
director and an actor make a conscious choice to use a dominant acting theory, then the
use of the theory, whether it is a historic representation of the time and place defined by
the play or not, represents a conscious choice of collaboration or resistance with the
specific cultural conversation of the playwright. If a collaboration takes place, then the
director, actor, and audience watching represent a culture defined by resistance to
systems of power. If a director and an actor use a dominant acting theory unconsciously,
then the play is not defined by conscious choices of collaboration or resistance, but rather
by an unconscious presentation of a specific set of rules and regulations. If the director,
actor, and audience watching take part in an unconscious presentation of rules and
regulations, then the actor, director, and audience watching participate in the erasure of
an alternative cultural conversation, and the erasure exposes a culture that is defined by
compliance to specific systems of power.
My dissertation explores Method acting, which is the dominant acting
methodology in the United States, through acts of complicity and/or resistance to systems
of power from 1930 to the present. Method acting began in the 1930s as a resistant
methodology, and then Method acting was altered in the 1950s in order to comply with
the discourses that defined a specific culture. Because contemporary Method acting is
defined by complicity, a contemporary actor must be viewed through acts of unconscious
erasure. Concerning the production of a play, if Method is performed consciously, then
the play is consciously “placed” within the United States in the 1950s. If Method is
performed unconsciously, then the alternative cultural conversation of the play is altered
in order to define discourses of the 1950s, thus the alternative conversation of the play
disappears. Though beginning in resistance, Method acting now controls and regulates
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actors through a methodology that produces and reproduces images from the past. The
images present systems of power from the 1950s, and the director, actor, and audience
watching an unconscious presentation of these images represent not only an acting
methodology that is constrained, but also a culture and a people defined by compliance
with the past.
In order to resist Method’s production and reproduction of the past, I offer an
alternative methodology for the contemporary actor. The Third Actor Training Program,
or TAPT, is resistant by definition because the function of this actor is to seek out and
engage with diverse cultural conversations within a text, and the function of the
methodology is to expose a physical and creative avenue for the theatrical enactment of
diversity. TAPT also offers a new “place” of performance for this new actor, a place that
is defined by freedom from systems of power and freedom from controlled and regulated
time. The Revolution of the Species continues, and the Revolution is being enacted even
as I write this abstract. My dissertation proposes that the state of the actor is the state of
the State, and my dissertation proposes that the state of the TAPT actor presents is a
possible future for a contemporary culture.

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INTRODUCTION

The injunction to see things from the native’s point of view speaks for a definite
ideology of truth and authenticity; it lies at the center of every polemical discussion on
“reality” in its translation to “beauty” and “truth.” To raise the question of representing
the Other is, therefore, to reopen endlessly the fundamental issue of science and art;
documentary and fiction; universal and personal; objectivity and subjectivity; masculine
and feminine; outsider and insider.
Trinh Minh-ha, When the Moon Waxes Red (1991)

The challenge in writing for both the institution of theatre and the theatre artist lay
in finding the right framework to discuss art. To a theatre scholar, art is articulated
through disciplines such as history, theory, dramaturgy, and pedagogy. To an artist, art is
not defined by disciplines, but personal experiences. My desire for this dissertation is to
find a common language for artists and scholars where personal experiences and
disciplines co-exist. In attempting to weave together the tangible and the intangible, I risk
many things, primarily, being labeled as polemic. I accept this label willingly because the
primary function of an artist in society is to be controversial. A tension exists between
academics and the polemic because there is a tension between scholarship and human
experience.
The challenge of articulating an experience without diluting it or the artist who
lived it is the challenge that I face. I must write a document that reveals the binary
between controversy and compliance within the academe and the artist, and at the same
time, I must write a document that offers a template for a new condition of creativity in
scholarship and artistry. The template begins with articulation of a specific truth: theatre
scholarship is an unknown discipline to professional theatre artists, and professional
theatre artists are, for the most part, an unimportant aspect of theatre scholarship. I make
this controversial statement based upon twenty-five years as a professional theatre artist
and seven years as a theatre scholar. In all of my artistic travels across this country, and
in all of my dealings with major Broadway and regional theatre professionals, I had never
heard of theatre scholarship until I began my first year of graduate school in 2002.
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Perhaps I traveled in an insular world, but that world has defined and continues to define,
the professional theatre in the United States today. I admit that for every controversial
statement I make a dozen scholars stand in the wings to dispute me. I also know that I
will be defending my experiences alone because very few actors, stage technicians, or
production stage managers will know, or care, about what theatre scholars are saying.
This is my experience of art and scholarship in the United States, and it is the experience
of a professional actor.
I have always positioned myself as an actor writing to the academic, but now, in
order to bring together fractured parts of the same whole, I must stand both inside and
outside of the institution of theatre and position myself as an “artist-citizen” writing to a
society. Critics have applied the term artist-citizen to visual artists in the United States
such as Robert Rauchenberg and the nineteenth-century mural painter Constantino
Brumidi, and the definition of a U.S. artist-citizen circles the notion of what the
Smithsonian Institution calls in the article “Robert Rauschenberg, Artist-Citizen,” the
representation of “social and political issues” in an artistic frame (sites.si.edu). In an
article on Brumidi entitled “Restoring the Reputation of ‘Artist-Citizen of the U.S.,’
Sheryl Stolberg of The New York Times calls Brumidi “a folk-hero of America” who
brought “mythology and history” into art (nytimes.com). I choose to view my role as an
“artist-citizen” through a framework that is defined by uncovering heroic representations
of social and political issues in both a theatre text and the human being performing a text.
This framework allows for a place of mythology within the theatrical performance of
cultural histories, and it is within this place of mythology that human experience can be
discussed as a tangible medium of communication. Like ancient Greek theatre, this
dissertation weaves back and forth between Dionysus and Apollo searching for a middle
ground where logic and dreams can communicate. For Apollo, I write about disciplines
that either constrain or promote creativity. For Dionysus, I write about the mythic source
of creativity that defines an artist, and for me, I seek to create an academic language that
articulates the sublime. I accept the repercussions of my new identity understanding that
the function of the artist-citizen in society is to uncover the beliefs and practices of my
own country so that I may explore a global community. It takes a polemic to rupture the
status quo, and once ruptured, it is up to artist-citizens to make dreams a possibility. My
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dream is about the possibilities of my country, and my dissertation is an odyssey back
home.

A History, Theory, and Pedagogy of Change

In my experience as an actor, disciplines and practices do not define what I call
the “creative condition” of an artist. The creative condition of an artist is the freedom or
constraint of the artist’s mind and body to explore the possible. If the mind and body of
the artist is unimpeded in exploration, then the artist exists within a condition that allows
for creativity. If the mind and body of the artist is constrained or controlled, then the artist
does not exist within a place of creativity. Disciplines and practices exist outside of
creativity, and disciplines and practices, even my own, are applied to the mind and body
of an actor in order to forward a discipline and practice, even if the practice is the practice
of creativity. In exploring this paradox, I have positioned actors as a primary source for
consultation. This positioning of the actor not only sets me outside of the disciplines and
practices of theatre production in the United States, but also sets me outside the
disciplines and practices of those who research theatrical disciplines and practices. By
making the actor a primary source, I expose a second paradox and uncover the first of
many sites of tension between the academe and myself. Trinh Mihn-Ha would suggest
that my strength is the auto-ethnographic position as an “insider-outsider.” This position
affords me the opportunity to stare into mainstream academic ideas of “truth” and
“beauty” and challenge these ideas with a “reality” of personal and shared experiences as
a professional theatre artist.
My experiences in “creative conditioning” began with my training as an actor at
Florida State University in the late seventies and early eighties. At that time, FSU had
one of the top theatre schools in the country, and as an MFA actor, I was afforded what
was considered a privileged education in theatre practice. In my curriculum, I performed
extensively in various studio classes, took electives in the School of Music, and took one
class in history taught from Theatre History by Oscar Brockett. I read no dramatic
criticism, no critical or social theories, and I took no classes in politics, philosophy,
language, or science. Brockett taught me a history that privileged play texts, technology,
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