Intentions

Anne Bogart

A director cannot hide from an audience because intentions are always visible, palpable. An audience senses your attitude towards them. They smell your fright or condescension. They know instinctively that you only want to impress or conquer. They sense your engagement or lack of it. These qualities must live in your body and are visible in your work. You must have a reason to do what it is you do because those reasons are felt by anyone who comes in contact with your work. It matters how you treat people, how you take responsibility in a crisis, what values you develop, your politics, what you read, how you speak and even which words you choose. You cannot hide. Neither can an actor hide from an audience. Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki once remarked: "There is no such thing as good or bad acting, only degrees of profundity of the actor's reason for being on stage." This reason is manifest in your body and in your energy. First you have to have a reason to act and then, in order to articulate clearly, you must be courageous in that act. The quality of any moment on stage is determined by the vulnerability and modesty one feels in relation to that courageous, articulate, necessary act. What you do in rehearsal is visible in the product. The quality of the time spent together in rehearsal is visible. The chief ingredient in rehearsal is real, personal interest. And interest is one of the few components of theatre that has absolutely nothing to do with artifice. You cannot fake interest. It must be genuine. Interest is your engine and it determines the lengths to which you will travel in the heat of engagement. It is also an ingredient that vacillates and changes in time. You have to be sensitive to vicissitudes. In rehearsal, a director cannot hide from an actor. Again, intentions are visible and palpable. An actor can sense the quality of interest and attentiveness the director brings into the room. It is real and it is tangible. If intentions are cheap, the actor knows this. The line between the director and the actor is undeniable and it can be either tense or slack. A director should attend to that line with interest and listening. In art, truth is always manifest in the experience of it. The audience will finally have the most direct experience of the breadth or lack of your interest. They will feel the truth about your intentions and about who you are, who you have become. They will instinctively know what you are up to. It is all visible.

Beauty: Parabasis
The Creation Of Fear: Theatre Conversation