Fiction's Truth

The Consequence of Representing Human Suffering, Distress, and Violence in Performance

Danielle Szlawieniec-Haw

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429946547
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Art General

Fiction's Truth explores professional actors' lived experiences of representing human suffering, distress, and violence.

The book analyses the struggles, issues, and transformations professional actors face when dealing with these portrayals of human life; the personal and interpersonal consequences – both taxing and rewarding – they experience while undertaking these representations; and the forms of attention and care they use to limit the costs and maximize the rewards of their work. The author also includes new key terminology, proposing the term dolesse to capture the experiences of representing human suffering, distress, and violence.

Written for entertainment professionals, acting students, and scholars with an interest in acting, theatre, film, and television, Fiction's Truth addresses the challenges of representing dolesse on stage and in front of the camera, acknowledges the importance of health and wellness in the entertainment industry, and helps remove the stigma that surrounds the consequences these representations often have for actors.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Danielle I. Szlawieniec-Haw

On a hot August night, during my theatre school years, I was up late, watching television. I flipped through the channels, noticing that American Psycho was airing. When the film was first released, my parents had declared me too young to watch it; but, many times over the years, I had heard them discussing how it was based on a book considered the “blueprint for [serial killer Paul] Bernardo’s behavior and crimes”.¹ That had made me curious about the film. Even though it was partway through, I decided to watch it.

I selected the channel, and – seconds later – Patrick Bateman popped up, running around his apartment with a chainsaw and hacking a woman to pieces. While I watched the scene, I was overcome with feelings of sadness, horror, fear, and disgust. I even found myself becoming nauseated. My reaction surprised me as I had seen films with more graphic violence in the past. Soon, however, I recognized that my response was tied to my inability to separate the story from its links to Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka.

I began to wonder whether Christian Bale, who portrayed Patrick Bateman, had known about this connection when he worked on American Psycho and, if he did, whether it had altered his experience of shooting the film. From there, my thoughts expanded. I questioned what other actors could be experiencing when representing characters like Patrick Bateman, who perpetrate acts of suffering, distress, and/or violence. I also considered what actors playing victims of or witnesses to such acts could be experiencing.

My interest in actors’ lived experiences of representing suffering, distress, and/or violence only expanded when I was cast as Marjorie in William Mastrosimone’s Extremities for my thesis project in performance. In Extremities’ opening scene, Raul breaks into Marjorie’s home and sexually assaults her. During a scuffle that follows, Marjorie takes Raul hostage, torturing him for what he’s done to her. The remainder of the play revolves around a debate between Marjorie and her two female roommates about whether they should call the police or kill Raul as punishment for his crimes. Throughout this debate, Raul struggles to convince Marjorie’s roommates that he’s an innocent man and Marjorie is insane. Only during the show’s climax, when Marjorie blinds Raul, does he confess that he not only tried to rape her but planned to kill her as well.

By the time I was cast, I had already trained in a variety of psychological, physical, and improv-based acting techniques, as well as several forms of political theatre. The director of Extremities, however, did not employ a singular technique, instead encouraging cast members to take an eclectic approach to our work. While rehearsing for and performing in the show, I encountered several unexpected experiences, including stress, nightmares, anxiety, and feelings of agitation. Everyday situations, like walking to my car at night, all of a sudden felt terrifying and unsafe. I was afraid that someone could attack me at any moment. My fear became so intense that I would ask someone to escort me if I had to go anywhere after dark. Even during the day, if I was alone, I would consistently check over my shoulder, worried someone might sneak up on me.

My relationships with my castmates also transformed. Prior to starting the Extremities production process, the actor who was cast as Raul and I were close friends. In fact, when I learned this actor would be my co-star, I was excited at the prospect of working with him. Over the course of the rehearsal process, however, our dynamic shifted. He became awkward around me, while I became less comfortable with him. By the halfway point in our rehearsals, I found myself getting anxious whenever I was in his presence.

Although my experiences during Extremities were powerful, I told myself they were due to the fact that I was not yet a professional actor and was still developing my craft. I believed I simply lacked the experience necessary to handle representing such an intense level of suffering, distress, and violence. I was certain that, once I was a “proper professional”, everything would be different.

After graduating from theatre school, I launched into my professional career, working in film, television, and theatre under the stage name “Danielle Cole”. I gained work experience, established a deeper understanding of myself, and built strong personal and interpersonal support systems. I also further developed my craft, studying several acting approaches in greater depth, including Viewpoints, the Suzuki method, and the Alexander Technique, as well as techniques emerging from Stanislavsky’s system. With my personal and professional growth came a new sense of confidence in myself and my work.

Then I went through a period where, almost every time I was cast, it was as a victim of extreme violence or an individual who suffered powerful loss. Again, I encountered personal and interpersonal costs related to my work. While I can now see that I also encountered personal and interpersonal rewards, I wasn’t able to identify these at the time. Concerned and judging myself, I returned to my earlier questions about what other actors were experiencing when representing suffering, distress, and/or violence.

I was hesitant to speak with fellow performers at first, worried that they would criticize me just as I was criticizing myself. When I finally did open up, however, I was shocked to discover that the vast majority of actors I spoke with were not surprised by or judgemental about my experiences. In fact, many of them shared their own similar stories in return. Although my fellow performers were candid with me, most made it clear that they were speaking in confidence as they felt that the assumptions in the entertainment industry were that actors who encountered costs while representing suffering, distress, and/or violence that did not mirror events they had dealt with in their personal lives were not properly trained, couldn’t handle the demands of their profession, or had psychological issues that needed to be addressed.

I began digging into these assumptions, discussing them with non-actor entertainment professionals working in film, television, and theatre. Many of these professionals – even those who didn’t subscribe to them – agreed that these assumptions were widely held in the entertainment industry. Several other professionals dismissed my questions, denying that representing suffering, distress, and/or violence could possibly carry consequences for actors. The remainder of the non-actor entertainment professionals I spoke with believed the assumptions, arguing them back to me. Several even said that producers should take down the names of actors who admit to encountering costs while representing suffering, distress, and/or violence in order to avoid hiring them again.

It was clear to me that my and other actors’ concerns around speaking up about our lived experiences of representing suffering, distress, and/or violence were more than justified. Next, I turned to academia in hopes of discovering research that could help me understand what myself and others were encountering. The material I found was extremely limited, mostly revolving around theories about what actors – often in non-professional settings – could be experiencing while representing trauma. None of these theories, however, was based on research studies conducted with professional actors, non-professional actors, or acting students.

To me, this was a significant gap in scholarship. How could anyone hope to understand or address actors’ lived experiences with these representations without first establishing what those lived experiences are? The closest studies I located were based in vicarious trauma research and compassion research conducted with non-arts professionals, such as nurses, therapists, and police officers. Though these studies confirmed that professionals can encounter consequences related to working with suffering, distress, and violence, they didn’t tell me about the experience of representing suffering, distress, and/or violence.

Nursing and health scholar, Gail J. Mitchell encouraged me to conduct primary research to establish the nature of this latter experience. Acknowledging the significant differences between acting as a career, as a hobby, and as a course of study, I decided to focus on professional actors. With Dr. Mitchell’s extensive support, I designed and conducted a qualitative, phenomenological study exploring professional actors’ lived experiences of representing suffering, distress, and/or violence. Since finishing the study, I have shared its findings nationally and internationally, contributing to a growing interest in actors’ health and wellness and inspiring similar studies to be conducted in Australia and the UK. Now, I hope this book will connect with others, allowing developments in the entertainment industry, scholarship, and beyond.

Who, What, Why

While conducting and sharing my research, I encountered many people with expectations about it. Therefore, I want to be clear and upfront about what this book is and is not. This is not solely – or even primarily – an academic book. My research has always straddled the worlds of scholarship and practice. Having completed my PhD, I have spent extensive time in the academic realm. As a full-time actor and screenwriter, though, I am imbedded in the entertainment industry. I have always intended for Fiction’s Truth to serve both spheres and have striven for it to be relevant for both artists and academics. Given this, I balance the theoretical and the practical throughout this book, with early chapters leaning more toward the former and later chapters trending toward the latter.

Although I have faced some pressure from various sources to provide “solutions” to the “problem” of costs related to representing suffering, distress, and/or violence, I deliberately do not do this for two reasons. First, the base assumption underlying this request is that costs are problems and, as such, need to be solved. Costs are not inherently problems. Positioning them as such is a reductive way of approaching not just actors and their work, but also human experience as a whole. It also runs the risk of suggesting the costs of representing suffering, distress, or violence are abnormal or unhealthy, stigmatizing those who encounter them.

Second, even if I did see costs as problems (though, again, I do not), there are no simple solutions. After all, you cannot “solve” human experience. Even if you could, there would not be one solution appropriate for every workplace or desired by every actor. The entertainment industry is wide, containing actors with vastly different experiences, needs, and wants, as well as workplaces with individual circumstances and production demands. Rather than framing costs as problems or offering singular, prescriptive notions regarding navigating them, I explore their intricacies and the complex relationships my participants had with them. I also address forms of attention and care that had assisted my participants in the past, as well as those they believed would help them in the future while representing suffering, distress, or violence. Finally, I address larger questions of how we approach actors, their work, and their health and wellness, as well as how we approach suffering, distress, and violence in both the North American entertainment industry and society.

I have faced pressure to identify who’s to “blame” for costs related to representing suffering, distress, and/or violence. Again, you won’t find blame here. That simply is not what this book is about. Representing suffering, distress, and/or violence is complicated, with a lot of factors contributing to actors’ lived experiences in relation to it. Assigning blame would dismiss these complexities. I also find the idea that human experience should be blamed on anyone problematic, counter-productive, and – again – highly reductive. I, instead, focus on sharing what professional actors’ lived experiences of representing suffering, distress, and/or violence are in a contemporary North American context.

I have recently been asked if this is just sharing raw data. The raw data in my study is the complete interviews with participants, which I cannot and do not share in this book. What I do include, however, is an exploration of a multi-layered lived experience in order to allow actors, other entertainment professionals, scholars, and others to more thoroughly understand it. This understanding can help support a variety of individuals, including actors who wish take more agency in relation to their health and wellness; other entertainment professionals and acting instructors looking to better understand or support actors’ health and wellness, particularly in relation to representing suffering, distress, and/or violence; entertainment professionals and scholars who are in the process of challenging the way the industry approaches actors’ health and wellness; and academics hoping to launch additional research in the areas of entertainment professionals’ health and wellness or representing suffering, distress, and/or violence.

Language

Throughout this book, I engage with professional actors’ lived experiences of representing suffering, distress, and/or violence. In the past, I have used this whole phrasing when discussing my research. For ease of reading, however, I take a new approach in this book, dubbing the grouping of “suffering, distress, and/or violence” dolesse. This term is derived from the Latin for pain, suffering, sorrow, and grief (dolor) and essence (esse).

Why not use a term already in place? The answer to this is quite simple… I didn’t feel any of the terms already on offer effectively captured the grouping of suffering, distress, and/or violence without bringing a specific framing and an extensive – in some cases, contentious – history to the table. By using a new term, I could ensure the full grouping of suffering, distress, and/or violence was covered, while avoiding unintended framings or histories.

Most other terminology in need of description will be dealt with as it arises in the book. I have, however, already used the terms costs and rewards in relation to my and other professional actors’ experiences of representing dolesse. Given this, I want to take a moment to define the meaning of these two terms in this context. Both emerged from my study and are in line with common terminology employed in human science research. A cost refers to a price paid for undertaking an endeavour – in this case, representing dolesse. Costs should not be read as negative. In many cases, my participants expressed complicated feelings about one or more of the costs they identified in their interviews. Rewards, on the other hand, are the benefits received from undertaking an endeavour. Considering an unrelated example, I could say a cost of writing this book has been having less time to spend with loved ones, but a reward has been feeling that the book could assist others.

In order for it to do that, though, we need to continue on into the meat of the material. Having introduced myself, this book, and key terminology in this chapter, I outline my study in the next. Then, once that groundwork has been laid, the remainder of the book explores my research findings, as well as associated topics. I draw on other relevant scholarship and practice to fully discuss these findings and associated topics.

Note

1. Kamalipour & Rampal 63

Works Cited

Kamalipour, Yahya R., and Kuldip R. Rampal, editors. Media, Sex, Violence, Drugs in the Global Village. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001. Print.

Chapter 2
The Study

Danielle I. Szlawieniec-Haw

The objective of my study was to describe professional actors’ lived experiences of representing dolesse, as well as to explore what personal, interpersonal, and structural factors can have an impact on these experiences. I chose ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Study
• 3 Setting the Stage – and Screen
• 4 Intertwined Realities and the Paradoxes They Spark
• 5 Intense Emotions and Lingerings
• 6 Reflections on Intense Emotions and Lingerings
• 7 Personal, Interpersonal, and Structural Forms of Attention and Care
• 8 Moving Forward
• 9 Breaking the Four Walls
• 10 In the End
• Index