Culture is the Body

The Theatre Writings of Tadashi Suzuki

Tadashi Suzuki, Kameron Steele

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781559368070
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre History & Criticism

•Revised edition/new translation of Suzuki's book The Way of Acting, published by TCG in 1993, which has sold nearly 8000 copies. •New translation by director Kameron Steele, who has worked with Suzuki for 20 years.•Tadashi Suzuki is one of the most iconic and influential living theatre directors and philosophers.•Suzuki's acting training approach, often referred to as the "Suzuki method of actor training," was popularized in the US by Anne Bogart and SITI Company (New York), and has become a staple of actor training across the world. •Suzuki lives in Japan. He was the founding directing of the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT), and the organizer of Japan's first international theatre festival (Toga Festival).•Suzuki and American director Anne Bogart co-founded the Saratoga International Theatre Institute in Saratoga Springs, NY.

ON DIRECTING

FROM TEXT TO STAGE

The Theatre’s Foundation

Theatre can be thought of as the visual and aural manifestation of the written word. For this reason, theatre productions generally start with the selection of a text. Since text simply implies written language, theatre is not limited to drama. Though not usually written in dialogue, novels and poems can serve just as well onstage. If there is a difference between drama and other kinds of writing, it lies in the fact that dramatic writing is framed by the varied history of expressive forms known collectively today as the theatre. Drama remains the only form of writing that has consistently, over several millennia, corresponded to the live performance act. For this reason, the dramatic lexicon we have today exists as an accumulation of text that has been repeatedly physicalized. Despite this special characteristic, drama is still no different from novels and poetry in the sense that they all come into existence through the act of writing, and if a director is skilled enough he can make use of any non-dramatic text onstage. Such work may turn out to be tedious, but it is theatre nonetheless. My point is, since practically any written text can be made into theatre, dramatic works in and of themselves hold little of the theatre’s essence. What, then, is theatre’s distinguishing feature? What makes it unique? For me, it is the presence of the actor. This is why the most important part of the director’s job is how he infuses his vision into the actor’s presence.

It follows that one of the most critical and challenging parts of creating theatre lies in how the actor delivers the text. While an actor’s lines usually start as written words, in the end they are physicalized; that is, the word is made flesh, and this transformation is what makes theatre seductive. Dramatic text is often assumed to be conversational in style. Drama, however, is a genre of written text. How that written text transfigures into speech is what engages us. Even if we think of dramatic text as dialogue, there is no need for it to sound like everyday conversation. Indeed, the assumption that text for the stage must be written in the vernacular strikes me as odd. Any written word can be vocalized, which is why I think forcing theatrical speech to depend on our perceptions of everyday reality is a mistake.

Words in theatre are ultimately spoken (be they previously written or coined in a moment of improvisation), and it is through the seductive, dramatic quality of the speech act that we encounter the theatre’s singular essence. In other words, it is not the content of an actor’s text, per se, but the formal quality of the speech act itself that inspires the audience. Thus, if we view theatre in terms of the relationship between actor and text, it follows that the theatre’s defining characteristic is revealed through the spontaneous sensations experienced in the actor’s speaking body, which in turn spawn an imaginative reincarnation of the rich linguistic heritage that dwells within the collective somatic unconscious of all human beings.

There are other theories that see the actor as nothing more than a medium for explaining or transmitting to the audience the content of a preexisting written or communally shared oral narrative. Here, actors exist solely for the sake of passing on the ideas or philosophy of the author/community as expressed in the narrative, and how accurately this information is transferred becomes the criteria for properly judging a performance. I am critical of this definition, and while I don’t deny that there are people trained to function in this way, I don’t believe this is the essence of the actor’s work.

The Actor’s “Cozening”

Theatre begins when a person projects his or her voice in space to tell a story—be it through great drama, poetry or even improvisation—and those watching find value in that person’s energy/action and are seduced by it. This is when the act of storytelling becomes a kind of deceit, what I like to call “cozening.” This cozening does not occur through the intellectual interpretation of a text, but rather when the act of speaking itself becomes the drama—when the change that happens inside the speaker reveals itself. This transformation is what we refer to as acting. More specifically, the power to cozen emerges when an actor’s appealing use of language and space, action and energy, generates an extraordinary, constantly shifting visceral awareness between him or herself and the audience. We usually refer to this as an actor’s presence. When this presence is vivid, we in the audience experience a physical and spiritual satisfaction different from our daily lives, beguiled by the actor’s ability to conjure up this sensation in us. This is why the source of a truly great actor’s charisma is not found in the text, but rather in the subconsciously driven speaking of the text, which transfigures the actor into his or her greatest potential self. This essential, singular self, lying dormant in everyday life, is ignited through the act of speech—a kind of fictional truth. By activating his or her charisma through this fictional truth, the actor elevates the audience into a rare atmosphere beyond quotidian reality. At such moments, the actor’s cozening produces a dense space where the seer and the seen, at first structurally separated and estranged, coalesce into one. The instant this fusion of actor and audience is achieved, theatre is born.

The Director’s Job

It follows that the director’s primary objective must be to establish a place where he can quickly make this kind of strong connection between written text, actor and audience. He should not feel pressured to completely explain the text for his actors, obligating them in turn to educate the audience, or visualize scenes for them in the manner of realism, i.e., “these words are to be said as if in a Russian living room,” or “in an American diner,” etc. While I don’t deny that such techniques can help actors create a kind of cozening, they are not essential to the director’s creative work. The fundamental challenge confronting the director, rather, involves the detailed organization of a playing space that, besides allowing for a large public gathering, must facilitate the construction of exceptional alternative realities. It must be a space where human interaction can be mediated by certain individuals possessed by a strong impulse to speak words and show their bodies—namely, actors. Once established, the director must discover the most effective ways to logistically engage this space and encourage the actor’s cozening. In some exceptional cases, the actor may not speak at all, but only move. At such times, to prevent theatre from abstracting into dance, the director must help the audience discover how silence can be even more eloquent than speech. This is how a director proves his or her talent.

CHEKHOV AND REALISM

“Three Sisters”

In Anton Chekhov’s celebrated play, three sisters originally from Moscow are forced to move to the countryside when their father takes up a new post as army captain. After several years and their father’s death, the sisters find their daily routine in the country so boring that they develop a fantasy of retuning to Moscow by themselves. Embracing this dream, they gossip day and night with soldiers from their late father’s regiment. One day, a new captain, Vershinin, comes from Moscow. Masha, the second oldest daughter, is already married, but falls in love with the captain who, as one might expect, also has a family. The youngest sister, Irina, throws away her dream of going to Moscow and settles for marrying one of the officers, a baron. The baron, however, dies in a duel with another one of her suitors. The oldest sister, Olga, unmarried, complains daily of her hectic life as a schoolteacher. Eventually, the soldiers are transferred to a new post, and the three sisters, their dreams of returning to Moscow dashed, despairingly resign themselves to continuing their mundane existence in the country. Just before the final curtain, the three sisters emerge from a grove of white birch trees and speak the following famous lines as a military band accompanies the departing soldiers:

MASHA:

Oh, the music!

They’re leaving us, and one left absolutely and forever.

We’re left alone to begin our lives over again.

We must live . . . we must live . . .

IRINA:

(Putting her head on Olga’s breast) One day the time will come

when we will know why we suffer,

there will be an end to all this mystery—

but meanwhile, we must live,

we must work, only work!

Tomorrow I’m going away, alone,

I’ll teach school, and I’ll give my life away

to the people who need it.

It’s fall now;

winter will be here soon and cover the world with snow . . .

and I’ll work, I will work . . .

OLGA:

(Embracing both her sisters) The music is so happy, so brave, it makes you want to live!

Oh, God!

Time will pass and we’ll be gone forever, we’ll be forgotten,

They will forget our faces, our voices, how many of us there were—

but our suffering will turn into joy for those living after us.

There will be happiness, peace—on this earth,

and they will remember us later with a gentle word—

they will bless us,

we who live now.

Oh, my sisters, our life isn’t over yet.

We will live!

The music is so happy, so full of joy,

as if we’re only one moment away from knowing

why we live, why we suffer . . .

Oh to know, only to know!¹

While I have seen Three Sisters staged in Japan many times, almost all the productions, especially those directed in the style of modern realism, have had the actors speak these final lines in front of white birch trees with a live military band playing and, needless to say, all the actors made up to look like Russians. Of course, Japanese theatre productions have no need of this. When Chekhov was actively writing for the stage, there exi...