[A young actor, going through physical warmup routines: fluid, confident movements, clearly at ease on stage. Everything he says is directed out to the audience]
I don’t mind your watching me. An audience is an audience, however it comes. In any case, I’m only warming up. Getting the body ready, you know? Cos there’s always tensions, stuff built up. That’s why I don’t get actors who skip this stage. You see them walking around on set before the curtain goes up, running their lines for the eight thousandth time, and you’re thinking – that’s not your problem right now, buddy. Your problem is the tightness. All that residue from the world. You’ve got to get that out of the system. Get the mechanism clean before the lines can flow through it. You understand?
[Pause. Then, slyly]
Was that a bit…tactless, of me? You don’t look like the type to benefit. From the physical routines, I mean. Not your thing, I imagine. Still, this is Day One. We’re training. You should see everything, the whole process, start to finish. Whether you use it or not.
[Pause]
I’ll say one thing for you. Bet you’ll know your lines. Had them down in – what, two thirds of a nanosecond, probably! Don’t get me wrong – that’s good, that’s professional. But… here’s the thing… you don’t let the script become a prison, right? The words. Are not. A cage.
[Amused]
You probably don’t have the first idea what I’m talking about, do you? No matter. That’s why I’m teaching you. Give you a sense of how it works – how it really works – before we see what you can do.
[Business-like]
Okay! So, ‘Prometheus Bound’ is our text. [Pauses to eye the audience] A classic. Greek tragedy. It’s good to challenge ourselves early doors, I think. See, Prometheus, he’s stolen fire from Zeus – the big guy up on Mount Olympus, who you don’t want to mess with. [With a mischievous smile] Think of it as like ‘new tech’ – the fire, I mean. The gods had exclusive rights, we humans were just crawling around on all fours without it, and Prometheus – he’s an immortal too, but he’s fond of us, feels sorry for us, so he steals it and he sneaks some of it to us, and ‘boom’ we’re all sophisticated and building stuff, just like that.
[Pause]
But that’s all backstory, you know all that. For the play, for the part, it’s about what happens next. Chained to a cliff, that’s his punishment. Like forever, his hands and feet shackled and his breast skewered by a shard of rock and he knows, he knows, worse is to come, that a big eagle-demon-bird is winging its way to rip up his belly and feast on his liver – for all eternity.
[Pause]
So that’s our challenge. To find the truth of that. [Pause] Not the fantasy stuff; not the gods and goddesses and demon-birds… I’m talking about the feelings. [Taps head] Here… [Taps heart] …and here. How are you gonna make an audience believe?
[Pause]
See, there’s my system of acting and there’s yours. [Gives a little wink] If we can call yours ‘a system’. You work from the outside in. Me, it’s the other way round. I wanna know who he is and why he is and what he was thinking. Did he know the dangers of his gift? Did he do it out of love, pity? Did he regret it? I need to start there, because, you know, you have to feel it to be it.
[Jumps into action]
Show you what I mean. See all these ‘Aie’s, and ‘OhOh’s and ‘Eleu’s and whatnot in the text? Cries of anguish – Greek drama’s full of them. They come from somewhere deep below the surface. You can’t mimic them. You have to conjure them up fresh every time from a shared place of pain – your own feelings becoming one with the character’s.
[Holds a moment’s concentration, takes a deep breath and releases an impressive howl of inarticulate agony. A pause as he recovers]
Alright. Now you try it.
[From a point in the audience comes a returning cry, similar in kind but altered in register and texture (and perhaps gender); yet it is at least as convincing as the actor’s own. A pause]
Okay. Okay. Not bad. Did you just do that based on what I…?
[Trails off, somewhat shaken]
It’s true that a good actor can imitate emotion when they can’t produce it in the moment – but that takes years of experience to fall back on…
[Trails off again]
That’s what you’ve got, though, isn’t it? Experience. Didn’t earn it, of course, it’s all scraped together from elsewhere, but you’ve got it.
[Pause]
Still, to an actor it’s obvious when another actor’s not emotionally engaged on stage. [Pause] I think it is. Most of the time. There’s always something missing, some step in the process…
[Half to himself]
They’re tricky things, the feelings, I don’t deny it… You’re always asking – are they truthful? Are they mine? Am I just borrowing them from somewhere else, some source I’ve forgotten about…? How do I tell what’s inside me from what’s outside?
[Out to audience again]
Who am I kidding? You won’t have a clue about that.
[Pause]
Let’s try again. A bit of text this time, from the end. Prometheus is arguing with a messenger from the gods. He could say sorry to Zeus, but we see a different side of him now, the hubris side. It’s all about clash of egos, who’s in charge, and Prometheus won’t back down, not at any cost.
[He readies then unleashes himself]
“Down to the bottomless blackness of Tartarus let my body be cast, caught in the whirling Waters of Destiny!”
[The actor pauses, self-critically: he knows it was a bit hollow]
Okay, that wasn’t exactly what I wanted so I’ll need a couple more goes at it, restart the process to make it happen inside…
[Before he can do so the same voice from the audience repeats the lines, but with far greater intensity and conviction, and adds the subsequent line for good measure: “For with death I shall not be stricken!”. There is a long pause]
[Quietly] So. That’s how it goes. And all it took was a little spark from me.
[Voice from the audience, now cheery: “Training contract with Oracle Technologies fulfilled. We wish you a pleasant day”. The actor, making to leave, hesitantly reaches his hand up]
Can I switch you off?
[Silence]
No, I didn’t think so.
[Exit]
(Quotations are from Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, Dover Publications)
homo monologous 