Jurij Alschitz
40 Questions of One Role
A method
for the actor’s
self-preparation
Translated by Michael Smith
Edited by Christine Schmalor
ars incognita
Berlin 2005
Prologue
The freedom to ask questions
The working technique you are about to discover could also be referred to as “Socrates’ Questions of a Role”. What is a Socratic question? Plato called this skill of his teacher Socrates “maieutike”, which translates from ancient Greek as “obstetric art”. A Socratic question is a crossroads of several flows of thought impelling us towards truth. I was driven to adopting this method of working in theatre by my love of Plato’s dialogues and the study of the art of Socrates – a man skilled in posing questions. Questioning as a means of independent analysis of a role, as a method for rehearsing and teaching, is unique and, as it seems to me, very forward-looking today, although many thinkers of the past were always aware of how important the role of the question is. The great potentiality that lies in the ability to pose a question was always valued more than the answer itself. Everyone is familiar with the principals of dialectics – the art of recognising the truth by means of posing a question skilfully and getting an answer to it. Solving a scientific problem in any sphere often starts, first and foremost, with a question being posed, and the process of research is always primarily interrogative. It’s the same in theatre. After all, analysing a role is nothing other than a process of cognition, and so actors, too, have to learn the art of questioning.
It’s not easy to ask the right question. It’s not enough just not to know. You can’t ask about just anything. You have to know what you are asking about. In a question there is no demarcation between knowing and not knowing; the borders are hazy and, moreover, they overlap. Or, as the ancients said, knowing that we do not know is in itself knowledge about what we do not know. Knowledge, in a question, is already the basis for moving forward. Behind the question and the very ability to pose it there should be a special logic – the logic of a question-answer relationship. As a director and a teacher I have become convinced that there is much more sense in asking specific questions for the professional analysis of a role than an informational analysis that frequently purely provides results. It’s no secret that many directors and teachers offer hundreds of answers straight away, pointing out not only what, how, when and why events have happened but how to perceive things as well. A director will advise an actor how to perform this or that role, not thinking that as yet the latter doesn’t even have any questions for the role. Such pre-prepared answers fall on unprepared ground and so the results are barren. Based on my own experience I can say for certain that this is a path with a very low coefficient of actor participation in analysing the role. If we change the tactics of rehearsals, where the director always asks questions and the actor looks for answers, the quality of the analysis improves immediately. This is already an analysis in dialogue, not in monologue. A true dialogue is not just “question-answer” – it is, first and foremost, a combined movement towards cognition. With such a Socrates-type analysis of a role the director feels like some generalised being and asks questions not so much to discover his own opinion as to steer the actor as best he can in the direction of a collective search. Here the actor is drawn into the search, he refines the director’s question with questions of his own and at the same time pays sharp attention – does the sought-for answer lie within them? If the director’s question is asked correctly then the actor, in trying to find the answer, is already striving not towards a single answer, rather he is widening the range of the question, turning his answer into a theme. That is why the director’s task in this method of working lies in not trying to close the issue as quickly as possible. He has to support the kindled flame of inquisitiveness and pose new questions, in an effort to discover the path to the living energy of cognition. Thus the actor and director approach the realm of answers in dialogue. Together they seek out not one answer, but a sum of answers.
However, in recent years I have modified this method in the belief that the quality of the work will be greater when the actor himself poses the questions and himself finds the answers. I began to strive towards the aim of the actor asking his own questions of the role. Only then should he start looking for the answers. This is also an analysis in dialogue, but an internal one requiring the actor to make free choices. What you discover yourself always belongs to you! That is important.
I will try to explain other reasons why I changed my technique. We have the expression that “freedom is the right to ask questions”. From my point of view any method for working on a role should, first and foremost, preserve the actor’s freedom. Generally it is accepted to speak of the actor’s freedom and his ability to express himself on stage, but in contemporary theatre practice it is precisely the problem of freedom of the actor’s perception that is all-important. What does this mean? First it is the ability and possibility of the actor, freely and without external emotional, intellectual or other influence, to see, hear and feel the role’s material and, like the aforementioned manifestation of freedom, to open up to its world. But are an actor’s senses guaranteed by this freedom? Actually, no. Perception is the labour of the actor’s soul, not of his senses. And the soul opens up only when freedom appears. That’s why it is so important. When working with a director, however interesting it might be, the actor’s direct perception fades quickly and becomes a mediated, conditional perception, i.e. dependent and captive. Passive perception, from my point of view, is the greatest affliction of actors today. That’s why in recent years, first and foremost, I have focussed much attention on the actor working independently, believing that only thus can he return to a living, active position.
The art of asking questions is a rare but vital quality for actors today, demanding a reworking of many of their traditional working principles. From a questioning position the actor not only performs his role, experiencing or presenting it to the audience – he asks questions of it. In this way he analyses the role. In asking a question the actor himself opens up before an unknown role, he prepares to meet and collaborate with it. Now they are together. I am sure that just as an actor moves towards the role, the role moves towards him. They are equals, equals like “asking” and “answering”. The role, too, analyses the actor, his cultural position and thinking because with his question the actor determines where and at what point of unawareness he is located. For the same reason the audience always appreciates a thinking actor more, one who asks interesting questions on stage, not just repeating the same pre-prepared answers over and over. It is always clear if the question holds powerful energy demonstrating the personal interest and desire of the actor to explain the unknown or if it is just a formal intercourse. If the actor begins to have questions of the role then he will not be able to think of it distantly, impersonally. The role appears before the actor as a huge unknown world that requires him to take an active position. The problems of the role, like his own personal problems, allow the actor to relate his world with that of the role, to gauge various kinds of logic, to make a choice between one life and another. Only this position makes an actor equal to the role and as a result of this the actor, in asking questions of the role and becoming familiar with it, will above all else get to know himself.
When an actor feels that he is engendering questions the job immediately becomes easy and interesting. The most important thing in asking questions is to feel movement forwards. To a great extent this is achieved because of the freestyle montage of the questions. It should be noted that as soon as an actor begins to feel that the energy of the question is diminishing he has to ask the next and not stick to one and the same thing. Each new meeting point of questions draws forth a flash of the truth. And it is especially because of the order in which the questions are posed that the inner, hidden essence of the role can emerge. The montage of questions can differ – sharp, contrasting, gentle, continuing the previous question or engendering the next. Try and you will see how engaging and creative it is.
40 questions are not enough. There can, in fact, be an unlimited amount. I have tried