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 to show just the basic principle of analysis. All the questions in this methodology serve as examples. They should steer the actor towards his own questions. Of course, not any old questions but those that are “eternal”, “of the world” and “unresolved” will help him discover something new inside himself – the explorer, a belief in himself and his own wisdom. That is important. Remember that Socrates was proclaimed by the Oracle of Delphi to be “the wisest of men” (Plato writes of this in Socrates’ Apologia). But he himself was convinced that “he knew nothing”, and to justify the honourable title he began to ask questions of others who were considered wise. Thus Socrates came to the conclusion that this conviction of his own lack of knowledge made him wise in as much as other people were unaware of it. Try for yourself! Take a risk and I am sure that you will discover the wonderful world of the role, full of diverse secrets and riddles. You will also discover your own world, boiling with thousands of questions, and there are always thousands of answers. Sometimes they come to you at once and sometimes years later.

Introduction

In the beginning there was chaos

All of my lessons are based on a love of order. I would go so far as to say a passion for order. That is how I was made, how I was raised. But nonetheless I adore chaos. I have to start from chaos to feel the wonders of order. For there to be nothing that makes sense in the beginning, then for one instant everything becomes clear and lucid, as if you have opened your eyes. Then everything fades away again and you can’t see anything any more. Like a child’s game.

Analysis is also a game, not a boring job as actors often think and therefore dislike. I know this for a fact. Maybe they think of it as too hard, and only intellectual directors are up to the task. But in actual fact the rules are simple – in the midst of utter chaos you have to find Beauty. That and nothing more.

They say chaos is for brilliant people, with normal people you have to bring order and show them so that they see; fools have to be shown and have it explained; and idiots have to be shown and have it explained and then repeated. All of this is just playful chitchat. In actual fact, it is not so easy to separate one from the other, brilliance from stupidity, order from chaos. It all exists together and not only is it hard to separate them, in a way they complement one another. It seems to me that that is how analysing a role should be approached – you can’t take it all apart and put it back together and sometimes you don’t have to. You just have to play with it. You have to ask questions.

Many actors believe that analysing a role means explaining for themselves the behaviour of the personnage* in a given situation, discovering the motives behind their actions, understanding the logic of people’s relationships, finding the organic chemistry of their feelings and the like. In brief, such an analysis results in a study of the principles of life and nothing more. It is clearly insufficient. I would even go so far as to say it is dangerous. Dangerous because the psychological analysis of a role is becoming a rabid disease amongst actors all over the world. Today, even in Greek tragedies, actors try to play out the psychological sufferings of the heroes. As if they see nothing in the role other than the psychology of humankind. I remember August Strindberg’s Dreamplay being performed by a company of actors from Mozambique under a Swedish director in the style of psychological theatre. I have never seen anything funnier, and they thought that they were employing the Stanislavsky system. Poor Konstantin Sergeyevich, if only he had seen it! It was he who warned in his final lessons that the use of just one psychological analysis severely reduces an actor’s ability to cognise the role. But, towards the end of his life, who listened to him? The bacteria of “psychologism” had already begun to spread in theatres. And soon it took on epidemic proportions. That is why I say it is dangerous. It seems to me that it is very important to dwell on this problem in some detail before coming to the proposed questions for conducting an analysis.

(*) What is generally referred to as “character” is divided by Jurij Alschitz into persona and personnage. Persona is to be understood as a real individual, with a biography, and comprises his/her personal history with facts, and emotions, with a beginning and an end. The personnage is a legend, a myth, a dynamic substance beyond the confines of time and space. Compare Jurij Alschitz, The Vertical of the Role, Berlin 2003, p. 32. (Editor’s note)

Throughout history the development of theatre has generally taken two directions. The first involved researching the spiritual world and the second the material world, where the practical side of life comes under scrutiny. It was this form of Theatre that gradually became predominant. By developing in this direction it perfected its ability to depict a person’s behaviour in different circumstances. But the situations, albeit in a thousand different guises, repeated themselves and ultimately came down, as they say, to twenty main plots. There were repetitions, remakes of age-old subjects and certain situational frameworks emerged. At that time, with the onslaught of the naturalism of the 19th century, people’s inner psychology was Theatre’s focal point. Motivated by the fact that each person’s behaviour in the same situation will be different and that each of us has different feelings and emotions, Theatre started studying human psychology, the various motives for a person’s behaviour and the richness of the human persona.

Actors’ consciousnesses have long played host to the idea of human individuality, inspiring them to create on stage numerous personas and the relationships they share. Theatre had made a distinct step in its development and it was accompanied by significant success. Truth be told, the suspicion sometimes arose that by and large people are different from one another in mere trifles. But in accepting this disparaging conclusion it was necessary also to accept that on stage we are engaged in a study of these very trifles. Not wishing to concur with this we continued, as we thought, to immerse ourselves deeper and deeper in the mysteries of human psychology, while in fact we were creating more and yet more acting clichés. It was as if actors had forgotten the theatre of Euripides or Shakespeare, as if they had forgotten that there is something higher than human nature, something which maps out the destinies of individuals and their spiritual aspirations, things that bear no relation to their character but rather to the mission allotted to them in life or which they themselves have chosen.

The truth of individuals’ psychology, as well as of their interrelations, became the sole criterion in theatre art. Everybody sought out one thing – “the truth of life”. But in hiding behind this “truth” theatre only created the illusion of truth, nothing more. Enthralled, actors would show audiences “… people in the act of eating, drinking, loving, walking and wearing their coats; when they attempt to extract a moral from jaded scenes and their insipid talk, when playwrights try to create a moral, a small one, comprehensive and useful for the everyday and give us under a thousand different guises the same, same, same old stuff…”** These words of Konstantin Treplev first voiced fears of theatre’s principles of “usefulness”, its intelligibility, its mimicking of life so dominant on stage, and thus ultimately its dependence on everyday life. The study of the inner psychology of life was substituted for its outer shell, and it was done with a fair amount of “vitality”. Over one hundred years ago the author of The Seagull was struck with concern that Theatre, with its unilateral thought processes, was gradually losing its ability to move upwards. It repeats itself, stands still or at best turns on the spot. The young and still untainted actress Nina Zarechnaya refuses to act without a psychological foundation for her character and demands a “living character”. Using Dorn’s words from the same play, Anton Chekhov proposed another way – “express only deep and eternal truths”; art should aim for the kingdom of dreams and higher ideals. There, in the realm of the spirit, people and human relations are truly ordered. But few have adhered to this advice.

(**) Anton Chekhov, The Seagull, Act I. All original quotes translated by Michael Smith.

A century has since passed. Konstantin shot himself. Chekhov is gone. What has changed in our views of theatre? As before, most actors create a role on the basis of the personnage’s psychological state, purely on the basis of psychological conflict and the plot. I don’t want to say this is wrong but it is insufficient both for the role of the Actor and that of Theatre. What we take on board and sort out as our own personal baggage in life is perfect only for life itself and not at all for Theatre.

This unilateral way of analysing the role brings the actor to a low, base way of thinking, to a stage study, to put it bluntly, of coarseness. It limits his artistic potential, narrows the artistic scope, makes a cliché of the acting and results in inadequate proficiency. Let me explain why…

By taking such a one-sided view of the role, actors and directors basically draw on psychological material gained from their own experiences in life. But however great this experience may be it would be difficult to call it knowledge of human psychology. Psychology is a most complicated component to our lives, and it only seems accessible to all. And everyone considers himself an expert. In fact, this is gratifying self-deception. The deepest processes in our psychological lives are only to a tiny degree subject to our logic and the decisions we make freely. There are more questions than there are answers. Difficult psychological decisions are taken intuitively by the subconscious. So we have a paradox – actors use these psychological processes as if it were the most natural thing on stage while scientists state that the science of psychology is only just in the initial phase of research. Thus actors only use the uppermost layer of the very simplest psychological motivation, taken from life, on stage. They draw on its energy to create a role. But for the stage, for theatre and for art this is not enough. Due to its inconstancy, the everyday lacks sufficient energy for the simple reason that it needs energy itself.

The analysis of the role is often based on how observant an actor is in life and of his ability to render a believable imitation of a commonplace, everyday situation and human nature on stage. Everyday life gradually came to be the basic material of an actor’s art. The lifelike images that most actors strive to attain so selflessly merely serve to force their feelings and thoughts onto a lower level. This diminishes the energy of the acting and means they will never achieve the level of genuine “creativeness”. Because the creative spirit feeds first and foremost on ideas and images. By feeding on a diet of the everyday, nothing greater can ever be created. Surely the role of Theatre is more than rifling through explanations about who loves whom and who doesn’t? We find out who are friends and who are foes, and then what? In any case, as Oscar Wilde said – sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature. There is yet something else, something even more important, that truly steers life itself, alters it, something which defines our role in life and our attitudes. Surely this is a more worthy object when analysing a role? A study of the purely psychological relations between individuals is clearly insufficient to get a full picture of the world those people inhabit. Are the plays of Sophocles, Chekhov, Shakespeare or Becket built merely on “psychology”? Nonetheless, the vast majority of actors and directors continue to cut the philosophical worlds of the great playwrights to shreds with the scissors of psychological theatre.

Today an actor does not have the right to be satisfied with his work on a role by simply analysing the psychological being of the personnage. Contemporary theatre demands the analysis take different directions – “vertical”, “horizontal”, from different positions, based on different sciences and religions. Only by fulfilling this condition can the acting become truly rich in nuances and as varied as a great novel where, while everything exists in isolation, it seethes and boils together and is thus unified. Everything has to be acted out together and at the same moment – psychology and philosophy, physiology and aesthetics, biology, physics, religion, ethics and so on. The more views an actor takes in analysing a role, the more polyphonic the role will sound on stage. By immersing himself thus he is not faced with the question of where to get the energy to act from. If one line of analysis doesn’t work then another will. The actor doesn’t move about clutching to one single solitary thread of the role which, if he loses, will thrust him into a gaping chasm – rather he holds onto an entire network of various analyses that ensure his ability to structure his acting on stage. The rules proposed below differ widely, they offer you various studies that can support or contradict each other, bringing you to results, which are the opposite of your intention. That’s fine. Don’t be afraid of that – it is a game. I will even go so far as to say that if you are an actor then you should know what the joys of victory and defeat in acting are. If you know this then you will probably love to analyse.

I love to play with balls; hence the order of the questions bears no relation to the degree of their importance. Each question or rule is a distinct point on the surface of the ball. It suits me better that way. In a game all the rules are important, though the most important is what you need at a given moment. I think that sooner or later you will find them all useful. The main thing is to play with the ball, spin it around. The number of these rules increases with each year of my experiments in theatre and teaching. This pleases me rather than otherwise. I think that you too can add to and continue the list. It all started with one of my teachers, who once gave us twelve or fourteen rules of analysis, called them “axioms”, explained nothing in detail and then left. He was a good teacher, he believed in the aptitude of his students and trusted us with his knowledge. His name was Mikhail Mikhailovich Butkevich. He is no longer with us. It is with gratitude that I continue what he started.

I named these rules of analysis Questions of the Role. If you have a Question then you will have the energy to investigate. If a Question arises then that means somewhere an Answer awaits. Maybe you will never find it. But the important thing is to look – because that is what analysis is all about.

QUESTIONS OF THE ROLE

Question 1

What is the Idea of the role?

• How do you see the main idea of the work?

• What does this idea express?

• How does it relate to the present, to the past, to the future, to you personally and to all humanity – young and old, black, white, or yellow?

We know these questions from our school days. I was taught to understand the principle of an idea thus – “in taking a play to pieces you have to find the most burning issues of today in everything.” That is arguable. “Today’s issue”, so to speak, may only be burning today and lack powerful energetic potential, so it cannot count on lasting long and consequently has no claim to be classed as a work of Art.

But before we start to argue about that, we must define what an idea is. Often actors and directors call their own concept the idea of the role or the play. Others try to find the “idea of the author” by honest means. But you have to look not for the idea of the author and his play or your own idea but for the Idea itself. What does this mean?

The fact is that Ideas or groups of IDEAS exist outside the drama and outside us. They belong to no one nation, time or event – they are eternal. The time, the situation and the development of philosophical and aesthetic thoughts, of all culture and civilisation, are appointed by time so that the Idea appears before the new Aischylos, Shakespeare or Chekhov. The paradox lies in the fact that we are looking for a new Idea all the time, whereas actually it is looking for us, seeking out that worthy someone.

Its energy – and an Idea has incredibly powerful energy – strikes the playwright and thanks to the Idea he starts to create his own work. He embodies the Idea in his play – a specific story, theme, conflict, personnages or text and so on. The first thing the director does having read the play is to fall in love with the Idea. It is the Idea he expresses in his production by analysing the play, the mise-en-scènes, the sequence of events, the style and music etc – in other words by all means available to him, though first and foremost through the actor. The actor feeds on the Idea and embodies it in his acting, in an emotion or a movement. Through the actor the Idea reaches the audience. So, in accordance with this pictorial chain which Plato beautifully portrayed in his dialogue Ion, the actor has to turn primarily to the Idea that formed the basic impulse for the creation of the chain. Imbibing energy from the initial source, so to speak.

Corruption of the initial impulse will occur in any chain reaction. The longer the chain the higher the coefficient of corruption. The “purer” and “clearer” the transmitter the more the final result resembles the original. That is why each of those in the chain must constantly check their thoughts and reference points against the main Idea from which everything began so as not to corrupt it. Can a role or a play be constructed from several principal ideas? Yes, of course. A role or a production constructed on myriad ideas is much more difficult to embody, but, from my point of view, such a model has much greater energy and is of greater beauty.

As an Idea, the sea can be expressed in a single drop of water, a forest in a single leaf, so the Idea of a role can be expressed in everything – both generally and in minor details, in a long dialogue and in the shortest retort, in a pause and in the text, in movement and in motionlessness. It is an entire world built on and subject to one thing – the Idea. The Idea is the main impulse and guideline for analysing a play or a role. The Idea is the main source of energy for the imagination, reflections and the rehearsals of the actor and the director both when working on the entire performance and in the process of its creation and embodiment. In order to keep a production or a role truly alive for a lengthy period it is necessary to think, first and foremost, about their vitality in terms of the main Idea.

You have to see the difference between ideas of the present and Ideas for all time. They are different energies, different distances, different lives of the role and the play. An idea for today may be bright and burning now but tomorrow lose currency and fade away. It is important to find an Idea that will never die, which will live, independent of time, social structures and people’s dispositions. Don’t rush and call the first thought that comes to you in the role an idea. That’s akin to calling your first experience of love true love itself. You will soon be convinced of how fast the first “concept” of the role evaporates, how empty everything that you have analysed and conceived seems. That is normal. When working on a play your understanding of the Idea will grow, it will somehow change, it will become more defined, it will grow like a living being. Only practical work will help you give the Idea an exact name. But simply naming and understanding an Idea are insufficient for an actor. You have to feel its fire, let it burn you, your partners, embody it on stage and convey it to the audience.

An Idea can strike an actor not just when he is creating the role. He might discover an Idea for himself that fills his life and his entire artistic being with meaning. The power of its energy does not fade with the end of the work, rather it grows and other plays and other roles will be needed to embody it. If an actor grasps the Idea of the role as well as its main source of energy then he will discover a beautiful and endless well of creativity.

We will return to the Idea several times, which is proof, if such were required, of its importance, both as the main line of analysis and as the main source of energy for investigation of the text.

Question 2

What is the Energy of the role?

In an analysis, first and foremost you have to look for a source of energy – energy of the role, the scene and the performance, and not merely understand the meaning of the words. Below you will see that almost every question or rule is directly linked to the problem of seeking energy for the role. Because this is the basis for the life of your role. Finding the logic, defining the emotions, creating the chain of actions, identifying the meaning of what is said and what is done is much, but it is not enough. Find the source of the energy! Above all the analysis is needed for this. Naturally investigating the role is important for the clarity of its intrigues, the composition of themes and images, for understanding the structure of the text and style etc., but more than anything it is necessary to find its energy. Without energy there can be no life, and so analysis should act as a strong and powerful generator of energy for the role. This can be attained first and foremost by changing your way of thinking. When analysing, try to avoid purely logical or linear approaches, from a justification of events, the “organic nature” of emotions, pre-programmed behaviour. All this is important but it is not enough. Go one step further to discover all the resources of energy: Make your analysis of the role varied, expansive, paradoxical, awaken contradictory emotions and thoughts, bringing them to an irreconcilable contradiction, and then the energy will appear.

You have to assimilate the fact that energy develops when there is a battery. There have to be “plusses and minuses”, “hot and cold”, “poetry and prose”, “the exalted and the base”, “the tragic and the merry”, “the vulgar and the refined”, “the emotional and the intellectual” and so on. By analysing a role on several levels you have to make a sudden transition from one to the other. This will result in the greatest possible energy. You can analyse one and the same scene according to differing theatre schools and directions. This will also bring you energy. You see? It’s all very simple.

If you look at a role from various standpoints, altering the line of observation, and ensure that the “battery principle” is observed, then the energy will increase, endlessly shifting from one form of its existence to another. This is the main rule by which all the energy resources of the role are to be discovered.

Question 3

What is the tension of the role based on?

What I am now going to talk about is normally called “conflict” in theatre. I call it “tension”. In my opinion, thanks to the concept of “tension” there are greater possibilities to understand how to create the role and the scene. It is best to stipulate this from the very start so that it is understood what I mean when I use this or that word. Basically I am talking about one and the same thing.

First and foremost about School! The thing is that without School you will never discover anything new. You have to know the rules to be able to break them and change them. School tells us that conflict forms the foundation of foundations of dramatic art. Accordingly an analysis of a theatrical plot is a study of how conflicts arise and how they are resolved. Sounds clear and precise. But that’s not all – to know the profession is to know how to create conflict through action on stage. Conflict is a fact of opposing interests, views and convictions. An actor finds the conflict when he discovers this fact. The conflict comes to life in the struggle and the struggle comes to life in the action. Each conflict cannot remain unchanged, it has to be resolved. It grows all the time, the struggle develops and it leads to an event after which the conflict is resolved. A play, a performance, a role all exist, live and develop first and foremost due to conflict – that is how my teachers taught me. Look for conflict everywhere and all the time, they said. In everything… They taught me well. From them I learned to define the conflict, develop it and unfold it to the very limits, to bring it to an explosion so that it could no longer exist. In other words, to bring it to a dramatic culmination. These are the main rules of School.

But with the passing years, somewhat expanding my knowledge of theatre, I came to understand that “conflict” is by no means a characteristic of every theatre. There are other cultures besides. For example, the traditions of Eastern theatre are not characteristic of conflict as we understand it in European theatre. So today, when the borders of theatre are becoming increasingly blurred, I wouldn’t recommend that an actor be dogmatic in understanding the nature of conflict and the laws of its construction. A conflict can remain static for all time. It might not be resolved and it might not disappear. A scene can be constructed without any conflict at all. But in this case you have to understand and organise life on stage in a completely different way to what we are accustomed to. That is why in such cases we have to look for “tension”. It is a similar phenomenon. But all the same it is already a different world, another philosophy, a different theatre. The concept of “tension” increases our possibilities of seeing and creating a scene with invisible links, on unnoticed nuances, as if on a molecular scale. It could be said that the scene is not constructed but comes about according to the law of dynamic harmony to be found in nature. It is as if everything is evenly distributed and exists in harmony, while nonetheless there is tension. And thanks to this tension life takes on boundless meaning and volume of action. Within us there develop unclear, dequilescent feelings towards it and as a direct result of this the many possible ways of reading it. Learning to read the tension of a scene means being able to read the tension between a river and a field, between snow and a railway track.

I first came across this issue in the Soviet Union when I started out on my career as a director. The fact is that from the time of Stalin it had been said that as there were no antagonistic classes and no conflicts in socialist society, then they should not exist in contemporary drama. In performances about the lives of Soviet people it was proposed that conflict take the form of a struggle between the “good” and the even “better”. Harmony of happiness instead of conflict! A proposition – if we refer to Aristotle – impossible in dramatic art, yet nonetheless performances were staged, and some very good ones too. Only with the passing of time did I come to understand that this and the following generation of Soviet directors were forced to learn to create polar tension for a scene and a role in total harmony with all its components. And I believed that communist dictatorship had made a great discovery for contemporary theatre according to which conflict in theatre is not a struggle, but rather harmonious tension.

The concept of conflict is more specific and defined in dramatic theatre than tension. You can “touch” it, as they say. But also within this concept, seemingly already known and familiar to actors, there is a great deal more that has to be grasped and used in an analysis of a role.

Thus a conflict in classical drama can be defined as a conflict of two personnages, two groups of people or two philosophies. But in viewing it as a confrontation of religions, civilisations, generations, states or mere people, in any case you have to see the conflict of the Ideas in it before all else. The higher and stronger the actor sees the conflict the better his acting and his energy will be. Otherwise you can get bogged down and submerged in petty conflicts.

It could be said that a conflict does not exist just within the drama, it always exists outside the framework of the play and the performance too.

Discovery of all the possible conflicts is possible by one means only – by analysing the role in various spheres – ideological, philosophical, psychological, aesthetic, physiological, artistic, national, sexual, political conflicts, conflicts of age, emotions, words and a thousand other things. In other words, if you take a role apart from different positions then the conflict becomes larger and more capacious.

The best thing is to make the analysis of the conflict of your role thus so it is impossible to express it in one formulaic phrase. This discovery, which I came to over time, completely contradicts what I was taught. The definition of the conflict should be so complicated and confused that the actor’s psychological and physical abilities do not know what to do, how to act it out, how to embody it on stage. And, on the other hand, everything should be absolutely clear and precise to the actor’s artistic “Self”. This is the foundation for the dialectics of the link between theory and practice, between analysis and embodiment.

When I propose carrying out such a multi-layered analysis of the nature of conflict actors normally get nervous and revolt. They want to know everything exactly. And the sooner the better. They believe it is very important to visualise the main direction of the plot and the struggle clearly. They believe it necessary to reveal and name the conflict precisely. They believe that this is a deposit in confident acting. But it is a mistake. Because clarity and definition destroy the improvised nature of a living search and lowers creative energy, it turns the acting into a series of simple, logically justified actions. It will be proper, but nothing more.

There are thousands of different kinds of conflict and places where they occur. It would be impossible to list them all but they can all be important for the actor. So you have to look at as many possibilities and variations as possible. They will form by themselves into a sphere of conflict, where they will weave between each other like worms in a fisherman’s can.

Conflicts can be divided into separate categories. And in accordance with each category analyse the role and the scene. For example an open conflict is one that lies on the surface. It is open to both the personnage and the audience. This kind of conflict has least energy and gives little to an actor. Taking this as a foundation you generally have to work with variations of it, looking for unexpected moves and techniques. However you act out an open conflict it is never the main motive force of the scene or the role as it has no inner secrets or energy. But this kind of conflict can serve as good camouflage for another conflict that is hidden and has not come to light. If a conflict is expressed in the text or actions of your personnage then you have to look for one on a deeper level, which doesn’t express itself directly. A hidden conflict is when the personnage knows about it but does not express it in words or actions for a long period. It comes to light at a particular point in the play and the role. Sometimes it never comes to light. This kind of conflict is richer and more intense, it has the energy of a secret, of the “underground”, it gives the actor greater freedom for improvisation.

The conflict can be internal – experienced by the personnage himself – and external – between the personnage and the surrounding world. Actors often take a greater interest in the first, believing that if a personnage has no internal contradictions then it will be of little interest to interpret the role. This idea came to them and remained with them from an enthusiasm for psychological theatre. But I can assure you that external conflict is often more of a game, and however strange it may seem, more emotional than internal conflict. It is often much harder to portray. Three quarters of the world’s plays are structured on external conflict.

Personally I would like to add that an actor’s undying love for “feelings” should not deprive the personnage of the right to live without internal conflict and in external harmony. After all, a man can be in harmony with himself and with the world. Everything can be well at work, at home, with his health, financially, with friends and in love. Here you have to seek out other techniques to portray such a personnage.

Conflicts may be categorised into conflicts of time – the past, the present and the future. For example, it can be said with certainty that it is a conflict of the past if it developed long ago and only its resonances can be heard in the play, like the echo of passing thunder.

A conflict of the present is when it arises now, at this minute. In this case your attention should be focussed on the process of how the conflict develops, how it flares up and how it ends.

In the role and in the scene you can see and analyse the origin of a new conflict – a conflict of the future, the results of which will only take on form and lead to certain consequences only in the future. This kind of conflict always gives the role a certain tension towards the finale when, although everything seems finished, it is still clear that it is not over with and there is still a great deal that will happen. For example, at the end of Chekhov’s play The Three Sisters we hear that it is just the beginning.

Some conflicts could be called potential. They are still unknown to the personnages themselves, neither are they set by them, but the actor finds them, defines them and can use them as the basis for creating the role. It can happen that it is they who to a great extent define its character and the direction it takes. Such conflicts are generally never resolved within the framework of the play, but their definition gives the entire role or a part of it yet another source of energy.

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