This book is dedicated to my students and friends who have helped me to create and run the European Association for Theatre Culture which will turn fifteen years old this year.

My heartfeld thanks.

Jurij Alschitz

The Art of Dialogue

Translated by Noah Birksted-Breen

Edited by Christine Schmalor

ars incognita

Berlin 2010

Good Morning

This book is, to some extent, a dialogue. A dialogue with dialogue, a dialogue with my theatre colleagues and a dialogue with myself. In any case, that’s what I felt it to be as I was writing it. It’s hard to write by yourself. But it’s better, more free, to be in a dialogue with someone else, and in that way, dialogue moves not along previously constructed traks or in one direction, but it lives easily and naturally. You can talk about one thing, then go on to another, deny that which you thought before or say the thing which only just came into your head. It’s good to have revelations together, in dialogue. If I discover something alone, then where’s the pleasure in it?! But together - it’s more joyful. I want to tell you that Dialogue itself is not alone. There are many Dialogues. They are like the branches of one large tree, very similar to one another but, in fact, they are very different. And here am I, researching dialogues of all possible theatrical directions, different schools and traditions, and I have come to the conclusion that although there are shared roots, one trunk from which the majority of dialogues have developed and are developing, nevertheless, there was not and is not a single method or set of rules, established once and for all, for the creation of dialogue. So there. Personally it makes me happy, since it gives me the freedom and the possibility of making my own division of dialogues into different types, and researching those which are the most interesting to me. Freedom in research is the most important thing.

I can’t say that in this book I will talk only about contemporary types of dialogues or about my most recent experiments. Of course, they interest me a lot but classical dialogues of world drama, their founding principles, rules and methods of their construction are also uniquely beautiful and interesting. They all proved their artistic quality a long time ago; you could say, they passed the test of Time. They should not be cut off like dried leaves. They are far from dead. I agree that, at times, they seem old-fashioned, wordy, but believe me it is worth paying attention to them and their magic will shine through. Think how many inexplicable feelings and emotions are evoked when you happen to hear the sound of an old grandfather clock. It’s as if time goes by the same as always but also somehow differently. And if you ever happen to wind the crank on your grandmother’s sewing machine, I assure you, you will receive genuine aesthetic pleasure. It’s the same with old-fashioned dialogues. Try to play the dialogue from the good old plays by the same rules by which they were created, and you will not only discover the playwright but also the whole era. You will feel satisfaction. Of course, it will require no small amount patience from you but you will be rewarded artistically. It’s important. I’m certain that all forms of so-called “old” classic dialogues will be developed much further, or at least, strongly influence the appearance of new forms of dialogue. I also don’t doubt that the prospect of their development in contemporary theatre is not in conflict with other dialogues but in accordance with them, you could even say – there will be a melting of forms. Only a dialogue between different Dialogues will define the development of a future theatrical Dialogue. The question is elsewhere – are contemporary actors ready to hold such a complicated, multi-layered dialogue, a dialogue which consists of so many styles? Will they easily move from Shakespeare’s dialogue to Wilde, from Shakespeare to Beckett and be able to creatively combine them together?

I think they will be able to. But on one condition. If they open the concept of Dialogue for themselves. I repeat openly now, at the start of the book: there is no point assimilating exercises and different technical devices into your acting arsenal without your own understanding of what dialogue is. Nothing good will come of that. Memorise this at the outset – dialogue is not just a method of communicating on stage, it’s Theatre. My own research in the field of theatre history, let’s assume it’s not even the most profound, has shown that each theatrical direction, and each theatrical generation, differed from the previous one with its own particular understanding of stage dialogue. I’d go so far as to say almost all great actors, directors and playwrights, even within one generation, offered their own special construction of dialogue, their own understanding of its essence, aims and meaning. The secret of their success was that they could hear “their own” dialogue, the dialogue of “their own” times and the dialogue of “their own” Theatre. If you have “your own” Theatre, you will also have “your own” dialogue – that’s my main discovery. With this very discovery in mind, I want to repeat to you – my theatre colleagues, to actors and directors, who have played hundreds of dialogues on stage and to those who are only just beginning to gain experience, do not hurry to grab some ready-made recipes from this book and to get an answer to the question of how to construct a dialogue. First and foremost, you need no answers, but questions. It is better to start from a question.

First question:

How do you personally see dialogue?

This is an important and fundamental question which, beyond structural significance and the issue of meaning, touches on much broader concepts. It elicits such questions as, for example: What exactly is “your” Theatre? What constitutes your individuality as an Artist? and other such crucial themes. There’s no need to fear these questions, you can answer them for yourself; you can get it wrong and then correct yourself. That’s normal. Answer as simply as possible: how do you hear dialogue? How do you experience it? How do you see its meaning for yourself? Of course, many exercises from the chapter on training will help you. You will learn, for example, how you can tap out dialogue with your hands, or how to meaningfully draw it on paper. But to repeat, first and foremost, it’s important to have your own feeling, a personal hearing and an artistic taste, of dialogue. Don’t be embarrassed, have a go. So, for example, a bit further down, I will present ideas about my model of dialogue as a centaur. Maybe to some people this will seem strange, even questionable, but it helps me to work. When I go to rehearsals, I always have – albeit obscure, indistinctive – my own concept of dialogue in mind. I try to see it or hear it. Even in my dreams, I listen to its whispers and screams, I see human pairs sitting packed together in a corner or wandering around aimlessly. This is “my” dialogue for today, and that’s what is important to me. But I never fix its image, I am free and I can change it if I like.

So, in another chapter of this book, you will be introduced to my feelings, ideas and one extensive exercise with which I myself don’t always agree, and which I don’t yet know exactly how to realise in my work with actors. But for today, I like them, they seem useful to me, and I willingly share them with you. And so, it’s possible that they will push you towards the birth of your image of dialogue, towards a particular path of work with it. And this is good. In Theatre, you need to communicate and exchange ideas, even if they are a long way from completion. This is a living dialogue. I think you need this, not only on stage, but also in Theatre itself. It’s much better this way, both for communication, and for the knowledge of our profession. When everyone already knows everything, then there’s no dialogue, nor will there ever be… and Theatre will become a boring, simplistic know-it-all. That’s why I hope that this kind of free dialogue between us on the pages of this book will help you to formulate your own understanding of Dialogue. This is what you need, first and foremost. Just don’t relax and think that “your” understanding of dialogue, and its image, will come to you once and for all. This is just your first visit. Have your dialogue with Dialogue indefinitely. And boldly go into dialogue with each person who you think may allow you to develop your own image of Dialogue.

1. MY DIALOGUE

I imagine Dialogue as a real and, at the same time, irreal being. This is not a contradiction. Over the last years, I have been interacting with him in this way; and this interaction helps me in my work. I listen to him and see him. I feel him. I chat with him. I know what he likes and what annoys him. It’s important for him to know what I want from him, and it’s important for me to understand what he expects from me. So, over the last few years, my image of dialogue has gradually formed and unexpectedly taken on the image of a living metaphysical being. I have named him a centaur. The name is not new, but precise.

The centaur is half-man, half-horse. It is a dialogical relationship. I think you will agree that our very profession of acting is also extremely dialogical. However you look at it, the actor constantly finds himself in a dialogical relationship with someone or something: with a text, with a director, a partner, a spectator, with himself and so on. The most famous relationship of our profession was defined by Stanislavsky, namely the one of Actor-Role. This relationship is least understood but the most interesting, because what is present in this relationship is, what one could call, the combination of two un-combinable natures: dialogue of the world of fantasy, and invention, and the world of real life, everyday life. A centaur. An inauthentic truth. But this untruth is an artistic truth, that is what’s important! Actors, as a general rule, strive towards it although by no means everyone all the time is able to answer the question “why”? What are you striving for? But those who can, know that they are striving for the zone of the inexplicable and the unknowable. So, in Aristophane’s tale, people cut in half by Zeus are inexplicably striving towards each other. They know and don’t know where it will lead them, but anyway they rush towards the union, hoping to reveal something which they mysteriously longed for. Later I will speak more concretely about this tale in Plato’s Symposium. So there is this very similar and inexplicable, yet very clear and powerful inner striving in the partners to enter into a dialogue.

“Can you strive, through the whole course of a dialogue, towards something unknown and inexplicable?”, you may ask.

“Not only can you, but you need to. Because art is much more of a path into the region of the inexplicable than into the region of the explicable. In a dialogue, both participants of the dialogue are equally drawn in that direction, understanding that they need to break into the zone of the unexplored together. Take the dialogue ‘I - Hamlet’ by way of example of the relationship ‘actor-role’. So, an authentic dialogue between them, an artistic breakthrough and a revelation of the unknown as a result of this break-through, can only occur in the situation where ‘I’ needs ‘Hamlet’ as much as ‘Hamlet’ needs ‘I’. This is the law of dialogue always. The Horse needs the Man exactly as the Man needs the Horse.”

“But these are two realities. ‘I’ is always I, the ‘Role’ is the role and the ‘Character’ is always the character. The Person belongs to the real world, but the Role is from the invented world,” you object. “They cannot be united.”

“They can,” I answer you. “But not the way this happens in real life. Theatre is Theatre. Here, it is not so much the laws of everyday truth which hold sway, as much as the laws of the metaphysical world, the world of art. In Theatre, these two realities join together legally. Then, the miracle arises, the new reality arrives, as does the unknown dual-being and the dialogical relationship: actor-role.

“Of course, any life, which comes from two united lives, is – in and of itself – a miracle. A child is formed of two lives, two lives have joined into one and what emerges is one body, one own soul, one own set of habits, et cetera.”

“That’s two in one. But a centaur isn’t quite like that. It has two lives joined together but it still has two lives. Two systems, two worlds, which are joined and not joined. They live together but also separately. Being in agreement with each other, but also opposing each other, they have a constant dialogue. Dialogue – is the principle of their co-existence. That’s what intrigued me about the centaur-dialogue as a way of living.”

Not only in Theatre, but also in life, everything can be joined, fused and turned into a miracle-unity. Certain conditions are needed: a vacuum, a low or high temperature, a high speed, weightlessness and so on, but everything can be joined by modern technology. But in everyday life these miracle-unities exist as well; still, we do not wish to add them to the system of our habitual knowledge. People immediately call them: delirium, madness, the wild, the absurd, and so on. So, one has united with another, but they shouldn’t have united, according to our logic… so that means it’s useless, rubbish! It’s as if we swear at them but, at the same time, we love them. These absurdities are accepted by us, they live beside us, you could say that they are our neighbours, and we frequently, albeit cautiously, enter into contact with them. They always attract our attention and they turn out by a strange logic to be more interesting and valuable than all of that which is around us and exists coherently and explicably. Why? Well, because there is an inexplicable life in these strange, alogical conjoined beings, these miraculous beings. There is something new and mysterious in them, for us. So, mystery is always present in dialogue. A dialogue should be thought of, by actors, as the magic of unity. Their task is to join and merge together words, phrases, images, themes in dialogue, in order to reveal something unbelievable. This is not a simple addition, but rather a sort of multiplication of dissimilar, heterogenous elements. Broken pieces of a mirror and the sound of a saxophone. Telephone and lobster. Is it not possible to combine them? Of course it is, and they go together very well. But it happens not on the basis of – what would be for us – comprehensible and customary arithmetic but according to the laws of magical chemistry. No revelation comes from “two times two equal four”. No energy is created. No artistic explosion will happen. There needs to be a collision like “Man + Horse”. So then we get the fantastical creature, the subversion of the natural order, the miracle – the centaur.

These newly formed miraculous beings are a lot more interesting to us than a horse grazing in a meadow or a person eating a sandwich. A person’s just a person, a horse is just a horse. There needs to be something literally fantastic. Only this can provoke an explosion of our ideas and feelings. Such is dialogue, it always strives to jump from reality to the realm of fantasy. It, like the centaur, tries to break out of the captivity of everyday truth. There, everything is clear, stuffy, and it can’t gallop as freely as it would like. It’s with us, only in physical terms; but it’s not with us. By its nature, it is simultaneously physical and metaphysical. It is a real creation but it is also irreal. It is these combinations which make it artistic. I believe that each centaur-dialogue should be like that, – artistic and metaphysical. It always feels trapped when it’s in the written framework of the author or an allotted timeframe of the play.

I can find confirmation of my image of the centaur-dialogue in any form of art. In ancient mythology from all around the world, there are images of similarly strange creatures, which manifest two different beings within themselves - sphinxes, mermaids, chimeras, angels, devils, and finally centaurs. All of these are the results of dialogical unions of different worlds which cannot, at first glance, be unified – animals, birds, people, fish and even plants. If you open Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings you will see how many possible variations of these incredible monstrous-beautiful, attractive-repulsive miraculous dialogue-beings exist in the world of fantasy. We’ve always been afraid but also fascinated by them, the way that people have always trembled in front of – and celebrated – unexplained or divine appearances. This is just one of the examples which Borges gives, using an octave from one of the longest Europe epics of the sixteen century Orlando Furioso by the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto.

And sees the host and all his family,

Where, one to door, and one to window slips,

With eyes upturned and gazing at the sky,

As if to witness comet or eclipse.

And there the lady views, with wondering eye,

What she had scarce believed from other’s lips,

A feathered courser, sailing through the rack,

Who bore an armed knight upon his back. 1

We find images of creatures with combined origins not only in ancient literature but also in modern art: lion-men, cupboard-people, bird-women, elephants walking on mosquito legs. All of these – my favourite examples of miracle-beings by René Magritte, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali – are my models and examples of dialogue. Look at their striking work: a multitude of many irreal combined dialogue-creatures! This is how, taking their lead, I combine elements of dialogue so that what appears is an exit into irreality. A moment, an explosion and you are no longer here and now, but in another dimension. This is how my dialogue looks to me. Since time immemorial, Art, with its diverse methods, demonstrates the ability of human fantasy to create unbelievable creations – not subservient to the human mind – out of parts which cannot possibly exist together by the logic of reality. Furthermore, we can note not only people’s ability but also their passionate, and at times inexplicable, wish to unite and create what does not exist and what cannot exist. I’m certain that much more of this kind of passionate striving is needed from the actors, when holding a dialogue – to unite, to re-imagine, in order to make the miraculous.

Of course, we are people. It’s difficult for us, on the basis of our micro-knowledge of psychology, to imagine the life of centaurs, satyrs, mermaids, griffins, Harpies, minotaurs, and many other beautiful creatures. It’s really difficult for us to imagine what intensive dialogue goes on inside them, between one part of the being and the other. But it goes on, and very intensively. Look carefully: inside the Centaur, there is the constant stamping and jumping of dialogue between man and animal, knowledge and intuition, culture and wildness. The Centaur can manage all types of gait, which means that all types of movement must exist in Dialogue. It has its pirouettes, cantering, gallop and so on. Can you see before your eyes, how, in such a dialogue the human is leading, but now the bird’s nature takes over, and suddenly the snake appears but now the lion is roaring? This dual, and constantly shifting, nature of such mythological beings is universal. They have a special mental structure, a special dialogical way of thinking. The creative, shared way of thinking between two – this is a special method of existence. That is what’s important! This is the very quality which should be manifest in the actor in the process of a dialogue. To arrive there, we’ll need to dedicate a whole series of exercises to this shared way of thinking and joint creativity.

Now let’s go on… Studying the private life of my favourite centaurs, I have become convinced that there is no confrontation in the phenomenon of the centaur’s life. And this made me happy. It is not a conflictual being, in spite of the severity of its disposition. In the centaur, both of his composite parts strive for harmony. It is predicated on the fact that, as in a dialogue, two different natures, not two opposing facts, are uniting. Person - horse, actor - role, reality - fantasy. These combinations do not suppose a battle of sides, in a dialogue, with the necessary or desired victory of one over the other. Because the victory or defeat of one of these natures, ends the life of the other, and that means, it ends the very meaning of the idea of a dialogical whole, it destroys dialogue. This fully coincides with the theory of the Unity of the world. Everything is mutually linked and whole. I will talk about this below. So, anyway, I realised that dialogue is in no way synonymous with a conflictual dialectic. It is, of course, similar, but in any case it’s different. The main thing is, I saw in my centaur-dialogue, that there is no battle in it, no aggression. And this became, for me, the main rule of working with dialogue.

So that’s what I can say in brief about “my” dialogue.

My dialogue is a centaur because a centaur is the image and model of conjoined life.

My dialogue is a delicate and happy combination of un-combinable lives.

My dialogue is the elegant art of thinking together and jointly revealing the new.

My dialogue is, like the centaur, strong and full of powerful energy, shaped by two opposing natures.

My dialogue is the striving for an unlimited space of the metaphysical world.

My dialogue is a constructive collaboration, an artistic creation, but never an aggressive conflict.

Now you should answer for yourself – which image does your dialogue have? Don’t rush. Your answer is there ahead of you. Discuss it with me. Write down all your thoughts and ideas. And only after doing that, move on to the second question.

1 Ariosto, L., Orlando Furioso. Translation from the Italian by William Stuart Rose (1996). Stanza L2.

Available at: www.gutenberg.net

Second question:

What type of dialogue is the playwright proposing?

For this, specific knowledge of the different types of dialogue are needed. You have found out about some of them already, and you will find out about others from this book and I hope it will help you a bit. But mainly, as I said above, try to find this out for yourself. Do not look for ready-made answers; ask yourself questions. How, and from what moment or word, does the playwright start the dialogue? How does the playwright develop it? What changes in the dialogue – where, when? Who holds the dialogue here, in this part, and now who, in this other part? What stages of development does the dialogue go through? What does the playwright lead the dialogue towards?

Still at first glance, even before going deeper into the play’s content, it’s clear when a great playwright is writing dialogue and when it’s a bad playwright. The bad one does it this way: question-answer, question-answer. The good playwright does it differently: question… then text about something completely different, then a reply but that’s already on another page. So, this is quality dialogue. But if the dialogue is built like steps, one after the other, then in this primitive composition, the dialogue will crawl like a snail. Then, all of the transitions, all of the answers to the questions, can be guessed beforehand. Then, there is no space, no space for playfulness, no space for ideas, no space for the theme. There will be no creativity and no revelations will take place. You will reach the end of the thought or the end of the text, comfortably, without hurrying, and that’s it – good night. Sleep well. No magic. The dialogue needs not only to walk but to run… well, and even to jump two or three steps at a time like a naughty schoolboy. It’s like in chess – you’ll never achieve anything with a combination of two or three moves, you need to sketch out a plan ten to twelve moves ahead. So if you come across a two or three-move dialogue, turn away from it, don’t waste your time working on it; it is, as a general rule, an imitation, not a dialogue.

In trying to ascertain how the playwright sees the dialogue, you need to take note that some dialogues are written to play the words, while other dialogues have been written to play the situation or so that the dialogue lives mainly in the pauses. Try to define this at the very start of your work. The point is that these are different types of dialogue and it’s only common sense that different rules apply to each of them.

Now, a few words about this, then later on in the chapter Dialogue of Words and Without Words, I’ll discuss it in more detail. In a dialogue of words, i. e. when words are the most important thing, this is the rule: the words must necessarily be translated into feelings, emotions, into physical life and then, every time, they will evoke a splash of emotion in the actor and prompt him with the next move and the direction of the game. In these kinds of dialogue, the actor doesn’t need to work things out logically (that won’t give him much), but rather to listen emotionally and see how it unfolds.

If a dialogue is built on pauses, then its basis is behaviour, physical action, and words are only the background (and there will be more about this later).

If a dialogue is built on game-playing, then you need to define or create the environment, the circumstances of the dialogue, the territory of its existence, the rules and principles of the game, the initial event of the scene and so on, and then after that suggest a composition, a movement of words, vectors of interaction and so on.

Once you’ve defined the playwright’s principles, take them into consideration in your work. But don’t rush into becoming its slave or observing it too dogmatically. Take note that in a good dialogue, the principles can change frequently. The frequent shift of rules is a sign of a living modern dialogue. And if the playwright doesn’t have these shifts, then be more bold and change them yourselves. Take note that each time, when changing the rules, the dialogue turns in all directions, and as a result shows different facets, and it naturally only benefits from this. Well, if, after all, you choose only one dramaturgical principle, only one type of dialogue, then pay close attention to where there are exceptions from the rule. Something isn’t right – and the alien elements will become spirits of your dialogue.

The definition of the type of dialogue thought up by the playwright needs to be done with full respect to the playwright and to his conception of dialogue. Respond creatively towards another person’s creativity, and artistically towards another artist. This is all that’s needed from you. A dialogue is always a co-creation – so begin this co-creation, working together with the playwright. Listen to him, and then freely and jointly begin searching together. This will help you to answer the third question.

Third question:

How to unite your and the playwright’s views on dialogue?

After you have answers to the first question, “How do you personally see dialogue?” and “What type of dialogue is the playwright proposing?” compare them. Establish a sort of dialogue between these two different views – the playwright’s and yours. By comparing them, energy will be created. It is the energy of searching. This is already a first important step towards the birth of your own image of the dialogue.

In answering this question, you already start unwittingly to create the plan of the whole construction of the dialogue. For example: in this part of the dialogue, a pause is important; here, I agree with the playwright. And here: what’s important is the actions in the situation – I agree here, too, but here – no, I don’t agree. At this point, in my view, everything stems not from the words but from the game, and so, again, the basis for the dialogue are the words. Ask yourself the questions: When does dialogue begin according to the text, and when does it begin according to its own essence? How does it develop? Where does it come to a standstill? Where does it end? What is the revelation in the dialogue? Where can the metaphysical break-through occur? The more questions you have, the better. Taking apart and then building up your version of the dialogue in this way, you will hear and see not only a diverse and rich form of its life on stage, but you will open whole hidden riches in its meaning. But this is only one part of the work. You will only find the full answer to the third question through patient, applied work on stage. Do not hurry! Take time over the dialogue. A lot of time.

I sometimes think that time is what dialogue feeds on; it breathes time. If you cut back on time, you’ll see that it suffocates. You can’t create a dialogue by fussing over it, in a noisy environment or in a hurry. You need to pay attention to the fact that Dialogue demands different temporal dimensions, it is crowded by our calendar framework and clock faces. But, unfortunately, in today’s world, we lose patience if a dialogue happens over a long time. We need a quick result, not faith in its continuation. We are irritated by Chekhov’s impreciseness. We don’t have the patience for it. And this is all visible on stage: actors hurry, get nervous, don’t listen to one another, rush like race horses to the finishing line, towards victory. I assure you that this “quick” dialogue will not work. A genuine revelation won’t take place. In the best case, there will be a decent debate. But in any case, let’s agree that in a short debate, you can only gain temporary knowledge. Knowledge which is comfortable for the spectator and practical for him “today”. Is this what Theatre is for? I am not sure about this at all. I’m sure that true knowledge is reached only by following a long, long shared path. Only a dialogue which is heading towards the future, a dialogue with a long perspective to develop, can genuinely reveal something authentic. We need these distant horizons. And so it’s impossible to create dialogue by fussing over it, in a noisy environment or in a hurry. That much is tried and tested.

Answer the questions and go on stage. There, you’ll come across a hundred new questions. The image of your dialogue will reveal itself to you fully only on stage, and only in rehearsals with your partner. However well they might prepare, dialogue will never be revealed to one actor or to one director. Dialogue is between two. It is in many ways a personal issue between two. Trust each other as yourself. You need your own dialogue. Otherwise you won’t manage anything, ever. The way you play the dialogue, with this particular partner, cannot be played with another person, even if it’s with the most wonderful actor. You will never manage to repeat your dialogue with them. And anyway it’s not possible to repeat dialogue. You will always need to create it afresh. The image is created by you + your partner. It is created by you + the playwright. You + the spectators. You today + you tomorrow. So take care that your dialogue is always you + someone/something else.

They say that when a person comes around, after fainting, the first thing he starts to understand is whether there is someone next to him or not.

2. MY TEACHER - PLATO

The aim of this book is not to describe the history of the origin of dialogue. There will be people who are able to do that much better than myself. It’s important for me to turn your attention, first and foremost, to what you need to know for your practice in theatre, when and how to use it.

It would be correct to start from the Bible, because the Bible is itself a dialogue. Its knowledge arrives through the voices of the prophets in the strong desire to listen to the voice of God. For the Jews, knowledge unfolds in the mutual relationship through dialogue, and not through submission. The Jewish culture was quite different to the Ancient Greek, but in any case, let me start there, where the tree of Dialogue truly blossomed for the first time. Among the ancient Greeks, dialogue (in Greek διάλογος – original meaning: a conversation between two individuals) was understood as a normal verbal exchange between two collocutors. The Greeks, passionate about dialogues in pairs, realised the special quality of dialogues in revealing new knowledge. This became a huge step forward in understanding the nature of dialogue and marked the first distinguishing characteristic between dialogue and normal conversation. To discover the world together turned out to be more interesting and productive than by oneself. Dialogues became so popular that they were specially organised as entertainment for citizens in the form of verbal tournaments. They were at least as successful as the famous theatre performances. I’m certain that a well-made dialogue is always a guarantee of success with spectators. So, this interest and success pushed the ancient philosophers and writers to look at dialogue as a special form of the development of philosophical as well as other deep and meaningful themes. The philosophical teachings of Plato are known to us through his dialogues. I want to point out right away that if you want to become an expert on Dialogue, you won’t be able to do so without studying his work. It’s practically impossible for an actor to make a good and deep analysis of dialogue without a base of philosophical knowledge. But most importantly, in his works, you’ll find the main principles of the construction of all types of dialogue from antiquity to the present day. It is a wonderful practical tool. That’s why you shouldn’t put it off for later; read Plato now.

I will try not only to convince you how contemporary his understanding of dialogue is, with brief examples and conclusions, but also to direct your attention to its main laws. First of all, look at how beautifully and how simply Plato and his pupils define the essence of dialogue. For them, Dialogue is the cosmos. Not “you said – I said’, but the cosmos. It’s not shallow, not a line, but an infinity – just as in dialogue the speech of different individuals is heard in conformity with what befits each person, there are also higher and lower natures in the cosmos… and the soul, being in the cosmos, joins first to one, then to another. (…) In dialogue, too, there are characters, asking and answering, and our soul being a judge between them, as it were, leaning towards first one, then the other. 2 In this way, the authors of antiquity used dialogue to juxtapose different ideas, and the listener joins first to one and then to the other, until he arrived at certain knowledge. Thus, asking questions and answering their own questions, participants of a dialogue would force the spectator to think and ask the questions of himself. They could lead the listener to agree with their own conclusions in the very same way that the dialectics, according to Plato’s teachings, forces the soul to reveal what is hidden inside itself. I want to turn your attention to the way that in all of Plato’s dialogues, the truth does not strive to be taught or captured. It is born. And it does not strive to be asserted for a century. There is no room for dogmatism in Plato’s field of dialogue. Each time, truth should be born anew, in a new dialogue, each time with a new partner. Thanks to the absence of dogmatism in their thoughts, both partners always have an equal share of hope that they are participating in its birth. From the very beginning of the dialogue, the opinion of the other is permitted, and nobody stubbornly insists on their own opinion. The position is this: “I am ready to change my point of view if I see a journey to peaceful coexistence, to agreement and through that – to a joint revelation.” In Plato’s dialogues, both participants, always joyfully search for “a territory of agreement”. Look for this “territory of agreement” in each dialogue that you are working on or will work on. I am certain you will manage to find one. Even if they are tiny, or they live momentarily, they must necessarily be there: in a word, glance or staging. From this moment of agreement, you can build a whole dialogue. Of course, if you understand dialogue as a battle, then the rules of war will be at work – there are no equals on the battle field. But if dialogue means agreement to you, then we need to use another rule – on the peace field, all are equal.

In 1933, two weeks before the Nazis brutally seized power, an event occurred which revealed the extreme heights and measure of a true Dialogue of agreement: on the 14th of January, the Jewish theologian and philosopher, Martin Buber, and protestant theologian Karl Ludwig Schmidt met in Stuttgart and, in the process of dialogue, declared their contempt for antisemitism as well as their belief in the spiritual kinship of Christianity and Judaism. 3 But before beginning their dialogue, they found a general field for it. “The great divine gates are wide open for all religions” – this was the territory of their agreement. The territory of agreement, where you can speak the differences and incompatibilities of your views, does not in any way mean refuting your own religious, artistic, or even just human, preferences. It’s a territory of peace with no room for enmity.

It is always present in Plato. His work has everything: ingenious moves, suspense, traps which attract and demoralise his “rival”, tricks of meanings, knocking him to the side. In his dialogues, he can bring his adversary to mental paralysis or lay him out cold, as the saying goes, but then hold out his hand to him and help him back up onto his feet. And that’s wonderful. You will see how this is reflected in some of the exercises I have suggested in the training section, such as “Balance”, in which you need to disrupt your partner’s balance, but at the same time look after him, not letting him fall, and at the critical moment, offering him an assisting hand. Pay attention to the way not one of the protagonists in Plato, however savagely they are leading, never has the desire to finish off, dismiss or destroy his partner. Even the idea of that cannot arise, let alone become an aim. This is very important for a general understanding of Dialogue.

Unfortunately, throughout our history, we have learnt to see what separates us more clearly than what unites us. And the fruits of this “science” are clearly felt in the work of directors and in the game of the majority of actors. I think that this is the destructive path of dialogue. We need to escape constant aggression, irreconcilability, scandalous expansionism, on stage. There’s little you can achieve like that. We should free ourselves from that, on stage. Dialogue is never a mortal fight. Look again at how benevolent the characters of Plato’s dialogue are, in their very essence. So much humour, irony and elegance. Does that hinder a serious relationship with the dialogue’s theme or a sincere striving to reveal the new? Of course, in dialogue there is an element of competition, of game, and that’s wonderful. The process of playing can be more important, in them, than the result, and at times the game itself is their result. Well, the opponents haven’t revealed anything specially new but we have played joyfully, beautifully. And both players are pleased. At times, dialogue is needed for the sake of dialogue. Dialogue, in order not to stop. Dialogue – as the only way for all of us to live together, peacefully and happily. From the very beginning, when the art of dialogue was conceived, it was seen as an instrument for unification, for revelation, and not for the destruction of the adversary and his ideas. Of course, the form of dialogue can be very much like battle. It is fine to make a revelation into a thorny discussion, at the edge of the possible, powered by explosions of energy. As the Russian expression goes, only a heated debate can give birth to the burning truth. But even that is not the general rule. The famous Socrates, the main participant of nearly all of Plato’s dialogues, was not even remotely a hero, like Odysseus, or a warrior, like Achilles. He’s more like a benevolent and sociable joker, not at all an aggressive person. He discovered that the world around us is perceived so differently by each and every individual. And that made him happy.

The differences are important. They are important for energy – which is one of the most important concepts in the life of a dialogue. It is these juxtapositions of differences which give rise to, nurture and develop the energy of a dialogue. But the energy of differences is only part of its overall energy. First, we need to open the energy of the source, the energy of motivation of the dialogue. Think about this: why does Socrates, in Plato’s dialogues, start up a dialogue in the streets, in the squares, by looking for passers-by on the roads? What does he need? Where is the energy of his original interest? (Let me point out immediately: All of these questions are built on a psychological premise and are not quite right for an analysis of the work of Plato. His psychological movements are not so important as the movement of thought itself. Nevertheless I am ready to make this mistake for the sake of gaining an understanding of the basis of the laws of dialogue.) Notice how Socrates enters a dialogue with people not to convince them of something but in order to find out who they are and for something else as well. Socrates enters a dialogue, based on the fact that he knows only one thing – that he doesn’t know anything. The energy for the beginning of a dialogue is concealed in this already famous position of Socrates. It is the energy of taking “being unprepared” as one’s own position.

Notice that the originating essence of energy from the Socratic position does not consist of wasting energy in planting one’s own thoughts and images in the head of the collocutor – a vulgar, primitive teaching – but it is rather the “cultivating” of thoughts and what is born out of each of our own creative potentials. It is the energy of the artist kindling the artistic in another person; this is the task of the actor in relation to the audience; to awaken the artistic in a person’s soul, to help the artist to be born – the Socratic dialogue serves this aim, and this is the basis for the other part of its energy.

But there is also one other source of energy. Notice how it’s no less important for Socrates to participate in the revelation, in the process of dialogue with his partner. It’s important for him, too, to reveal a truth – together with his partner. Make a note of the fact that the revelation is not only important for the other but also for you yourself. In a dialogue, it’s important not only to reveal a truth, but also to reveal yourself against the background of this truth. This is another powerful motivation for the start of a dialogue – to find out about yourself! And it’s a huge source of energy. Looking at the main theme of the dialogue, engaging in a search for truth, both sides simultaneously examine themselves: their own spiritual, moral and aesthetic values.

“For me,” says Socrates in the dialogue Protagoras, “the main thing is investigation of the question itself, however it can happen incidentally that we investigate the one who is asking, in other words, myself as well as the person who is answering.” And at another place in the same dialogue: “you and me (…) we should speak from within, with each other, to investigate the truth and ourselves” 4.

I was taught: “I” is not important in dialogue, only “You”, your partner. He’s important for you and you’re important for him. That’s true but I’m certain that in dialogue you have to also hear your own “I”. If there’s no “I”, then there won’t be a “You”. The actor in dialogue must always find time for himself. He must say to himself – it’s also my dialogue and it’s personally important to me to come to an agreement with myself. In this way, Socrates constantly searches for an agreement with himself. He never finds peace. He is ceaselessly searching. He constantly starts dialogues, for that reason. He always searches but it seems that he never finds it. In this “never” is hidden his energetic “perpetuum mobile” – the unending search for unity with himself. In this very same way, the actor should search for this unity inside himself, in the process of dialogue. This is essential for the actor. This striving for unity, for harmony, is also essential for each character.

But this still isn’t everything about the initiating energy of dialogue. One wise old saying goes: “if you want to gather everything together, throw everything into all four corners”. This expression means that you can only arrive at unity by unavoidably going through a phase of division. Remember Plato’s Symposium – and if you don’t, or if you haven’t read it yet, then read this work as quickly as you can in order to feel the source energy – the striving for unity. Here is an ancient myth about human “halves” which were once upon a time separated and even to this day are searching for each other. Here I share with you a shortened version:

…Once, our nature wasn’t as it is now; it was completely different. First, there were three sexes among people, not two as there are now – male and female, for there existed another, third sex, which unified the signs of both the other two; it disappeared, and only its name remained, becoming a curse – androgens, and it was clear that they combined in their appearance and nature both sexes, male and female. Besides that, all of their bodies were round, their backs were no different from their chests, they had four arms, as many legs as arms, and each one had two faces on their round necks, completely identical; their head was shared between these two faces, looking in opposite directions, two pairs of ears, two shameful areas, and you can imagine the rest for yourself from everything which has already been said. This type of person moved either forwards, the same as us now – but in either of the two directions forward, at its full height, or if in a hurry, it would travel as a wheel, pushing its legs out and rolling along its eight extremities, which allowed it to run forwards quickly. And there were three of these sexes, and they were so because from time immemorial the male comes from the Sun, female from the Earth and the joining of both of these from the Moon, in as much as the Moon combines both of these natures. As far as the ball-natured beings are concerned and their round movements, they were affected by the inherited traits of their forefathers. Fearsome with their strength and power, they harboured great dreams and they even encroached upon the authority of the gods – and what Homer says about Ephialtes and Otus applies to them, too: they tried to make an ascent into the heavens in order to attack the gods.

And so Zeus and other gods came to confer about what to do with them and they couldn’t decide: kill them, by striking the human race with thunder, as they had done once with the giants, - then the gods would lose the honour and gift of people; but to make peace with such excess was also not possible. Finally, after a great effort, Zeus thought something up and said:

“I think I have found a way of keeping people, and putting an end to their unruly conduct by diminishing their power. I will cut each of them in half and then they will, firstly, become weaker and, secondly, be more useful for us, because the number of them will increase. And they will walk on two legs. But if they don’t calm down after that, and begin to behave riotously again, I will cut them in half again, and they can jump around on one of my legs” he said.

Saying that, he began to cut people in half, the way that rowan berries are cut in half before they are preserved or the way that eggs are finely sliced. And Apollo, on Zeus’ order, had to take each one who had been cut and turn their face and half of their neck towards the cut so that, looking in the direction of their mutilation, people would become more modest, and it was ordered that all the rest could heal. And Apollo, turning their faces around and, pulling off the skin, the way they tighten a bag to one place, now called the stomach, he tied up the resulting piece at the opening in the middle of the stomach – it now has the name ‘navel’. Flattening out the creases and giving distinctive features to the chest – for this, he used a tool similar to a cobbler’s last which he uses to flatten out the leather – Apollo left some crinkles on the stomach and around the navel, in memory of their former state. And so when their bodies were cut in half, in that way, each half – filled with desire – rushed to another of its halves, they embraced, linked together and, passionately wishing to grow together, died from hunger and generally from lack of activity because they didn’t want to do anything apart. And if one half died, then the one which was still alive sought out another half and linked up to that one, regardless of whether it came across half of a former woman, in other words what we now call a woman, or a former man. (…) So, from long ago, it is characteristic of people to feel a love attraction for each other which, by joining up former halves, tries to make one out of two and thereby heals human nature.

And so, that’s why each of us half people, cut in two parts, resembling flat-fish, is always searching for its corresponding half. (…)

When anyone, whether a lover of youths or anyone else, happens to meet their exact half, both are seized with such a surprising feeling of attachment, proximity and love that they truly do not want to part even for a short time. And people who spend their whole lives together cannot even say what precisely they want from each other. You know, it’s impossible to assert that it’s only for the satisfaction of lust that they strive so jealously to be together. It’s clear that each one’s soul wants something else; what exactly, it can’t say and only guesses at its own wishes, only vaguely hints at them. And, when they lie together, if Hephaestus were to appear before them with his tools and ask them: “What do you want, people, from each other?” – and then, seeing that they have trouble answering, ask them again: “Maybe you want to be together as long as possible and not be apart for a day or a night? If that is your will, I am ready to meld you and join you into one, and then from two people you will become one, and, while you are alive, you will live with one shared life, and when you die, there will be one corpse in Hades, for you will die a shared death. Think about this, is this what you thirst for, and will you be happy if you attain this?” – hearing this, we are certain that each one would not only refuse such a suggestion and would not express any such desire, but would consider that he had heard precisely what he had dreamed of for so long, possessed by the striving to join and merge into one being with his loved one. The reason being such was our original nature and we constituted something whole.

In this way, a hunger and a striving to be whole is called love. To repeat – before, we were something whole, and now, we have been re-made separately by the gods, like Lacedaemonian Arcadians. (…) Our race will reach bliss when we fully satisfy Eros and each finds their corresponding object of love in order to return to our original nature. But if the best must come from what there is now, then it’s best to admit what is the closest to being the best: to meet an object of love who is akin to you. And consequently, if we want to praise god, who gave us this gift, we ought to worship Eros: not only does Eros bring us great benefit now, directing us towards what is close and akin to us, he promises us, if we only honour the gods, a beautiful future, for he will make us happy and blessed, making us whole and returning us to our original nature. 5

Don’t you agree – that’s another originating source of energy of Dialogue – the crazy hunger for wholeness. It’s beautiful! Who can say it better than Plato, who let Aristophanes tell this myth?! Dialogue – is this meeting between two separated halves… of one from the other: Romeo and Juliet, Masha and Vershinin, Estragon and Pozzo. They have been separated for hundreds of years and just now, at fate’s will, under our gaze, they are meeting and recognising each other as their half. The period of loneliness was compressed like a spring – that’s energy! and now it is beginning to work. That’s the spring of dialogue. This period of separation is over. Everything which happened to me is mine, but is also yours, ours. It is not disappearing anywhere but is poured into the shared foundations of the dialogue. In Thomas Mann’s novel Joseph and His Brothers, there is a description of the first meeting of Jacob and Rachel – they recognise each other immediately, at first sight, as well as their whole history, everything which was and everything which will be. They enter into a conversation, not understanding the language spoken by the person in front of them, as if they are continuing a dialogue begun by them long, long ago.

This is the EXERCISE for actors, this is the task – to begin a dialogue on stage in this way. As if without beginning, without a first line, but as if continuing a conversation which began a hundred years ago, as if you are participants of one whole which was separated infinitely long ago.

It’s that simple – one character and another character; they have so many differences, so many subjects for debate, in brief, there’s plenty of material for a living dialogue. But let’s look at them in a different way. Imagine that a hundred thousand years ago they came out of one place, breathed in one air, spoke in one language, moreover – they were one whole being and they were separated. Now, hundreds of years have passed, each one has had their own life, separate from the other, and now they meet. It seems as if there is nothing shared between them, no shared language unites them, no worldview, no faith, nothing. But they know by some scent, sound, feeling, sub-subconscious, that they are parts of one whole, that only together will they create an authentic whole being. What is that? What is the meeting with your second half? What exactly is wholeness? All wholeness of individuality, which before seemed to us to be final, suddenly appears only as part of a something new, unknown. And now you feel some obscure, but strong attraction, a premonition of a unique dialogical contact leading you to a new Unity. In that way, people remember their kinship with the cosmos. There are no facts and therefore it’s not just human memory. It is non-human memory. It is no memory at all, but a metaphysical attraction. That’s energy! Metaphysical energy is always present in dialogue. How little we actors think about this but we want to play dialogue well. Rarely do we reminisce about our involvement in the Absolute.

Look at the scene when Rachel meets Jacob in Thomas Mann’s novel Joseph and His Brothers. Please excuse me for jumping from Plato to the twentieth century. But this scene is so beautiful and it will explain everything to you better than I, or even, Plato could.

Thus first he beheld her, his heart’s destiny, his soul’s bride, for whose lovely eyes he was to serve fourteen years, the mother sheep of lamb (…)

“Here am I,” said she; like a short-sighted person she contracted her eyes, but then lifted her brows in surprise and delight as she added: “Lo, a stranger!” (…)

“Whence cometh my lord?” He pointed westwards over his shoulder and said “Amurru”.

She turned towards Jerubbaal and laughing beckoned him with a motion of her chin.

“So far?” said she, in words and gestures. And then she asked in more detail, saying that the west was wide, and naming two or three of its cities.

“Beersheba,” Jacob answered.

She started and repeated the word, and her mouth, which he had already begun to love, shaped the name of Isaac.

His face twitched, his mild eyes ran over. He did not know Laban’s people and would not have been eager for contact with them. He was an outlaw, stolen to the lower world, not here of his own will, and felt not much cause for soft emotion. But his nerves gave way; under the strain of the journey they had gone soft. He was at his goal, and this maiden, with eyes so darkly sweet, uttered his far-off father’s name and was his mother’s brother’s child.

“Rachel,” said he, with a sob, and put out his arms to her, his hands trembling. “May I kiss thee?”

“How canst though claim such a right?” she asked, and retreated in smiling dismay. She gave no sign of suspecting anything, just as before she had not seemed to mark the presence of a stranger.

But with one arm stretched out towards her he pointed to his own breast. “Jacob, Jacob,” he said. “I! Yitzchak’s son, Rebecca’s son, Laban, thou, I, child of mother, child of brother…”

She gave a little cry. She put one hand on his breast and so held him away from her as together they reckoned up the kinship between them, laughing, but with tears in both their eyes. They cried out names, nodded their heads, making out the genealogical tree by signs to each other, putting their forefingers together, crossing them, or laying the left across the tip of the right.

“Laban - Rebecca,” cried she. “Bethuel, son of Nahor and Milka! Thy grandfather and mine!”

“Terah,” cried he. “Abram - Isaac, Nahor - Bethuel! Abram - forefather, thine and mine.”

“Laban - Adina,” cried she. “Leah and Rachel! Sisters, cousins, thine!”

They nodded to each other over and over, amid tears, while they came to the conclusion as to the blood relationship between them, through both his parents and through her father. She gave him her cheeks and he kissed her solemnly. Three dogs sprang at them baying, as the creatures do when men, for good or evil, lay hands on each other. The shepherds applauded rhythmically, singing in high head-tones: “Lu, lu, lu!” So he kissed her, first on one cheek then on the other. He forbade his senses to perceive more of her femininity than just the softness of her cheeks, he kissed her reverently; but the friendly darkness of her eyes had bewitched him already, and he felt favoured to have received her kiss at once. Many a one must look longingly, desire and serve, before there would be incredibly vouchsafed to him that which had fallen at once as it were into Jacob’s lap, because he was the cousin from afar. 6

Look what happens to the dogs and shepherds! The energy of the meeting overcomes them too, that is why they are happy, they jump and sing like mad people. The real dialogue always produces a mass of energy and everyone present in the field of energy (in theatre – it’s the spectators) will be affected by it. This kind of Dialogue is constructed on the energy of confluence, contact, striving towards one’s own self-development and the revelation of the Other; on the energy of joy of the transformation of oneself and the other. Without the energy of creation, the energy of revelation, the energy of artistry, there won’t be a dialogue.

Dialogue is – recognising yourself in another. That is what I discovered in Plato. To unconditionally trust another, as yourself. And yourself, as another. You have seen how the things around us begin to communicate with us, open up their essence to us, show their character, not when they act contrary to our intentions and plans but at the moment that they sense our trust. That is when they begin to reveal their secrets. Then, we understand – a dialogue is being created between us and them! As if the magic words ring out – “We be of one blood, thou and I!” Remember the Jungle Book by Joseph Rudyard Kipling. I remembered those magical words my whole life. The jungle is a difficult battle where each fights for their own survival, and when these words ring out, and the connection opens up, a dialogue begins. Masters know that the violin will never call out if the wood does not trust its creator, bread will not be made if the dough does not trust the baker. The exact same thing happens between us in a dialogue – if there is a mutual trust, then the hidden possibilities in us open up. This trust towards each other is what Plato’s dialogues are built on.

I probably haven’t told you everything that was revealed to me in my teacher Plato’s dialogues. Go to his school. Read his words yourself, speak to him, and I am sure that he will reveal many other secrets to you. You will be persuaded that his dialogues are not only contemporary in their content but are also the best possible school for us actors. Therefore, when you are beginning to work on any form of dialogue, and their exist many and they are very different, remember the great philosopher who first revealed the beauty of Dialogue; remember his main principles of the construction of dialogue which he discovered, and you will be convinced that they can help you to resolve your most difficult tasks.

And one further piece of advice – don’t forget that Dialogue arose in the heart of the young Greek democracy. Which means that Dialogue significantly helped to build free, democratic relations. It could be built on thorny competitiveness, hard battle, but anyway, it’s foundations were agreement between people. We be of one blood, thou and I! Never forget this. And try to start work on each dialogue from that perspective.

2 Plato (1994), Complete Works [Sobranie socinenija], Anonymous Prolegomena, vol. 4, p. 367. Moscow.

3 R. Müller: Stuttgart zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Stuttgart, 1988. pp. 37

4 Plato, Protagor. 1994, Complete Works [Sobranie socinenija], vol. 1. p. 418. Moscow.

5 Plato, Pir., 1993 Complete Works [Sobranie socinenija], vol. 2. p. 98. Moscow.

6 from Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, 1933, translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter, published by Secker & Warburg, pp. 148-150. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

3. LABYRINTH OF QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Around ten or more years ago, at one of my seminars in Sweden, which was not on the theme of dialogue, I said to an actor, during a discussion about one of the pieces of work presented, that his scene was not a dialogue but a simple exchange of questions and answers. I did not mean to offend him. But as a person with a university education who appeared to have very seriously studied ancient Greek culture, he was shocked and upset – “dialogue in ancient culture has always been understood as the special art of holding a conversation, asking questions and answering them. That’s how the dialectical method came about,” he said. “One person asks a question and the second person answers him.” I both did and didn’t agree with him. But I didn’t object to what he said because it wasn’t the theme of the lesson, I didn’t want to make a digression, well, and generally it was already late in the day to start a serious conversation. But, coming back to the hotel after the session, I thought that it was essential to continue the discussion which we had begun about the ancient Greek understanding of dialogue as the art of questions and answers. When I got into bed, by chance, I turned my attention to the Bible lying in the draw of the small table next to the bed. I began to leaf through it. And there I found the first line of the very first dialogue in the world. And I was very pleased, because that dialogue took place a very long time ago, even before the dawn of ancient Greek culture with its dialectics, before ancient Greece even existed. In brief, I had found a reply. I took the Bible to the next session and read the actors this line:

God. “Where are you?”

There it is – the beginning. I like this a lot. In my view, it’s a very sharp, painfully wounding and beautiful opening line. As elegant and piercing as my favourite weapon – the rapier, which I learnt as a child. But in this particular situation, the essence of this line was not the important thing, nor its penetrating depth nor even my childhood memories, but rather the fact that this first line of dialogue was a question. “Yes, the dialogue begins with a question,” I agreed with my opponent from yesterday, the following morning. “But dialogue does not begin from every question. It must be a special question. What sort of question?” I invited the actors to think about this theme. The discussion became very noisy, literally right away, and I didn’t have time to write everything down. There were so many different and so many interesting points of view. Someone compared the question with a razor which “slices with its sharp blade – and undoes everything hidden and firmly sewed into the adversary’s subconscious”. Someone said that a question is light. “Like a bright sunbeam on your eyes, it should interrupt a sweet dream and say – Get up!” They confirmed that a question should be an instantaneous, shocking blow. Others considered that “it should go unnoticed and enter inside the adversary bit by bit, like a slow-acting and paralysing poison”. I was interested in listening to everything they were suggesting. Then we went over to an analysis of the question which I had found in the Bible, “Where are you?” and we decided that the one who asked it, knew that an endless series of other questions stood behind it – “Who are you?” “What are you doing?” “Where are you going?” “What are you looking for?” and so on. “So, the question can be an exploding bullet,” someone blurted out, “Its fragments live for a long time inside the person who was affected by them, and won’t give him a minute’s peace.” It was an interesting group and, in a Scandinavian way, was very poetically inclined towards Theatre. When the actors became a little clearer about what sort of special “questions” we were talking about, I closed our discussion and declared that it was time for a cigarette break. After the break, we began rehearsing scenes from Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, but that theme of the discussion had captivated the actors to such an extent that they continued with it during the rehearsal and finally decided to start the analysis of the famous questions in Oscar Wilde’s dialogue once more from the beginning. At the end of the seminar, to calm them down, I promised them that we would continue this theme again, at some point. But I never saw one of these actors again. That is just how it worked out.

And now, more than ten years later, as I am researching dialogue, I remembered that discussion. I found the notes from it and thought for a long time by myself about the Question and its role in Dialogue. Today, I no longer think that the question is always a “bomb”, a “bullet”, a “mine”, “poison” or a “razor”. Before, these definitions pleased me with their attack, their sharpness, but not any more; I don’t like them now. I agree that, when beginning an analysis of dialogue, the actor and director must find the question which breaks the calm, but not only with the aim of breaking and destroying. We need the powerful energy of a question, first and foremost, so that something will grow out of it in the future. The question is the seed – and something should grow out of it. That’s what we need.

Each dialogue incubates a powerful Question like a germ cell. We need to find it. It relates to each character, each actor and each person. This question is directed at you as actor, it is addressed to you as an individual, and that in turn provokes the character who you are playing. In a dialogue the question must be “distributed to all addresses”.

But first the actor must find the question and define it. This is not easy at all, because the question can come under different names and in different masks. You might not even understand that it is this Question which will transform you or your Dialogue. It depends on your alertness, your experience, and your skill-level of analysis. You need training. For this, take dialogues by different authors and try to find the main question in each of those dialogues. You will find that the question can come too early in your dialogue when it is not yet your turn, according to your role. Or the role has already started but you are not prepared to articulate the question out loud. In this case, the question is present in the dialogue, just waiting for its entrance. It can also happen that the question appears later, meaning the answer was already played before the question was even articulated. Such a reversal between question and answer is always very interesting. Arrivals of the question “early” or “late” in the composition of a dialogue always create a playful and meaningful tension in the scene. Such a device protects the dialogue from the catechism of the question-and-answer pattern. The questions come and go, they can appear again and be repeated in other scenes, they can be split in two or three parts and so on, until they have been fully articulated. But note this, too: it is far from being the case that you and your character always give birth to the questions. That’s an illusion. Questions are born of themselves.

The Question which comes at an unplanned time, not in the situation or place where people are prepared for it, gives rise to genuine shock. Suddenly!!! It appears unexpectedly and nobody can find anywhere to hide from it. Actors need to search for such questions, more than anything. These are the so-called event-Questions, questions which turn everything on its head. They live their own special life – they are born, they live and they die. I’m saying this so that the actor shouldn’t be too satisfied by the fact of the arrival of an important question, during an analysis; he is going to have to follow the whole journey of its life. Questions have their own complicated lives: some short, some long. The process of forming, and giving birth to, the question must become an important, composite part of the actor’s and director’s analysis of the whole dialogue. I personally like these explosion-like questions. Nobody is waiting something – and suddenly – an explosion. This is preceded by a long energetic tension, which creates the conditions for this bolt out of the blue. Such a question wakes up everyone and everything. It turns the dialogue on its head. We are speaking about a nice theme, eating an apple, talking to animals, nothing presages change and then – suddenly!!! An explosion-question – and everything changes. Like this ignition, from the outside – “Where are you?” – the Lord explodes the inner cosmos of Adam, destroying his original wholeness. An explosion is always effective but, at the same time, it’s important not to forget that the aim of such an explosion-question is not to destroy! We don’t need such a question in dialogue for that – it’s not in order to kill, overturn, conquer, confirm, subordinate, and so on. The destruction of the prepared, the about-turn, the explosion of the whole: these should be realised as a launch of energy for creation and rebirth. This is what is intended with the question; that’s what we need.

In a play, the dialogue begins from the question. That’s the way it is. But that does not mean you will always see it immediately in your role, in the text. Even there’s no question mark in the first line, or second or third, the actor still needs to hear it, and play it. There is always a question in the beginning, even if nobody has formulated it on paper. Notice that a question can stand in front of the door for a long time. The question might have started its life long time before it appears in the dialogue and formulates itself. Sometimes, it takes time for it to be formulated, to dress itself correctly before it can decide to come in and introduce itself. It is the job of the actor to listen for it when it’s still outside the door, to see it before it comes in, not only if it’s standing right in front of you. That’s too late. Then, only an elementary reaction will occur, a hasty judgement, but not the process of a genuine meeting. For me dialogues, which are full of such quick-fire judgements and reactions, are on the lowest rung of acting. “Suddenly!” and “Explosion!” do not mean you need to scream or duck under the table.

On Stage, the dialogue begins from the question. That’s the way it is. But, hang on, your partner asks the fundamental question and you don’t even hear it or feel it. Does that mean it’s not a question? Well, sometimes the question is nothing but words from your partner, just lines of text, and so you don’t recognise it. The actor asking the question must, first of all, hear the question which he’s asking deeply inside himself, and understand its depth and perspective. Why should he ask if it’s not important to him? If the person asking does not highly value what he is asking, if the question is only for the other but not for himself, then this Question will never be uncovered.

I value questions – those wise, old beings which were born even before the plays. These are the timeless questions. They were alive before the dialogue and the play, and they have a long life ahead of them, even after the dialogue. The actor must learn, while still in the analysis, to hear them and differentiate them from ephemeral questions. A long-borne question, which has aged like a fine wine, has a different, particular weight, a different energy. This kind of question decides for itself when to appear, before you can decide whether to ask it now or later. It’s the same way a child – not the doctor or midwife – decides when to be born onto god’s earth.

So look how beautiful it sounds when scenes, plays or dialogues begin with such a powerful question as, for example, in Plato:

“Welcome, Ion. From where do you wander in this moment? I assume, from your house of Ephesus?” 7

or in Shakespeare:

“When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?” 8

In Pushkin:

“What do you think? Could I be recognised?” 9

Or in Chekhov

“Why are you always in black?” 10

The fact that it’s not a common question but a question which sets in motion the machine of dialogue means you will always hear it and feel it like an impulsive, germinating burst of energy. It is always experienced vividly, almost painfully. Disturbingly and joyfully, it includes you in the dialogue. Everything is in it – in the first question, just as the first step of a marathon contains the energy for the whole forty two kilometers and one hundred and ninety five meters.

In dialogue, there can be arsonist-questions which, like sparks, ignite first one question then another, until the whole theme is alight, the whole Person. The questions themselves aren’t powerful, not dangerous individually, as it were; they are just matches. Perhaps one does not even notice them. But together, – they give birth to flames. It is exactly this creative flame, which begins the process of the birth of the Individual, Adam. Notice how – with his quasi-innocent question “Where are you?” – God changes his conception of the living being-Person, created out of the dust of the earth, into a Person-individual, created out of questions and answers. Questions and answers – that is the main material from which the Person-individual is created: they torture us, fill us with hopelessness, reassure us, please and kill us; other questions are born – in brief, they make us living personalities. We were not simply thrown out of Heaven. No, we were condemned to a constant search for answers and the birth of new questions which are looking for their answers. An endless inner dialogue was started in us, with a constant insane search for answers in the labyrinth of questions. What is it? Why is this? What is it good for? To make you search. To search for your times, your place and your world. And most importantly to search for yourself, your Personality, your Wholeness. In life, it is this unending search for wholeness which makes a person into an individual. In theatre, it is this search which makes a character into a personnage. And one must understand the main movement of a dialogue as a search.

There is rarely only one question in dialogue. Normally there are many questions, and they often crash down on you one after the other, from different sides, like a hail storm from on high. So many questions but you don’t have time to answer? Well, you don’t need to. It’s not possible to predict their direction or to hide from them? Then, don’t do that. It’s frightening and at the same time, for some reason, also joyful? It’s an honest state of being. It is a crisis. It is a chaos from which everything wants to be born. If I see more and more questions turning up in a dialogue, then I know that the moment of crisis and revelation is getting closer. It’s for that reason you need the hail attack. Don’t be afraid. Only once you start to accept your defencelessness against these questions, as an essential condition for the moment of revelation, only then can you understand which direction you need to go in and why. And only then, somewhere deep down and very far away, an answer is born inside or outside of you.

For me, a reply is not yet the end of the question. Even with the reply – it’s not yet time to let the curtain down. It only seems as if – with a reply – one dialogue ends and you need search for the beginning of another. I don’t think that’s it. Perhaps there is basically only one dialogue? … which lives in us for the whole play, the whole role, our whole lives? That’s why I like long answers, long-lasting dialogues, even if they are interrupted for some time, but which don’t come to an end. Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko once spent sixteen hours in dialogue about the working principles of an Artistic theatre. The result? This marathon-dialogue gave birth to the great phenomenon of theatre culture, the Moscow Arts Theatre, the MChAT. That is dialogue. It’s the same in Dostoevsky’s novels: long questions and long replies. Remarkable.

In plays, the dialogues are usually short, what a pity. Everything is unbelievably squeezed together. I feel this, and then I try to lengthen them out. One needs to give them time to live and be sorted through, and to compare the options, and time to search, to make mistakes and to doubt. Or I combine a few dialogues into one. I will speak about this more in the later chapter on “spherical dialogues” and introduce an exercise for this subject. Never mind that it’s in pieces, strewn throughout the play in chunks but, nevertheless, it’s one dialogue. This can happen: a dialogue began then suddenly got up and left, came back in the second act when nobody was expecting it, continued and unnoticed went off into town, returned after three years, in the winter, and again – the same dialogue. One dialogue, only one, a whole. I think that you can only reveal something genuinely unusual for yourself – the main and most important thing – in the unending development of the meaning in one and the same dialogue. Not in fits and starts, not in pieces, but whole.

There is a constant dialogue both in life and on stage. It goes over from one role to the other, from one performance to another of your performances. Look at the play, at your role, at all of your performed and produced plays, as at one journey. Not fractured but constant. Everything changes – different themes arise, all the possible situations; all the stops flash by, partners not resembling one another, sections of plays resonate, languages mix together; familiar and unfamiliar faces appear and disappear but in fact, it’s just one journey, one and the same, one and the same endless dialogue.

Of course, there are also short dialogues. And they can also be beautiful. Very beautiful. Small, but brilliant and quick dialogues. But nevertheless, I love long ones. It’s strange. When I was young, there was a lot of time but I loved short meetings then. And now time presses but I prefer longer ones. And I ask myself: “why?”

It happens, that a dialogue moves, and moves, floating along … how nice that you don’t want to think about how it will end.

How wonderful when dialogue ends with a question! It all started with a question and it will also end with a question. What does it mean? This means that dialogue isn’t finished – everything is still ahead. No full stop. Dialogue forever! Do you hear? In the very first question of the Lord God to us – “Where are you?”, the foundation is already laid for infinity. Did you hear it?! It is asked of us forever, and forever we are destined to search for its answer. I love to rehearse that sort of dialogue with actors. Well, the one where everything is clear in two or three replies, evokes only boredom in us actors, directors and the spectators. That isn’t a dialogue. At least, for me.

So, today, ten years after this Swedish seminar, I understand dialogue quite differently: Let there be a question in the beginning, but the answer …. Let the answer last for the whole dialogue, the whole role, the whole of life. Eternally. Only eternity lifts and changes a normal conversation to the level of a dialogue. Find this eternity in your dialogue. It can be hidden in each word, in each gesture, in each intonation. You can talk on different themes loftily, but still asking seriously and responding on a high level. You can think up different tricks and acting devices, include music and change the décor. But now a note of the eternal has made an appearance, with its own special sound, not resembling anything else, and you yourselves and everyone around you – Suddenly!!! they understand what this is not just answer-question, question-answer, it’s Dialogue.

7 Plato: Ion

8 Shakespeare: Macbeath

9 Pushkin: Don Juan

10 Chekhov: The Seagull

4. DIALOGUE? DISPUTE? CONVERSATION?

You must agree that not every dispute, conversation or just exchange of lines between two characters can be, or needs to be, defined as a dramatic dialogue. Inside the drama, all possible forms and types of communication between characters exist side-by-side. There can be monologues, conversations, disputes, and simple exchanges of phrases, different word games, double-entendres and so on. In other words, in one performance, in one role, there not only can, but there also should, be different forms of communication. This variety of forms, undoubtedly, enriches both the role and the performance. Now, it’s important to understand that one form can fluidly transform into another, as it moves forward. For example, a conversation can turn into a dialogue and vice versa. Use this boldly. Sometimes, it makes sense to also use the capacity of this structure for mutual-insertion, in other words, a dispute can live inside a dialogue, and a dialogue inside a dispute, in other words: one becomes the substantial part within the other. A monologue can find a place in a dialogue, and a dialogue in a monologue. One lives in the other – dialogue can live inside conversation with its own special life. This looks like a blob of oil floating in water without merging into it.

Some actors feel that they do not necessarily need to know all of these different forms but I advise them, with some insistence, to separate their methods of working on dialogue from their methods of working on short scenes or sketches. This are totally different analyses and a totally different actors’ position. Do not hurry to call each bit of pair work in a play a “dialogue”. As the saying goes – not all yogurts are equally useful!

This confusion begins right from the time spent inside the four walls of a theatre school, which then translates to work on stage. Even now, I come across the most simple first-year undergraduate scenes, made up of literally two or three replies, which the drama school teachers are calling dialogues, and in fact they are rehearsing them like simple skits. But these have completely different laws and rules – the work on dialogue and the work on a scene for two. Once in the theatre, actors continue to mistakenly think that they master the methods of working with dialogue. So, please take note – my advice is not to rush into saying it’s a dialogue every time two characters have a conversation. In fact, many communicative forms of interaction exist in plays, and they differ greatly from each other.

Coming across different types of interaction of characters on stage in the theory of theatre and in my pedagogical and directing work, I have tried to classify them. It turned out that each form of communication has its own working title. You should think of them exactly as they are: as “working” and not academic terms. Maybe the terms are not always accurate, and I myself do not completely agree with some, but it always helped me to understand how to work with one or other type of pair work in a scene. I think that one or another classification, which you can meet in literature, will help you not only to learn to distinguish dialogue from conversation, games or disputes, but also to make your own divisions of forms of on-stage communication, to define their different types and, using all of that as a starting point, create your own working methodology. Here are a few main types of communication which I have found in my old drama school notebook.

The battery

The point of this communication arises only in the context of two opponents. If there’s no opposition, it’s not working. The participants, who are exchanging points of view, somehow help each other. Their pair only exists because of their exchange and because they are together. Their communication reminds one of a battery. It will work only when there are two poles (+) and (-). The energy of such an interaction only arises when the whole sum of positions, opinions and knowledge is upheld by the two different “I”s.

This is how many dialogues in commedia dell’arte are constructed, for example, early character comedies: the servant and his master.

I plus I

This interaction, although it looks like a normal exchange of lines, nevertheless, it has different themes, different contexts, which are absolutely foreign to each other. That’s why in fact it isn’t a dialogue but the existence of its two participants in two different monologues.

For that we can find a lot of examples in Chekhov’s plays: one talks about means to fight balding while the other talks about the essence of human happiness.

Higher “I”

In this type of interaction, there exists a higher “I”, which, has distributed lines among participants of the dialogue, in times and situations. For example, the playwright, who himself divided up the positions and leads the interactions the whole way. The participants have the function of executors but not creators. The centre of meaning does not rest on one of the participants of the dialogue but is placed higher than them – in the higher “I”.

An example of this are Plato’s dialogues and a number of plays of ancient dramaturgy.

An agreed game

This is when the participants have previously defined one main theme and one point of view on it. There are no differences of opinion between them, they voluntarily, according to a prior agreement, take up different positions for the game. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that they agree on what they are saying and standing up for. Their opinions can freely be swapped and muddled up between each other. In this way, they confuse the spectator, who has not guessed that they have agreed to this game, and they force the spectator himself to search for the truth. It’s not an argument, not a discussion, but an imitation of arguments and discussions, a game within a game.

Look at Molière’s comedies and Shakespeare. This game appears in the dialogues of Plato, too.

If the agreement is set up openly at the beginning of such a game, then the spectator will follow, with excitement, how this agreement is played out, and each actor follows where he and his partner is, at any given moment, relative to the agreement, how they can sharpen the game, how to spice it up. In other words, they follow to see which way the agreement is realised by the actors’ improvisations.

The duel

This is often not real dramatic action, but a verbal skirmish, a quick exchange of short phrases. Each waits for the other’s line before they can reply. The text which they speak is not as important as the shift in context which it brings. What’s important is the form of the reply – theatrical, literary – and the paradoxical nature of the question and answer.

Look at Oscar Wilde’s plays, for example, they have series of contextual explosions. The shorter the line, the more likely is the change of context. And that is of value here, first and foremost.

Gentleman’s discourse

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