GAYNOR O'FLYNN CHRIS LOVELL LUCY MANNING NICK ROTHWELL
LIFE IS A SERIES OF CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN BEINGHUMAN FOUNDER GAYNOR O'FLYNN & COOL, CLEVER CREATIVES WHO CARE.
GAYNOR EXPLORES THESE EXCEPTIONAL, ELUSIVE, ETHICAL HUMANS THROUGH THE LENS OF THEIR CREATIVE WORK, LIFE & PRACTICE.
THEY INVESTIGATE WORKS THAT INFORM WHO THAT PERSON IS, WHAT THEY DO, HOW THEY DO IT & WHY.
ONCE A YEAR, BEINGHUMAN RELEASES A LIMITEDEDITION PHYSICAL MAGAZINE OF LIFE.
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Aileen Gonsalves first trained as an actor at the Central School of Speech & Drama. She has gone on to direct numerous productions with the Royal Shakespeare Company, including The Tempest & All’s Well That Ends Well.
She founded her own company, Butterfly Theatre, in 2011. Butterfly specialises in immersive, site responsive theatre, inviting audiences into extraordinary spaces & thrilling them with truthful, responsive acting.
She has developed & widely taught the Gonsalves Method, & in 2020, she published her book, Shakespeare & Meisner: A Practical Guide for Actors, Directors, Students & Teachers.
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"To experience Aileen’s method is to be given tools for life. She is one of the foremost performing arts innovators of our age. " Dr Chris Laoutaris, lecturer at the Shakespeare Institute.
GAYNOR: Welcome to the first Beinghuman interview. I'm talking to the amazing Aileen Gonsalves about the Gonsalves Method & her book, Shakespeare & Meisner. Aileen is a theatre director. She has her own company, Butterfly Theatre, & she teaches at RADA, which is where we met. Aileen managed to turn me around from feeling that Shakespeare was something I couldn't relate to at all. She helped me love Shakespeare. So I'm really, really happy to have our first interview with Aileen. The first question I've got for you, Aileen, is: how did you first fall in love with Shakespeare?
AILEEN: Oh God, that's a good question! I fell in love with Shakespeare when I was 15. I had a brilliant English teacher at school, Miss Lillington, who I still see. She comes to see my shows. I was playing Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream in our school drama classes. My best friend Sophie was cast as Hermia, & I was distraught. I was so jealous because she's very pretty. I was like, "Why are they casting me as the weird one?!" So I was furious about that for ages until I realised what an amazing part Puck is. And I absolutely just fell in love with it.
It felt really easy to me effortless. And I love that it gave me a way of expressing all this energy that was inside me – with words. I've been devoted to it ever since. Then we studied Henry IV, Part 1. And I felt that every
character was me. I couldn't get over how every character was going through whatever dilemma I was going through at that particular time. You know, with Romeo & Juliet, I was Juliet. Then I was Prince Hal, then I was Puck…
GAYNOR: Do you think that is what's so special about Shakespeare?
AILEEN: I think he gives actors expression for what they're feeling. You get to express the huge emotions we all feel. Suddenly you have these words... So instead of just swearing & blinding to describe things good or bad, Shakespeare gives you all these consonants, all this expression. He connects you to your internal feelings so you can express them in external words.
GAYNOR: So has working with Shakespeare taught you about your own psyche, your own emotions your own life?
AILEEN: Literally, at every stage of my life. And that's why I always want people to have access to Shakespeare. Because I think it's like a working Bible. You know, when you ' re worried about a first boyfriend, or breaking up with someone, or you ' re jealous, or you ' ve got a fellow... Every single play or character has something you can relate to & find a connection to. We say: a problem shared is a problem halved. With Shakespeare, you think: actually, that person is going through the same
thing as me, & maybe it's not so bad. Shakespeare gives that perspective across the gamut of emotions.
GAYNOR: So when was your professional debut?
AILEEN: I trained at Central School of Speech & Drama & did the three-year BA course in the 90s. And my first professional role was Maid Marian in Robin Hood at the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton. But my first Shakespeare production was in Devon. That was when I was 17 - so it wasn't professional. The teachers took us down there & we did Macbeth in the caves at Kent's Cavern. We didn't know there was such a term as site-specific. We just did it. I was so precocious! I said to myself: "When I when I'm grown up, I'm gonna have my own company & do it properly." So I went back there, & we ' ve done ten years in Kent's Cavern – doing Shakespeare annually. It was the start of our site specific work. I run a company called Butterfly Theatre. And we do site-specific Shakespeare in extraordinary locations around the world.
GAYNOR: What's the most amazing location you ' ve ever done it in? Or do you still love those caves?
AILEEN: The caves! Those caves are so old! It's just so fascinating to do Shakespeare in the natural environment. We do A Midsummer Night's Dream in an ancient woodland – Puzzlewood in the Forest of Dean. There's nothing like Puck really flying through
the trees! You realise how the language is so evocative of nature. Stones have been known to walk & trees to move.
GAYNOR: So you ' ve said before that all children need access to Shakespeare. Why do you think that?
AILEEN: Because it gives them a chance to express the emotions they're feeling, particularly teenagers. But young kids are brilliant at it too because they love this extraordinary language. They have no reverence for it & they don't care what anything means. A big thing of the Gonsalves Method is that it's not all about the words. Albert Mehrabian found that 7% of communication is what we say, but 55% is body language & 38% is tone of voice. And so you know, that's what I look at. Even when it's Shakespeare, it's just 7%!
GAYNOR: So let's go back to the birth of the Gonsalves Method. When did you realise your approach was different to others'?
AILEEN: Pretty early on. I did brilliant training at Central. Then I realised I wasn't quite on the same page as other people. These shows around me weren't touching me at all. I read David Mamet's True & False – it was really life changing. He said in that book: there's no such thing as character. What does he mean by that? He says a character is what a character does. And he questioned all the looking
back & researching & reading & thinking about what they have for breakfast... You know, he's so outrageous! I went out & bought five copies of that book for my friends, & I posted it to them. Can you imagine anything more bizarre? I said to them: "I'm doing this because I will be talking about this for the rest of my life." And I literally haven't stopped since then. That's 30 years ago.
It led me down the road of finding Sanford Meisner. Meisner had one sentence that encapsulates the whole method: you can't say ouch until you ' ve been pinched. Acting is reacting. No one had told me at drama school that our only job is to make the audience feel something real.
GAYNOR: So how exactly, with your method, do you make them feel something real?
AILEEN: I build everything on Meisner's repetition exercise. It's such a genius exercise. And the magical thing I did is: I created five given circumstances, called the five conditions, that are rooted in forcing you to tune into the other person in order to see if it's working.
GAYNOR: So what are those conditions?
AILEEN: There's an emotional prep – how you feel before you come on the stage. Objective, stakes what matters to the character. Entitlement – why you deserve to get the thing you want (the
objective). And the ' as if'. I've built on Meisner's version of ' as if' in a slightly different way, with a little bit of Uta Hagen substitution in there.
So I cobbled together all my learnings from decades of teaching & directing & training, & I've come up with a really brilliant, replicable system. And now I've written this book. Bloomsbury is publishing it & it's part of the Arden Performance Shakespeare series, which is very exciting. My book is Shakespeare & Meisner it's really quite an interesting title because you’d never normally put those two names together. When I was starting out, people were absolutely terrified of this American technique. But I think it's now being taught now in most drama schools. I mean, I've taught it in loads of them! It's a way of people getting interconnection: see clearly, respond honestly, from your point of view. It produces actors that are more connected to themselves, first of all, but are trained to have their attention off themselves. So, they're connected to who they are as people. Then, when they're playing a character, they're connected to their character. So they see clearly, respond honestly, from their character's point of view. That's how we get there.
GAYNOR: So there's really quite a spiritual aspect to this? A mindful aspect of being present & being in the moment?
AILEEN: Hugely. I've only realised in the last five
years that it’s tied intrinsically to mindfulness because the whole mindfulness movement is about training attention. I've now started training as a mindfulness teacher, actually, because I've realised that I must bring these two things together, because it's so linked. You're training yourself to notice, moment to moment, the other person ' s behaviour, & allow yourself to respond to it.
GAYNOR? And how do actors react to that more meditative, mindful approach to working?
AILEEN: What you get is a group of actors who are bonded extremely quickly. It gets through all the bullshit. You can't lie with this method. And it's very compassionate. It just accepts you ' re human. It's very emotional. The police sometimes get called because someone in the street can hear people screaming with such rage! That's happened twice it's hilarious. And it's because what the people outside can hear is real emotion. It's absolutely real in that moment.
GAYNOR: We've talked before about how all life is like acting: we take on different roles with different people we meet at different times & at different life stages. So tell me a bit more about how you want to move your method off the 'stage of the theatre', & onto the 'stage of life'.
AILEEN: From teaching acting, I've realised that improving connection between human beings, not
necessarily actors, is actually my mission. It's so exciting with actors because they magnify it. And it shows what truthful connection can be. So as you ' re training actors, you see them alter in their real lives. They become far more authentic. I have a great passion for the fact that we ' re all unique on this earth. Every person has something extraordinary to offer. If you can match being present with being unique, which you already are, you are quite an extraordinary force.
GAYNOR: What can Shakespeare in your method teach about love?
First of all, the method trains your attention outwards. It allows you to receive this world. And I think if we ' re present & we receive the world, you cannot help but feel love – because it is so extreme. I mean, what a world! It's just so extraordinary. You see the greenness of the trees, you hear those birds. It allows you to train yourself to respond fully. It makes you like a toddler again. They're the most loving creatures on this earth because they act without any guile, without any thinking. They just push you over then they pick you up again. This teaches you about love & forgiveness very quickly.
GAYNOR: What about darker emotions, whether it's jealousy or hatred?
AILEEN: The method's all about permission. I think
those emotions are the ones we really find it hard to access. But they're all in us somewhere. When we get into those bigger emotions, in the next moment, they can make you laugh. And the trick is to keep your attention outwards. The reason I think we hold on stuff is we tell ourselves stories. We go, "Oh, why am I feeling that anger?" And we go in, in, inwards. And actually in the work, you have to stay out. You've always got a job to do.
GAYNOR: In contemporary society in the Western world, we ' re obsessed with ourselves. We have this idea that we ' ve somehow got freedom & choice. And it doesn't always make us all happier, healthier human beings. So I find your method really interesting because it's about paying attention & looking out to others & your environment. In a way, that then empowers you to be authentically yourself in a more honest way. Would you agree with that?
AILEEN: That's a brilliant description, Gaynor. Every time you see a person, what happens if you see them afresh? Because they are new, as are you, in this moment. So in the same way we try to get actors to be moment-to-moment on stage, I think that's absolutely replicable to life. So I'm working with lawyers, doctors, teachers… You're not just unique as an individual – I believe we ' re unique in time as well. Me & you are talking now at 11.30am. At 8pm tonight, we are different, unique people.
GAYNOR: It's absolutely true. The only thing we know is that we never we never stay the same. And we ' re always changing. Shakespeare understood ageing, death, dying & change more than anyone...
AILEEN: He understood it the most. He captured that idea of time. It's fleeting. Everything changes. "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. " That Hamlet quote is so powerful because it's about how we lock things down with thought.
I feel like I'm pioneering something new with this mindfulness thing, because of the application to non actors who deal with communication. I've been talking to some doctors – they're doing Zoom calls at the moment. And they've got to be able to read who they're talking to. It's a basic skill, & actors who work in this way all have it. But it's quite easy to transfer it.
GAYNOR: It seems this book has been a pivot point for you personally. So as well as working in theatre, what do you see as being your role for the planet, really?
AILEEN: I think we ' re all unique & the world is diverse. So what skill do we need more than anything else in this world? It's the ability to communicate – to see clearly & listen authentically. We need to be able to hear other sides & listen to others. The division in the world at the moment is so extraordinary. We have to do something about it. So we can realise it
doesn't affect us what someone else is doing we can allow everyone to have a different way of seeing the world. No one can see the world like you see it that's what we can't quite accept. Because we feel that that separates us. But the thing that joins us, Gaynor, is our emotion. That's the thing that links us. Those caveman of a million, billion years ago, or however many – we ' re joined to them by something really profound. That is: that we all laugh, we all cry. "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" If you tickle us, do we not laugh? Shakespeare really knew that.
Gaynor O'Flynn is a performer, writer, director & maverick.
In her extensive career, she has worked with luminaries including Anton Corbijn, Björk, the Dalai Lama, Stomp, Terry Gilliam, The Verve, New Order, PJ Harvey & Eddie Izzard. She has collaborated with organisations such as UNESCO, the BBC, Channel 4, Canal+, the BFI, the British Council & Google.
The BBC called her ‘that conscious, cathartic voice’, Artrocker ‘bloody brilliant', Le Cool London 'hugely fnlightening' & Frieze ‘exhilarating’.
She is founder of Beinghuman Ltd & The Beinghuman Collective CiC & has campaigned & spoken to millions globally on humanitarian & environmental issues. Gaynor is a student of Dzogchen, a Himalayan philosophy she embeds in her life, work & art.