Characterisation: Threshold and Fluidity
Characterisation: Threshold and Fluidity Rosanna Vitale University of Windsor Creation unfolds and is made flesh in vital liminal space. As the Universe is dynamic and, therefore, in the continuous process of creating and sustaining life within itself, the actor, in fashioning the image he lifts from the page, breathes life into the matter of the character and, thus, becomes creator and creation. Actor and character meet on a plane whereupon they perform the dance of Dionysos under the directive gaze of Apollo. Life on this plane sprouts from ever–flowing movement and this is only possible in a state of consciousness that is forever integrating where all is possible and space or time serve as coördinates where the dramatic action, at once, reposes and whence it springs forth to provide continuity and poetic logic. What the audience recognizes as reality on stage is the ever– creating dynamism that takes place in the liminal space that is delimited by and at the same time intimates and includes the actor and the character. This is a secret space and, while the spectator is a creative element (the implied actor) 1, only the creation and not the creating must be made visible to the audience. The dynamics that take place in the threshold between actor and character, the actual motion of stepping–into–character must be veiled in secrecy lest the character remain imprisoned in its design 2. The threshold is a concept or a technique of acting described by Michael Chekhov, as the space the actor must enter where he meets the character he is creating. Chekhov deems Dramaturgy as independent of the other arts; the theatre, he says, starts when the actors and the director take the script into their hands. Their Creative Individualities are what make the theatre. The actor begins to explore the play, and as he does so, he must explore himself. All the lines, all the situations in the play are silent for the actor until he finds himself behind them, not as a reader with good artistic taste, but as an actor whose responsible task is to translate the author’s language into the actor’s. The written word must become the spoken one 3. The trajectory the written word undertakes to become spoken is a voyage traced by the actor using his body as the soil whereupon will sprout the spoken word as only one sign of the character’s awareness and existence. Awareness is expressed using the body as a sensory mechanism and as a perception mechanism. It is, of course, 1In his masterful tome. La crise du personnage dans le théâtre moderne. (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), offers the insight that the character’s existence is determined by the audience who contemplates him.
2When the character is not permitted to exist independently of the actor, the modus of the performance becomes visible thus obliterating the character itself.
3Chekhov, Michael. On the Technique of Acting. Ed. by Mel Gordon. Harper and Row. New York: 1991. p.77.
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