The following is a lecture presented at Spalding University on May 25, 2015. It was part of the graduation requirement for the MFA fiction program.
How is it possible that a fiction writer who knows her
story inside out couldn’t possibly present a more compelling narration of that
work than a skilled actor, even an actor whose intellectual grasp of the narrative
is minimal? Myriad arguments support the contention that, between the two, the
actor’s storytelling advantage is irrefutable, despite the writer’s superior
appreciation of the work, and its attendant intellectual nuance. Why is this? Essentially,
because acting fiction and writing fiction are as different as,
say, apples and oranges. The writer’s discipline does not address the act of performing
fiction aloud. The pathways to creating compelling storytelling, then, are
located in the actor’s discipline.
Nothing is more indicative of this apple/orange binary
than the actor’s and writer’s unique relationship to the syntax—the words
themselves. This lecture will focus primarily on the actor’s syntax
relationship. The exploration of that unique relationship will shed light on
how actors actually act fiction, and subsequently strengthen the contention
that when authors desire a presentation of their fiction that connects the
listener to the story’s emotional import, their first and only thought should
be: hire an actor.
On the surface, it might seem that the words unite writer and actor in a common
communicative undertaking. Not the case. As we explore the actor’s aesthetic
relationship to the words, we’ll discover that it’s unlike, maybe opposite, the
writer’s, that acting the words wholly differs
from reading them, can I say, dramatically.
Upon explicating this difference, we’ll also discover that the actor who
narrates aloud as an actor is inherently
predisposed to actualize the words’ emotionality, to give the narrative life.
Conversely, the writer, who reads aloud as
a writer, may convey the words’ meaning, but doesn’t possess the
performance tools to actualize the words’ feeling. And so
we can deduce what’s arguably the obvious: Accessing the words’ emotional
territory is the key to a riveting performance; authors who lack that access are
locked out of the words’ emotionality, which explains why their readings are often
flat, atonal, more likely to elicit somnolence than edge-of-the-seat
attentiveness.
Before specifically interrogating the actor’s relationship
to the words, let’s contextualize his discipline with a brief primer on acting,
and the storytelling process. One parenthetical, albeit important
caveat: We’re exclusively discussing fiction. Non-fiction’s narration process
is related to, but different enough from, performing fiction to the degree that
non-fiction might be regarded as, say, a tangerine.
Finally, two brief addendums before getting underway:
Throughout, I’ll use narrator,
storyteller and actor synonymously.
For me, these nomenclatures reflect an identical aesthetic endeavor. Second,
it’s worth mentioning that I’m discussing fiction through the storyteller’s lens, rather than the author’s, and it’s
always useful to remember that various definitions and characterizations
writers understand one way, may be regarded quite differently by the actor.
Back to acting, and the fiction storytelling process
(arenas I have some expertise in, given my years as a theatre and audiobook
director, and storytelling teacher).
First, some definitions. What is acting? What is storytelling?
What is the aesthetic relationship between storyteller and listener?
Sanford Meisner, one of the America’s most preeminent
acting teachers, defined acting as a process that connects the performer with
his “emotional impulses,” and that acting itself, “is firmly rooted in the
instinctive. All good acting,” he argued, “comes from the heart, as it were,
and there’s no mentality to it.” (1) While numerous definitions of actor and
acting express various truths about the process, what’s instructive about
Meisner’s definition is that he specifically conflates acting with emotion, and
not with intellect (what he means by mentality). Meisner portrays acting as a
craft predicated on the performer’s ability to connect to her emotional
impulses, her feelings, rather than her cognitive experience—what she thinks.
Which is precisely why an actor never has to have been a king to play Lear, and
why the actor who does play Lear isn’t playing how Lear thinks, but rather, connecting
to what Lear feels. Bottom line, it’s the actor’s simulation of Lear’s
emotions—emotions the actor has surely experienced—that determine how well, or
poorly, he portrays this character.
In a word, the storytelling process can be reductively summarized
as: acting. Storytelling is an acting
process whose primary obligation is to connect
the actor to the text’s emotions. By definition, when there’s no acting, there’s
no storytelling, and the result is reading, or speaking words, often with
emphasis, but—and we’ll explain why shortly—never confuse emphasis with acting.
For now think, readers (non-performers) emphasize words’ feelings, actors act words’ feelings!
In summery, storytelling and acting are synonymous. When
acting fiction, the storyteller intuitively connects his own emotional impulses
to the emotionality embedded in the narrative’s syntax, and never to the words’
meaning. Like a heat seeking missile, the actor is inexorably propelled toward
how the characters feel, rather than what they think. In the actor’s parlance,
all that’s of value is the subtext. Subtext
simply refers to the feeling within the words, rather than their meaning.
In order to move a listener from dazed to engaged, two
aesthetic bridges must be constructed by the storyteller: one that connects him
to the narrative’s subtext (its emotionality); and another that connects that subtext to the
listener. The visceral material those bridges are constructed of is acting. Therefore,
no acting, no bridges, no storytelling.
This bridge-building metaphor helps us fathom why the actor’s
cold reading of a novel, for example, is likely to be light years more
gratifying than that of the writer’s rendition, no matter how long, or how
diligently the dedicated writer has practiced, no matter that she’s committed this
hundred-thousand word tome to memory, verbatim. It’s worth noting, too, that
writers who construct the actors’ subtext-connecting bridges stand an excellent
chance of narrating their fiction like an actor. Why? Because they are one.
When the storytelling process is proceeding, the actor is
in the midst of fulfilling his most basic promise to listeners: Maintaining
their willing suspension of disbelief.
Listeners know, of course, that the story, written in the past, is being told
by someone standing before them, or if it’s an audiobook, has been pre-recorded
by a narrator in a booth. But that doesn’t inhibit them from wishing, maybe
praying: promise me I’ll be transported my immediate reality, as if on a magic
carpet ride; promise me I’ll be emotionally integrated into unfolding events
that are happening in real time, where I, just like the fiction’s characters, have
no clue as to what’s going to occur next. When listeners willingly suspend
their disbelief, it’s most likely because the actor is just doing her job,
making good on her wish-fulfillment promise.
Having briefly examined acting, and storytelling, we’re
better prepared to peer further into the storyteller’s process, and describe some
of its salient moving parts, that when aggregated, help us visualize how the actor
actually acts fiction.
Earlier, I argued that it
would seem fiction writers and actors share seats in a common communicative
domicile: Words. I suggested that, upon investigating this presumed
commonality, whatever the words may imply to the writer, likely none of those
implications are applicable to the narrator—and so, apples and oranges. In an
effort to deepen our understanding of the storyteller’s process, it’s useful to
explore in more detail what the writers’ words mean to actors.
We’ll begin by imagining a
word as a house with two rooms: one is the thinking room; the other, the
feeling room. The thinking room is filled with thoughts, intellectual
constructs: abstract symbols, signs and significations that represent meaning,
ideas, etc.; the feeling room is populated by our emotional states of being:
happy, sad, angry, etc.
Only the feeling room
warrants storytellers’ attention; the thinking room is useless to them, off
limits, verboten!. Why? Because ideas and
meaning aren’t actable. Only emotion is actable. Therefore, we can categorically
assert that to the storyteller, the words’ intellectual value, their meaning,
are irrelevant: dead weight. In effect, actors are not wired to access the author’s
intellectual purposes, nor the characters’ thoughts. In fact, attention to the words’
meaning crosses actors’ wiring, and distracts them from doing their job:
acting. At worst, excessive fretting over meaning can totally short circuit the
actor’s ability to connect the listener to the text’s emotionality precisely
because this mislaid agenda prevents the actor from acting.
At the risk of sounding
hyperbolic, why is the actor’s attention to content such a narrative-toxin? Shouldn’t
narrators understand the plot, the story? Won’t that knowledge enhance the
storytelling experience? To a degree. Essentially, the actor should comprehend
the story, be familiar with its characters and ensuing events, but only enough
to be secure that he more or less knows what’s going on. Too much concern for
content, a trap many storytellers fall unwittingly into, reinforces their
misperception that understanding the words will enable them to act their
feelings. It will not! Here it’s important to reiterate that to the actor, the
text (the words) are not actable. Ipso facto, an actor who attempts to act what’s
not actable—the words—will fail to locate what is actable—the words’ feeling. Axiomatically,
the harder the actor works to understand the words, the more likely he is to
fail to appreciate their emotional consequence.
By way of example, let’s reiterate this words-aren’t-actable
storytelling pillar, mindful of the thinking room and feeling room, and also, as
Meisner might say, the stimulus that’s necessary to connect actors to their “emotional
impulses.”
If I present this sentence to an actress—“ Katy Smith
walked to her office”—and then said to her, okay, act that sentence, what would
trigger her “emotional impulses,” or the acting response? How would she
interpret the syntax? The answer is, she wouldn’t because she couldn’t.
Essentially, she’s in the wrong word-room. Though the sentence is grammatically
correct, and coherently communicates Katy’s activity, to the actor it’s just
syntactic static. But what if I said to the actress, well, in this part of the
story, Katy’s favorite hat has been blown off her head and then kicked into a
mud puddle by Roy Jones, whom she’s walking beside? Now the actress can act, “Katy
Smith walked to her office!” Now she can intuit Katy’s distressed mood, access
her bereft feelings, and then connect—not the words’ meaning—but their
emotional consequence (the subtext) to the listener.
Getting down to some how-actors-act-fiction nuts and
bolts
We can now turn our attention to several fundamental
storytelling elements that will specifically demonstrate how actor’s actually act
fiction. Three of these nuts and bolts—perhaps first among equals of what I
tell narrators are really storytelling’s ten commandments—are: Point of view; The Stakes; Discovery. And
again, a reminder to fiction writers: these three commandments are being viewed
through the storyteller’s lens.
To visualize these nuts and
bolts in action, we’ll enlarge the Katy/Roy example, replete with a surfeit of
adverbs, so that it more accurately reflects most of the best selling fiction
I’ve directed over the years. We’ll assume a female narrator reads: “Katy Smith
walked cheerily to her office with Roy Jones, and stupifyingly gaped as her new
pink hat blew unexpectedly from her head by a gusting wind, into a mud puddle
on the sidewalk, and as if that wasn’t horrible enough, when Roy carelessly
booted it, she angrily grimaced when he seemingly stepped on it on purpose,
though he could have stepped over it purposefully, too.”
How then, step-by-step, does the actress act this
sentence?
First, she intuitively
disabuses herself of the writing’s quality—good, bad, literary or pedestrian;
it’s meaningless to her, and therefore, to the quality of her performance. To
her, there’s no difference, say, between Danielle Steel, and Jhumpa Lahiri.
Why? Because, while these fiction writers may exist on opposite ends of the literary
continuum, their stories reveal identical emotions. Their characters are happy,
sad, distraught, obnoxious, etc. And since only the words’ feelings (subtext)
are accessible, thus actable, their literary merit is inconsequential. To the
actress, there’s no such thing as literary vs. commercial anxiety, just anxiety.
Preparing to act the
Katy/Roy example, step one finds the actress internalizing the words’
emotionality: actually connecting her emotional impulses to the words’
feelings. Then on to step two, which requires her to organically (believably)
replicate the words’ feelings, and exactly as the author intends. If the author
writes, ‘she murmurs sadly,’ the actress murmurs sadly. If the author’s intent
is less apparent, she must employ her intuition and training to access that
intent. A daunting process sometimes, which is why we rely on her training and
intuition to organically simulate those feelings.
Breaking down step
two—believably replicating the words’ feelings—is where we find the majority of
the actress’s nuts and bolts repertoire, including the three specific
commandments we just mentioned, that serve her effort to organically simulate
Katy’s emotional experience, and as the author intends?
Point of View: In
narrating fiction, among the actor’s most obligatory commandments, is: Tell the story from the point of view of
whom, or what you’re talking about. That directive’s importance is fully
appreciated when we understand that every single word in fiction—including
description—is imbued with feeling, or an emotional point of view. Every person,
place, or thing in fiction comes from an emotional place. A way to further
understand point of view is to read fiction and try and locate a neutral word
or phrase, one utterly devoid feeling, an emotional black hole. Not possible. Imagine
a fiction writer: writing and feeling nothing, then reflecting that nothing in
the words. Again, not possible. And remember, actors can only act feeling, and
so if they can’t locate feeling, activate the words’ point of view, there’s nothing
to act. Their default scenario is a reading, a rendition; think somnolence, or
Sominex.
In our Katy/Roy example, because
the sentence’s emotionality is revealed through Katy’s eyes, the actress
connects to Katy’s feelings, that is, Katy’s point of view. And what is her
point of view? Actually, it’s several. At first, it’s cheerily. And so the actress intuitively connects to a Katy who “walked
cheerily to her office with Roy Jones.” But then, Katy’s pov shifts to stupification, when her hat falls into the mud
puddle, and then to anger when Roy, seemingly accidentally on purpose, steps on
it.
Despite the gangly, convoluted
sentence, the subtext (its emotionality) is unmistakable, and like a plug in a
socket, the actress intuitively connects to Katy’s cheerily, stupifyingly, and angrily
point of view, in order of their appearance.
The Stakes.
Exactly how intense are Katy’s
feelings in this sentence? Or, in actor-parlance, what are the stakes? To what
degree do Katy’s feelings reveal themselves? First, the actress senses the stakes
by connecting her intuition to stupifyingly,
angrily, etc. These are all feelings she’s had before, or can imagine
having. She may relate to walking down a sidewalk with someone, though, again,
this scenario isn’t her primary concern because scenario isn’t actable.
How then does she believably
simulate these feelings’ intensity? Here, we refer to Meisner, to the actor’s
instinct, the actor’s heart—upon which her believable performance is predicated.
The actress relies on her experience and intuition to vocally match the stakes
she sees embedded in the author’s syntax, to replicate their power, or
intensity, and then connect that intensity (the stakes) to the listener. When listeners
sense that, indeed, her performance replicates those stakes, they willingly
suspend their disbelief, and are emotionally engaged, plugged in, not only to stupefied,
and angry, but to how stupefied, and how angry. Connecting to the stakes is
acting; it is how actors organically
act the subtext, rather than emphasize, enunciate or imitate that which isn’t
felt by them.
Discovery.
Our daily lives unfold in the moment, in real time: that is, we don’t
know what’s going to happen next, even if we’re dead sure we do. Our experiences
aren’t scripted; we can’t flip ahead ten years to see what happens. Fictional
characters written as real, sentient beings respond similarly. Replicating
fictional characters’ spontaneous, real time interaction with events, other
character, and themselves, is another fundamental storytelling commandment.
Discovery, then, is defined
as activating the here and now: Or real time, or the moment. Discovery maintains willing suspension of disbelief by
convincing listeners the story is unfolding right before their eyes.
By the way, when narrators fail to discover, their reading
sounds like reading—stilted, or rote, pre-fabricated, distant, or reported like
the six o’clock news. Lack of discovery disconnects listeners from the here and
now, from sensing that it’s all happening in real time. When narrators fail to
discover, willing suspension of disbelief ruptures, and listeners become
restless, and bored. When it’s delivered a fatal blow, listeners are no longer
engaged by the subtext, they’ve tuned out.
Discovery’s most important
benefit to the storyteller is that it stimulates an organic (that is, believable)
response to the subtext, and at the same time discourages what’s called indicating, or voicing, or emphasizing
what’s not felt. Indicating is really an intellectual choice to represent
feeling, imitate feeling, fake feeling by emphasizing words. Indicating—voicing
rather than internalizing emotion—is the antithesis of acting because it is not
stimulated by the subtext’s emotionality. Nothing separates the listener from
the story’s emotional consequence more than indicating.
Discovery can be confounding,
even to experienced actors. The primary reason is because reading aloud is antithetical
to discovery. The very act of reading words that the narrator sees just prior
to speaking them is so counterintuitive to spontaneity. Especially when he’s
already prepped the book by reading
it in advance of the recording, which means he also knows the complete story,
including who-done-it! Additionally, most actors aren’t trained to read aloud.
Their film, TV, or theatrical experiences involve dialogue memorization and
rehearsal, a familiar process that encourages simulation of real life
spontaneity. Finally, the non-dialogue syntax is utterly foreign to the
performer, and almost terrifyingly artificial. While dialogue presents various obstacles,
such as playing multiple characters, including opposite gender, at least trained
actors are experienced in interpreting and simulating naturalistic speech. The
non-dialogue syntax is another story: People don’t naturally narrate their lives
aloud, especially in third person, so humanizing the non-dialogue, and then
spontaneously discovering its emotionality, just like a real person speaking in
real time, is arguably the storyteller’s most vexing challenge.
For the storyteller, the major
discovery impediments—the act of reading, advance knowledge of the story, and the
non-dialogue syntax—are most effectively addressed when, perhaps surprisingly, he
seeks guidance from his number one discovery guide—the text itself.
Just how does the text earn
the actor’s favor, that is, guide him toward discovering the words’
emotionality? Three ways:
First the obvious: Feeling-instructions
appear in the author’s dialogue and character descriptions. For example, “I
hate you,” ‘she said, angrily!’”
Second, actors discover less
obvious feelings in the syntax by sensitizing themselves to word order, and word
choice. Such as, “She just couldn’t work at this pointless job another day.” Here,
the actor intuits a particular distress, or anger in the phrases, ‘she just
couldn’t,’ and ‘pointless job.’ As an example of word order’s impact on
discovery, we’ll reverse two words in this sentence—couldn’t and just. Now
the sentence reads: ‘She couldn’t just work at this pointless job another day.’
Here the actor discovers a different feeling, subtle perhaps, but different due
to the word order.
Third, and often invisible even
to trained storytellers, are two fail-safe discovery clues that we’ll call The Discovery Twins, because they’re so
closely related, like twins. Twin One is The
Punctuation. Twin Two is The White Space.
First, we’ll explain each
twin’s discovery contribution. Then we’ll hear
how they work in tandem, hoping this demonstration will further illuminate
their unique and profound importance to spontaneity.
Twin One: The Punctuation. All the text’s
punctuation—the period, comma, semi-colon, explanation point, m-dash,
etc.—serve as a discovery marker. Much like a buoy in a sea of words. To the
storyteller, punctuation indicates the end of one feeling, and signals the
beginning of another feeling. In actor parlance, a feeling is termed a beat. The new feeling, or beat, may
range from sharply to subtly different than what preceded it. But for the
actor, what’s relevant is that the beat is new,
therefore, what follows the punctuation is not part of the previous beat, or feeling.
In short, punctuation signals the actor: Old beat over; get ready to discover
the new feeling.
Twin Two: The White Space. For the actor, the
actual white, or blank, space between the punctuation and next word is a
discovery stimulant: an ah hah, or oooh, or, wow indicator. The white space is a vibrant, emotional territory
that, when inhabited by the actor’s intuition, stimulates his discovery of the
feeling embedded in the words he’s about to say.
An example of how these
twins work as a team to activate discovery may further highlight their
significance to the storyteller:
Let’s focus on the
following sentences’ punctuation, and the white space: “Kathleen perused the
Spalding lunch menu. (Period/white space) Not another day of soup. (Period/white
space) Damn the diet. (Period/white space) She was going to order a bacon
cheeseburger. (Period/white space) No! (Explanation point/white space) A double
bacon cheeseburger, (Comma/white space), and fries. (Period/white) And a
chocolate shake!! (Double exclamation point).
Now I’ll read these
sentences twice: first, no acting: simply to reinforce focus on the punctuation
and white spaces. Then a second time, I’ll narrate as the storyteller who is
directed by the punctuation and white spaces to discover Kathleen’s feelings (and
you’ll excuse my less than award-winning performance).
First: Again, listen for punctuation, followed by white
space.
“Kathleen perused the
Spalding lunch menu. Not another day of soup. Damn the diet. She was going to
order a bacon cheeseburger. No! A double bacon cheeseburger, and fries. And a
chocolate shake!!
Now, as the storyteller:
“Kathleen perused the
Spalding lunch menu. Not another day of soup. Damn the diet. She was going to
order a bacon cheeseburger. No! A double bacon cheeseburger, and fries. And a
chocolate shake!!
I hope you hear the discovery in the second version, and
can visualize how punctuation and white space create spontaneity. Incidentally,
you also sense the stakes, and can tell that this experience is told from Kathleen’s
pov.
If we open the storyteller’s head while she’s narrating, we
can bear witness to the storyteller and Discovery Twins’ at work. Listen to the
first few sentences: (I’m fairly chipper) “Kathleen perused the Spalding lunch
menu (period/white space—Ugh! Now I’m bummed) “Not another day of soup
(period/white space-frustrated, reeeaaallly frustrated) “Damn the diet.” Etcetera, etcetera.
There’s discovery. Discovered
feelings create immediacy; immediacy brings the fiction writer’s words to life.
Discovery is an integral component of the carpet’s magic that transports the
listener’s imagination toward willing suspension of disbelief. Discovery
transforms the listener from passive observer to engaged participant. In short,
no discovery, no storytelling. End of story.
When audiobooks emerged in the late 1980s as a derivative
compliment to their printed elder, some readers—many of them college educated—balked
at audiobooks’ legitimacy. Most people casually listened while driving in their
car; cassette decks were becoming standard in newer models. And most audiobooks
were abridged—often by 70%. By the way, unabridged is the rule today. When
queried about audiobooks, readers’ common, pejorative refrain—I read—spoke volumes about the implication
that spoken word was comparable to print. The notion that reading and being
read to could ignite their imagination equally seemed impossible; after all, reading
and being read to were apples and
oranges.
In a very real way, that assumption is accurate. It’s also
fair to argue that reading and being read to are equally viable aesthetics. Rather than apples verses oranges, the
explicit notion that I hope this lecture advances, is that storytelling is by
definition, a performance art, a unique enterprise that deserves to be
considered an artist’s endeavor. How actors act fiction, and
why authors can’t possibly narrate their fiction as well as actors, is really meant to inform,
and then persuade us to first imagine what it means to be an actor, so that we
can imagine what it means to be a storyteller, so that, then, we can imagine
what it means to be read to.
--
I am looking forward to residing and working in LA next
January/February, and to my September Narrator’s workshop in New York, and
January workshop in LA (for information/registration, contact Michele michele@audiofilemagazine.com).
Finishing the MFA fiction program is gratifying, and will
allow me to put less time between blog posts.
