I was fortunate enough to study abroad in London for spring semester of my junior year of college, and during that time I saw Judi Dench in Amy's View, by David Hare.
A large thrust of the play is about an aging stage actress butting heads with her daughter's husband, who is a film director/producer. She is concerned about how technology and film are eroding the sacred nature of the theater, and he is dismissive of the theater being able to deliver a story as real as a film can. At the end of the play, the daughter has passed away and Judi Dench's character is having a surge of popularity. She is doing a play and her now son-in-law comes to visit her in her dressing room. She sits before her dressing room mirror applying creme to her face to get ready for her show.
She goes through the entire process of cleansing her face, both with creme and water, hair pulled back, until she is ready to go on stage. All the while having a difficult conversation about the death of her daughter with a man with whom she has never found common ground.
Except that there is no mirror. She sits at a dressing table facing front to the audience, as if the mirror where between her and us. It remains one of the most beautiful moments I've ever seen on stage: an aging actress grieving the death of her only child, forced to relive painful memories because of the presence of the son-in-law, yet studiously preparing her face for a show. And we, the audience, in effect became her mirror. It was both intensely real, and yet obviously "not" real at the same time. We couldn't not be aware that there was no mirror, and yet we believed in the moment that we were watching. The strength of the talent of Judi Dench combined with the choice to not have the scenery be 100% "real," actually worked together to draw the audience in in a way I don't think would have been possible had she had a physical mirror to work with. For one, staging it that way would have forced her to angle away from the audience, and so by taking the mirror away and having her "pretend" it was there, we were able to get every nuanced reaction and emotion as she felt it, because there was nothing between her and us.
I think this illustrates the idea that you can only be so real on stage before it starts to get in the way of story. Yes, we strive for naturalistic truth under imaginary circumstances, but always in such a way that the story is being faithfully served. In the case of the scene from Amy's View, the best way to illustrate the "realness" of the scene was to set it in a way that was actually less than real.
ReplyDelete“Ah, but it felt so real!”
You put down a very compelling example a detour from reality that drives straight into the home of the story being served. Our efforts and the audience’s hopes may be bent towards ” immersion and realness” but, as you say, “not so much that it distracts from the act of being at the theater.” And sometimes, we go as far as to demand the opposite. For example, nothing will kill a scene of staged violence faster than sloppy, unprepared execution of the choreography where the actors (or nearby audience members) are actually in danger. Worrying about whether actor “A” is going to skewer one of actor “B’s” eyes leaves no room for any kind of emotional investment in the character’s life. Here’s a less potentially painful but equally distancing example: The big moment has arrived. Pleading for his life center stage, the actor falls to his knees with a great, dramatic, THUD. For a count of ten or so, the audience tunes out of the show and begins to ponder…”ow, that must have hurt”, “hmm, the stage must be quite hollow after all.” “Is he wearing knee pads?” “Uncle Caleb had knee surgery last month, I wonder how he’s recovering.” You get the idea. It’s an intrusion of reality that not only fails to faithfully serve the story but actively detracts from the narrative as well. The actor was instructed, at length, to basically sit/squat and then let the weight gently (and quietly) transfer to his knees...but it did not feel real, so he went with the thud (It also makes me think about how what is experienced from inside the actor’s instrument can differ so much from what is then appreciated on the receiving end...) Reality must be a question of dosage then: too little and we might fail to relate the matter to our lives, too much and it becomes artless, and somewhere, mid conversation between the two is a place where the show is presented “in such a way that the story is being faithfully served.”
I'm so so very jealous of you!! What a stunning production that must have been. I was struck by your observation that, "actors and audiences alike are hoping for immersion and realness, and yet not so much that it distracts from the act of being at the theater." It was the second half of that statement that was most interesting to me because as an actor and an audience member I am acutely aware of craving something "real" but I don't think I ever consciously wish for something to appear "not TOO real." Yet I have certainly been in situations where something was indeed TOO real and therefore instantly pulled me out of the magic bubble of performance. Does that mean, perhaps, that we can't exactly identify what makes something too real until we actually see or experience it? Are those moments something that can only be named and acknowledged after the fact?
ReplyDeleteI feel like that magic bubble that I mentioned is also hard to concretely identify. When I imagine the show you described, I find myself asking questions like "What would happen is Judi spilled the water?" or "What if she got the cream in her eye?" Naturally a good actor would just role with these unexpected developments, but even by having these questions as an audience member, you have stepped outside of that magic bubble. Yet with a really special experience, an experience like the one I suspect you had at this show, those questions don't even pop up in your head. Why is that I wonder...
The description of the mirrorless scene is indicative of a beautiful moment made more moving by combining elements of "real" and "not real" into a better way for this piece of story to be told for the stage. Though unrelated in so many ways, your example reminds me of Peter and the Starcatcher, where so many conventions are not at all real, but are made real by the illusion of something(a hand turning to illustrate the steering of the boat, for example or a piece of moving fabric representing water) and the gift to the audience of being able to complete the picture with imagination. In the case of Amy's View, Judy Dench's work to create the mirror gave us the gift of that mirror in a better way than if it had actually been there, to obstruct our view of the nuances worth seeing unobstructed. Perhaps the obstruction, if there would have been a physical mirror, would have taken the audience "out" of the performance if they couldn't see her every move. Perhaps not. The story, it seems, is "faithfully served" by making this choice in this particular example. I'm curious in what cases would the opposite be true, where the set, or situation being too real, would benefit the audience. I am stumped to offer an alter argument for this one, still thinking about what it must have been like to experience what must have been a mesmerizing scene live. I agree with you, and cannot objectively see the alternative at this point, though it'd be nice to have enough brainspace to see the alternative...
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