Acting Expressionism - Part One

The best place to start when talking about expressionism is with the suggestions that Clive Barker pus forward with regards to the problems that actor encounters and the job that the actor is required to do, of course this differs from one performance to the next, not to mention it is vastly different when acting expressionism, but there are still a number of fundamental points tha are transferable and applicable to any performance.

The Work of the Actor:

1. He exhibits real physical skills (including vocal skills). That is, he makes demands upon his body apparatus that go beyond the general level of use and ability which apply in everyday life.

2. He exhibits mimetic skill. That is, he simulates physical states and activities which are not real for him.

3. He imaginatively explores situations of time, space and character which are not real for him.

4. He exhibits patterns of human behavior which are not natural to him.

5. While engaging in all these activities, he interacts with other human beings, namely, the other actors/characters and the audience.

(Barker, 1997: 11)

This clearly demonstrates the demand on the actor is great in any acting situation; removing the actor from the real world and placing him in a completely synthetic one in which he must live. Point by point then how does each demand affect the expressionist actor?

1. The expressionist actor make huge demands of his body while engaged in performance. The expressionist actor must achieve a state of the ecstatic, like the soul is about to break from the clutches of the body. It is not enough in expressionism to be suggestive of, to imply, to be an index pointing towards something. The expressionist actor must become that which he is portraying, if he is greedy he not just greedy but greed itself. If he is sick, then he is not just sick, but sickness itself.

I was the director and writer for an expressionist piece called Death/Commodity. In this piece there was a scene where 'The Man' visits industry owners. For the actors this demanded huge amounts of energy and engagement for the scene to work. The demands on the body were both beyond the daily and even the extra-daily demands on the body, require the actor to achieve almost a beyond-human level of movement. I will momentarily discuss the problems encounter with making such demands.

2. Mimetic skills and simulation have little place in expressionism as there are no real reference points to use, nothing in real-life is, in isolation, a starting point. Instead the actor must use abstract ideas and references, concepts rather than singularities. Again using the example of the industry owners, ideas discussed included the feel of the horror film Hostel, the horror film Creep, the wheelies from Return To Oz. The actor then had to covert these influences into something tangible and real for us to mould, shape and inevitably perform.

3. The exploration of time, space and character is once again a challenge for the expressionist actor. Expressionism generally (but not be definition) adheres to the three unities. Time while arguably immeasurable in expressionism does not change, there is no day/night. Due to the dream-like reality time is unimportant as it would be in a dream, things just happen and are not defined by time. Space is usually a single place usually a factory or a street, sometimes multiple but the actor does not have to think about re-creating different spaces. Character is of utmost priority for the actor, the character is beyond human, it is removed from the world, while encapsulating it's very essence. Characters act more as concepts or groups of people, rather than individuals or actual people.

4. Patterns of human behavior are shown, but not through naturalism, they are shown through the most extreme abstraction, exaggerated patterns of human behavior that exist and thrive in the darker part of human nature.

5. The actors in expressionism only interact with each other on a performance level. In regards to character, the characters ignore each other, rarely acknowledging their existence. The Man works slightly different in as much that he does have to interact with all aspects of his dream-like reality.

As is seen here the job of the actor surpasses the demands an Ibsen or a Beckett would demand of the actor. It goes beyond the real of just acting to the point where it becomes a vigorous exercise in itself, actors are left out of breath, tired and at the point of almost passing out. Of course this would become boring after a while to watch and so not all characters need this much energy. Workers from Death/Commodity for example moved with sharp, machine like precision. All at once and all in unison.

In any case the actor of expressionism must find and present the highest level of energy, it is the work of the director to try and help the actors to find this level, though I have to say an actor either can or achieve this level of energy or they cannot, just like a person can or cannot roll their tongue.