Kalliope talks 3: Playing versus acting

Why do we automatically assume that she hasn’t read these books …? 😏

Hi Claudia,

Yesterday I started to translate our conversation for my blog – and I think I have the solution!

To understand what I mean – and what you mean – I need another dichotomy: the difference between PLAYING and ACTING. As it both translates into “Spielen” in German, there is an issue if they don’t actually mean the same. And, in a way, they do because they are difficult to separate “empirically”. I suppose what we see actors do is a combination of both most of the time. But I realized that, in the way I USE the words, there is a difference. I tried it out to get closer to the issue – and it worked!

As I wrote, my experience of creating voices for characters is an embryonic form of PLAYING. I IMAGINE something so vividly that the voice emerges naturally. I believe we were perfectly agreed about what we actually saw when Richard Armitage came on the stage in “Uncle Vanya”. But we used different categories to describe it. In my new terminology we are describing two sides of the same coin when you referred to it as “Just acting” and I as “Not Playing”. Whereas, for me, “Not playing” is what you called “Not being this person”. He wasn’t (yet) in this state where he was himself totally convinced of BEING Astrov. (In my opinion, this got fixed completely when the other actors came onto the stage and “convinced” him.)

PLAYING, as I understand it, is something many children can do without thinking about it - though, in my experience, not all children! – when they forget the reality around them and get themselves into a fictional situation. ACTING is something we are all doing all the time in real life situations. When we have to convince other people that we are feeling/thinking something we don’t really feel or think. Or that we really ARE this person we think we are – or know we are not but should be. In fact, acting mostly makes us who we are, and we know very seldom what we are thinking, or feeling before we have uttered it in the company of another person. (I believe that most people never get into the habit of having conversations with THEMSELVES, as I do.) That I am so aware of the distinction is because – though I am probably not quite hopeless at playing – I am absolute crap at acting. (To the point that I mostly hate myself when I am with other people – or am constantly trying to trigger an “authentic” conversation. What I hate most in the world is small talk – which is totally important, though, because it creates the illusion that we are feeling and thinking the same and begin to like – or at least tolerate – the other person. As you have had ample occasion to endure, THIS is not what I want to achieve with other people!  Of course I know that it is my own fault if people don’t like me – I refuse to dance to their tune. When I don’t like the tune. You are one of about two people I know who endure and appreciate this!)  

PLAYING is what actors like Christopher Eccleston, Toby Jones, or James McAvoy can do to a degree that other people could never understand – but it certainly doesn’t happen “naturally”. I suppose that every actor on this level has a PERSONAL program for it that – depending on the actor and the character he is about to play – involves a greater or smaller amount of ACTING = doing things which they have learned will work, and being in control of what they are doing. If actors are relying so much on their actually BEING this person as Richard Armitage, Ralph Fiennes, or Chris Eccleston, they are bound to get into trouble more often than others who are more “calculating” – like, for example, I think David Tennant is. And in the theatre we cannot fail to see this and even experience it as lack of professionalism! Nonetheless these are the actors I just love. And I was so pleased with James McAvoy – and think that he might be the best actor I have ever seen – because he managed BOTH to a degree I would never have believed possible: playing and acting.

(By the way – as the “scripted reality crap” proves! – there is nothing as disappointing and sickening as BAD PLAYING! And it is bad playing, usually, when it is JUST playing – without at least some degree of professional acting.)

What we want to see, though, when we are going to the theatre, is the PLAYING. We want the emotions the actors are producing to overwhelm us in a way that is only possible in the theatre. If we don’t get this, the play will not be a success.

(I just noticed that I am only speaking for the kind of theatre I like – which has “always” existed and has survived in certain places, like the West End. I even believe it was basically the same for the Ancient Greeks or the Elizabethans, there were just (partly) very different emotions people were interested in, and very different conventions about expressing them. The kind of playing I referred to, in my opinion, is part of the human DNA. Saying things like this concerning German theatre would be embarrassing – but this is exactly why I find German theatre so pathetic. The reason I lost interest in the theatre is that I forgot that it existed! Discovering British actors was the reason I came back to it. And Shakespeare, of course. This is why I only half smile to myself when I hear somebody recite the “Blessed isle”, and why I always feel as if I had come home when I am in London. Great Britain is the PLACE where people have this relationship with “text” that I want to have. Basically: getting the emotions OUT OF the text instead of putting their own into it. Even in music: Hearing the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields play Bach brings tears to my eyes!)

So, now Kalliope needs calories – and coffee! – to be able to kiss again!

Hi Barbara,

Yes, this is a great definition!

PLAYING nails my trying to explain when I am happy in the theatre: when I am having the emotions they are trying to convey myself, and am totally caught up seeing somebody on the stage who has these emotions and can make me believe her/him.

ACTING can be great as well, especially when the story is more important, or the emotions don’t concern me because they are strange to me or not relevant. We obviously are agreed that playing is superior, even though acting is definitely important.

I am just checking my theatre experience to establish if all the actors who impressed me that much were “players”, but I believe so. Sam definitely is one, and Kenneth was in Henry V. Afterwards he was just an “actor”. Fast check successful!

I was bad at acting and small talk as well for a long time because I am too honest, but I learned it. I never was able to answer the question “How are you?” simply with “I am fine.” Because it wasn’t true. I finally settled for “Thanks, and how are you?” Well, nowadays I am fine and therefore I can say it, but I think now if it were otherwise I would just lie – no, “act”! It feels good to act, I am safer dealing with people. I have given up the expectation that I may have a meaningful conversation with everybody, but it is just nice to have exchanged a few friendly words. It makes me feel better. If small talk unexpectedly turns into meaningful talk, that is great, of course!

Hi Claudia,

got this right, obviously! Now we can agree on a number of issues. Yes, Kenneth Branagh or, for example, Joseph Fiennes, are good at acting but, in my opinion, not at playing. This can be an advantage, for example with comedy (I liked Kenneth in “Harry Potter” – where he is playing a comedy character) or even in Shakespeare. But at the end of the day I am not convinced. (I just got a bad conscience about Joseph Fiennes, having now seen him in “The Handmaid’s Tale”. I remembered him “just acting” in “Shylock” and “Shakespeare in Love” but he has definitely worked on his playing!) What you described about Samuel West in “Richard II” is a stellar example for playing. When somebody knows so exactly how this person is feeling that they get this kind of detail right. (My funniest example for it was when Richard Armitage and the producer did the commentary on “Hannibal”, and he asked Richard how Francis Dolarhyde would paint his toenails – “maybe jungle-red?” He considered the question for a few seconds and answered – as I think, in earnest: “No, I think black!”)

(No, I forget because it is now such a long time ago! It was Martin Freeman worrying because he didn’t know if Bilbo had had sex. Hilarious - but THAT was the moment I understood playing!)

Sometimes it is almost funny how much alike we are! I always thought I was the only person in the world who could never answer the question “How are you!” with “Thanks, I am fine!” I immediately start to think about how I am feeling – and, even though I know that I am being ridiculous, I cannot stop it! This is the reason why I avoid asking the question myself – though I know that this is rude. But I am also much better at acting and small talk than I once was. I also feel better than I did and often enjoy being playful. Sometimes I suddenly notice that I enjoy showing off, or being nice and compassionate when I don’t care, or able to talk at depth about things I am not the least bit interested in, but it never lasts long. I suddenly notice: there is NOTHING behind this, I could make better use of my time! And then I just break it off, for example at work. As I said – totally NOT surprised that nobody likes me! Though – when I look closely – there are a few people who might appreciate it that what they get is really me.

Summary

This turned out so important that I have to try and summarize the central issues:

Playing versus acting

That was one of my most important discoveries EVER – that there is a difference I can describe. It is not strictly empirical, though, as they cannot be separated – or exist independently – most of the time, neither on the stage nor in real life. Even in my embryonic experience of playing – when I am reading in different voices – there is a good deal of acting involved. I have a crude talent for voice acting – which got refined lately because I discovered how much I like it. But I like it more when it gets better, and it gets better when I find out how to do things that WORK. For example, basic things like creating spittle to improve my pronunciation, or to get more of the voice into my mouth cavity to reduce the strain on the throat. Though I was largely unsuccessful at learning to play the flute at the time, I learned one important thing: “pushing up” the sound from my diaphragm. If I hadn’t learned this, my voice would still be too low for anybody to hear. The biggest part of acting, in my opinion, is learning SKILLS – often so basic that we never notice that we learned them. But I also constantly learn BY DOING and discover new “devices” for making voices sound different. – On the other hand, acting socially, I am much more successful with other people when I am in a playful mood = in a mood for being someone else! (I think that it is really important to separate acting from lying, but we all know that they are close kin. Everybody knows that the best way of telling a lie is to make ourselves believe in it.)

So, there isn’t a CLEAR distinction. It proved overwhelmingly useful, though, first of all because Claudia understood immediately what I meant. Which means that it is INTUITIVE. And this, I believe, is because the two concepts EMPIRICALLY spring from totally different sources. Playing from being lost in another world that exists mostly or entirely in our imagination, whereas acting is an important part of our social behaviour – if not the most important.

Playing versus “method acting”

I was even more pleased with the definition when I noticed that I can finally get rid of the concept of METHOD ACTING which I have always been uncomfortable with. Not unlike many actors, obviously, because it is mainly used in jest. Maybe because the word suggests that it is something actors can LEARN. Of course it is! - in the basic sense that we had to learn everything we are able to do. But playing is also something actors are doing already - they just have to find out HOW. And everybody whom we notice as so very special on the stage probably found out IN THEIR OWN WAY. Richard Armitage, who is very good at talking about these things, calls ist "concentrating". Which actually means that he IS this person for months, though he can get out of character and be himself to have a conversation (and probably do any number of things he can only do as Richard Armitage ...?) It is obvious that this cannot be taken literally, but it certainly includes that he has to do things AS this person, create genuine memories for them, or write diaries to get into their heads and lives, to a point that he ends up dreaming their dreams. ONLY THEN is he ready for playing them! There certainly is a natural inclination and talent for doing this kind of thing, but there is a lifetime of learning to do it so successfully. And the finding out starts anew with every new engagement because it is exactly the point that it is completely different each time. Considering this, I totally understand Laurence Olivier's frustration, whom - to which Claudia enthusastically agreed! - we both rate as an "actor", not a "player". He cracked "playing" for once and couldn't establish what he had been doing!!! 😞

To BE and not to PLAY – or the other way round?

To say that “Not playing” for me is the same as “Not being this person” was not quite accurate, and, I think, it is also where we differed. I think we both value the theatre equally highly but probably for different reasons. BASICALLY we are the same kind of theatre goers – the kind who DOESN’T want to see directors get their ideas on the stage for us to whet our intellect on. If we are in the theatre, we want things to happen with US because of what the actors are doing. Of course we are different people, and there are different things we want to – or let - happen to us. So I probably got more of a kick out of Chekhov than out of the universal love story of Cyrano, and for Claudia it was the other way round. Nonetheless there is a distinctive feature that was at the beginning of all this and which we don’t share. It came out when I saw “Joker” and was so impressed with the STORY that I wasn’t able to watch it again until now but couldn’t make up my mind about the ACTOR. It wouldn’t have mattered if my sister hadn’t asked how I liked Joaquim Phoenix – only then I noticed that I COULDN’T TELL. (I know why I was so impressed with the story: because it actually hurt. It even left a faint blood trail running through the following conversation. I noticed that I know NOW why I am a person likely to be disliked and bullied – and I am fine with it. But there certainly was a time – which I don’t remember - when I didn’t know and was genuinely upset.) It didn’t matter that I couldn’t tell because it was a FILM, and the story-telling was great, but I realized that it would have mattered if it had been a PLAY. Therefore – even though I don’t quite understand it myself - I came to establish that I want to be sure if somebody is actually PLAYING. Otherwise I don’t believe them. And this is the reason why I am not comfortable with sentences like: “Toby Jones WAS Vanya and Richard Armitage WAS Astrov” – though I understand why people say this and why actors probably like it as the greatest compliment they can get. When their audience feels like this they can be sure that they have succeeded. But BEING this person can happen entirely WITHOUT playing – or rather just with some kind of “real life playing”. When the actor is a good fit for the character, and everything else about him is convincing – especially the other actors! – we just ASSUME that he is this person and it mostly works. But I have come to value great PLAYING so much that I am never quite happy with it. And I noticed that, in the theatre, I can ALWAYS tell if somebody is playing. “Just being” is not a viable option on the stage. And I assume that it has something to do with my own relationship with text. Roughly, that the aesthetic quality of the text – being strongly moved by text in DIFFERENT ways AT THE SAME TIME – is such an important motivation for me to “interact”. And that I love it so much to see this intense aesthetic relationship with text in another person. That is why I valued James McAvoy (even) more than Toby Jones, and why I was taken in by Chris Eccleston’s playing Macbeth even though he was not good on that day – because I was so moved by the strange intimacy he had with his text. And this is why I always come back to the moment where Richard Armitage entered the stage AS John Proctor in “The Crucible” – when I could see the great playing BEFORE I saw anything else. For a few seconds, there was NOTHING BUT the playing.

And I think there is a brilliant transition to my next chapter about the TEXT VORTEX …