Appendix One: Testimonies by Barker Actors

Appendix One: Testimonies by Barker Actors Julia Tarnoky: Cynthia in Ursula, Henderson/Plevna/Berezina/ Season in The Ecstatic Bible, Suede in He Stumbled, Lindsay in A House of Correction, Hawelka in I Saw Myself Barker’s work presents vital invitations and challenges to respond to with all facul- ties: vocal, physical, intellectual, instinctive, and imaginative – you need to speak clearly and think fast. All the text – different in my experience from play to play and character to character – is muscular, sculptural and visceral. Strongly rhythmic and musical, it is best thought and spoken on the word, on the line – engaging with the vitality inherent in every word and each syllable. It may be complex and contradic- tory, inventing and reversing, so the way to understand the character, and be clear for an audience, is to commit moment to moment to connecting directly to the words – which constitute actions. Any speech or utterance for a Barker character has vital significance; even when they seem or feel lost for words, this is given eloquent expression. Every word is a key – which spoken, unlocks meaning. As distinct from other forms, in which speech is like the crest of a wave, the culmination of a process, in Barker the word has the force of the wave itself. Ursula was the first time I worked with The Wrestling School so the pleasures of engaging with this works’ sheer outstandingly original acuity of perception and expression were new – indeed, revelatory – to me. Amidst the panoramic landscape of The Ecstatic Bible, I had a range of characters to encompass. My aim was to make them all distinctly different which I was able to do by focusing on the shapes in the text, my breathing, and where I placed my voice to discover how each might best be inhabited. After the huge scale of The Ecstatic Bible, which felt like a great wasteland and an open excavation, He Stumbled seemed possessed of a darker narrower atmosphere, set, as it were, at great depth. In production it proved to be no less epic, showing that a close examination of the particular casts its own light and throws its own shadows to different but equally universal effect. What I have found distinctive about performing Barker with TWS to any audience is a particular confidence in the text, the spectacle and the production as a whole. I think, in general, people are happy to be honoured and respected with the genuine complexity of something given and inhabited with vitality; true intensity is repayed by true attention. Barker is distinctive and unfussy as a director; he never fails to treat enquiry with courtesy, interest, patience, and an honest answer. It is like being in an orchestra: he expects that everyone can play their instruments and read the music, so we begin. Justin Avoth: Albert in Gertrude – The Cry, 13 Objects, Eff in Dead Hands, Guardaloop in I Saw Myself (reading) Rehearsing with Barker is rigorous and liberating. There are no long drawn-out dis- cussions of themes, meaning or what – in any given scene – we might aim for. The scene is read once for understanding and a second time if rhythmical inaccuracies have identified moments where there has been a lack of clarity; then the scene is put 254 Appendix One: Testimonies by Barker Actors 255 on the floor, and one looks to find the appropriate physical expression of thought and emotion. In the best instances the process allows the actor to work on a deeper, perhaps more sub-conscious, level, since it denies him the possibility of integrating pre-prepared ideas and physicalities. The great pleasure of Barker’s work resides in the complete structure of atmosphere, incorporating sound and design. These effects are not separate from the performer but rather inform the interpretation and act with the actor. They penetrate within and produce a response in the actor which informs the moment to moment drama of the play. Plasticity or dexterity of voice is essential, but the language of the play does not only reside in the voice but in the physiological response to the choice of words and the rhythmical structure as well as the movement of the argument. The cast of Gertrude – The Cry comprised of a mixture of experienced Wrestling School actors and enthusiastic new arrivals. I was delighted to be a part of a theatre which was neither polite nor complacent and which demanded a participation from its audience rather than a passivity. I felt as close as one could be to working in European Theatre in Britain. I developed an idea about Albert in rehearsals and performances, an idea which may not have been what Barker had in mind but was helpful in structuring him. I felt that there were three distinct phases in his development: in the first he is (in the framework of Shakespeare’s play) Horatio – friend and fellow student; then he becomes a sort of composite Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, not insofar as he is charged by Gertrude and Claudius with observing Hamlet but that he develops his own agenda which is not one residing in friendship (but rather a lust for Gertrude); from this arises his critical view of Hamlet, his distancing from him and final return to marry Gertrude as a ruthless Fortinbras – both martial and marital at the same time. This is something I never discussed with Barker – perhaps it seemed too pat or reductive – but it gave me a shape for Albert’s extraordinary development. 13 Objects presented many creative and technical challenges by constantly casting the actor afresh upon the stage. Playing a (small) multitude of roles and scenes meant one was always entering for the first time, as it were, so hadn’t the luxury of establishing one’s character and developing it towards its conclusion in the accepted way. One had to be both rigorous and flexible, able to excavate the individual scene immediately and inhabit its different linguistic and physical rhythms and atmo- spheres. 13 Objects represented an almost perfect paradigm for the actor’s training and art: the technical necessities of voice and body; sound diction and musicality; fluidity of expression bodily; swiftness of thought and emotion; great reserves of concentration and relaxation; variety in all these means. Eff in Dead Hands took these challenges, albeit in a form which did allow for the development of a single character and situation, and drew them out to huge lengths. Barker described Eff as ‘le battleur’ – the juggler, in tarot cards. Another appropriate image for him might be Sisyphus. There is a vertiginous inevitability to Eff’s ‘progression’ in which resolution – such as it is – amounts to understanding and accepting his circumstances, but not refusing it. Barker delights in his character’s dextrous examination and articulation of their immediate circumstances, particu- larly as their passions and desires are enacted and embodied: ever more layers of language accrete in their desire. The language of Elizabethan theatre requires the actor to pursue the meaning of the phrase until one has, so to speak, beached on the shore. Barker requires his actors to tack and tack and tack again before beaching; enacting an emotional autopsy while the passion is still warm; refusing a conclusion. Eff represented this challenge at its most thrillingly etiolated. Such challenges 256 Howard Barker: Ecstasy and Death inevitably reside in the pursuit of variety of tone and atmosphere. Where the structure of conventional drama allows the scenic division to build a progression, here those changes in key could only be found within the language. Barker’s ability to continuously find variety within the schema of a neurotic monomaniac amply demonstrates his dramatic and philosophical brilliance. The extremity of the language and the situations Barker formulates can sometimes alienate an audience. There is furthermore a suggestion in the choices of costume of setting and sound of exclusivity and complexity which is out of step (sadly, in my view) with the prevailing cultural appetite, which demands either the logic and justice of a fairy tale or the spurious authenticity of ‘verbatim theatre’, as if to high- light or reveal what makes theatre theatre in a cinema-shaped culture. One is there- fore aware that there are several strands of audience. Some are au fait with the work and its style through study or other familiarity. Many people – whether they have encountered the work before or not – respond to its mordant humour. Many people respond to the beauty of the spectacle and its completeness with the commitment of the actors. Some people are unnerved by what is demanded of them by the plays. On one occasion during the 13 Objects tour an audience composed of sixth form stu- dents were totally unable to countenance certain circumstances within the various scenarios. Commonly these were moments when love was addressed. The extremity of the language was well within their scope. The idea of love was transgressive. Whatever the temper or response of the audience the performer can only be fully committed to the play; to its extremity of moral speculation; to the extremity of the language and the physicality. One is supported in this by the completeness of the form and by the strength of the ensemble. The actor can embrace the extremities of his character and even the extremity of the audiences’ responses. The challenges and pleasure of Barker’s work reside in large part in the quality of his superabundant language and ideas. Technically one has to be able to achieve musicality of rhythm and pitch in the voice; one quickly finds that rhythm and meaning are indivisible, so that to be incorrect in the former obfuscates the latter.

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