Even in Arcadia: Conflict, Certainty and Self-Perception Whilst Directing Tom Stoppard’S Iconic Play

EVEN IN ARCADIA: CONFLICT, CERTAINTY AND SELF-PERCEPTION WHILST DIRECTING TOM STOPPARD’S ICONIC PLAY A Thesis Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN THEATRE DIRECTING by Elizabeth J. Carlson May 2015 Thesis Approval: Ed Sobel, Thesis Advisor Head of Directing, Department of Theatre ABSTRACT This thesis is a partial documentation of the process of preparing and rehearsing Temple University Theatre’s 2015 production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, and the ways in which the process was artistically challenging and personally transformative. It is a demonstration of the manifold procedure of discovering action through language in the rehearsal process, the essential relationship of language to behavior in all collaborative practice and both the embrace of constructive conflict and the fundamental exercise of self-reflection as the primary catalysts for artistic development. ii For Mark, my audience. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to Ed Sobel, Doug Wager, Bob Hedley, Peter Reynolds and Michael Kaufman for generous guidance, support and encouragement throughout the process, to David Girard, for being a loyal companion on this leg of the journey, and to Gabriel Guerin without whom, nothing. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii DEDICATION ................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS THE MEASURE OF ARTISTIC GROWTH? .......................... 1 CHAPTER 2: ARCADIA’S ELLUSIVE ESSENTIAL BEAUTY ..................................... 4 CHAPTER 3: LANGUAGE AND ACTION ..................................................................... 9 The All-Important First Day ........................................................................... 10 Indside-Out/Outside-In ................................................................................... 22 Past Process: Outside-In ..................................................................... 24 Present Process: Inside-Out ................................................................ 29 CHAPTER 4: AT THE TABLE ....................................................................................... 32 CHAPTER 5: FORM AND CONTENT ........................................................................... 42 Compromise and Surrender ............................................................................ 44 Attention and Intention ................................................................................... 49 CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................... 59 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................... 63 APPENDICES A. DIRECTOR’S NOTE ................................................................................................. 64 v B. INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH TOPICS ........................................................................ 65 C. ARCADIA GROUNDPLANS ..................................................................................... 66 D. PRODUCTION PHOTOS .......................................................................................... 68 vi CHAPTER 1 What Is The Measure Of Artistic Growth? “We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms…” (42) To be an artist is to be in motion. To be always in the process of becoming. To encounter the world with a beginner’s heart and an open mind. In this state of constant motion and boundless influence: what is the true measure of artistic growth? In our linear, binary conception of development: from small to large, from few to many, from here to there: how do we begin to quantify artistic progression? As an artist, one must be constantly in pursuit of new languages, new processes, new ways of seeing. By adding to our inventory of instruments, we gain new entry into our work. We not only see what is new and newly possible, but we see our past work more accurately and our future work holds transformative potential. By learning to wield these new tools, we sharpen our ability to use and evaluate all our other tools. Nothing is ever lost; it is only shifting in and out of focus, or along a hierarchy of usefulness depending on the task. I am choosing to measure my artistic growth, not in the inches and miles of movement along a linear path towards a finite goal, but by the diversification of my skills and an ever deepening understanding of myself. When I began graduate school I thought of myself as an artist who was more akin to a choreographer than a director. I have always been attracted to the astonishing possibilities of bodies in space, and my training was a nearly exclusive enforcement of 1 that predilection. I valued physical precision, innovation and experimentation above all else in my work, and would often give preference to acrobats and dancers over actors when casting an ensemble. I never began a process without introducing a new physical skill-set out of which the ensemble would build the corporeal vocabulary of the world of the play. I chose to work with scripts that bowed easily to a robust physical manipulation; even those that seemed to be couched in pseudo-realism, I bent and maneuvered into expressive movement pieces. I believed fully and absolutely in the generative genius of the ensemble. I felt my role was to create the structure, introduce vocabulary and then let the ensemble invent everything else. If that meant the work lost its focus, so be it. I was concerned with the kind of ensemble dynamic that would enable intensely physical, theatrical work. I would avoid using the text as a measure of the effectiveness of the choices, often allowing the ensemble’s goals to rule independently of the play. It was not an intentional mistrust of the text, but the physical, experimental work of the ensemble was often given preference over a deep investigation into and loyalty to the fundamental requirements of the play. It was a way to make the text subservient to my primarily physical work. It was a way to appear to be taking risks without leaving the comfort of my familiar processes and products. I have always been intensely conscious of my lack of training as an actor. Most directors I know are confident in guiding an actor’s process because that is where they, unlike me, started their work in the theatre. I wanted to disguise my shortcomings, which I felt were primarily a lack of fluency in the 2 vocabulary of the actor, and this lack of confidence lead to wariness, not only of text but of actors and their processes. Arcadia was therefore a contentious thesis project for me. It is a play that demands an absolute trust of language, will not tolerate directorial embellishment and imposition, and necessitates the humanizing process of the actor for the play to be palatable, let alone comprehensible. It is a play that is verbally and intellectually, rather than physically acrobatic. It forced me to re-frame my skills and my perceived strengths while also confronting my textual and actorly insecurities head-on. For me, Arcadia was about trust: trusting language and the processes of the actors, trusting that experimentation had a place in the more subtle work of text analysis and that the discoveries would be just as thrilling, trusting that the value of my work was not in wild impositions on the piece, but in creating the space and the process that allows the truths present in the text to emerge on their own terms. For me, trust is not a simple, finite state-of-being. It is a constant process, an arduous struggle. What follows is a documentation of the conflict I found myself in with Arcadia, both as a play and in the process it demanded from me. It is not a neat, comprehensive analysis of how my work on the play resolved itself into a completed, satisfying product. Rather it is an honest record of the struggle in the process. How I learned not to avoid, but to embrace the liminal state of being in conflict as a necessary catalyst both for personal artistic growth and for a more active and intentional relationship to the process of making work. 3 CHAPTER 2: ARCADIA’S ELUSIVE ESSENTIAL BEAUTY Certainty, Presence And The Search For Truth “It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.” (52) I began my work on Arcadia in a state of resistance. I had a specific vision of myself as an artist that was being jarringly contradicted by being asked to do this piece as my thesis project. Arcadia is a play that I love; I love reading it, I love seeing it performed, I have never had the inclination to direct it. It was a play for a ‘different kind’ of director: the kind of director who sits at the table and expounds on ideas for hours at a time, not for me who always has a body-first process, who believes in the primacy of corporeal discovery. I was feeling misunderstood, under-appreciated, and supremely sorry for myself, when it was brought to my attention that I was not being asked to direct Arcadia because I would be good at it, or even because I would enjoy it. It was precisely because the piece is not susceptible to my usual, comfortable set of directorial tools, that the

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