44 CAMILLE PAGLIA Shakespeare are exponents and defenders of a high culture that is steadily disappearing. Sir Ben Kingsley Because of the dominance of the Method in theater train- ing here, American actors seeking their own “truth” are some- THE ARCHITECTURE OF IDEAS times impatient with the technical refinements in which British actors, with their gift for understatement, are so skilled. Rehearsal is central to the Method actor as a laboratory where SIR BEN KINGSLEY, CBE, joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in the ensemble merges through self- exploration. American cul- 1967 and has been recognized with the title of Honorary Associate ture, from Puritan diaries and Walt Whitman to Jackson Pol- Artist. He has performed in theatrical productions of Macbeth, As lock and Norman Mailer, has always excelled in autobiography. You Like It, King Lear, Troilus and Cressida, Much Ado About But which is more important— the actor or the play? Shake- Nothing, Richard III, Measure for Measure, The Tempest, speare’s plays are a world patrimony ultimately belonging to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Antony and Cleopatra, The the audience, who deserve to see them with their historical dis- Merry Wives of Windsor, Hamlet, Cymbeline, Julius Caesar, tance and strangeness respected. The actor as spiritual quester Othello, The Merchant of Venice, and the one- man play Kean, is an archetype of our time. But when it comes to Shakespeare, based on the Shakespearean actor Edmund Kean, as well as in the actor’s mission may require abandoning the self rather than films ofAntony and Cleopatra and Twelfth Night. His work in such films as Gandhi, Bugsy, Schindler’s List, Sexy Beast, The finding it. House of Sand and Fog, and Hugo has earned him many honors, including an Academy Award and three nominations, two Golden Globe Awards and seven nominations, three BAFTAs, a Screen Actors Guild Award and three nominations, two Emmy nomina- tions, and a European Film Award. He is currently working on a film of Christopher Rush’s novel on the life of Shakespeare,Will . hen Daniela, my wife, was offered Titania in A Midsum- Wmer Night’s Dream last year, it was her first experience performing Shakespeare. I had been in the famous Midsummer Night’s Dream of Peter Brook as Demetrius, and so we sat in our kitchen, right before I had to go to Morocco to film, and we worked through the role of Titania— and two things absolutely delighted me. The first was that my recall, myjoyful recall, of the play was complete and instantaneous, and very detailed. 46 SIR BEN KINGSLEY THE ARCHITECTURE OF IDEAS 47 The second was that Daniela’s grasp of the poetic rhythms of ton and Cicely Berry, I know that it’s possible for them to grasp Titania’s way of speaking was immediate, which could be some- the essence of that acting in the same way. I needed Daniela thing to do with her being Brazilian and with her speaking Bra- to continue this wonderful work on her Shakespeare for longer zilian Portuguese. Our appreciation of rhythm is an extremely than the run of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because she’s got important part of how we communicate artistically, musically, it, and it mustn’t elude her. And Anna did tell me, in all sincer- metaphorically, mythologically. Rhythm in speech, rhythm in ity, that the teachers in the tradition do exist. There are people written language, is crucial to the survival of an idea, and so in who completely comprehend and celebrate what Cicely is doing exploring her Titania— which turned out to be magnificent— I and they are able to pass it on, which to me is a great relief. realized that I myself had really taken in that John Barton key Now, however, the arena in which it’s being passed on is to deciphering poetic drama and turning it into an event that shrinking. I came through the British repertory system, and an audience can be moved by. The way that had stuck to my rib then the Royal Shakespeare Company, and for a period that cage was really gratifying because it has been a while since I’ve loosely spanned eight years I was part of a company in which we performed Shakespeare, and yet it was right there, hugely I’m were all listening to the same beautiful voices on stage decipher sure thanks to Peter Brook, to that production of the Dream, this extraordinary text and make it fresh to the audience, so that and to Cicely Berry, the great voice coach whom I love dearly, they were standing and cheering at the end, shouting, “Please as everyone does. do it again! Please do it again!” My plea, therefore, would be for Now, the concern with the lineage— since John Barton, Cic- schools to adopt or invite a group of travelling players. That was ely Berry, and Peter Brook are of the generation that preceded how I started, actually. It was in what’s called Theatre in Educa- my generation, and are all in their eighties—is that the thread tion, and I was with a group of players who travelled to schools that joins Shakespeare to us, that was twined by them, braided doing Shakespeare for children. We performed excerpts from by them, is going to snap. I recently asked my future daughter- Shakespearean plays, because we were only a group of four so in- law, Anna, who sometimes works with a Shakespeare com- we couldn’t do the whole plays. Later on in my career, whilst I pany, if there is anyone who is going to pass on this baton of was still associated strongly with the Royal Shakespeare Com- how to decipher this miraculous language. It’s important that pany and the National Theatre, I had an opportunity to tour people not force- feed children with it at school badly, but that American campuses with a similar small group of actors. Then, when children encounter it they actually slap their foreheads we were with much more mature students who were in their late and realize, “Of course! It’s my mum, it’s my dad, it’s my cousin, teens and early twenties, but the same gasps of recognition and it’s my life, it’s the war, it’s today.” Which of course it is. To keep understanding of a passage in a play that they were labouring banging on about Shakespeare being relevant is a bit stupid, over, and that seemed totally abstract, were beautiful to hear. really, since of course it’s relevant. It’s us. It’s the birth of the Students were exclaiming, “Oh my God, of course, that’s what greatness of our language. Using my wife as an example of the it means.” I get a rush of experience whenever I come across a generation of younger actors who have been denied John Bar- passage, especially a thorny passage which tends to lie dead on 46 SIR BEN KINGSLEY THE ARCHITECTURE OF IDEAS 47 The second was that Daniela’s grasp of the poetic rhythms of ton and Cicely Berry, I know that it’s possible for them to grasp Titania’s way of speaking was immediate, which could be some- the essence of that acting in the same way. I needed Daniela thing to do with her being Brazilian and with her speaking Bra- to continue this wonderful work on her Shakespeare for longer zilian Portuguese. Our appreciation of rhythm is an extremely than the run of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because she’s got important part of how we communicate artistically, musically, it, and it mustn’t elude her. And Anna did tell me, in all sincer- metaphorically, mythologically. Rhythm in speech, rhythm in ity, that the teachers in the tradition do exist. There are people written language, is crucial to the survival of an idea, and so in who completely comprehend and celebrate what Cicely is doing exploring her Titania— which turned out to be magnificent— I and they are able to pass it on, which to me is a great relief. realized that I myself had really taken in that John Barton key Now, however, the arena in which it’s being passed on is to deciphering poetic drama and turning it into an event that shrinking. I came through the British repertory system, and an audience can be moved by. The way that had stuck to my rib then the Royal Shakespeare Company, and for a period that cage was really gratifying because it has been a while since I’ve loosely spanned eight years I was part of a company in which we performed Shakespeare, and yet it was right there, hugely I’m were all listening to the same beautiful voices on stage decipher sure thanks to Peter Brook, to that production of the Dream, this extraordinary text and make it fresh to the audience, so that and to Cicely Berry, the great voice coach whom I love dearly, they were standing and cheering at the end, shouting, “Please as everyone does. do it again! Please do it again!” My plea, therefore, would be for Now, the concern with the lineage— since John Barton, Cic- schools to adopt or invite a group of travelling players. That was ely Berry, and Peter Brook are of the generation that preceded how I started, actually. It was in what’s called Theatre in Educa- my generation, and are all in their eighties—is that the thread tion, and I was with a group of players who travelled to schools that joins Shakespeare to us, that was twined by them, braided doing Shakespeare for children.