RICHARD SCHECHNER AND THE PERFORl^IANCE GROUP: A STUDY OF ACTING TECHNIQUE AND METHODOLOGY by ESTHER SUNDELL LICHTI, B.A., A.M. A DISSERTATION IN THEATRE ARTS Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May, 1986 ego r3 copyright 1986 Esther Sundell Lichti T'3 C^^^» -^ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply indebted to Professor Richard A. Weaver and to the other members of my committee. Professors Clifford A. Ashby, Michael C. Gerlach, Daniel 0. Nathan, and Steven Paxton, for their encouragement and helpful criticism. I would also like to thank Richard Schechner for his time and generosity. This study was funded in part by the Paul Whitfield Horn Fellowship made possible by the Texas Tech University Women's Club and the University Quarterly Club. Finally, I am grateful for the love and support I have received from my fellow students, my friends, and my family. Ill ABSTRACT The social and cultural upheaval of the 1960s spawned a wide range of "alternative" theatre companies concerned with finding a solution to what they perceived as the imminent death of theatre in the United States. The Performance Group, under the direction of Richard Schechner, proved one of the most important. The study is presented in three sections. Section one sets forth the history of TPG, the theory of environmental theatre, and a study of influences upon the company's work. Section two examines the productions Dionysus in 69, Makbeth, and Commune with regard to their development from the inital idea through performance, including descriptions of the physical environments, acting problems, and performance methodology. The concluding section summarizes TPG's actor training and performance methods, the role of the actor in the mise-en-scene, and unique problems arising from the basic theories of environmental theatre. It studies the changing definition of the actor's role in theatre and explores the contribution that TPG's work can make to contemporary developments in actor training. TPG pioneered a style of performance that emphasized the actor as the central figure in the creative theatrical IV process, working within an environmental design that merged audience and performance spaces. In the course of their productions, the company developed a system of actor train­ ing which drew upon numerous antecedents in theatre, social science, music, dance, and visual art. They created a meth­ odology concerned with mastery of the actor's physical and vocal instrument, self-referentiality, and heightened commu­ nication among actors and between actors and audience. Their training process provides a means of dealing with many of the problems which face actors working in the contempo­ rary theatre. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 111 ABSTRACT iv CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. THE HISTORY OF THE PERFORMANCE GROUP 12 III. RICHARD SCHECHNER AND ENVIRONMENTAL THEATRE 34 Environmental Theatre 39 IV. INFLUENCES 50 Theatre 51 Stanislavski 51 Meyerhold 54 Brecht 58 Artaud 62 Grotowski 65 lonesco 69 Oriental Theatre 71 The Contemporary Theatre Avant-Garde 74 Social Science 78 R.D. Laing 79 Encounter Groups 81 Gestalt Therapy 83 Transactional Analysis 85 Erving Goffman 87 Claude Levi-Strauss 89 Mircea Eliade 90 The Other Arts 92 John Cage 92 Merce Cunningham and Ann Halprin 95 Visual Art and the Happening 97 V. DIONYSUS IN 69 103 VI VI. MAKBETH 124 VII. COMMUNE 140 VIII. ACTOR TRAINING AND METHODOLOGY 155 The Training Process 155 The Actor's Role in the Mise-en-scene 172 Specific Problems for the Actor :- 179 IX. CONCLUSION 189 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 196 Books 196 Articles 202 Other Sources 204 VI 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The social and cultural upheaval of the 1960s spawned a wide range of theatre companies concerned with finding a solution to what they perceived as the imminent death of theatre in the United States. Many factors motivated these "alternative" theatre groups: a desire to circumvent the economic forces which kept production costs soaring while ticket sales declined, the wish to experiment with accepted ways of acting, directing, and designing, and the need to expand the boundaries of theatre by exploring nonverbal communication and abstract realities in the hope of creating a new kind of performance that would rejuvenate what they saw as a stagnating art form. Among these companies, the ensemble groups such as The Living Theatre, The Open Theatre, and The Performance Group raised the greatest controversy and attracted the most attention. Founded in 1967 and continuing until 1980, The Performance Group under the direction of Richard Schechner proved one of the most enduring of these companies, as well as one of the most innovative. Richard Schechner and The Performance Group (referred to from now on as TPG) pioneered a style of performance that 2 emphasized the actor as the central figure in the creative / process of theatrical work. Instead of having the actor serve as an interpreter for the playwright's words and ideas, filtered through the director's viewpoint, TPG sought to heighten the actor's freedom of choice and allow him to reveal to the audience the person behind the character mask. They strove to create a situation where both actor and audi­ ence were part of the performance so that it became impossi­ ble for the spectator to withdraw and view the theatrical reality objectively, as separate from the "real" world of his everyday existence. Richard Schechner and TPG sought to make the site of each production an integral part of the work, which encom­ passed both acting and audience areas in one space. Accord­ ing to Schechner, in typical western theatre, the audience sits passively, in a darkened auditorium, separated from the performers by brilliant lights and scenic pieces. Informa­ tion flows from the stage to the audience, but the actors receive limited feedback. The audience has a single focus, chosen for them by the director. The play appeals to the audience member's intellect, allowing him to hold himself aloof from what the actors are experiencing onstage. In Schechner's environmental theatre, however, the multiple and variable focus forces each audience member to choose for himself what to watch. Since the actors and audience are within a single space, everyone is equally aware of everyone else. The rest of the audience becomes part of the perform­ ance that each individual audience member perceives. By providing no separate space to which the viewer may with­ draw, the environment forces him into participating in the experience the production creates. He may choose to deny the experience, but he cannot avoid it. He cannot remain passive. This allows the audience member options ranging from leaving the theatre entirely to joining the performers and participating in the production. Environmental theatre necessitates a contact between performer and audience member that demands an unusual degree of personal commitment from the actor. Richard Schechner and TPG felt that such a commitment created specific needs in the area of actor training that were not being met by ex­ isting methods. Although they studied the techniques of emotion and sense memory, the company realized that these alone were not enough to allow the actor to communicate ful­ ly. Training of the performer's entire instrument, body, voice, and mind, must be emphasized. The company investigated the phenomenon of communication on three separate levels: within the actor himself, within the acting company, and between actor and audience. They sought ways to multiply the means by which information and experience could be passed from person to person, so the theatrical event would be heightened for all participants. Richard Schechner's vision of theatre has had a major influence on contemporary American theatre. In his work with TPG, Schechner synthesized the work of Jerzy Grotowski, one of the foremost theatre theorists of this century, and attempted to apply those principles with actors trained in realistic acting techniques. He explored the positions of ritual and myth in theatre, experimented with the possiblity of the actor functioning as a shamanistic figure, and intro­ duced the concept of theatre as a social science. Schechner's work made it possible to examine and measure theatrical interactions objectively, creating in turn the opportunity to manipulate them by experimental means to achieve a stated goal: the revitalization of theatre through the creation of an authentic experience for the audience. Although Schechner's work had a profound impact on oth­ er experimental theatre groups, a search of the literature reveals that no major work on Richard Schechner and TPG has been written, except by Schechner himself. His first book. Public Domain (1969) is a collection of essays and includes work on Happenings, Environmental Theatre, and the use of communal events as a basis for theatre. It also contains an essay on The Bacchae, the play which provided a starting point for Dionysus in 69. Environmental Theatre (1973) doc­ uments the growth of TPG and expands on the theories and techniques upon which the concept of Environmental Theatre was based. Dionysus in 69, compiled by members of TPG and edited by Schechner, describes the creation and production of the play and includes many enlightening photographs. Theatres, Spaces, and Environments (1976), co-authored with Brooks MacNamara and Jerry Rojo, contains detailed descrip­ tions of the environments for the three productions under study and essays on environmental design and its historical antecedents. Essays in Performance Theory (1977), explores Schechner's studies of theatre as a social science and its relationship to sociology and anthropology. Since 1977, Schechner has published several more books, but his studies have led him away from the area of Environmental Theatre, and the later works have little to offer this study. In addition to his books, Richard Schechner published articles in numerous periodicals in the disciplines of the fine arts and the social sciences.