September 27, 1993
Chicago
Daniel J. Travanti
Actors act. They react. Act, the first three letters of action. We take action. But why? What’s it all about, Alfie? Heaven knows, Mr. Allison. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. I do.
In this absurd world—no, in the absurd world of human beings, because the planet is sensible, sensitive, determined, balanced, and eternal, I insist on hoping—the only way I can make a living with a full heart, no regrets, and sometimes even complete satisfaction, is to be an entertainer. I am a creature of delights; a clown, a poet, a buffoon, a villain, a hero, a lover, a dreamer, a pragmatist, a revolutionary, a victim. But when I act, I am all things to all people, depending on the limitations of the play. I operate on three principles: order, symmetry, and control. I will act, play, portray anyone. As long as the world—the little round world I live in as the character—is orderly, symmetrical, and whole. Someone writes it. Real places, real furniture, real trees, cups, and people—but not all substantial, only shadow words—all on an impossibly small space, a page, pages. Pages bearing a gigantic world that can be contained in my mind, in yours.
A person is written. I breathe him. Of course I have nothing to give him, nothing with which to inhabit him, but me. I am he. I believe that so strongly that it is true. All good actors simply believe. As a child believes. It just is so, whatever’s happening. It will be for the audience, too. Because everyone is always a child still, no matter whether she thinks so or doesn’t even realize it. But why in Heaven’s name do I want this? Why does the viewer?
Life is haphazard. At worst, it’s chaotic and painful. At best, it’s unpredictable and pleasant. It is never in my control. It’s never in yours, no matter how much you believe it is. Life—natural life—is poetic. It is always harmonious and satisfyingly clear, pantingly alive and complete. Nature is perfect. Human beings are messy, confused, and scared. But not completely stupid. Human beings long for nature’s order. So they write poetry. They paint pictures. They write novels, essays, histories, life stories, signs, slogans, and laws. They build houses, monuments, workrooms, and even little dwellings for smaller creatures. They map out roads, mountains, boundaries, and borders. They write plays that will include all of the above, full complex characters, human beings, little models to inhabit the miniature worlds of the plays.
Human beings admire weather. We admire it so that we humanize it, as if that were the supreme compliment. We have a word for that—anthropomorphism. We anthropomorphize the storm: it’s vicious. The earthquake is destructive. The wind is unrelenting. The waves are treacherous. The tide is irresistible. The sky is cheerful, the clouds are gloomy, the weather threatening, the hurricane nasty, the cyclone whirling insanely out of control. The breeze is cheery; it’s swirling gaily, it’s soft, caressing, romantic. Human beings admire animals even more. The love birds are romantic. Dogs are faithful, bees are busy, ants are industrious, owls look wise, at least, if they aren’t truly. Foxes are wise, many smaller creatures and even whales are affectionate, dolphins are intelligent (like us, hyuck, hyuck, lucky stiffs), but snakes are treacherous (like some storms and winds are snowstorms, right?) and tigers, lions, wildebeests, and hawks are vicious. Poor, dumb human beings. So naïve, so silly, so childish. No, that’s not fair to children, meaning all of us once upon a time, and some of us still and still fewer of us, namely all actors at least, for all time. We want to belong, we are so discombobulated, so fractured, confused, fearful, and disorderly. So we imitate the storms, all weather, all animals, plants, and even the “restless sands” and shifting, waving seas of grass, wheat, and fields of flowers. The reason we attribute to them our emotions and thoughts, even, is that we need them, crave them, need to claim them in order to feel that we belong to the universe. That’s O.K. But we are confused. The actors—with the blessing of the writers—dispel confusion and bring kinship, harmony, integration, order, symmetry, and control. Out of kilter, out of nature, we want in. So first, we name the orderly forces and creatures after us, as if that will make them family and make us welcome. All of us One. But the wisest of us know that this just ain’t so.
So the writers and actors—all the entertainers—reassemble all the forces. They make plays, skits, ballets, symphonies and play the music, storms and stalkings, mating calls and dances, flights and gallops and swoops, heat and chills, rages and caresses, loves and loyalties, hatreds and compassions, confusions and certainties, in orderly constructions. We actors reintegrate, repeatedly. The reintegration never gets done once and for all, remember. We must reconstitute over and over. We must reorder on a regular basis. People who don’t, go on feeling confused and out of sorts. Out of nature. Lost. Actors find lost people and herd them back, yes, like lost sheep. And maybe actors are the most lost sheep of us all. The neediest. So we do it ourselves because we are desperate for love, for harmony, and the transcendent peace of merely, once and for all, belonging and mattering. Mattering, oh great cosmic force, whatever thou may be, one with the wind, rain, tides, all other creatures, rocks, and EARTH. We take everyone, I mean everyone, along.
You want it too, so you come. Before the ultimate catharsis, though, before the great cosmic ultimate epiphany, what are the immediate understandable attractions of this work?
First, it’s playing. Play acting, I call it. At first, it’s haphazard and that’s part of the fun. At first, it’s very simple and that’s easy. We imitate people we know. We pretend to be someone else we recognize. We have two emotions: happy and sad. WE always start by making people laugh, or scaring them. We like to play villains, but everyone wants to be a hero. Wise and understanding. No one likes to make a fool of himself, except born clowns, and they emerge early. They’re almost always goofy, unstoppable kidders, relentlessly silly. Later, they find it hard to get people to take them seriously. They may be very serious spirits, and that can be exasperating. Everyone likes to play dress-up. Disguises are everybody’s favorite.
The first disguise is a hat or mask. The rest follows. Makeup is a little harder to come by, but lipstick, rouge, and powder are easy. Making faces is better. Real acting will turn out to be an internal change. Faces adjust, flicker, and challenge, please and surprise alternately, scare and attract, according to the emotions that are painting them.
We think we’re being people, but we’re really being emotions. We use words right away, but the ideas come later. WE need only simple plots and simpler stories. Characters are two dimensional at best. Later, all the writing will be more complex. We are heading for the THEATER. Serious constructions. Serious business.
It’s a serious business because it incorporates all the arts. In opera, the plot matters but not so much the words: except as simplistic conveyors of the story and the basic emotions. There is little subtlety of emotion in opera; little shading of motives or actions. The emphasis is on the music—even more on the voice. The sets are important, but they needn’t be as carefully realized as the settings of complex dramas. The actor moves, in a dramatic dance. The actor speaks in poetic prose sometimes, in prose and in poetry, whatever form will best convey the meaning of the play. Lights illuminate the play and paint the locales to harmonize with the theme; the tone of the tale. Furniture is carefully chosen, costumes too. Every prop is selected to enrich the meaning. The actor even sings, a little or a great deal, if the drama warrants it. This is the most human, most nearly universal of the arts. Drama—meaning comedy too, of course—means to be everything in the way of recreated life, but not just human life. It intends to restructure existence as humans see it. Each drama is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying everything. Maybe because we know that it is howling in the wilderness, whistling in the dark, pissing in the wind. It’s a consolation.
A consolation prize? That means something given in lieu of the thing actually wanted. A substitute. I mean, it consoles. It is the very thing wanted, needed. We need to keep understanding. We need to be reminded. We need to keep reaffirming our existence and the meaning of it all. It never comes clear once and for all. So we repeat. To make sense, to make order, to reharmonize, in imitation of nature. We regroup repeatedly, in theater. We reassert ourselves. We distract ourselves with laughs and purge ourselves in tears and anger. We feel less lonely to see others like ourselves. We are enthralled to see others different from us in other, new circumstances. We are transported to other times. We are shown our own times intensified. Sometimes we are shown ourselves as is, and are disturbed by it. But it can be a comfort. And there can be something about a particular actor that soothes. The actor is a combination of qualities that please. The actor emits a personality, an aura, a feeling, feelings, sounds, expressions, tones, a presence: effects that give the viewer comfort. The actor then is all the best that people want and feel, the fullest representation of humankind. Combined and harmonious, not fragmented, confusing, disjointed, vague. To see an actor who appears to be whole is a consolation. It consoles one. And yes, the actor is the substitute for you, perhaps. The actor does is for you, makes sense of it all. That’s entertaining. The actor is essential. The playwright is not. But the actor without the play is not much. The actor is the voice. The playwright provides the song. In order to have a hit record, the actor must have a good song to sing, in a good arrangement.
For the actor, the singing is therapeutic. When an actor is correct, he is exactly and only in this moment. He achieves the ancient goal, being here and now. Undistracted by sounds or other sights, riveted on the truth of his fantasy. It’s peace. It’s clear order. It’s perfect bliss. This rejuvenates and energizes. It keeps actors enthusiastic. It’s this childlike enthusiasm that keeps actors youthful. We think they are prettier and handsomer than they actually are, because they seem joyful. This is one characteristic that is so attractive in them. It’s one reason, I know now, that I felt actors were immortal. They were just too lively to die. They couldn’t. They were too wonderful to end. We end. Sometimes, with a whimper. While we live, we may whimper a great deal more than we like.
Of course, an actor you like is immortal. Like any loved one. But because the actor has touched so many, the actor seems more powerful. The actor endures as a representative of all of us. People make the actor important. The actor agrees to the bargain. The actor needs the bargain. But the actor pays for the privilege. It has always been a curious aspect of the deal, that the public seems to have mixed feelings about the actor. The actor is admired, and even worshipped. The actor is envied, and hated even, by some. The public is ambivalent. We want the actor to shine for us. We want to know the pain the actor is suffering, we long to see the dark side, we rush to read the dirt. We are almost relieved to find out that the life we imagine and envy is ugly, filled with problems. The actor can be our sacrificial lamb, no, human, an Inca dedication to the salacious gods. The actor pays our price for us for seeking immortality, thrilling to immortal longings.
The actor’s price is high. The actor may be the greatest escape artist, who helps us escape. A dual felony. But actually, it’s honest and useful. Some actors know very well that they can’t stand being themselves. One famous actor, a legend, thanked the public and the American Film Institute for allowing him to be other people so successfully, because he had always found it unbearable to be only himself. He couldn’t wait to get to the theater for three years straight to play a hero he admired. The actor’s price for escaping is sometimes failed marriage, failed parenthood, failed friendships. The actor pays the price of humiliation, rejection, doubt, fear, and confusion of playing the waiting game. Patience is trying and promises nothing. Rejection is sometimes the cruelest sort. It’s indifferent, not merely cruel. It shuns. The worst punishment in some religions is shunning. No one knows you. No one even sees you. Phone calls are not answered. Even if you are in the same room with producers or directors and fellow actors—they don’t hear you, if you are out. If you are “in,” you may be praised. You may be respected. But not even respect in an actor’s world is impenetrable, and it’s certainly not immortal.
Our profession throws away talent. To begin with, it’s simply not very good at detecting talent in the first place. Maybe that’s because it isn’t looking for talent, only appeal. Only the appeal of beauty, sexiness, eccentricity, oddness of a milder order, cuteness, “presence.” Sometimes talent is actually recognized and given roles to act that are worthy of it. Often, there isn’t material good enough to match the talent, or too little of it to go around. The actor is seldom a gifted playwright, too. The actor is at the mercy of someone else. The actor does not wish to do business. But the actor is in show business. Still, no actor I know relishes the business work, the making of deals, the scheming that some say is necessary, the bookkeeping. Even when an actor succeeds and makes plenty of money, the actor does not want to be a business person—whether good at it or not. But we are forced to be; to invest, go into debt, to sign documents, make financial decisions, choose business managers, accountants, advisers. We need advice on how to choose advisers. Where do you start? Where does it all end? Sometimes in being thrown away. But we aren’t the only talents to be gotten rid of. In recent decades, our profession threw away half a dozen great film directors who had a great deal to offer, still. We—no, the commercial forces, those indifferent powers that count profit, the only good and youth, the only hope—tossed out the full talent of Frank Capra, Vincente Minnelli, Fred Zinneman, David Lean, Stanley Kramer, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and others. Many more actresses were sent home before they’d lost all their charms. Many actors, too.
Should this risk be counted a fair bargain? Considering the prizes, the large amounts of money, the acclaim, the privilege that can be achieved. Perhaps the pitfalls are not too deep, too treacherous. Nonsense. The cosmic price for carrying the fantasy, for bringing one of the most satisfying comforts to the spirit, for this witchcraft powerful enough to attract adulation and acclaim, is usurious. The fact is, few actors make money. Few actors are ever famous. The burden of fame is backbreaking, for the few. The burden of anonymity is carried by most actors; some with resignation, some with resentment, some with relief. Yes, some actors would just as soon work in small places, are happy to be playing the game of escape, disappearing while in plain sight, and making a decent living. They have never wanted to be hounded and recognized, to be business people, to be frightened by the responsibility, to feel like moving targets of the public or the press.
Some of us simply long to play great roles—or at least good ones—in memorable plays or, better yet, in films . . . because they will live longer. We don’t act for ourselves, though we ought to learn. If we wish to have some peace of mind that in the end of all, we do it for ourselves, our own need, and to our own satisfaction. But we do it for the public. We make spectacles of ourselves. We want to be seen by everyone and to be accepted by all, or most, anyway, at the very least. If an actor is frustrated enough in these attempts, he learns to settle for just working steadily for the most part and having decent work to do from time to time.
In this increasingly absurd world, acting is the only thing I care to be doing. It saves me. It lets me go away and come back refreshed. It lets me enter myself, explore my own depths, and see what might frighten me if I could never get at it. One’s unknown demons, the paper tigers, the mysteries that threaten if only by their invisibility, remain hidden from most people. Actors have a chance to look inside. Sometimes, it’s enough to see and know that the emotions deep down there are not ugly or life threatening. Sometimes, it takes exploring them to find out they can be borne. Sometimes, finding them tells us we’re complicated, and that can be useful. People who can’t ever touch their emotions can stay frightened of them forever. Sometimes, facing things inside—that we feared might be horrible—shows us they are not. Sometimes, we experience emotions that were always there, but not erupting—not reaching a full boil—only bubbling and irritating, scaring us with the threat of explosion. Getting in there, we can meet them, have them, know them. Actors learn to make friends with inimical feelings. We use them, consciously or unconsciously. The actor’s talent is for using emotions the actor doesn’t even know are in there. Acting is intuitive. It has a force of its own. It can give more than its own inspiration. Happiness can sleep inside. Some people don’t know it’s in there. The sheer pleasure of leaping into fantasy can make an actor happy.