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The Actors' Brief: Experiences with Chekhov

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Alfred Nordmann
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Extract

Künstler ist nur einer, der aus einer Lösung ein Rätsel machen kann. (Karl Kraus)

Only that person is an artist who can turn a solution into a riddle. (Karl Kraus)

The aphorism by Karl Kraus captures the intuition that an artwork is an intentional structure, that it represents the response to a question or the solution to a problem, if only a problem of self-expression. Even when, for example, a theatrical performance is riddled with accidental omissions of text and other mishaps, we find ourselves watching and appreciating it as if everything in it was meant to be as we see it. It has therefore been said that in the presence of art we ‘suspend disbelief’, we suspend the sceptical suspicion according to which the arrangement of internal relations within the artwork might be less than perfectly meaningful: in the presence of art we begin as absolute believers in the integrity of the artwork.

But there is another dimension to Kraus's remark: what appears to be the solution to a problem or a coherent response to some situation becomes a riddle of its own. The apparent integrity of the work may result from interpretation rather than through the deliberate intentionality of the artwork itself. Moreover, it is the exception for a work of art to be reducible to providing a solution to a particular problem. Indeed, we would tend to deny that artworks are governed by instrumental reason. This is true even in the case of theatrical performances: a performance is bound to provide more than a solution to the problem of how to stage a particular play; it cannot be regarded merely as an instrumental means of conveying a drama.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , Summer 1994 , pp. 134 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1994

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References

Notes

1. Cf. Enzensberger, Christian, Literatui und Interesse (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981).Google Scholar

2. This is and has been the general presumption in literary theory. The following reflections are quite in agreement with this presumption. Far from regarding the perceived meaning of a performance as caused or prompted by a set of intentions governing the staging, this paper nevertheless maintains that perceived meaning involves hypotheses about what was intended by author, director, and actors. These hypotheses are testable to some extent. However, for purposes of interpretation there is little need to test them since their postulation alone yields the satisfaction of ‘understanding’.

3. Baxandall, Michael, Patterns of Intention (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

4. Ibid., p. 36.

5. Ibid.

6. Inference from the phenomenon (e.g. the performance of a play) to a hypothesis that would explain it, is called abductive inference. Abductive inference can only suggest a hypothesis as plausible but it cannot establish its truth. Charles Sanders Peirce first elaborated abductive inference as a means of guessing from a solution at the problem to which the solution does provide a solution. Cf. also Wille, Franz, Abduktive Erklärungsnetze: Zur Theorie theater-wissenschaftlicher Aufführungsanalyse (Frankfurt: Lang, 1991).Google Scholar

7. Since the five stagings yield different determinations of the very content of that scene, it is virtually impossible to provide an innocuous synopsis.

8. Chekhov, Anton, Three Sisters (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1984), p. 28.Google Scholar

9. Stroeva, M. N., ‘The Three Sisters in the Production of the Moscow Arts Theater’, Chekhov: A Collection of Critical Essays ed. Robert, Louis Jackson (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1967), p. 126.Google Scholar

10. Op. cit. (note 8).

11. And all of these sounds occur within the space of no more than about 50 exclamations, questions, and full sentences. Stanislavsky calls for these sounds in a prompt book created before rehearsals began. Stanislavsky, Konstantin, Drei Schwestern von Anton Tschechow: Regiebuch (Berlin, Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, 1988), pp. 67–71.Google Scholar

12. Op. cit. (note 9), p. 133.

13. Testimony to this peculiar Brief is the fact that in conjunction with its staging the Schaubiihne published a lush documentary volume Anton Pawlowitsch Tchechow und das Ensemble Konstantin Sergejewitsch Stanislawskis (Berlin, Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, 1984)Google Scholar as well as Stanislavsky's prompt book (cf. note 11).

14. Not all critics appreciated this nostalgic quality of the performance, e.g. Henning Rischbieter: ‘What is being imitated without a millimetre's distance is the art of stage design of historical illusionism. Chekhov's play is enshrined under the belljar of its time of origin. Dead theatre’ (Theater heute 25, March 1984, p. 14).Google Scholar For a collection of critical voices see also the 1984 yearbook of Theater heute.

15. It is not at all clear whether Peter Stein followed a critical or even political impulse while he pursued an actors’ Brief that required actors to imitate actors and acting of the past. Cf. his statement in Über Cechov ed. Peter, Urban (Zürich: Diogenes, 1988), pp. 380f.Google Scholar

16. Again, in the words of Henning Rischbieter: ‘the inner wishes of all these individuals prove ridiculously futile when they try to act them out’ (Theater heute 21, December 1980, p. 16).Google Scholar

17. In Brechtian terms one might say that Rudolph and his actors analysed each scene for the character's Gestus, the actors’ Brief consisting in the representation of this Gestus. In Freudian or Lacanian terms one might say that the characters only reveal themselves and become someone else through occasional slips in the course of otherwise meaningless conversation. The actors’ Brief would then emphasize the importance of maintaining the meaninglessness of that conversation as against the superficial pleasures which the characters overtly pursue. It simultaneously enjoins the actors to be highly alert for any chance to define themselves opportunistically anew and to discover a new set of desires for their character through any slip in their otherwise meaningless conversation.

18. The production originated a line of theatrical inquiry which was subsequently pursued at the Stadttheater Konstanz and now at the Staatstheater Hannover. I served as dramaturge for that production.

19. In the meantime, another production explored the proximity of Chekhov and Beckett. In Roberto Ciulli's 1991 staging at the Theater an der Ruhr, the first three acts were presented to an audience of the future, an audience that can laugh at and cherish the futility of all that went on in those acts. In the fourth act, the three sisters themselves are shown to be that audience of the future. As they listen to tapes, they remind themselves of a past where they still enjoyed the luxury of feeling and hope. Accordingly, Axel Gottschick also played Vershinin's declaration of love for a grand audience. Cf. Theater heute 32, July 1991, pp. 20f.Google Scholar

20. Since Brace Up! appears to be a work-in-progress, I should point out that the following description refers to a performance in Zürich in May of 1992. It differed in a number of ways from a 1991 performance in Frankfurt in which Ron Vawter had the part of Vershinin.

21. The image of Masha on the screen appears to be an image of Masha as the audience sees her at that very moment on stage: sitting with her eyes closed and her head leant back somewhat like Stanislavsky's Masha.