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Performance Conventions
The Unconscious
Professional
Flair
The Unconscious
 The Unconscious
has to do with choices made when crafting the engineering product
to tie to the rest of the performance, knowing what kind of theatrical
experience for the patron is wanted at any given moment during
the performance. It is the most powerful performance convention.
It is also the most artistic. For the engineering product to tie
to the patron's unconscious, it must remain unnoticed.
No person can
tell another how to be an artist. You either are an artist or
you are not. Few people have a real capability. And to assume
that a person is an artist does that person an injustice I think.
In my own world, it would equate to a person saying that I am
a mathematician just because I can add 42 and 23. In actuality,
I can barely do that. I am unable to understand calculus or even
algebra. I am unable to divide or multiply. (And that's why God
made calculators, right?!) But my life does not begin and end
in the mathematical world, but in another, one of which I am suited.
As a teacher
and as a director, the best I can do is to try to offer a student
an environment wherein he or she can explore his or her artistry.
It's the student's inner knowledge saying whether or not he or
she is an artist or has the potential to be an artist. I can preach
about knowing your craft and pound my fist when speaking of a
disciplined life and mind. I can proclaim that in order for you
to be able to think outside the box, you have to know the box.
Not only must you explore the box, touch the box, but understand
several perspectives of that particular part of the box you're
looking at. And, finally, I can offer principles to help guide
students. But whenever I offer a guide, like this website, I cannot
help but think of Horace's Ars Poetica and the danger of
reducing the understanding of theatre to being a series of prescriptions
or rules. And yet, in the back of my mind, also, are the voices
of students who say, "I know what I want, but I don't know
how to get it." With this apology, I shall offer some guidelines
on how to tap into the Unconscious. This closely relates to the
essays on Creativity.
Be aware
of the audience. The Unconscious requires the theatrical artist/engineer
first to observe and focus outside himself or herself. It takes
a strong sense of self to let go and "walk in another's shoes."
The best way to do that is to actually care about the audience
and to try to do things to help the audience know and feel something
meaningful to them. A person can practice this discipline by constantly
seeking to understand the needs of people one encounters in one's
life.
Be aware
of motifs. Motifs are usually relegated to a physical object
or a symbol, but they are also norms and values, especially when
they are cultural motifs. Some objects, symbols, norms, and values
are cultural motifs and some are universal motifs. For instance,
the cross is a cultural motif that is both a physical object and
a symbol. It means something to a community of people, but not
to all people. Norms have to do with behavior and therefore connects
to character action in the theatre. Norms are behavioral actions
that are considered by a community to be right or wrong. A taboo
is often an action that the community considers to be beyond wrong.
In the U.S., cannibalism is considered to be so wrong as to be
a taboo. In Equus, when Alan blinds the horses before the
play begins, that behavioral norm is considered to be very wrong
by the community in the world of the drama. Values have to do
with what is considered to be good, bad, or neutral to the community.
Values are qualified; they connect to something else; they form
attitudes about something. In Equus, Hester sees Alan as
having value, his value is good, despite his wrongful acts. Consequently,
she wants Dysart to help him release his pain.
Separate
your values, norms, and beliefs from the world of the drama.
The playwright offers an entire world where characters have particular
points of view, beliefs, and particular philosophies upon which
they base their attitudes. The society of the drama also has its
own set of norms, values, and expectations that help drive characters
to do what they do. In order to truly understand the world of
the drama, it is necessary for a person to set his or her own
attributes - his or her own set of values, norms, expectations,
points of view, beliefs, and philosophies - aside. By suspending
one's own, a person can tap into a wealth of understanding of
the drama without prejudice, without judgment, and without regret.
Use motifs.
If you know your audience ... if you know the culture in which
you live ... if you analyze the drama ... and if you can separate
your own norm, value, and belief systems from that which is given
in the world of the drama ... then you can begin to tap into the
unconscious by exploring your own deep sense of connection. After
losing your own ego, then you have a clean canvas upon which to
experience as would the audience. You become the representative
of the audience. At this point, you can trust in how you feel,
in how you experience, when examining how to actualize an experience
for an audience. The emotional life of a theatrical experience
can often be identified by adjectives: strange, bright, happy,
melancholy, ugly, fearful, dark. By connecting adjectives to cultural
and universal motifs, you can begin to actualize that emotional
life. Again, this connects to the essay on Creativity.
Use contrast.
Theatrical artists/engineers use contrast in order for the
patron to experience a particular balance to the main thrust of
that experience. It's much like that old saying that you can't
know what good is without knowing the bad. Through analysis, you
know the main theme of a drama and its contrasting theme. Match
motif with the main theme and its contrast, keeping the contrasting
theme as a secondary aspect of the experience, much like using
accent colors when painting. Also match motif with characters,
knowing which characters are primary and which are secondary,
and by using adjectives, know what motif to use to match a character's
attributes. If the engineering product is not associated with
a drama, but a music concert, then concentrate on the life of
the music itself and use contrast; it tells its own story.
Sculpt. Color,
line, shape, light intensity, light angle, light movement, sound
quality, sound intensity, and sound direction also associate with
motif and its connecting adjectives. For instance, you have identified
the adjectives "angry" and "isolated" as contrasting
themes or qualifiers of themes. If a particular red at a particular
time that is connected to a particular theme or character feels
angry to you (as the representative of the audience), then use
red lighting. But if a particular yellow at that particular time
connects to the contrasting theme or character and that feels
isolated to you, then also use yellow lighting. But it does not
end there. Let us say that if the main adjective motif as red-as-angry
not only relates to the main theme but also to how the main character
feels about his world, you might want to project red lighting
as a background onto the cyclorama. It feels right to you because
it seems as if the red IS the world at that particular time. At
the same time, you would not bathe the stage with yellow light
because that does not feel like isolation. Rather, by using angle,
intensity and a small shape, allow the yellow light to reveal
a very small portion of the stage, one that reveals the character
who at that moment feels isolated. The rest of the stage would
be in much lower light intensity. Carrying this through with sound,
the same principles would apply. The audience might hear an angry
sound general background but at a very low intensity and no identifiable
direction, and as the yellow spot moves onto the character, a
mournful melody enters from only one direction. It feels right
to you, as the representative of an audience member, according
to the adjectives describing the emotional life of the experience.
And it matches the other theatrical elements - design, directing,
and acting. By matching the other theatrical elements, the engineering
product helps tell the story.
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