Etudes: Resting on the Stage

When the word "etude" is used, the first thing I think of is the time I spent practicing etudes for piano performance and study with my piano teachers: 

More interesting than scales, but still just for practice

Etudes are practice songs which are not necessarily meant for uber performative means. They are meant to encourage skills in much the way a scale is, but they can sometimes be beautiful, haunting, or just particularly wonderful. Some of my etude pieces on the piano are still very special to me. The simplicity and complexity of skill and expression inherent in the notes and available through expressive playing are exhilarating to play. [Note to self: when settled in Seattle, keep an eye out for a free craigslist piano]

Songs with names like Etude no. 5 or Lullaby were on my top list.

When I studied at the Stanislavsky Summer School, in Boston, I was introduced to the idea of etude as acting study. I did not understand at first. Lost in translation I thought that moment was the operative idea behind an etude. The first one I presented was the image of a woman, a tired, middle-aged mother in an American Apparel Isle. Along with many other misunderstanding students, received quite a lecture. That no, it was not a feeling or an emotion, it was more like a journey of doing something. A practice piece of showing a story. I confess that, while I continued to present etudes which improved immensely, I don't believe that I really understood what I was trying to accomplish. The only thing I can think is that I was trying to make it fun or right. Not that there was an objective right that I or anyone else could know before hand, but, as Mischa explained, [Here I paraphrase horrendously] "You know when it's done right but you can't really say how. When it's wrong, we can figure out what's keeping it from being right." 

The method was almost via negativa (like Grotowski). I remember more the two etudes that I did really right than any of the tons that were not right [I don't like the word wrong for this as it doesn't really describe what happens with an etude that misses the mark. There really isn't a good/bad in this method of work, which is a hard thing to understand in American acting]. The first was Nina in the Seagull, getting ready to see Trigorin and sneaking out of her second story bedroom to say goodbye. It wasn't the most adventurous, but I remember doing my makeup checking. Listening for parents, and then figuring out, awkwardly, difficultly, how to get out the window without mussing my dress or my makeup so that I wouldn't be caught and would still be pretty to see him. The second was my animal etude in which I was a sloth. A last minute addition of nuts, which I was attempted to get to, turned out to be exactly what was needed. In each of these, I don't remember specific moments so much as I remember the feeling of flow that happened. I was both completely free and knew exactly what needed to be done. I did it. 

"These studies of life, as we can see, are neither exercises nor scales. 

They are filled with the meaning of life, with life vibrations.

They are ETUDES." 

-Veniamin Filshtinsky

In his article on the use of etudes in acting class, Filshtinsky discusses how etudes, studies, differ from exercises or scales because there is something full of life in them. I think this relates to the via negativa in the metaphor "full of life" as if life were some kind of substance with which we could fill the vessel of the etude if only we could remove the blocks that are keeping it out. The blocks are like impurities in the metal of a tuning fork or the stones that damn up a creek. You can still achieve something, but the difficulty is immense and the sense of being off is palpable and disheartening. Like when string is out of tune on an instrument. I hate that feeling so much. 

Filshtinsky further suggests that "As it has been noted repeatedly, when an etude is presented for the second time it often fails, becoming a lifeless, cold and formal “work of art”." When asking my Russian professors about repeating an etude, they always said no. They said that something died when you did the etude again, unless it was a totally new etude that was just related to the other. This is also a strange way to move the brain. It is at once an intense valuing of the artistic creative moment and also an affirmation of the Zen knowledge of ephemeral nature of life--and by extension performance. This is not to say that repetition is wrong, but rather, as I think I've discovered, to rest in the activity, rather than in the knowledge--like so many theatrical productions--that you can try again tomorrow, in the next take, at the next rehearsal, at the next performance, the next time you perform the role etc. It comes to me as a way that actor's can practice living in the moment and really seeing what they are doing and the given circumstances in which they practice. If we perform etude after etude after etude, our failures begin to lose power with the strength of the technique of performing action in the moment with the given circumstances. It's a form of technique.

Annnnd I'm back with Ben Spatz and what the body can do. The practice of etudes is a technique of refining what the body can do. 

All this is to preface or maybe to understand or contextualize the etude that our cast of Jane Eyre performed on Friday night. After a bunch of ensemble games and warmups and discussion. Our director asked if we could do one more movement experiment.  She asked if we could explore the moment of birth or fusion of Jane/Bertha as a single girl. The only requirements were that we start separate, fuse, and find an ending. There was no music playing, only our bodies and voices in the space. There was  no lighting. There were no costumes. There were no lines. There wasn't even really a script. Just an event and the Beginning, Middle, End structure. 

I preface this with these descriptions because the etude happened and we did the play. 

I remember feeling as if there were music, though there was none. I remember feeling as if I was in the story and not a rehearsal hall. 

Bertha (Sarah) and Jane (I) started at opposite ends of the room and interacted with the ensemble in different ways, she played leapfrog and I skipped with the other girls. Then the ensemble slowly put us together, which we resisted at first, then explored within the ensemble before breaking away together in a joyous fit of giggles. Then the ensemble helped to tear us apart. It was physical and distressing. At the climax of it, Rochester (Johnny) let out a scream that was so in my heart that it felt like my own scream. I remember so many ensemble members sitting with me holding my hands as I was really alone for the first time. I remember trying to get to Bertha who was laid out on the floor and held down. I remember being eyeballed back away by Helen (Aubrey). I remember being placed together with Rochester, who looked at me and I knew I was wild and only half there and I knew why he said I looked like a fairy. I remember little else between but that I was finally brought back to Bertha and Rochester who curled against me finally together, their heads on my shoulders. I remember sitting and seeing everyone arranged around us where we held each other, crying and so glad to be back together. 

It's not the actual story of Jane Eyre, but it was filled with the meaning of that life, the vibrations of the story, which we explored. There was something right about it, something that couldn't be repeated by trying to do that particular etude again, but which now lives inside each of us as we continue the process of building this play together. 

I think the etude explorations have been particularly freeing and trusting. I think at the heart, they are the skill technique of resting in action. Instead of judging ourselves, we act, instead of fearing each other, we trust.  If it misses the mark we learn what we could and move on. If it hits the mark, we hold it in our hearts and rejoice. 

Resting in action; Resting on the stage. 

Also this, because it makes me laugh and that's good ;)