Gerry said a very interesting thing in the last class. He said for us to be careful not to incorporate the multimedia messages on the video because they tend to sway the viewer's idea of the piece. What struck me was this whole idea of eliminating parts to analyze rather than the whole. People have been talking alot about of a "universal truth" and whether or not it is our jobs as theatre artists to provide it, search for it, represent it, or not bother. When Gerry told us to disregard the media, I thought, "Why watch this video then? If we disregard these two people's interpretation (which are the people who made the video) then we are analyzing the wrong thing."
We are theatre artists. We do not put on a show and then tell people to disregard the third scene in the second act. We represent a whole entity. We ask people to judge this entire entity. The media in the film was deliberately put in there to elicit some type of response from the viewer. Therefore, we, as actors, make choices on a stage and then people interpret them. We must be self-limiting in our choices. So, when we talk about truth and whether to put it on a stage, we need to remember that theatre is a stage. Whether it be in a museum parking lot or in the Ford Theatre, it is still a stage where a performance is being held. Immorality has nothing to do with theatrical interpretation. It is a representation allowed to be interpretted.
It struck me as odd that we had to limit our viewing in order to see their true meaning on the film. Doesn't the media section add to their true meaning?? Was every choice that Peter Brook did analyzed? Yes. So therefore, I think that when watching/performing in a piece, whether it be "Couple in a Cage" it is important for actors to not judge the delivery, but simply tell this story. Interpretation is on the spectator not the actor.
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I think interpretation is on both the spectator AND the actor. Interpretation is a double edged sword, on one side it is the actor's job to figure out (or intrepret) what exactly they are doing...saying, try to find the truth in the piece and on the other it is up to the audience to interpret what they are seeing. True the actor and the audience can totally disagree with the intrepertation. However, there has to be a some depth to what the actor is doing. I'm not saying that everything that we do as actors has a profound meaning, but we need to understand what we are saying and WHY we are saying, moving, doing this character. And I feel that to say it's only the job of the audience and not the actor shows signs of either a bad actor or an extremely lazy one.
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