The Burning Stage #5 - Writing for the Burning Stage

How I go about it. In Seven drafts with Nine mind-blowing insights.

As I mentioned before, there are many different kinds of stages: village halls, outdoor spaces, concert halls.

My plays could end up on any one of these spaces.  They get performed in odd parts of the world.  I have no control on what they get up to in Bangalore or Montana or the suburbs of Sheffield

But whatever the environment, I must remember that theatre manifests in a sacred space where transformation occurs—not only for the characters in the drama, but, importantly, for the audience. A play that begins as a lowly creeping thing transforms into a butterfly with the work of the actors and the reactions of an audience.

One of the great transformations in the natural world. We hope for as much.

I’m not sure writing plays is a skill that can be taught. But it can be learnt.  And it’s learnt by opening yourself up to the possibilities of the stage which are usually hidden from view.  I don’t mean, the fripperies of lighting and sound and music – I mean the possibilities of actors being here and now with an audience that shares the same here and now.

The best way to learn is to watch and be with actors. Learn how they go about their craft. I was fortunate to begin my career as a stage hand in the West End.  I literally leaned on my broom and watched people like Sir John Gielguid and Alan Bennet in rehearsal.  I was there when Judi Dench auditioned for Sally Bowles in Cabaret.

And what did I learn? I learnt that great actors are not gods. They may play gods but they are human beings with all the trifles and anxieties of life surrounding them. However, on stage with words given to them, they can leave all the nonsense behind. They bring their humanity with them but they lean on the writer to give them substance.

Lighting the flame - The Genesis of The Play

It’s as if I’m walking through a dark forest at night and I see a distant, flickering light. This picture repeats over and over to me. I come across a group sitting round in the glow of a fire. In the space between a group of actors are performing, casting shadows in the firelight. It is a moment in which I catch a glimpse of The Play as it might be.

I start with a stage picture.  A vision. A moment that sums up my initial idea. During the writing process, the play is going to be pushed and pulled by the characters and situations I create. I may have only a hazy idea of how the play will come out but I need to find that kernel. That moment that sums up what is to occur.  A moment from a scene. It may be a phrase or even a smell or taste.  Maybe a snippet of conversation I’ve overheard somewhere.I try to imagine that as the still heart of the play with the characters and actors.  Even if I don’t know who these are yet. But I will try to imagine the sort of group that might be performing or imagine particular actors. If I’m working to a commission then a great deal of stuff will have gone to funding bodies and marketing people before I even begin work, so this stage picture will be my waymark. It will be what I describe to prospective producers. And as I progress, I find it easy to lose focus and to get lost in the weeds.  This image becomes a mental post it note or old photo pinned to the screen of my pc to keep me on track.

Someone once said that when you’re writing for the stage you start with the poster and work back from there. 

Insight #1

The Eternal Fiery Triangle

There are three elements in witing for the stage that are universal. The eternal triangle, if you like. Writer - actor - audience.  They all share the responsibility for bringing this play to life and giving it meaning.  As a writer I must always bear in mind the living presence both of the actor and of the audience.  I must respect their contributions to what I am trying to achieve.  They are both present on my desktop as I am constructing my play as much as my pc and dictionary.  My contribution as a playwright is only a third of the finished piece.  I am not even there when the actor and the audience contribute their parts to the performance.  The actor contributes their physical presence, their experience of the world which enables them to interpret what I have written.  And they will have spent many hours delving into this in the rehearsal room.  The audience brings their understanding and perception of what is happening at this actual moment and how they feel about it.  Plays depend on process. Different actors = different manifestations of character.  Different audiences = different interpretations.

I cannot control everything. And, really, I shouldn’t try

  As a playwright I try and recreate a world in which the audience will suspend their disbelief in what they’re seeing for an hour or so and within that, their experience becomes totally real; exactly as if they were witnessing something that happened to them personally on their way here.  And their experience will be quite different from the person in the next seat or at the next performance.  They may have struggled in out of the rain and dumped their shopping on the front of the stage. During the performance They will be flicking their eyes from here to there. Taking in peripheral details like exit signs and someone coughing. But even if they’re concentrating properly, they may not necessarily be concentrating on the actor at the front of the stage or the one speaking. They may even be distracted for a moment by a noise from outside and may miss a whole chunk of exposition.  But the human brain is a wonderful thing and it will try to make some sort of sense of what is going on even if that is quite at variance with what I originally intended. The words I write and which the actor speaks will resonate differently with every person.  The crucial element is that what they see is immediate and ephemeral.  There is no turning back the pages to check a clue to the puzzle There is no guidance by camera work or editing tricks.  They see and understand what is in front of them.  For an hour or so we all share a space and an experience, but the result will be different for us all.

I must Trust my audience  as a colleague, a collaborator. They will make be the ones who make sense of this play in whatever way they can.  I want them to be part of what is happening. I don’t mean I want them to get up out of their seats and participate in the drama but I do want them to be engaged emotionally, spiritually, mentally.  I want them to be able to challenge what they see.  I want them to be affected and feel changed in some way. I will try to avoid throwing a soulless spectacle at them or, much less, a lecture where all they have to do is to sit back and let it wash over them thereby missing the very humanity of what we’re about. I also need to remember that at no point do the audience know what is to happen. As a writer I am creating an edifice that the sudience know nothing about. They know nothing of the hidden staircases you will reveal, the sweeping lawns, the claustrophobic dungeons or the heady parapets on the roof. You reveal all the features to them piece by piece and if something shocks them as you round a corner, their shock will be genuine. For the sudience, the edifice is entirely real and immediate.

First DraftIn The first stage of the writing process proper I begin assembling bits and pieces that will form the matrix of the play.  This is sort of equivalent to a designer’s mood board.  There is no average time for this and it may be months before I begin writing seriously but all the time it will be churning away in my subconscious and I will be picking up odd bits and pieces of inspiration. When I have got this jumble of material into some sort of order I find I have got enough for the project to go critical. This the first draft.

Insight #2

Plays are NOT Literature

Plays are not written to be read.  They inhabit a different space from prose or poetry. Or even monologues or songs. This peculiar shared space is immediate and almost drunkenly Dionysian. My words are a series of hints and nudges to an actor to enable them to create characters in situations where those characters can carry my ideas to an audience, Writing a play is a largely technical exercise more akin to architecture than to poetry.

As a playwright I have to bear in mind at all times the fact that I am only contributing a third of the playmaking process.  I am only one side of a triangle that is completed by the actor and the audience.

A drama is formed by an interaction between characters in an environment.  The environment is made up of the framework of choices that I present the audience through the agency of the actors.  That interaction is manifested mainly through speech because that is the principal form of communication of humans.  The speech of a play we like to call dialogue.  Dialogue functions not so much through the meanings of particular words but through its implication – what students of language call “implicature” – a hidden code that is understood by the context it occurs in. But dialogue has separate functions for the actor and the audience. For an audience the dialogue unrolls around them in a breaking wave. But I must structure the dialogue so that it is clear to the actor what the intention of the piece is.  I am speaking to the actor through the dialogue. And through them to the audience.  The actor and the audience are, as it were, just as present on my desk top as my dictionary.  They are ever present. The actors have to know what the Intention of the piece so that they can then transmit this step by step to the audience. I help the actor by defining the environment where the interactions of characters take place.  Not the physical environment; that is the job of the designers and directors, but the dramatic space constructed out of the choices I make in the dialogue.

I don’t need sit here at my keyboard and tell the audience things in the way they might need watching a film or reading a novel.  Exposition and description are superfluous.  Exposition lies in the head of the actor.  They will have spent their time in rehearsal teasing out a backstory that fits my words and which enables them to colour the words they speak.  Thus, I do not have to clumsily describe the time and space (“Hello, what are you doing here in crumbling and draughty Blackwood Manor on the remote Yorkshire Moors at three o’clock on a rainy Tuesday afternoon? And why are you pointing that gun at me?”)  The audience can see all that for themselves. They can experience all that in an instant.  Any exposition is contained within the Intention of the actor.  They know where they are and why they are here.  They ARE the character in that moment. 

Similarly, I avoid physical description of the characters.  Physical presence is what the actor contributes.  Characters can be assumed by actors of all ages, sizes and dispositions. And as long as they follow the path I have laid out, they can walk it in whatever manner they find appropriate. Thus, I allow the actor to bring their own self and skills to the part and, in this way, challenge them to find something new; something more than the written dialogue.  I am opening a conversation with the actor and allowing them to contribute to the finished work.

And by doing this I am also beginning a conversation with my audience.  And like any conversation in the real world at a bus stop or in a café it will be disjointed and puzzling to the outsider who is not actually present in that time and place. In other words, the disinterested reader of a script.  As much as possible I will leave aside good literary conventions of clarity, conciseness, and structure.  In co-operation with the actors I am creating moments in the here and now just as moments are created in the real world.  These are messy, ill defined.  The only difference being, that they are chosen by me and it is the choices that define the moment. The difference with a novel, say, is that in there the past is contained in the reality of the printed words.  We can turn back the pages to find the clue we missed.  We can rerun a video countless time to wring out every bit of emotion we are being fed.  In a play that emotion is gone in an instant.  What might elicit tears in one performance might equally bring laughter in another. A play has no existence outside the moment.  It is here and gone.  Any attempt to recapture that fleeting moment by reading a script is to discover a poor, sorry thing that has no real meaning.

The audience inhabits a space that is immediate and entirely of this moment. The actor has to pretend they have no idea what is happening even though they have carefully planned it over several weeks of rehearsal.

I am creating a moment, a series of moments.  A giant hoax with only the actors in on the joke.  Literature?  No.  I am using artifice to reach out and create a create a moment of reality with a group of individuals that finds themselves in a world where it is increasingly difficult to sit down in communion together.

The nearest thing I can think of to what I contribute to the play making process is that of the architect. I will not be living in this edifice in the way the actors and audience will be. I am designing and assembling a moment, a series of moments, made up of speech, characters and intentions.   The moment of performance is made by the interaction of actor and audience.  I am not even there when the performance takes place.  Over the past year my plays have been seen in Bangalore, India, in Montana in the US and in Rochdale.  I have no way of knowing how any group of actors or audiences are going to find truth in my words.  I just hope they enjoy their time together.

Second DraftThen I copy this to a new file tand begin to join all this together with strings of dialogue or outlines. I begin to see the characters and situations emerging out of the mist.  At the moment a lot of this is just place holders but from this emerges the characters and situations and by playing with it I have the sketch of the play. I may at this stage write a sort of place holder first scene, just to see if the ideas make any sense. This is the second draft.

Insight #3

Dialogue is NOT Speech

A drama is formed by an interaction between characters in an environment.  That interaction is manifested mainly through speech because that is the principal form of communication of humans.  The speech of a play we like to call dialogue.

In order to understand how to make convincing, understandable dialogue, connectable with an audience,  the playwright needs to be able to understand how conversation is made in the real world.

I was very bad at dialogue.  It took my long years of listening in to conversations in cafes and on buses to begin to piece together how people react together as they are speaking.  I came to realise that dialogue is not in any way coherent or thought out. It is an interchange of a series of chopped phrases culled from everything the speaker has gleaned from elsewhere.  Most people have a storage bin of words and phrases that they can trot out whatever the circumstances smooshing them together to make sounds that are vaguely relevant. Consider how AI works by hoovering up all the words from the internet and smooshing them together to make something apparently relevant.  That is exactly how we speak, jumbling together odd words and phrases we have heard on the news , gestures and sounds that may or may not have some relevance to the conversation. 

The technical way of describing this is to think about speech being made up of inputs which are little pre made phrases or utterances rather than words..As such a dialogue is seldom preplanned.  We may know what we want to say but it seldome comes oout in any coherent way.

But that’s a whole other topic I’ve written about elsewhere.  Stephen Pinker says that language is innate in humans.  But he doesn’t say what form that language takes. 

Any conversation is seldom an exchange of information and is really a way in which individuals groom each other socially establishing hierarchies and validations of their existence.

When we engage in a conversation, we have a contribution to make and we spend the rest of the exchange trying to get it round to where we can put in the nugget of information that we have gleaned from elsewhere and which we have take n as our own.  Listen how often people in conversations say “Ye, ye, ye.  No.  Ye. Yeah” as they wait to get in their nugget of knowledge.

Insight #4

Speech does NOT contain Meaning

So, in dialogue, although I am writing in words.  It is not the words that contain meaning. Meaning as defined by the OED is the “intended sense of a person’s words”. Meaning is conveyed not by the words themselves but by tone of voice, context and the way the smoosh is pulled out from the brain bin. The actor needs to pick up my drift, understand the context and imply the meaning themselves through their gestures and actions. It’s the exchange of musical melodies.

Two characters making statements at each other, or posing questions and receiving coherent answers is neither convincing nor very interesting.  What I have to do in my writing is to Imply meaning. Come at it sideways. Talk about anything apart from what my characters actually have buried in their hearts and is bursting to get out. The actor needs to pick up my drift, understand the context and imply the meaning themselves through their gestures and actions.  Meaning is carried through tone and modulation more than the words.  What generates that is context. The actor must decide to say a particular line sincerely or ironically.  They key for the actor is the thread that weaves its way through the piece as a manifestation of character. The words are only vehicles for the intention of the character.

If you want to think about this some more, find a digest of the work of Paul Grice who talked about speech being a cooperative enterprise. (“I’ve run out of petrol.” “Ok. There’s a garage just down the road.”) are, on the surface, completely unconnected statements but they have a contextual meaning that is clear to anyone taking part. This, Grice calls Implicature. And by making the characters follow this process, I can expect the audience to apply the same cooperative principal to understand what I’m aiming at. 

All dialogue will contain implicature and I need to be clear about the character’s intention.  In other words: where they are expecting to end up and what goals they are expecting to achieve at any one moment in the drama.

 And if a character is going to lie and I want the audience to know it is a lie, I need to show evidence of that lie.  I need to imply the contradictions in what they do and say.

Third Draft: Every time I work through and I make substantial changes, I save to a new file and call that the next draft. Because I have to make a continuing thread for an actor to follow, I must always be moving in the direction of the drama.  Every day, my first task is to read through starting from the beginning.  And by read through, I mean exactly that – reading it out loud. I must always think of it as a play, not an extended piece of prose. This way I will pick up the non sequiturs and find the places where an idea has to be planted or a character has to be given some information before it becomes apparent later on in the play.  I am like God laying traps for the actors.

I did once have to write a play completely back to front.  I was commissioned to write a play about Thomas Hardy’s first wife, Emma.  I knew what the end was and then I had to construct a play that fitted that end.  The process was the same, just backwards. That is now the Third Draft.

Insight #5

“The characters you remember long after you have forgotten the story” - to quote an advert

A play consists of characters interacting together in an environment.  The character is everything.  It is what the actor clings to, of course.  And it is the way the audience follows the action.  They experience the situation through the characters.  Interestingly, the audience may feel sympathy with any of the characters you create and not necessarily with the ones with the most words or who is central to the story.  For this reason there must be enough room for an actor to form that character out of the clay I have provided.  I never think about describing characters.  Because I may not know anything about how an actor may see and interpret what I have written.  My characters are defined by what they say and the contexts I put them in but they are made flesh by the physical presence of the actor.. 

A character is a bundle of motivations.

 Motivation is an overall set of cultural and social beliefs modified by the moment we are in.

These motivations are wired in so that even the character themselves is not aware of them. 

In a drama, not all these motivations can be shown but they need to be there.  Or, at least, the possibilities of the whole bundle must be allowed for, because every one of them will have some bearing on the characters choices and progress through the drama.  But I must be aware of, at least the significant ones, and the actor will spend many enjoyable hours teasing them out,

There are as many combinations of motivations as there are individuals on earth.

Draft 4 So in draft 4 I’m playing with the characters, stretching and bending them to see what their possibilities are.  At night, if I’m lying awake I like to take one or two of my characters for a walk to see how they react outside the circumstances of the play.  This is a particularly useful exercise if I am writing about a real life Person.  I used this technique a lot when writing my play about Mary Anning.  I could see how much more she was than a Hollywood heroine.  She must have been unbelievably tough and muscular.  She must have been immensely resourceful to have persuaded the labour force to come with her along the wind swept rain lashed beach at Lyme Regis to carry her fossils home. It took one visit to Lyme Regis on a wet day to give me the key to Mary Anning. So context gives me a key to the characters.  The more I dig into the characters, the more I find out what the play is about.  This is Draft Four.

Insight #6

The Car Crash

I can see little dramas everywhere I go, every day I step outside.  Some event may happen – two cars nudge each other at the traffic lights.  People gather round trying to understand what is going on.  Perhaps even eager to participate by directing traffic or phoning for an ambulance.  I see people arguing at a bus stop.  Watchers form a circle at a respectful distance in case they get dragged in.  A child sobs on the pavement because she can’t have an ice cream and her mother becomes flustered and embarrassed. People walking along a pavement step aside to let a disabled elderly gentleman past.  These are the real, interactions of a world where people come and go and have to acknowledge or avoid others we live alongside.  These interactions are continual and, for every one of us how we react to these situations is a clue to our own characters.  So I need to think about each scene as a series of interactions.

Fifth Draft Somewhere about draft 5 I have smoothed the play into coherent shape and consistency but I’m frankly getting bored with it.  It’s too bland.  The story has no power behind it. I need to bring the story into sharper focus.  I will probably do something dramatic like changing the names of the characters or even their sex.  Change the names and you have redefined the character.  I’ve changed their possibilities.  Change the sex and you have altered the power dynamic.  I might be asking “Does this scene have a point?  Does it add anything?” This is Draft Five.

Insight #7

Power Gradients

The chief interactions that we are aware of on stage are those driven by power gradients.  That is, the difference in status between characters.  And by this I don’t necessarily mean class, although that comes into it a lot. A status is the power that a character has at any one point of an interaction. It may derive from culture, emotion or intellectual certainty.  They may know something that others do not. For whatever reason they hold the high ground in a scene. A villain with a knife may hold a higher status because of their capacity for violence but, on the other hand, a young girl may have status because of some strongly held belief.   And as with any gradient, status may change within a scene.  The villain may be disarmed.  The young girl may be persuaded of the error of her thinking.  The actor will sniff out the status of their character like a hound sniffing bottoms.  I must give the actor enough for them to believe in the various changes of gear and shifts of emphasis.  The point at which the power gradient of a scene changes is called the Elbow.  And actors need to know both their arses and their elbows.

Draft 6.  About now, I may try to finalise the structure.  By which I mean structure within scenes.  I need to clarify where the elbows and paradigm shifts are. I will be continue to edit and cut.  I may have to chisel away at the dialogue to find where information that I have planted earlier comes out and changes things.  And have I overwritten?  Not given the actor enough respect for their ability to portray in the raising of an eyebrow what it has taken me three paragraphs of dialogue.  It used to be said, if you’re writing a poem cut out the first verse.  Writing a novel – cut out the first chapter.  Writing a play – cut out the first scene.  This is to get rid of all that dreary, unnecessary exposition. If I’ve got this far, this is the Sixth Draft

Insight #8

Intention

Above all the actor is looking at the intention of a scene.  What is sometimes called Motivation.  Motivation is probably an overall set of cultural and social beliefs. Basically, what I’m talking about here is, what the character is thinking at the beginning of the scene that drives them on to the stage.  It is no use a character drifting on just to make up numbers.  They need a strong reason to be there.   All of them.  Right down to the lowliest butler or friend. Sometimes that reason is patent – Just came to ask if anyone wanted to go for a walk or to report a murder.  Or latent, the unspoken desire to be near someone or to learn something.  Either way that intention continues to drive the character until their wish is satisfied or until something happens to give them a new intention.  We can see this turning point as a manifestation of one of the elbows.  Intention gives structure to a scene.  It answers the “What is this scene about?” question.

The Intention of a character is what conveys to the audience the IMPLICATION of unspoken dialogue.  If the actor understands the INTENTION of the scene then she can convey that through the spoken and unspoken dialogue and, by extension, the audience will too.

Think about Intention in terms of Maslen’s hierarchy of needs.  Which one is to the fore here?

Above all the actor is looking at the intention of a scene.  what is the character thinking at the beginning of the scene that drives them on to the stage.  It is no use a character drifting on just to make up numbers.  They need a strong reason to be there.   All of them.  Right down to the lowliest butler or friend. Sometimes that reason is patent – Just came to ask if anyone wanted to go for a walk or to report a murder.  Or latent, the unspoken desire to be near someone or to learn something.  Either way that intention continues to drive the character until their wish is satisfied or until something happens to give them a new intention.  We can see this turning point as a manifestation of one of the elbows.  

Seventh Draft Around draft 7 is where I make sure that intention the central part of the scene but, at the same time, giving the actor space.I will make this or that word mean what I want it to mean.  So that the actor is in no doubt what I’m driving at and that my words fall naturally on his or her lips. For a character, the words must be inevitable. I will have repeated the word out loud every time I read the draft though.  A dozen times.  A hundred times.  A thousand times until it loses all meaning.  I will have changed it for something else and the returned to it and welcomed it home into the piece like a prodigal child. This is the seventh Draft

Insight #9

It’s all about space 

Space between the words.  Spaces for the actors to act.

Actors are not robots.  So use their very humanity to interpolate meaning into the space between the words. Meaning that will in one way or another communicate with the audience.

The Final Draft.  Altogether, writing for the stage is a messy process and not at all s organised as I describe here.  But Having done this a great number of times, I am aware of all the processes I need to go through.  The steps I need to take to achieve my goal. But when I can tick all these processes off, I can deliver the script to the actors and know that whatever questions they have, it is all in there for them to discover in rehearsal and I am confident enough not to have to go through rewrites. If the actor believes and understand my words then learning them will be easier because they will belong to that character.  I have worked on this play for a year.  I have thought of everything.  Now, it’s you the actor’s turn to trust me and discover what treasure I have buried in all those words and deliver it to our audience. Stop writing

Some Further Thoughts

For me, devices such as narrators and subtitles are unnecessary in drama.   If I feel that I need some narration at any point athen I know have not worked hard enough to let the characters inhabit the space and time of the events that have been created on the stage.  I once watched a play in which a scene was acted out.  A narrator then came on and told us what we had just seen.  And to crown it all, the actors then performed the same scene in expressive dance. One way or another, we had not only got the point but felt it hammered home deep into our aching brains.

Show don’t tell

Telling stories directly through narration is a long and honourable tradition. But it is a different art form from the drama where events are shown through character interactions. That’s why I prefer to write plays than just lecture an audience or write novels. If there really isn’t another way to get the story across I should ask who my narrator is talking to and why.  What reality do they inhabit that enables them to talk to the audience directly? How do they see the audience in the framework of the drama? The same applies to choruses.  Although I saw a very spooky version of “The Cocktail Party” in Manchester where the chorus inhabited the space of the audience and added to the interplay between audience and characters on stage.

But, hey, it’s a big world and, in art, all things are allowed.

I was going to write something about the Classical Unities here but I’ve given them a whole post to themselves. That’ll be next.

The Burning Stage - #4 The Actor

The Actor

I was never very good as an actor. I was too keen on performing; too easily seduced by the audience’s laughter. I enjoyed being on stage but never really felt the deep emotional truth. I enjoyed dressing up and pretending to be someone else. Yes, I know that’s starting point for any actor but I recognise that there is another level of skill that I never had.

Performing not acting. Attic Theatre 1976. Photo by Judy Blake but I sharpened up a bit with AI because, well, you know, fifty years.

Another time, I was playing an unnamed courtier in a production of Hamlet in Basingstoke. I was given a line that Osric usually says “Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland,To th’ ambassadors of England gives this warlike volley.”

I found myself alone in the greenroom with the instruction to dab a spot of Kensington Gore on my face just before I entered so that it looked as though I had been the victim of the English gunfire. Just a nick, you know. Sadly, with time on my hands I got rather carried away and one dab led to another. And another. As it does. My entrance, when it came at last, stepping over the dying Hamlet and dripping with great gouts of gore was greeted with gales of laughter. I was never required to act there again.

It increases my respect for that craft and those who know when enough is enough and who continue to hone their craft throughout their career. So I’m not going to insult you by telling you how to act. Even if you’ve never been on stage before. So I’ll talk about acting from my point of view as a director and a writer.

What impresses me as a director is the hard work, the commitment, the willingness to listen and learn that an actor brings to the process. I don’t really care where you are in your career or whether you earn money at it or not.

On the surface, the real skill is how convincing an actor can be. As Stanislavski wrote, the actor should always be seeking the truth in their character. Yes, but that’s not the whole of it. Maybe it’s also something to do with the relationship with the writer. The writer maps out the paths through the play. The actor lets the writer guide them through all the twists and turns so that they feel justifed when path gets them to some resolution at the conclusion. I suppose I say that as a writer. Or, perhaps it’s to do with the understanding of the way the audience apprehends what your doing. And I guess that’s me being a director again.

Now you, of course, as an actor, know all this stuff but I’m repeating it here as a way of focusing on the particular idea of the Burning Stage.

Performing is not Acting

The Burning Stage is the place for a story. The writer will provide the words to the story. They will construct the characters and the situations. But you, the actor, will carry that story to the audience. You are the mediator of the story. You are the Higgs Boson giving the story reality and weight.

It is worth remembering that the audience does not know what you know. They come with a limited expectation and it is for you to consider how you will share the reality of the story with them.

In the Burning Stage, ideally with no lighting or technical gizmos, the actor is very much exposed. An audience member is watching you and your fellow actors more closely than you will ever have been examined before. You are as close to being naked as you ever will be in the rest of your working life (unless you happen to be the manager of a Naturist Centre) In this case you can become self consciousness and retreat into yourself or ham things up and fill the gaps with unnecessary business. As I would do if ever let loose again. But there is no need for that. If you know your lines and feel safe in this space, you can dive in totally, viscerally. trusting in the writing, the work you have done in the rehearsal room and the willingness of your audience to suspend their disbelief.

All the time, though, you should remember that you are a mediator for the play. This means that you The actor should not be looking for personal validation on The Burning Stage. There are plenty of other places to do that. You could beome a stand up comedian or a performance poet. Or a politician.

I suppose the question to an actor is: “Is the audience looking at you The Actor or the character you are portraying?”

This means that the actor performs a tricky balancing act between immersing themself into a character but at the same time keeping an awareness of their communication with the audience. At a very basic level this means being seen and heard clearly but it also means maintaining the “Totality” of the character and projecting that outwards so that it can be shared with an audience. It means accessing that particular source of energy that keeps you alert and alive the whole time. The great director and teacher Constantin Stanislavski wrote the actors should become their characters. Sometimes this is mistakenly misconstrued as needing to be “Methody”. This sort of self obsessed, inwardly directed performance can lead to distance from an audience. “Method” as is commonly understood, works well on film but it can lack the energy that is required to get the story over to the watchers. The actor needs to be aware of the need to share with the people watching. In other words, the Actor needs, not only to be able to express an emotion, but also to experience it enough to convey it to the audience.

It’s one of those areas, like ventriloquism that can only be learnt by practice rather than being taught in theory.

This all takes bravery. But it’s worth remembering that the audience comes to share not to judge.

Character

The writer will have spent months or years constructing the character you are inhabiting. but the play script will only contain certain incidents and speeches that directly involve that character. It is up to you, the actor to use the clues offered to fill in the gaps. And I don’t mean the sort of congealed horror of my brush with Shakespeare.

Thus, the actor should be committed to the character even when the character is not on stage. I’m not suggesting you stay in character for weeks on end during the run of the piece. (See my observation about being Methody above) That is unhealthy. There has to be room for the actor and the character to co-exist. What I am really saying is that the actor needs to explore and understand what their character is doing and thinking even when they are not present on stage. When you exit by that door, what is your character involved in until they enter by this other door? What is your train of thought that continues for the character? The entrance and exit ceases to be a beginning or an ending. For them it is part of the continuum of the action. For the audience, the character still exists when the actor is not actually present on stage and the actor should be able to follow their character’s train of thinking so that they arrive at their next appearance mid-thought, as it were. And there is a good reason for this. It is to maintain the audience’s meta-understanding of what is going on. Somebody watching sould be able to maintain the reality of the character subconsciously for the duration of the play so that they can pick up the character without a jolt. This is important when you, the actor, are playing multiple parts. The watchers need to be able to switch seamlessly between them with the minimum of prompts. Each character needs to be whole and complete. And if the writer has been sparing with the lines that character speaks, and if you only have a change of hat to denote the difference, you need to develop the character enough to make it whole for the audience so that it is not you the audience is watching but the characters you are playing.

Respect

The idea of respect is fundamental to the idea of The Burning Stage. There needs to be respect for the Stage, for the other actors, for the Story telling and, above all for the Audience. The actor should respect the stage and the drama she is involved in.

In all cases this means listening and awareness.

Respect for other actors: At the most fundamental level this means learning your lines. Getting your lines down before you arrive means more of the limited and valuable rehearsal time for you and the other actors to understand their parts. Whatever you are doing, your contribution is as important as anyone else’s. If your piece of the jigsaw isn’t fundamental to the story, the writer wouldn’t have written your character in.

Respect the lines the the writer has given you: They will have spent months and years coming up with just the right way of telling the story so don’t waste time querying whether this or that word should be cut. Instead use the rehearsal time with the other actors to tease out meaning and why the writer has chosen to express the line in such a way. Listen carefully to the words and follow where they lead.

The same applies if you’re working on a devised piece. Remember your place in it. It is not about You. Hold the audience there all the time. And, once the script is locked down, treat it with the same respect for your co-divisers as you would for another writer.

The good actor learns true silence and the art of listening. Listening is much easier on the Burning Stage because there are not the distractions of the technical stuff. The actor can concentrate more fully.

Listen in performance. You may have heard your cue line a hundred time before but listen to it again. There will be new nuance. Your fellow actor willl have found a new way to frame their speech and if you can hear it, it will change the way you respond. Each performance is thus different and becomes a sort of riff in real time.

It is also important to be able to listen to the audience and respond. Of course, much of the time we are surprising the audience and there will be gasps, nods of recognition, laughs. The actor does not play to the laughs or ham up the sad bits but should be aware that they are embarked on a journey together and need to respond accordingly.

Silence

I think the art of Silence is the greatest accomplishment for the Burning Stage Actor. It was a revolution when Pinter began writing Pauses and Silences into his plays. It is not thought of so much these days but it was definitely something of a challenge when the idea first emerged. Really, what Pinter was dealing with was thought processes. Again, and I simplify wildly here, the actor pre-Pinter learnt their lines, rehearsed a bit of business and that was pretty well that. Off to the pub. I have heard an actor say. “What? This Pause? Do you just want me to stop acting here?” There is so much to unpack in that question. Basically, it meant that actors were mostly taken up with the technical niceties. “Stand there. Pick up that prop, Move two feet to you left. Say your line… Come downstage… no, not as much as that…” and so on. But with Pinter came thought and thinking. Actors were expected the construct thought processes to go with the lines. The crucial thing was what happened in those pauses and silences. Despite my other lame attempts at acting I have appeared in a couple of Pinter plays and even performed as Davies in the Caretaker. And here I learnt that pauses and silences are the lines between the words. They are the places where words are not enough. Where change occurs.

Me as Davies in The Caretaker. Directed by Jem Barnes. I even shaved my head for the part.

The Dance

The actor’s energy is what burns through the whole performance. The stored up resource that the words release out to the audience. Indeed it is the release of energy that carries the whole enterprise. This release manifests itself in different ways. I have seen actors who measure out their energy with quiet determination as much as with wild exuberance.

The gathering of energy and its measuring it out is the dance. The dancer centres their energy on the centre of their body. Just below their navel. This is where strong instinctive forces are centred. The dancer will tell you that everything pulls into this part of the body under extreme emotion. Cold, fear, anxiety pull inwards towards this point. Elbows and knees pull towards it. Head and hands loll back, unwanted for the moment. The back bends inwards protectively. But then with the explosion of energy everything cascades outwards. Strong positive energy drives the head upright. Limbs punch outwards. Stored energy is released. Breath is pushed outwards and the voice is strong and resonanant.

The concept of Physical Theatre is sometimes misunderstood by actors today. It gets confused with Dance Theatre. And, while dance and dramatic acting do have the same origin, for us here, we are talking about the way that the actor needs to anchor their performance deep in the physical centre of their being. and the physicality of natural, human gesture stems from that.

In this inward and outward movement is the breath of humanity. And as the strength courses through the actor, the audience responds. Feeling that breath themselves. It is a remarkable facility that within close proximity people will unconsciously align rhythms. With a baby sleeping on your chest you will automatically synchronise your breathing. People living closely together will naturally synchronise routines. And we feel disorientated by meeting someone whose bodily rhythms are so out of kilter with our own. Each audience will find it’s own rhythms of breath and release and the good actor will sense and tune into those rhythms. I like to think about it as surfing on a wave of audience reaction.

In this section I should also talk about pacing. This is very much to do with the ebb and flow of the words and actions. Speeding up here, slowing down there. Respecting the sense of the actions and thought processes so that sometimes you are almost clipping the heels of the other actors. Sometimes slowing to think. Sometimes pausing to let a cloud pass over the sun. I’ll deal with that in the part about the Director’s role later.

Humanity

It is the actor’s role to let the audience experience situations and emotions that they might not have come across before. The actor stands in for the audience and the audience can imagine how they would act in a similar situation. They see themselves as though from the outside. Perhaps we have all experienced that feeling where, when watching a harrowing item on the news, the sharp pang of unrequited emotion rises in the throat, almost strangling sound and causing tears to prickle the eyes. You need that physical awareness of emotion as any human being would. Some actors are particularly capable of reaching for the emotional heart of a line and can easily access the emotion that drives it. But they must also be aware of what they are doing lest the emotion swamps, not only the actual performance but, worse, themselves. Emotion and control of that emotion are required. And, whether you are portraying an historical figure, or a murderer, or a Russian Princess, it is the humanity of that portrayal that brings the audience to it.

When Colin Dexter spoke at John Thaw’s funeral he said that what Thaw bought to a character was…

“…Humanity. And that meant the capacity to be hurt. The capacity to be genuinely, visibly hurt by the world while continuing to move through it.”

So if there is one thing you can do to improve as an actor for the Burning Stage, it is to learn everything you can about human beings. Sit and watch as they pass to and fro in the street. Not just people you sympathise with but those others whose lives, at first, make no sense to you. Learn the psychology and philosophy and what makes human beings tick. Observe the choreography of the world. Fall in love with the people of the world.

Because acting is an expression of love.

The Burning Stage #3 A Shared Experience

Some Useful ideas to start with

A drama is the interplay of two or more characters shown through words and actions.

This interplay is usually represented as some conflict or problem that needs resolution.

The action on stage ensues because of a discrepency in power or status. I call that a Power Gradient. During the course of the Drama the characters can change where they are on the Power Gradient. The change is brought about either by the agency of the characters themselves or through the circumstances they find themselves in. Really, this is the essence of story-telling. I’ll come to that in a bit more detail when I talk about writing for the Burning Stage

Natural human empathy means the audience become immersed in the emotional to and fro of drama so, they too, feel some transformation in themselves. This is called catharsis. This is the whole point of the Drama. Thus, it is important that the audience can experience this empathy without being prodded into it. For me this requires the simplicity, directness and intimacy of The Burning Stage.

The Fiery Triangle

There are three elements reponsible for creating the Drama - The Eternal Triangle, if you like. Writer, actor, audience.  They all share the responsibility for bringing this play to life and giving it meaning. Think of it like the Fire Triangle - Fuel, Heat, Oxygen. Without anyone of these, the fire dies. As a writer I must always bear in mind the living presence both of the actor and of the audience.  I must respect their contributions to what I am trying to achieve.  They are both present on my desktop as I am constructing my play as much as my pc and dictionary.  My contribution as a playwright is only a third of the finished piece.  I am not even there when the actor and the audience contribute their parts to the performance.  The actor contributes their physical presence, their experience of the world which enables them to interpret what I have written.  And they will have spent many hours delving into this in the rehearsal room.  The audience brings their understanding and perception of what is happening at this actual moment and how they feel about it.  Plays depend on process. Every performance will result from a different process. Different actors = different manifestations of character.  Different audiences = different interpretations.

  As a playwright I try and recreate a world in which the audience will suspend their disbelief in what they’re seeing for an hour or so and within that, their experience becomes totally real; exactly as if they were witnessing something that happened to them personally on their way here.  And their experience will be quite different from the person in the next seat or at the next performance.  They may have struggled in out of the rain and dumped their shopping on the front of the stage. During the performance They will be flicking their eyes from here to there. Taking in peripheral details like exit signs and someone coughing. But even if they’re concentrating properly, they may not necessarily be concentrating on the actor at the front of the stage or the one speaking. They may even be distracted for a moment by a noise from outside and may miss a whole chunk of exposition.  But the human brain is a wonderful thing and it will try to make some sort of sense of what is going on even if that is quite at variance with what I originally intended. The words I write and which the actor speaks will resonate differently with every person.  The crucial element is that what they see is immediate and ephemeral.  There is no turning back the pages to check a clue to the puzzle There is no guidance by camera work or editing tricks.  An audience member makes sense of what is in front of them.  For an hour or so we all share a space and an experience, but the result will be different for us all. I have written about this elsewhere at length so I won’t go into it in too great detail. In short, I suggest that the experience of Drama is divided in three equal parts. The writer, the actor and the audience share an equal responsibility for the eventual outcome of the production. The writer devises and orders the ideas, the actor communicates to the audience and the audience contributes the attention and makes the decisions about how they will watch the piece. There is no power gradient here.

As the lights dim on the audience and brighten on the stage we experience a ritual that denotes a beginning. Our attention shifts to focus onto the matter in hand.  We enter into the same dream world as the actors and allow our imaginations to run wild.

Suspension of Disbelief

The process whereby actors and audiences are willingly transported to other imaginary realms is called Suspension of Disbelief. It is a natural phenomenon in human beings. The phrase was coined by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817 but has been undersood since the origins of drama. Shakespeare called it “imaginary puissance”.

There are deep neuropsychological reasons for how and why this phenomenon exists and there is a huge literature around this subject that I can’t precis here, so if you’re interested, I suggest you go to your favourite Chatbot and dive in there. Suffice it to say that Suspension of disbelief is something we make use of continually in the everyday world. It’s how we rehearse emotional responses to situations we haven’t met before. It enables us to put our current situation on hold mentally whilst we explore other possibilities. In a world of suspended disbelief we can

• explore social situations,

• imagine threats or opportunities,

• and absorb cultural knowledge.

• In short, it prevents us going mad with overload of data. We choose to accept what is real and frame decisions accordingly. In the world of politics and sociology we can willingly accept the premises of ideas without having to question what they are built on. It is a way of filtering the world we see around by accepting some parts of it without having to question every single item of our life. The idea of metaphor is a suspension of disbelief. If we say “That ship has sailed” to mean that an opportunity has passed, we do not believe that there is an actual ship even now disappearing over the horizon. But most of us will understand the image that is being used and we do not have to question the underlying structure of the thought that brings it into being.

Obviously, Suspension of Disbelief can be used for ill by bad people especially when they present conspiracies and fake science to us. These might seem absurdly obvious and entirely untrue to us as outsiders but for those enmeshed within them they cannot be seen past. But, for us who only wish well to the world, we can also harness its power to explain our story of human nature. However we do need to be aware that, as with the empathetic instinct, we are playing with some very potent psychological phenomena.

Suspension of Disbelief, however, relies on whatever is fantastical in our story being anchored in “human interest and a semblance of truth” as Coleridge puts it.

Nowadays there is some doubt about the use of the term in that, if an audience of a play were truly to suspend disbelief, they would rush onto the stage to prevent Duncan being murdered. J.R.R. Tolkien uses the term “Secondary Belief” which depends on a wholly consistent inner world which can be accepted as a reality in its own right. So we still retain the capacity to distinguish the Suspended reality from actuality. Even if we cannot restrain our desire to shout out “He’s behind you. With a dagger.”

Of course, it is also important to recognise the fact that the Actor has also to suspend their own disbelief. This throws up technical difficulties. The actor has, at once, to create and live within the character they are playing but also have an awareness of the actualities of the stage and the audience that surrounds it. This is where the directness and intimacy of the Burning Stage facilitates this psychological discontinuity. The shamen can work themselves into a frenzy of being; mixing up reality and belief into a whirl of dissonance. In the story of Hamlet, we see this effect when The Prince assumes an ‘Antic disposition’ and then becomes the very thing he is portrating. This goes further. There is an old story (told by Michael Frayn) that an actor portraying Hamlet actually had a mental breakdown whilst playing the disturbed Prince and came to believe that the actor playing the Ghost actually was his own Father in real life.

In truth, the idea of suspension of disbelief comes with the notion of a voluntary immersion in the fantasy. We choose to suspend our disbelief. The very act of immersion also allows us to know where the level of reality intersects with the story. We can surface from it at any moment like a diver reaching for the surface.

As I said before, we create a fantasy that is easy to plunge into and to remain there, undistracted by the elements of the outside world. But close enough to it to be able to maintain a rational awareness that there is another, Real world out there. Indeed we need this awareness so that comparisons with real life can be made whilst the drama is continuing.

However it is framed, though, Suspension of Disbelief has interesting implications for the Drama. It means that we need to construct an entirely plausible and internally consistent version of reality that does not jar the audience out of involvement. Do this well and and audience will buy into it and they will willingly follow to the end. It also means an audience does not need the aids of overwhelming lighting and sound. They do not need to be told what is going on. What may seem puzzling to an outsider will seem obvious to those closely involved. We are, in effect, playing an extendad game of “What-If?” “What if there was a castle in remote Scotland where an ambitious husband and wife live?” If you accept this premise then we’ll continue following the unwinding thread to its conclusion.

And once the premise is set, the audience enjoy measuring the events as they unfold against their own expectation. They enjoy contributing by their natural ability to work out what is going on for themselves. Constructing a new reality out of the bits and pieces they are given. Audiences can instinctively make sense of what they have before them, however spare it might seem. The Burning Stage is a manifestation of the old adage that “Less is more.” Audiences are naturally better equipped for watching drama than playwrights generally take them for and can otherwise survive without lots of flashes and bangs.

“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

A New AudienceTheatre is in a bit of a Pic

None of this is new or startling but we all know that theatre has lost its way. For most people, if they can afford it at all, a trip to the theatre has become a once a year luxury. Young people find it difficult to find their way in to the art without huge amounts of money to back them.

So, how do we cope with the disappointment of an audience who come expecting a cast of thousands, glitter balls and extravagant special effects?  The answer is, by the intensity of the performance and the demands on the imagination of the participants and watchers.  And don’t forget, just because it’s intense it doesn’t mean it can’t have a grandeur and scope.  We can still tackle the great dramas of the Greek Classical canon.  Shakespeare, Comedies, farces all can be performed with this approach just as well as Becket or Genet.  The main strength, though, is that The Burning Stage can be a local phenomenon.  It works just as well in the upstairs room in a pub as in a studio theatre.  A small space can provide the seed bed to grow a new audience.  Of course, the limiting factor is, as always, money. But it can be done. And is being done.  And, if we really believe in this approach, it is up to us to persuade funding bodies that this is a worthwhile way to distribute public funding

First, let’s get rid of all that reliance on stuff like extensive, expensive lighting and stage effects. Let’s narrow the focus of theatre down to concentrate on the little magic area which is the stage, right in the heart of the audience in which every bead of sweat and breath and nuance of voice is right there to be shared . Let’s dispense with the rigidity of structure and pre determined emotional responses that characterise the electronic media and commercial stage shows.  This magic place does not recognise the difference of the actor, only their ability to show difference.  It requires huge intensity of emotion to draw the audience in so that the audience becomes one with the actor

The Burning Stage #2 The Stage

Let’s start with the stage

This is a stage:

This also a stage:

Some stages are high:

Some stages are low:

Some stages are impromptu and ephemeral

All stages are special. They are delineated by the needs of the audience. They require deep respect because they are a place where the most fundamental human interactions take place.

Stages can be all sizes, but, I think, the Burning Stage dictates a natural, human scale. Once you get to a stage that is wider than SIX people laid end to end or a circle more than EIGHT people in diameter then you have an arena.  Arenas are for spectacles.  We are not interested in chariot races or The Last Night of the Proms here. So we will leave Spectacles with their flashy effects and star names on the posters to one side.

There are two ways of experiencing a stage. A stage is a place for people to act.  But it also belongs to an audience.  The audience apply their mental processes whilst the actors supply their physical presence. A stage without an audience is as pointless as a stage without actors. The audience and actors own the stage fifty/fifty . The business of the stage becomes a compact between actors and audience. An understanding between them. It is almost a conspiracy where they both want to will a drama into being. This is what Samuel Coleridge Taylor called “Suspension of disbelief.”

The stage, the actors and the audience together, amount to one of the oldest art forms.  And probably originates with a story recounted in the very earliest days of our ancestors, perhaps when fire had first been tamed and they could sit around in the circle of warmth listening to a warrior back from a hunt or a shaman who had journeyed far into the land of dreams. It was a social space where stories were told and ideas were exchanged. And I would emphasise the social aspect of that interaction.

Sometimes it is the audience who create the stage themselves.

You can see it when a little group forms round a performer in a street or shopping centre.

Sometimes an audience gathers when some public event occurs such as a road accident.  In this case the audience will assemble across the street. They will be more than 6 people-lengths away. So this becomes a spectacle.  An audience does not participate in a spectacle. They merely watch from afar.

If someone collapses with a heart attack in a public place, some passers-by will gather closely around.  This is because they believe they may be able to help. They are participating.  This is drama.

Whilst sharing our stage, the audience needs to be close enough to the actor to hear and see clearly. Actors need to be able to share with the people in the audience without artificial reinforcement. Microphones and headsets have the effect of signalling that the actor has primary importance and needs to overwhelm the audience. That is a power gradient. I don’t like power gradients. Actors need to speak up if they can’t be heard.

In performing spaces it is best to allow a good arms length between audience and the stage because people sometimes come with bags of shopping and umbrellas with which they encroach on the acting area.

However, the crucial thing is that the audience can see beads of sweat on the actors brow, feel the warmth of their bodies and experience the less than pleasant odour that surrounds them. They feel emotion through the strong empathy humans have for one another. The performance is always visceral. The closer the audience is to the actor, the more directly they feel the emotional torrent. The event is a dream within reality. The dream is always in the here and now.

I have read thinkers who consider the drama equates to a religious experience. This may or may not be true but I think drama does fulfill a similar need to explore the Other. However, I think on the whole religious events are more akin to Spectacle with their reliance on costume, ritual and their distancing effects.

How the Stage Works for the Actor

I once shared a stage with a very famous and venerable actor called Michael Mac Liammoir.  His stage was an old carpet with a few pieces of furniture on it.  He walked about this small area entirely at ease with his material.  Few people in the audience could tell that Michael was, by then, completely blind.  His stage was so familiar to him that he had it pictured exactly in his mind’s eye and could come and go with confidence, picking up props and sitting in the big chair. This is how familiar a stage should be for an actor. It is their home from home; a personal space where they can share their deepest emotions. Or portray emotions so thoroughly that the audience members are drawn in and share those feelings themselves. The actors rely on the empathy of the audience so the space must be small enough for the audience to experience a real human interaction.

Actors on the Burning Stage wield enormous power. The emotional depths of the audience are easily stirred. The actor needs to be aware of this. They should realise that they are using the power of empathy for the sake of the audience not as a means of aggrandising themselves.

There is a way in which the Burning Stage has an almost religious feel and function. Because the stage belongs to so many people, it needs to be treated with reverence.  When the actor steps onto the stage they cease to be themselves.  They become something else, an animal, a bird, a god, Hedda Gabler or Othello. The stage is the home to these things and the actor should take a deep breath or say a prayer before committing themselves to becoming one of their number.

The actor should experience the transition that occurs at the edge of the stage with the force of a torrent.  They walk though a waterfall of change and instantly become the Other Thing .  They may have learnt the words and movements of the Other previously but, as soon as they step beyond, they become it and what went before disappears.  They have literally transformed and they are no longer who they once were.

I am not suggesting the stage is a religious place in a pious sense but it is Sacred. It is dedicated to the transformation that occurs there. The transformation of actor into another being. The transformation of the audience so that they are experiencing something new and alive. The Stage should be treated with respect and, once the audience have taken possession of it, no mortal should enter upon it without becoming the thing they are inhabiting.

I have come across quite well-known actors who were gibbering wrecks in anticipation of their roles but for whom all their fears dropped away as soon as they crossed the edge of the stage.  Sir Laurence Olivier in his later career was prone to stage fright and was sick every time he had to go on.  It is not for nothing that actors sometimes refer to “Doctor Theatre” as many have got through performances oblivious to quite serious illnesses and even broken bones.

For me, the crucial thing is that actors are seen and heard as human beings at human scale.  This means that stages are best when small and intimate.  This is only one step away from street theatre and stand-up comedy and is only different in that we are portraying dramas, be they comedy, tragedy or farce.  And we are allowing time and space for the audience to focus on the interactions. 

For this approach, I prefer to work in the round or in traverse.  Here the audiences are aware of both the actor and the audience members sitting opposite.  At the same time actors are conscious of their audience.  They feel a personal responsibility for them.  On a small, enclosed stage the actor is not constrained to perform facing in one direction.  They face the natural direction of the interaction they are participating in.  They can address the other characters as the action dictates.  The magic then arises because the audience, in filmic parlance, call the shots.  They are not compelled to look in any one direction.  They are free to experience every detail of what is going on.  There are no filmic close ups. Actor and audience are conscious of being in the same space together. And they are free to follow the fortunes of whichever character they choose to.  In this way, understanding and emotions derive truthfully from the performance and is not imposed by the director.

In my direction, I always insist that the stage is treated with respect.  There is a clearly delineated stage area.  Maybe the size of a carpet or a drugget.  Nobody walks here unless they are committed to their character.  I describe the feeling they should experience when crossing the threshold like being struck by a lightning bolt.  The performer should transform from actor to character in a split second. For this reason, the stage is kept clear except the very times when the characters are present.

One other advantage of small, intimate acting areas that I can do away with sound reinforcement. As I said before, Actors’ voices should be able to reach any audience member. Sound reinforcement produces another power gradient and you can imagine what I think of them.

How the Stage works for the Audience

There is something deeply satisfying when the lights dim on the audience and brighten on the stage.  This enables us watchers to shift our focus onto the matter in hand.  A portal opens and we enter into the same dream world as the actors where we allow our imaginations to run wild. It is a moment of sheer excitement of anticipation and joy as the event unfolds. The audience takes posession of the stage and for a brief time they share the moment with the actors. We both apply the same “imaginary puissance”.

Sometimes the audience literally owns the stage. This has certain advantages. When I was Artistic Director of Oxfordshire Touring Theatre we performed in every sort of space imaginable. On one occasion we were performing an adaptation of The Mayor of Casterbridge in a hall in a small Oxfordshire village. Half way through the lights suddenly went out and a voice from the darkness asked if anyone had 50 pence for the meter. For some reason one of the actors had some change in his pocket. He groped through the darkness handed over the coin and the lights came back on. The actors continued. The audience returned to the world of Hardy exactly where we had left off. The point being that the audience felt comfortable in their space. The lights going out was a regular feature and they thought little of the event. They were able to dismiss the incident because at that moment they wanted to continue with the drama. The portal reopened.

There is another sense in which the audience owns the stage. Unlike in films, they are free to look where they like and pay attention to whatever thread of the drama interests them. The actor at the front of the stage may be working hard but some of the audience will be following the reactions of that couple at the back.  Audiences should be free to choose how to interpret what is going on without being emotionally coerced by the use of music or clever camera work or editing. Or narration.

Sometimes, it is difficult for directors and writers to leave enough room for the audience to make this contribution to the drama. They do not trust the audience to think and make choices for themselves. At the end of the performance there should be as many interpretations of what has been going on as there are audience members.

The thing I learnt from touring theatre was that stages can be a myriad of shapes and sizes and, provided they are still within people proportions, they will work for audiences who come with few preconceptions. As a director I enjoy working in Traverse mode.  Here the stage runs through the centre of the audience with the audience facing inwards.  So that, wherever the director places the actors, the audience have to choose which way to look.  The effect can be rather like a deconstructed tennis match.  But good fun.

I have even tried having the audience in the cenre of the action looking outwards to the action. Or having the audience distributed in random groups throughout the action. In fact anything that reinforces the relationship between the Stage and the Audience, anything that can provide an audience with a literal new perspective has got to be one of the aims of what we do. They can all work.

The form I enjoy most is theatre-in-the-round.   Theatre-in-the-round seems to be the most fitting for drama.  The most natural and the most human.Whilst watching any one actor, the audience cannot help but also frame the audience sitting directly behind. This adds a sort of feed back loop to their excitement. Audience and actors are clearly aware of each other. At the same time, there is no front and back to the action. Actors have to expose their characters to the full glare of the audience. There is nowhere to hide. The actor and audience are joined in some fusion of intent.

The Burning Stage - #1 Out of the Shadows

Imagine, if you will, that you find yourself in the middle of a dark forest.  The trees gather round you and their branches sweep overhead, closing you in.  What you can see of the sky is darker still and you can see no stars in the blackness.  You are alone and cold.  But in the distance, you see a faint glow of reddish light.  As you stumble forward you find yourself in a clearing in the centre of which a fire burns brightly. People are gathered round, enjoying the warmth and companionship.  You sit yourself in the circle and watch the fire burning.  You notice how, at the heart it shines with brilliant intensity, the filmy blue fire consuming the resiny vapours given off by the logs.  Further from the centre of the blaze, red and orange flames dance, giving out the warmth and the glow that reflects in the faces of those watching. And, at the margins, hot coals give a comforting warmth that exists long after the fire itself has died away.  Behind us, the shadows watch from the trees.

Now imagine a theatre performance.  At its centre, the actors are alive with intense energy, projecting their interactions with each other outwards to engage an audience who are drawn forward by the humanity of what they are seeing.  We are together in one space. All are experiencing the real warmth of human contact, actor to audience and audience to actor.  Our combined imaginations produce one drama.

What I am trying to describe here is an entirely human experience, stripped of anything but the actor and the audience.

When I work with actors, I like to work in small, human scale places with the audience as close to the actors as possible. I try to do away with anything that does not belong to this experience.  I try to include only the barest minimum of lighting, music, complicated sets and effects.

This stripped back, unplugged, intense form of performance I call The Burning Stage.

This is not a prescription or a set of rules.  It does not denigrate any other performance or style of performance.  Every performance and style is valid and will work for some but not others. I merely offer this as a collection of thoughts for anyone who may find themselves bogged down in the minutiae of theatre making or who find some current work unsatisfying and distant.  And, of course…

…thousands of theatre companies, large and small, throughout the world have always worked this way. And, for many of them, they go about their task without receiving the full recognition they deserve.

I love all forms of theatre and performance and admire everyone who plunges into any form of it but this is how I’ve worked over the last fifty or so years and is, in the end, how I like to work with actors and audiences.  That’s all.

The Burning Stage finds its roots in Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty and Grotowski’s Poor Theatre. It is a description of a form of theatre that is both ancient and starkly modern. It seeks to be both universal and intensely personal. It eschews spectacle in favour of the humane.

Perhaps it can be distilled thus:

Immersive Experience: The Burning Stage aims to create a truly immersive experience for both the audience and the actors. It challenges the actors to commit fully to the limited space they share with the audience, fostering a deeper connection.  Here the experience is focused and committed.  Both bring their concentration and attention to this moment. The stage becomes a holy place and is treated with respect by both participant groups.

Triangle of Responsibility: In The Burning Stage, the responsibility for the performance is shared equally among the writer, actor, and audience. This creates a social ritual where each performance is a unique and collaborative event.

Raw and Unfiltered: The style emphasizes raw, unfiltered performances that strip away traditional theatrical conventions, focusing on the raw energy and emotion of the actors.

A State of Mind

To sum it up in another way: The Burning Stage is an attitude or a mindset.  It does not require special training or experience. Beware anyone who tries to teach it to you.  It will be something you puzzle out for yourself with the particular actors and audience you are working with.  It does, however, require commitment from all parties involved.  And the suggestions I make here are ways in which I try to generate these attitudes with the actors and draw in audiences many of whom will have been excluded by the weird formality that we love to generate in the theatre.  These arcane behavious might provide us, the actors, with warmth and security but can we say that the audience feels the same? Perhaps our weird slang and superstitions can alienate others. 

More fundamentally, theatre is expensive these days.  Productions cost huge amounts to stage and often rely on star names. Ticket prices are, accordingly, out of reach of many audience members and prevent a theatre going habit forming.  Theatre becomes an occasional treat. Part of the reason for this, I guess, is because traditional theatres see themselves in competition with films and video games.  They are creating extravagant spectacles and star vehicles.

Maybe, our unplugged approach will enable more people to get involved either as theatre makers or audiences.  By doing away with the need to pursue bigger and better special effects we can concentrate on the golden USP of theatre – imagination.

The unplugged approach also releases us from the movie conventions that force the attention of the audience to experience pre-set emotions by the use of music or mood lighting.  Movies insist that the audience looks at this thing or follows that scene through the lens of a camera. At the Burning Stage, audiences are freed of the constraints imposed by the film editor or director. Their emotional response is directly related to the emotional intensity of the Drama.  It is not emotionally manufactured or imposed.  And if the audience finds the tragedy funny or the humour sad, that is a genuine, unforced response.  So be it.

The Burning Stage is thus a way of finding an alternative to the Theatre as Spectacle. Spectacle aims to rival movies and on-line gaming platforms. In those terms it can’t rival Spectacle. But it doesn’t need to. Or it shouldn’t. There is room for spectacle, of course, but the heart and soul of Theatre and Drama is somewhere else. It is human and about humanity.

The Burning Stage holds no particular allegiance or set of beliefs. It can challenge and explore issues. But, above all, it is an experience that brings people together as individuals and tells us something about that experience.

“My approach is designed to challenge both performers and audiences, pushing the boundaries of traditional theatre to create a more engaging and dynamic experience.”

I want to use the Burning Stage to explore the humanity that underlines our place here in the cosmos.  Beyond the issues and temporal vicissitudes of life to something deeper and, perhaps, richer.

Why I think this important

…but don’t bother to read this if you’re not interested in what I think.

Here I’ll try to outline my reasons for not wanting to involve myself in the world of spectacle. Not that I decry chariot races and football matches or Grand Opera. They all have their place and I love them all. (Although I’ve never been fortunate enough to attend a chariot race). These inhabit a different part of the psyche from that of The Burning Stage and, in many ways, they illustrate a fundamental disjunction in all our lives today. The world is increasingly being made as a Spectacle. We become mere onlookers. We watch on, fascinated and appalled, by a world that is ever more complex, grandiose and out of touch with our day to day existence. We are alienated and made to feel diminished. Everything from entertainment to politics, to our very aspirations, are distant and alienated. Even worse, we are distracted by the wonder and awe of it all and made to feel worthless and unable to join in as we once might have done. As Margaret Thatcher said: “There is no such thing as society.” And, indeed, what once were unifying social mechanisms have crumbled or have become the property of others.

The French philosopher Guy Debord summed it all up in his book ‘The Society of the Spectacle.’

"All that once was directly lived has become mere representation."

So the view we have of our world is largely mediated by the Men of Power. And as we are denied agency we become more and more anxious. Adrenaline flows because of the sheer repeated buffeting of the spectacle we witness and are powerless to influence. The adrenaline goes to make our hearts race and our bodies go into overdrive but there is no outlets for our emotion. We watch hypnotised by it all. Could this be why so many of us turn to running or strenuous gymn session? Just to work off our frustration? At the same time we try to validate our own existence through creative activites such as writing poetry or crochet. Secret inward desires and ambitions that are often framed by someone elses rules.

We avoid real human contact because we are secretly afraid of what others are thinking. We are led to believe that the world is inhabitated only by knife wielding maniacs. At any moment, something we say or do may trigger a snarling angry rebuff. We hunker down with our mental doors locked against others in a gross manifestation of the world according to Ayn Rand.

According to recent thinking, people lose their identires outside the workplace and the fight for money and a generation sits silent at home with nothing to define themselves. We do not have sufficient shared experiences to provide a common ground where a relationship may flourish.

Mark Fisher described this in ‘Capitalist Realism’:

“Capitalist realism as I understand it... is more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action.”

In a great Irony, aspiring artists may even pay large corporations for a platform to express their thoughts as they seek the validation they are told they need. But these corporations are the very ones that are at the root of the Spectacle. The rules of expression are confined by their algorithms or artificial genres. The aim of these corporations is create more and more wealth so they make the algorithms increasingly more alluring. We plunder ourselves so that they may grow rich. We all buy into the very thing that crushes us.

For me, the answer to Spectacle is not a retreat into an individual expression fenced in by what The Spectacle decrees as worthwhile, but into mutual cooperative action. There are many ways of achieving this but I strongly believe that the Burning Stage is a place where we can begin to feel some form of fellowship.

Let’s see how this may work…