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Theatre Museum and Frankensteins
How to Prevent Snow
from Melting
Hanna Helavuori
(Helsinki)
Documentation et Art de
l'Acteur
Records and Images of the Art of the Performer
18ème Congrès
International, Stockholm 3-7 septembre 1990 / 18th
International Congress, Stockholm 3-7 September 1990
Editor: Barbro Stribolt (Drottningholms Teatermuseum).
Stockholm : 1992, p. 112-114
An actor uses his own
physical and mental self as a material of art. He is a
piece of art which is molded by himself being the
material for his own works. This piece of art created by
an actor only materializes at a certain time and space in
interaction with the audience. The very delicate art of
acting does not exist as a material piece of art such as
paintings and cinema but disappears and remains in the
minds of artists and audience. The secondary source
material on acting is imperfect. The process of creating
a role and the actual artistic result cannot be
documented as such.
The theatrical essence, the actor in the performance, is
like a snow man. We are dealing with the most ephemeral
form of art when we are talking about acting and when we
are talking about how to document acting. We have no
direct access to our object. The theatre museum's task is
to be nothing but a freezer which devours fragments in
order to prevent snow from totally melting. We can ask
ourselves it this is necessarily true.
I am dealing with the problematics of documenting actors'
work, my starting point being those experiences and
thinking processes around the subject that have been done
in the Theatre Museum in Finland. I am concentrating on
video recording production analysis and oral history
sources.
The Finnish Theatre Museum has been co-operating with the
Ministry of Education. As a result of this close
co-operation and experiments on videodocumenting, a
nation-wide videotape archives will be founded in the
near future in our museum. We aim to document 10% of all
the Finnish performances. The passionate and often
controversial discussions on different ways of
videodocumenting have no doubt played the most
significant role in this whole process. The key factor,
as a matter of fact, is evident: there is no one
proper way to approach performances. Every single
performance has its own dramaturgic and artistic logic
which ought to be exposed. First of all, we ought to
discuss what is acting all about, and secondly what is
the meaning of acting in every single case, thirdly we
need to ask for whom and for which purposes documentation
is done. The director is the key-informant when it comes
to the analysis of the performance. The documentation
must contain sufficient amount of information on acting.
In
this context there is no point in starting a discussion
on the different ways of videotaping. From my point of
view it is more useful to confess right from the
beginning that we are dealing with the hermeneutics, we
are dealing with the relationship between the interpreter
and his object which contains subjective elements.
Therefore it is possible to make videorecordings on
actors' work in more than one way all of which uncover
its object from different angles.
When it comes to perceiving the specific nature of
theatre, videodocumenting is of crucial importance. But
it is most difficult for video to catch the interaction
between stage and audience, the well-known here and now
concept is on the point of vanishing. We are dealing with
the intervention of the camera, the narrative apparatus
of the camera. The spectator of a videorecording is bound
to miss the very special atmosphere, the unique
experience of actually being present, seeing and sharing
the experience which is actually an encounter.
This leads us to the question: what does it mean to be
true to the performance?
Are we trying to reconstruct the performance or could we
openly confess that we have a full right to construct the
performance. Instead of limiting ourselves to
reconstructions, we can also make reproductions where the
use of the camera is being released. We must have the
grounds and reasons for what we are doing and therefore
what we need are versatile videorecordings, both
reconstructions and reproductions. This contains three
different items. Firstly, we have to be aware of our
choices. Secondly, we need to document the grounds and
ways of chosen documentation. Thirdly, the videorecording
needs to be evaluated by the production group itself,
especially by the director.
However, the videorecording cannot replace the
researcher's presence in the living performance and at
the rehearsals. The traditional sources are not
replaceable, either. Theatre museums ought to have more
chances to participating observations, they should have
more opportunities to take part in the whole production
process from the very first rehearsals to the opening
night and to see the whole development of the
performance. We need the ability to observe the methods
of rehearsing and the art of acting, the interaction
between actors and the director. We need the ability and
means of describing what we have seen. What we have to do
is to transcribe the process based on physical action
into words. All this material based on observations
should be completed by series of photographs, fragments
of videotapes, interviews and discussions.
On the other hand, the rehearsal process is so vulnerable
and exposed to external intervention that this may not be
possible.
This kind of participating observation, the field study
in theatre leads us to the very essential question, who
is actually the expert when it comes to acting. Recently,
it has been asked, whether the only means by which the
arts, and in particular the theatre, can be studied by
external observers. When dealing with the problems posed
by the work of actor, this kind of externality has a
tendency to produce external information. Very often the
actors and the directors themselves have been the best
documentators due to this inner knowledge which has given
them the access to approach actors' work from within,
from the sender's perspective and therefore produce more
relevant information, more authentic observations.
The actor himself is usually the expert when it comes to
his own work. Theatre museums ought to document this
unique knowledge as much as possible. This has been the
base of the interviews of actors concerning their work
and career and their ideas on acting. For the past few
years we have been interviewing actors in our Theatre
Museum. The aim is to gather a body of material
concerning the work of an actor not available in other
forms. These kinds of oral history projects have
generally been organized around a biographical, topical
or thematic approach. We have made a series of
questionnaires. The biographical interview goes through
chronologically the curriculum of an actor. The questions
concerning the actor's career try to illustrate his
background, his relationship with directors and
colleagues and his roles, not to mention his self-image.
The questions about the actor's training are also of
great importance. The most important questions are the
ones concerning the rehearsal process and creating the
role.
The information of these interviews is both objective and
subjective. Often, in most cases the actor's subjective
ideas of himself are most interesting and enlightening.
We should discuss more on the value of this unique
material.
It seems to me that many of those things that we have
been neglecting in the name of positivism are the essence
of the subject. This is where the very fundamental nature
of acting lies. And yet, we are dealing with internal and
external knowledge, we are dealing with the problems and
challenges of subjectivity and objectivity.
To sum up: In the beginning of my speech I described
theatre museums as freezers which prevent snow from
melting. I have outlined some ways of documenting actors'
work. I am convinced that this work can only be
documented in close interaction between the documentator
and the actor himself. This interaction can only take
place between a subject and his object.
Another thing I would like to point out is the fact that
we cannot be satisfied with merely collecting separate
fragments of information - positivist facta fetishism.
Actors' work is always documented from a certain point of
view, within a certain frame of reference, for a certain
purpose. The significance of this material only exists
within a certain context which enables us to unite
fragments to a larger whole. Thereby we have a new
network of information.
Words are our tools. We add flesh to bones. To put it
short, documentation of actor's work is nothing but
putting separate parts together. The result at the worst
is a kind of Frankenstein's monster. But then again, it
is better than nothing at all. After all, the monster was
alive. The compassion, imagination and open subjectivity
of the documentator along with his knowledge and critical
approach can make Frankenstein's monsters into human
beings.
18th Congress
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