Training the National Body

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Training the National Body
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• The Group Theatre was an earnest and conscious
  expression of American nationalism. The Group
  was trying to look at indigenous American
  problems and characters through American eyes,
  and to express them in an indigenous way
• Tyrone Guthrie, Encore November 1957

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model 1.

• A National Theatre Scheme Estimates
  1904William Archer and Harley Granville Barker

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• Training, rather than coaching of younger actor
  by older
• No Individual coaching
• Rehearsing only in second half of training
• Technique in voice-production, elocution,
  speaking of verse, gesture, dancing, fencing
• literary and historical instruction specially
  adapted to his requirements

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• The danger common to all securely established
  bodies is that of falling behind the times. The
  School should be so ordered as to help the
  Theatre to avoid this danger, by providing for it
  recruits strong in the vital principles of their
  art, instead of assisting it mechanically to hand
  on an academic tradition (however worthy) from
  one artistic generation to another.

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• The School will create a clear distinction
  between the actor and the amateur, so that in
  time a certain stigma will attach to the
  employment of wholly unqualified people.
• Third-year students will take small parts in the
  Theatre and work as understudies the School will
  minister to theatre in general.

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model 2.

• The Old Vic Theatre School
• 1947-1953
• George Devine, Glen Byam Shaw, Michel Saint-Denis

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• The training was improvisation and
  interpretation actors creation/submission to
  text together they made a balanced actor
  inspiration/technique, naturalness within
  convention.
• Llewellyn Rees, new Administrator of the Old Vic
  (1949), on Saint-Denis's work 'these boys and
  girls were all being animals it was like going
  into a lunatic asylum
• (from Irving Wardle The Theatres of George
  Devine 1978)

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• Peter Duguid the criticism was about as brutal
  as one could take it was out of all proportion.
  You were led by the hand along a little garden
  path, and then dropped. The idea was to show you
  just what you had to face the long road ahead.
  And that this was absolutely no bloody good at
  all and with proper humility on your part, we
  can now start to show you. (in Wardle)

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• Saint-Denis of Llewellyn Rees (1950)
• 'he went into a class and saw that we were
  improvising animals of all types. And he wrote
  in his report that he had been the witness of
  some exercises by which we were debasing human
  nature to the level of animals. And that he did
  not think that this was necessary to learn the
  interpretation of our great national poet
  Shakespeare.' (in Wardle)

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• The students would be expected to join the Young
  Vic, which played adult repertory to children.
• Rees I felt they were preparing the students
  for a theatre that didnt exist. (in Wardle)

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Sounding English

• I recalled that one of these successful actors
  came to me as a small boy twelve years earlier to
  be cured of a Lancashire accent
• James Bernard Twenty-four Lessons in Elocution
  1933
• (later he repeats the importance of losing
  provincialisms)

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• it must be remembered that the verse accent in
  French is marked largely by pitch, while stress
  is used to convey the logical meaning. The exact
  opposite is true in English verse The
  unalterable pulse of all French dramatic verse,
  whether classic or romantic in spirit, may not be
  interrupted by dialogue. The monotony of the
  cadence is broken by the most complete system of
  counterpointed stresses and modulations A
  similar necessity in regard to the heroic couplet
  of eighteenth-century English verse, actually
  developed here that mechanical art of elocution,
  fundamentally alien to our stress verse
• Elsie Fogerty Introduction to C.Coquelin The Art
  of the Actor 1932

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model 3.

• The English Stage Company at the Royal Court
  Theatre
• 1955-65
• George Devine, Tony Richardson

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• The Actors Rehearsal Group (Lindsay Anderson,
  Anthony Page) American workshop techniques
• The Actors Studio (William Gaskill, George
  Devine) training for Royal Court and National
  Theatre

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• This belief in a more internal acting was
  boosted when we heard about the Actors Studio
  and how the Method had influenced Marlon Brando.
  (William Gaskill A Sense of Direction 1988)
• Tony Richardson We dont want any of that
  Saint-Denis rubbish in this theatre (in Gaskill)

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• Osborne describes movement classes by Yat
  Malmgren (1956) 'These consisted of lying on the
  floor and having your character analysed from
  your choice of movements. I can't pretend to
  describe it now as I didn't understand it at the
  time and found it difficult to take seriously.
  (Almost a Gentleman 1991)

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• Gaskill There was a group of actors whose
  regional background was very clear in the way
  they spoke and who were not ashamed of it.
• Osborne 'the kind of gritty actor the Court had
  already made its own.
• Wardle 'redbrick actor'.

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• Richardson on Old Vic School products 'They were
  doing mime and sub-Copeau jumping about, which
  wasn't at all the sort of acting that was
  required. The plays preceded the company so we
  were looking for people who would fit. (in
  Wardle)

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model 4.

• Theatre Workshop
• 1945-61
• Joan Littlewood
• one of the most exciting theatres in Europe
  Peter Brook, Encore January 1959

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• I hated the tennis club, cup-and-saucer,
  French-window stuff we were taught.
• The West Ends curiously affected speech and the
  lack of anything resembling normal activity in
  the movements and gestures.
• (Littlewood in Nadine Holdsworth Joan Littlewood
  2006)

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Littlewoods methods

• Relaxation
• Laban movement techniques (via Jean Newlove)
• Meyerholds biomechanics and Dalcrozes
  eurhythmics
• Stanislavsky, if and authenticity
• Research, discussion and analysis of text
• Games and improvisation

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• Against London-centric drama schools and their
  ironing out of regional differences through
  teaching Received Pronunciation
• Avoidance of working with drama
  school/conservatoire-trained actors already
  ingrained with poise, propriety and tricks of
  the trade
• Preference for willing amateurs and those
  prepared to reach beyond their inhibitions
• (Holdsworth)

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• J.B.Priestley 1947
• Let us clear away all the silly nonsense, the
  muddle, the gambling, the insecurity, the
  exhibitionism, the cheap inflated egos, and start
  with a clean bare stage, solidly set in the
  community and linked with hundreds of similar
  sensible organisations (Theatre Outlook)

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• Priestley, again
• We need, too, a Theatre that attracts to itself
  plenty of virile men and deeply feminine women,
  and is something better than an exhibition of
  sexual oddities and perversions.