...Cayle Lorraine Sinclair shares her account
of a Michael Margotta actors' workshop in Rome:
About Cayle
Sinclair | Installment One | Installment Two |
Installment Three | Installment Four
Friends, Romans, Countrymen... That phrase has new meaning for me, now that I have spent two weeks at the Actors Center Roma working with a group of 15-20 Italian actors in the actors/screenwriting TAKE ACTION seminar.
The e-mail from Michael Margotta (michaelmargotta@yahoo.com) first arrived signalling a 'new idea' a few months ago and sat on my desktop gathering wishful thinking from me.
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Cayle Lorraine Sinclair. Photo: Kathryn Hud |
Margotta's ideas are always welcome, since we reconnected over a year ago, after meeting a century ago in Los Angeles. An email from mutual friend Henry Jaglom resulted in a call from Italy to me. "It's
Margotta..."I screamed and he laughed and the years fell away. When I met Michael he was a rising young actor on the American scene, had starred in Jack Nicholson's 'Drive He Said', and for me was always a touchstone of reality and honesty in the rather tenuous world that I had chosen to inhabit as a young aspiring actress.
In that first call Michael told me that he, his partner Kathryn and their 3 year old son Alexander (Mojii) were going to be in New York for the summer. The result was a seminar at Equity Showcase; 'The Actors Senses and Emotions' workshop which my husband Dwight McFee, myself and several actors participated in for a week when I managed to bring Michael to Toronto for a pilot seminar with Canadian actors last July.
It proved to be my seminal acting experience for the year and the possibility of going to Rome was an exciting prospect. Needless to say it required some magic and a Budweiser residual to make it happen, but on July 13th Melissa Bourne,
favourite former acting student of mine from the George Randolph School, singer and pilates expert and I, were on the plane en route to Roma.
I was trepidatious because I have not travelled well since an 18-hour flight from Capetown in 1998 that turned me into a screaming idiot.
After approximately 24 hours on the road, including a lengthy stay over at Heathrow Airport, we arrived at our new 'digs' where we would spend the next 8 days journeying to and from the theatre. (Eventually we lost our comfortable Rome apartment and moved on to share the hospitality of our new found Roman friends).
Day One:
The theatre where we will work is downstairs from an Italian dinner theatre right in the center of Rome: Trostevore, Ponte de Sisto, Piazza della Malva. It has been the temporary home of the Actors Center Roma, set up by Margotta to give Roman Actors a creative home similar to the Actors Studio in New York. There are sessions twice a week and actors are non-paying life time members. The long narrow basement with its brocaded walls and wooden floors with small stage at the end, is sometimes used by the owners as a banquet hall for weddings and parties. The quaint upstairs courtyard, bleached with endless hot sunny days was our break area in this heat wave that Rome was experiencing in our honour.
Melissa and I, jetlagged and disoriented, taxi to the Studio. Later we will figure out the transit system, well suffice to say we never really figure it out. (Some one explained that it's laid out on the triangular, hence that sinking feeling that you are going around in circles).
Already actors are dancing to provocative tribal music that goes on for an hour each morning and sets the pace for the day...endless cycles of energy and exhaustion.
Margotta asks how I am, and I reply, "Hot, tired, hungry, disoriented." "Good" he says.
"Work with it." So I dance with some abandon until I'm dripping with more sweat as we all flop around on the floor, spent for now.
The discussion begins that will pepper all our days, and Margotta starts right at the top with the most significant question of all: "What is the most important thing to you, and what is your problem in attaining it".
For myself, I can honestly say that if I could just get past myself, my own discomfort, I could easily conquer my limitations - my fears and
trepidations.
What's required says Michael is that you make a 'decision'...
I can guess what's coming, I'm going to have to make some monumental decision, like quitting
smoking. But everyone smokes here and I love it. Let me just act.
"... A decision requires awareness. Our own awareness of what drives human behaviour and ultimately as actors to find that piece of behaviour that the audience can't ever
forget."
He's got me now. There are more important things than smoking.
Characteristic of Margotta and the reason I am here is that this seminar is meant to engage us as human beings about to embark on a process that will affect our destiny. After all, characters are human beings and the true expression or exposing of believable and illuminating behaviour has always been the reason for my commitment to acting and indeed to life on earth. To understand human being in all our disguises. 'Hot and tired' will have to be incorporated, as I fight my usual reaction of catatonia, withdrawal until I can regroup.
No time for that. I experience a new reaction. I'm so excited! Margotta directs our attention to the things we do every day - the bath or shower, the first breakfast drink, putting on shoes and socks, the rituals we do every day which hold the key to how we use our energy unconsciously, habitually, without awareness...
Once we've mastered the art of tying our shoelaces in childhood, we forget about it. Through a series of sensory exercises we will explore these habitual rituals or routines essentially by asking questions. These non-exotic
activities -- a woman putting on make up, a man shaving, the different tastes, smells of the things we do every day, overall body sensations like
showers. We will do these imaginary things in a roomful of people we don't know and use these rituals to begin to see where our energy is being used, unconsciously, habitually.
We don't think, smell, or taste it, we don't even realize until we put on and take off our imaginary shoes many times that we always put the right shoe on first. For me the magic of sensory is that it does provide information about these unconscious routines that invigorate one's awareness.
We do sensory work every day, each person working at their own rate and pace through the series of Stanislavsky's sense memory exercises. Michael claims you can ask at least 400 questions about any object. Without the questions it is difficult to keep focus. No kidding. Have you ever tried to maintain concentration while taking your imaginary shoes on and off? It reminds me of an
ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) test I once subjected myself to. Maddening.
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However, about day four I found myself luxuriating in a sauna and it's the longest I've ever managed to spend in any sauna. In reality, I tend to run in and out and that exhausts me more than being able to breath through the thick air. But I've had some neat saunas in my time and they are providing me with untold resources. The imaginary thick air is a kinder and I begin to feel invigorated and cleansed. Doubtless my physical reality of feeling hot and dirty and ugly and stupid is relieved to be focusing on a sauna instead of the need for one. |
Acting exercises fold in and out of discussions about our other priority and reason for being here: we will write two screenplay story lines together, by
consensus. Yup, democratically. |
Acting exercises fold in and out of discussions about our other priority and reason for being here: we will write two screenplay story lines together, by
consensus. Yup, democratically. We were usually upwards of 12 to 20 people and it was an exercise in patience for the democratic as we would hear each other out and vote on several suggestions as we hammered out the structure. But I get ahead of myself.
Margotta: "Organized human action is what drama is, literature is organized words. This is important to keep in mind when we are developing characters. An actor problem is that we don't know what to do unless the writer gives us not only the words, but the actions, the stage directions".
This has become true I think, because with film and television scripts one is looking for any clue as to what to do under the circumstances: under/over/poorly written dialogue, made to read not to say.
Contrary to past theatre days when you would scratch out those presumptions as controlling remarks which we were told were no more than the typist's version of the first production and how they did it. Anyway this is another discussion. My mind is whirring now. Margotta is waking up the wonderful world of acting talk. It can go on for hours, for days. And it does. And I have 9 days ahead of me.
Okay so I'm starving, but who can think of food when Margotta is saying: "The architecture of the script translates into the action of the author and the role of the actor is an open door to procrastination because unlike Shakespeare or Mozart who had instruments to define their genius, the difficulty of the actor is that we are artists of life. The instrument that defines your genius is your body, your mind, heart, nerves, fingers, so you don't want to be blocked or in an adversarial position with yourself. If you ask the musician to strike middle C on the piano, he doesn't say he can't or just doesn't feel like it or is not ready. When the instrument is clear, you can press C and get C, not
fuck off, I don't feel like it now... and this is a communal art, we are dependant on each other to create something."
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Fear is the thing that blocks people... Clarity is power in your work as an actor, when you are confused about your work you cannot be in your power. |
"Fear is the thing that blocks people," he says. "Fear of making mistakes, of screwing up. If as children we encountered the adult fear of falling down we would probably just decide not to bother walking. We're so afraid we're blocked. Knowledge is not power unless you use it, and procrastination is the result."
He continues: "Clarity is power in your work as an actor, when you are confused about your work you cannot be in your power. The work we are doing is to help you use your brain to get results in this work. The habits, the fear of falling down, of making mistakes, are the biggest pitfall of the actor. But the past does not equal the future; this is a brand new moment. To understand how the brain works and to use it is to have the most powerful computers at our fingertips".
Kathryn, Michael's partner, arrives and we are very happy to see each other. Sensitively she asks if I would like a coffee.... YES!! She returns with a delicious coffee in a small green glass bottle. "That's how they do take out here". Over the next few days I manage to communicate my desire for an iced morning coffee at the 'Cafe della Malva' next door and this becomes my new ritual.
"It is time to give 'the method' a new name". Margotta tells a funny story of five blind men holding onto different parts of an elephant; and describing the creature accordingly: it's huge (trunk), it's thin (tail), two holes at the end.
"Stanislavsky's work has been as badly misinterpreted and misunderstood as the Bible. Strasberg and the Americans adapted the Russian work to a different climate and
culture." Coffe'd up, I pay attention: "The issue is not about learning more but about making decisions about our life, that is our power, our ability to act. What is more powerful: failure thoughts or success thoughts"?
Well that's easy to answer. So is his next example: "If a cigarette spark hits your body, you brush off the dangerous element immediately, you don't question it. This can be the same with a thought. You can make up your mind and decide not to go there. On the plains of 'oh no' (Biblical reference) you can utilize the power of thought. Sensory work helps us to develop will power. It is necessary to focus and juggle all the things we need to do when working on a role, developing conscious verses automatic will. This includes our relationship with the audience. If the actor denies the existence of the audience you deny the reality that you are dealing with. When we acknowledge that reality we are free to give it whatever focus you want, which may include saying
'I can't give you all my attention because I'm trying to create something'."
The mind, says Michael is not stupido and I learn my first word of Italian.
The seminar is completely bilingual. Margotta speaks English with a smattering of Italian slang which he uses to punctuate and amuse the Italian actors who are getting a simul-translation from Michael's assistants, a lovely Swedish girl Anna, who will extend us the hospitality of her home later when we need to move, and the ex-ballerina,
Olympia, with her wonderful blond corkscrew curls. Just as an aside, the actors are beautiful and my head is spinning with the exotica of their names and faces and figures; the charming insistent lilt of their Italiana. Over the next ten days, Franco, Emmanuella, Guido, Allessandro (of which there are several) Antonio and Antonenella, Valeria, Ciccio (Chi chio), Valentina are as thrilling as their names, full of an emotional richness and environmental naturalness that will become Rome for me.
But now I am still fighting my demons. The discomfort, the need to withdraw and refuel... but there is no escape from Margotta's relentless quest for our truths and we will become a tight force of moviemakers as the days and nights unfold.
Italian is beginning to make sense to me: Italian made easy, I'm starting to attach endings to my words: 'repetione'... telephon...e, principal...e, praci...ke, temporale, recorda...'vivre la vita'.
Margotta says: "To live, to be here now you must take action from the first moment you open your eyes. Energy is our currency for living. How do you spend it? What's left at the end of the day, am I living off the interest? Fear makes you use it in unproductive ways. To be conscious we must confront what we are afraid of. All character is driven by a biological urge to avoid pain and get pleasure. It happens in our gut, in our nervous system. As Pavlov showed through his work on neuro associations. And we spend more to avoid pain than to attain pleasure. We have associations for marriage, diet, business that define whether pleasure or pain accompanies them. The end value of a car may be freedom. It's not our relationship with the thing but what it gives us. It is important to sort out our values, to do things to help us live our destiny; this is what we are studying. That making a decision begins with a thought" and he introduces a sequence which we will use to guide us through our explorations and which applies to the actor as well as to any
character."
Making a decision begins with a thought.
Sow a handful of thoughts
you have a handful of Actions.
Sow a handful of actions you have
a handful of habits
from which we reap Character.
Sow a character
and reap a Destiny
"This means that we can change our normal associations, neuro associations, that control our life. This is the work we do on the characters we play. We start with big questions: what am I willing to do or not do? What is destiny? The thing that impresses our subconscious the most is feeling. When a person can see them self doing something where the outcome is not positive they can decide to change it. You can replace the thought with another thought. This work of mentally commanding the body to follow certain instructions that affect the nerves, the muscles, the bones can be seen in people who worry all the time and develop ulcers, ostensibly from a thought. As being angry all the time will affect your blood, your adrenalin.
"So you ask, what does your character 'personage' do to avoid pain and have pleasure? In some ways we owe more to Pavlov than to Stanislavsky. The key is repetition. You have to keep sending the message to use the pleasure, don't use the pain. We create associations. We all do the same thing. A character is the same.
"From birth until the moment the play begins there is a life the actor must explore, even as a writer gives biography to the fictional characters. We will create the context of the play, the story, we will write the structure for a script together, in consensus".
My notes here show that we paused for a 15-minute break. It's twenty to four. I could be wrong, but remembering that first day that set the tone for the following days, that could have been our first break.
I dodge insane scooters, large hog vehicles, and half size cars that overwhelm the narrow cobblestone lanes of the Piazza della Malva on the way to the Internet Cafe where Patricia will sell me daily doses of e mail. I find it to be the only way to communicate with my darling husband: "send more money". I manage one phone call two days in, from a payphone by a garage dump, off the laneway where I struggle with the two newly purchased phone cards (the more the merrier apparently, better odds on getting a connection). Fortunately I have the assistance of a lovely young transplanted Texan who loves her life in Rome, takes pity on a 'shfitzing' delirious 'English' who is still withdrawing from the comforts of home technology not to mention toilets with seats! Everyone has a cell phone but they run on phone cards and they're always running out of battery power. A lot of text messaging goes on.
We return and Michael resumes his talk addressing one of the actors' major problems:
"Tension. An unnecessary inhibiter of freedom, is also an essential theatrical ingredient when we use it. It is energy not yet released into some kind of muscular activity. Energy is the balance of two opposing forces. Unreleased energy = dramatic tension, i.e. suspense.
"This principal applies to very small actions, to a single breath, with the inhalation, the rise of dramatic tension, the moment between inhale and exhalation is the crisis, the exhalation is the resolution, release. This applies to large and complex actions, to plot, which is a rise in dramatic tension. That moment that the energy is prevented from proceeding, on the verge of being released, is the moment of the greatest suspense, tension 'the prolonged crisis.' The stronger the held back energy, the greater the suspense, which begs the question:
" What determines the right moment to release?
Answer: the rhythm: the pattern flow through time.
"The rhythm is what integrates you with the action, is the great unifying factor that gives cohesion to your work. Each unit of action is comprised of smaller units of action. The large action, the plot is not just a collection of smaller actions, but is rather smaller actions that are linked together. The release of energy that follows a crisis forms the rise of the next until the pattern is fulfilled, purposefully linked.
"You can identify, prepare for and prolong the crisis."
Our next series of exercises involve sequences of breath that propel you to a physical and vocal action, five breaths to a scream, to a jump.
Lots of breathing, screaming, jumping, crying and we do an exercise that involves one by one going up to the imaginary bookcase, taking out a book, and reading a poem. We watch each other approach an imaginary bookcase, remove a book and read a poem.
I spoke some words I'd written many years ago, that still haunt me:
What matters,
and seeks transformation,
while holding on tightly for
Dear Life
DAY 2:
Melissa and I are an hour and a half late trying to negotiate the transit system. I'm more exhausted and uncomfortable then yesterday if that's possible. We missed the wild dancing. It's okay, I'm dripping with sweat anyway. But it's different.
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Cayle Lorraine Sinclair. Photo: Kathryn Hud |
Margotta now turns to the concept of the actor as a writing machine. We are here to use and develop techniques to create two structures for screenplays and to improvise dialogue and tape scenes for the second project. We will write by consensus. Michael, it is revealed over the next several days is the only one not frustrated by this democratic approach. He patiently and relentlessly guides us through the stages and we vote on opening, ending, plot points. But first we will decide what we will write about. We can work from a premise, a genre, from an ending, from character. Creating a character can come before plot for example. As actors we opt for this approach.
We are familiar with dealing with a character, with uncovering the needs and desires of our character, the objectives and obstacles. Michael remarks that a lot of work the actor does in creating character is so often not used by the director. Actors give so much, because on a certain level acting is writing. We are dealing with the character's social physical, psychological aspects. Family, occupation, education, likes and dislikes, political affiliation, sexuality, morality, frustrations, disappointments
-- the three dimensions of the character and the forces at work, fascism, democracy.
And we keep our eye all the time on creating conflict. "The cause and effect. You put hot and cold together and you have conflict. Conflict is inevitable, the more the opposing forces, the more the conflict. Life on earth is conflict, an unremitting struggle. Without conflict, life would be
impossible."
We begin with a character at a turning point in their life. It can come from a big decision. Someone has to do something, immediately and urgently. The story begins with an 'inciting incident'.
We decide if the character gets what they want, slowly start to build and create situations. We discuss 'image systems,' the device that cements, holds a film together, like the necklace in the Titanic.
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Take Action Seminar, Rome, June /03
DAY TWO: This arrives by e-mail about the upcoming workshop that will follow the paradigm of the June session*:
Take Action!
with
Michael Margotta
23 Sept. - 2 October
10 days
Rome, Italy
Screenwriting for Actors. The actor is a writing machine. Learn two methods for writing your own original script. One, the fast method, Two, the more complete method based on improvisation, plot points and imagination. All material will be transcribed into a full-length script.
This is a new seminar combining elements of screenwriting through improvisation, preparing a role and taking action by using personal power.
We will use exercises to explore the depths and layers and challenge ourselves and to spark our imagination to say things in a way no one else can. We shall work with improvisation (plot point + generic improvisation) as a working method to create a text that has an original quality.
Anton Chekhov said: "If you want to work on your art, work on your life." In this workshop we are going to focus on both. Email: (michaelmargotta@yahoo.com)
* The Take Action seminar in June was an explosive success. The script we have developed was delightful fun in the making and is of a quality to be submitted to festivals (with credit going to all 17 authors.) This style of group collaboration is the spirited way in which Michael prefers to work. The commitment to the seminar is intense, and for this reason we ask participants to be present all 10 days and to please let us know in advance that they will participate
Please RSVP here by e-mail for this seminar or for inquiries into other fall seminars
U.S. telephone (917) 294 - 1735
I understand that there has been a reading of the script we all wrote together and take notice of the mention of our seminar.
Day 2: We have been discussing tension, energy, the action of a plot: rise in dramatic tension, crisis, release; exercised to experiment with release of energy, how the release of energy follows a crisis, and forms the rise of the next one, and the rhythm that integrates all the smaller units of action.
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What is a good script? "A coherent one, a script you can't put down, that starts on page one with a style".
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Margotta not only thinks the method should get a new name but that 'exposition' should get more respect. He defines exposition as the art of exposing. Well it was Brecht who said, "The art of the actor is to expose life".
Margotta says that the moment we stop exposition the script stops growing. Stanislavsky used the laws of composition, just as the great painters experimented but did not throw away and rather reconfirmed these laws.
What is a good script?
Margotta: "A coherent one, a script you can't put down, that starts on page one with a style".
We are working now with the three-act structure: beginning, middle, end and prepare to fill the cup with content...
I am amongst a sea of Italia, swimming in my own sweat. The dinner theatre upstairs is air-conditioned and sometimes we get a sense of the coolness seeping down the stairs. Mostly, speaking for myself, I'm HOT and dirty and hungry and exhausted. And happy.
Over the next four days we labour and belabour. The democracy is exhausting, particularly in the face of present day current events.
Berliscone, Italy's Prime Minister is granted immunity as we choose plot points and reminisce about the art scene in Paris in the 20's and Josephine's fate in our collective hands.
Only Margotta is tireless in the face of endless ideas and thoughts thrown out in Italian and English as others nap and eat and we all intermittently rise to the occasion with a good idea that gains consensus and vitality. As actors we have chosen to use character as our primary impetus:
Margotta: "character is a point of view, a perception, that's context, you create the context and the content will follow...you find the POV, a person's opinion and look for ways to dramatize it...
'actione'. Character is also 'attitude', a way of acting or feeling, a personality... there are no passive characters, only characters who may choose not to act, a character is always revealing
themself. Drama is conflict. We need to define the character's need and then create the obstacles".
We are used to this approach in our work as actors, now we bend our minds around the task at hand, and a character to drive it.
We choose a title for our first script: Waiting For Josephine, an historical genre drama set in Paris in the 20's.
We create Josephine, the illegitimate daughter of a French Laundress and a German businessman who has a secret passion for photography. We give Thomas five sons back home in Munich and a dutiful wife who brought as her dowry Thomas' position as owner of a shoe factory. In Marseilles, his second family awaits his business trips when he comes and photographs first,
Magali, the laundress and now Josephine their daughter. We go off to do some research on the War and conditions in Paris where Josephine will flee to, post war: in search of her long lost father? to become an artist's model? to flee the Spanish influenza? Her Mother dies? Her Mother goes to Paris with her, ad nauseam....
End of Day two...
I am beyond exhaustion, and ready to loll on the Roman avenue sipping wonderfully cheap red wine and nibbling cheese ball delicacies and strips of eggplant while Italy goes by my table. I return home to Piazza
Euclide, grateful for a toilet seat and a cross breeze and Melissa's fabulous Blossom Dearie tapes. I start reading Jack London's second book of Martin Eden, because its there in the apartment, about a starving artist suffering for his art. Life is good. I found potato chips at the market and negotiated the euros.
I dream of Josephine and of her father Thomas being hit by a bomb on the train to Marseilles during the war to take Josephine's picture on her 17th birthday in 1917, on of course June 17, Today's date as well.
Synchronicity is playing with me again. In L.A. Margotta and I acted in a video drama called Paper Life, written and directed by our friend Rosie Shuster. The project was never completed and I was responsible for the ultimate loss of the tapes, a small, well large nightmare in my life. Now as I am in Rome, a short film by young Ryerson film maker Daniel de Santo is playing at the Italian Canadian Film Festival and is called A Paper Life and I play an inn keeper who saves a young writer from her own machinations.
Irony is good too.
DAY 3
We dance for a passionate hour, then lie on the floor for relaxation and Margotta takes us through a visualization. He talks about gaining access to the subconscious and how we work with emotional memory.
"The way the mind works, we ask for a certain memory. It retrieves the info for us as instructed. Now as actors if we endeavour to access one of our saddest memories, we have an different motivation than the average person who will fight to avoid the sad memory based on the biology of seeking pleasure not pain. Our obligation is to expose certain emotions. We know that one of the ways to do this is to personalize the moment in the character's life, to find something in our own experience. We are also trained not to focus on the emotion. The instructions that we sent to the brain are important. We focus on the experience in sensory terms. It is a simple process of finding the experience I would like to use and testing it out, this is not a last moment decision".
Margotta gives us the task of making a decision regarding 3 neuro associations of our own. "Decisions that will positively affect us"....We cannot dispute the power of the imagination to generate real sensations. When doing sensory work you are controlling the imagination... you always begin with PLACE, try to get the time of year, time of day, immediate environment, air temperature on different parts of the body, what you were wearing... like in all film work the key is 'detail'...
....as I am marching to Petrolia for the opening of 'Oscar and Felix' I will resume the third installment with more information on how the sensory work applies to emotional recall and the historic and practical aspects of emotional memory for the actor and how this ties into the neuro associations that condition our lives and the access to the unconscious that our work unlocks.
Caio.
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Emotional Memory, another much maligned and misinterpreted concept.
Margotta: "Obviously as actors we have an obligation to expose certain emotions, we try to personalize the moment in a character's life, to find something in our own experience. But we are not trained to focus on the emotion. We are trained in sensory work and focus on the experience in terms of the sensory, a simple process wherein we find the experience we would like to use.
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Cayle Lorraine Sinclair. Photo: Kathryn Hud |
Begin as always with the place - try to get time of year (certain information), time of day (lot of information) immediate environment (air temperature on different parts of the body) - what you are wearing. Hence an emotional memory becomes a sensory exercise. We are not pushing for an emotion but rather setting down a 360 perspective - the detail, which is the key in all film work".
We make an effort to focus on sensory experience in different parts of the body: what can I smell, hear, what people are around, voices, we whisper words to ourselves. "The tone of voice behind the words can be very powerful: many times we are more affected by this than the words". We focus on all the possible details: colours, textures, objects, light, sounds, shadows, light reflecting off things.
"We are simultaneously moving into that experience and this is how we access the sub-consciousness for our work".
Control comes from all the other exercises that have nothing to do with emotion: the breakfast drink, mirror, changing shoes and socks, taking clothes on and off, working with three imaginary fabrics which Michael says is often the first time a person has a real sensory experience, because the fabrics are not part of the rituals of our lives, the daily rituals that have a lot of muscular habit attached: "We master our daily rituals and then it becomes unconscious. With the three fabrics there are no muscular habits and the senses start to wake up.
So the trick of emotional memory is that we don't focus on emotion, but use sense memory to access the sub conscious. The editor in us doesn't know how to access, find or retrieve, it is the sub conscious part of the mind that can help us.
We have to test the emotional memory. This cannot be a last minute decision. Because sometimes those memories are attached to traumatic experiences, the training, a rule created by Strasberg, as well as Vakhtangov is that we never use a memory that is less than seven years old. The actor does not use 'live emotion'. It is emotional memory and the seven years gives it time to 'cook', to become memory so we can control it. Emotions do not like to be relived".
This specific approach is for the actor to create a filing system of emotional memory. The same choice will be different at different periods of an actors' life. If you divide your life in three parts you start to see big differences in how you perceive things. Time has conditioned these memories, so that you might go to the happiest time in your life and cry like a baby because time has changed your relationship to it. Which is why we have to test these things, because you get a different feeling out of it now. When testing, you look for the object, colour, sound, smell, whatever brings back something sensory, and this becomes an anchor. This is an exercise that takes time and again we don't focus on the emotion but on the sensory.
Senses are like children, as are the emotions. They don't like to be forced, pushed, when dealing with past experience. Like a child being attracted to a lollypop, you don't force it upon them, you draw their attention to it by exploring it in front of them, you look at it, smell it, unwrap it carefully - you have their attention, you increase their desire.
Emotions get attracted like a magnet. This takes a lot of relaxation, concentration, willpower, repetition - practice. However when the actor is trained, you can suspend the seven year rule and use something that happened
yesterday.
I have become very attached to this long room where we run and jump and roll around...and where we have all this glorious acting talk. The Italian actors are so full and expressive - we laugh and cry and argue. I'm bathed in sweat most of the time and my heart is beating - to be "in life" - the ultimate goal. We are 'artista's de la vita', artists of life. As Stella Adler said: "This work is the expression of the highest human principals and aspirations".
Margotta reminds us of our homework, to find three neuro associations made in the past that have shaped our destiny in the positive, and three negative and to find ten reasons to change the negative behaviour, and why you know you can do it now.
"We all have rituals, personal rituals, habits that are literally directing and controlling the show. The emotions that we experience on a regular basis are in effect - a habit - do you get angry a lot or frustrated or depressed. How do these emotional habits affect the quality of our lives, our destiny, our daily actions - that create pain or limitation in your life. We have to look at the habit because that is the only place where we can change. Many of our 'pleasures' are simply habits. The habit for chocolate, putting on make up. To form a habit you have to keep practicing, repeating. When practiced enough it becomes automatic."
We know as actors that emotional states are accompanied by certain body postures, a way of looking at the world, certain thoughts, that maybe started when one was very young. We know they take practice. A ceremony is something that you do repeatedly, almost like a code that your brain runs on. Your life is a process, not a destination but everyone has a dream: what you want your life to be. When you have to travel to a seminar, get away from your life, you get to see the patterns in a new way and the impact is greater.
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Cayle Lorraine Sinclair. Photo: Kathryn Hud |
Awareness of habit is not enough. What we have to do is make decisions. You have to feed the conscious questions into your computer, change the ceremonies. We must take consistent action. Fear is what blocks us. Fear of failure, of mistakes. It is impossible to fail if you learn something. Procrastination can become a habit and is the quiet killer that prevents us from doing the thing that gives us pleasure. If we procrastinate it is because we anticipate more pain than pleasure. Everyone on the planet is motivated to avoid pain and seek pleasure.
There are different ways to see the subconscious, as a sophisticated computer system or completely automatic and sometimes called the unconscious. When we work on a character we create a new personality, i.e. a set of habits, we have to develop all new habits. You have to practice every day, rehearsals will never be enough. You carry it into your personal life and you become a new version of yourself. Five minutes of a grim mouth everyday becomes automatic, but in the beginning you have to work at it consciously, then the subconscious will take over and it doesn't care if its a good or a bad thing, it just sees that it must be important because you keep doing it. It doesn't judge or care. So it builds an obstacle course around that pattern, protects it, makes it permanent.
When you want to put an end to habit, you have to practice till you stop doing it. The subconscious is programmed to ensure that the conscious part of the brain is going to retain this newly learned habit. The job of the subconscious is to create an obstacle course. e.g. learning to ride a bike is a painful process, but once mastered you never forget it because it is protected by the sub conscious. Since you formed the habit it is now an automatic construct and that is what we do when we create character, and it has to be as automatic to you as it is to the character: Othello reaches for the sword when the alarm bell goes off, Stanley Kowalski doesn't have to think about reaching for a beer...if there had been a air conditioner in the tenement 'Streetcar Named Desire' would be a different play.
So we have to determine what's automatic. There are certain rules of the mind that can help in work on character, because the mind always follows these rules and to use the computer you don't have to be a computer programmer, you just have to know the basics, the essentials. There are thoughts that create conditions in the body. States of anger, fear, worry affect the body. Every single thought creates a physical reaction. Emotions brought on by thought can cause physical reaction. The mind is also affected by thoughts with strong emotional content, and once accepted they become a program and trigger the same response over and over. The emotional state has to last for a period of time for that to affect the subconscious, and the thoughts, the duration, what is happening can trigger the same responses because of the heightened states of feeling. Someone close to you dies, you may become sad or depressed. This state doesn't just go away. It will be there for a while. Six months later, a trigger happens. Someone asks, how you are and you get a headache. A strong sensation in the environment gets linked and becomes a program... the smell of fresh cut grass gets linked to the accident.
As actors we choose to relive experiences and this will have an effect on our life.
Another rule of mind: you cannot have two conflicting thoughts at the same time. You can train yourself to change your mood. Hence you can be as happy as you make up your mind to be".
Nice work if you can get it and Michael cites the work of Dr. Victor Frankle:
"And it won't work if we just tell ourselves, you have to DO. You need the details desperately and the triggers. Finding out what the associations are, what happened that created these associations...there's a tape in there, a program running and being supported. The mind organically asks questions, and the process of sensory work is the process of asking questions and our beautiful computer will search for the answer. If fact when we stop asking questions, we're dead. we have to ask empowering questions every day. The discipline is to keep coming back to the questions.
With this training you are training yourself to change your mood. We can all get depressed in five minutes, whether it takes you pictures of starving children to get there, or whatever. You can't do this work without realizing 'I am choosing', that you have the power to put thoughts on the shelf. In depression what gets lost, is what gives us life - we have lost the dream. Depression is not a virus. The person has to do something to get to the point where you can't get out of bed. There's some bad movie running in the person's mind. We have to feed the mind through hearing, speech, vision like the Yogis of India."
Rule two. What the mind expects tends to happen. Imagination can replace reason, can be so intense. Once an idea has been accepted by the sub-consciousness it remains there until it is replaced by another idea.. The longer it remains there, the harder it is to change. Good and bad habits are formed consciously.
As actors you have first the thought, then comes the action. We have habits of thought and habits of action. To change our action we have to change our thought. This takes work... quickly or slowly. If you practiced your way in you have to practice your way out. An immediate change can only happen when you persuade the subconscious that this is no longer appropriate. For example the use of hypnosis bypasses the conscious brain, and sends the message to the subconscious to persuade it that this is stupid.
Another rule is that if the condition lasts longer it will cause a physical change. Sometimes we start thinking too much about how we feel. Emotion is continuous. We are a mind in a body, they go together. Soul designs body so it can have the experience of sensation. When one follows another we are one. These distinctions, slices, are part of a process - actualization, which is to get us to the point of wholeness. They need each other to function efficiently - the greater the conscious effort the less the subconscious response.
We use relaxation to take the pressure, a conscious technique to access the subconscious. Stanislavsky said a conscious technique produces unconscious results. If there's pressure you won't get the goodies from the unconscious. That's why relaxation is such a big issue, and deserves ten minutes out of every hour. Considering that we are living in a dangerous age bombarded by menace, adversity, violence. We start to shut down, we develop tunnel vision. We don't see the homeless asking for help. There are too many. And we don't see each other.
The more the conscious effort, the more difficult it is to remember... as we know when we try to remember lines. Memorization is not an acting problem it is a human problem. Actors suffer from fears and anxieties that most directors know nothing about. That the audience has no idea of. These things are enhanced when the actor senses that no one knows what I'm suffering from.
Ease the pressure on yourself and the sub conscious will come forward.
Every action equals a reaction. For every direction you are headed there is a destination. We're always going to be somewhere. Are you going to be where you want to be? It begins this minute: What is the most important thing in your life. Once you're clear about that, you will know whether you are doing it or not. Beliefs are very important. we all come from different tribes. In order to accomplish what you want for the meaning of your life to be about. What do you have to act on on a daily basis? This seminar is about designing your life now. This process as writers and actors is to be applied to our own lives".
Margotta has designed these seminars and delivers them all over Europe, in often remote and exotic places for just this reason. Many of the students have travelled from other parts of Italy, from France. Melissa and I, from Canada have come the farthest.
We do a mirror exercise. I work with Antonella, a lovely young woman, full of life who calls me "ma-ma" . We get hysterical as we pass the gestures and sounds back and forth, recognizing the attitudes".
We move into the group circle, each taking our lead from the person before us, moving through the group several times, passing on gestures, recreating them, sounds. We exhaust ourselves as we try to keep up with some of the more energetic ones and finally cutting through all the jet lag, and discomfort - I am awake! And collapse on the floor as we all now enter a relaxation visualization that Michael talks us through.
We enter a forest, find a path, explore the sunlight and shadows, and there up ahead on the road we encounter our child self and talk sotto voce. Personally I am delighted to see little Cayle again. Some actors are sobbing, others laughing.. the muted sounds of our individual conversation rise and fall. Margotta reminds us as we put our little selves away, that they are always in us.
"The challenge is to overcome gravity, to challenge the 'inertia', to choose to wake up, to slay the need we all have to avoid discomfort. For self-acceptance you have to make real to yourself your thoughts and feelings - the things that disturb your equilibrium. Make it real for yourself. You choose the way you feel. We have chosen a very difficult medium to express ourselves in. We can be more than we are not less - INSPIRATION OR DESPERATION. Knowledge is not power, it is potential power. It is not difficult to understand and remember. It is difficult to feel and believe".
I know that one of the reasons I am so excited about this work is exactly what Margotta talked about in his workshop in Toronto at Equity Showcase last summer...as actors we know that we can change our feelings. We do it all the time. Cry in act two, scene two, experience great joy a moment later, fill with murderous rage that blows away with the next beat. We know that we can control feelings. This is something that the average human is not aware of or is incapable of and we do it all the time. We know how to create the necessary steps to take us there and how to dispel the feelings. I believe that as actors we possess valuable information about the human condition. Peter Brook wrote that into the twentieth century march the actor and the madman hand in hand... we are the new saviours, the Christs of this new century... just look at the cult of celebrity. The focus is on actors to live vicariously for the general public. Brook also said: "the art of acting is in some ways the most exacting one of all, and without constant schooling, the actor will stop half way".
And from Martin Eden, the book which I devoured that sleepless, heat-filled Italian night after Chinese food at midnight in the center of Rome, my brain racing, my body giving out:
"It is not in what you succeed in doing that gets you the joy - but the doing of it".
Last installment: we write the script.
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As I prepare to summate in this final installment of my Rome adventure, I begin to glean some overview of the experience. I am struck by my statement at one point: "I am finally awake". Having graduated from walking around in a vague state of semi consciousness, or preoccupation with discomfort, I am now ready to be 'in life' - responsive, spontaneous, open. That's why I love this process. Being in a room with a group of actors, living, screaming, jumping, crying, feeling, is my idea of a good time and it is what frees me up to create - to act.
And I am ready to create. I have gotten over myself - my trepidation, discomfort, uncertainty, and fear. I can use it, not be in an adversarial position with my creativity. What follows is complete relaxation.
This strikes me as the real conundrum of this work - to get to the sub-conscious; you do conscious work that is devised to take the pressure off the sub conscious so that you can access it.
It is indeed a riddle approximating the "sweet mystery of life"...and sometimes deciphering that mystery in relation to a character or situation.
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This strikes me as the real conundrum of this work - to get to the sub-conscious; you do conscious work that is devised to take the pressure off the sub conscious so that you can access it.
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We begin as usual by dancing followed by an exercise that was one of the oldest used in the Moscow Art Theatre...connecting the arms and legs to the center, then movement with a particular quality, i.e. cautious.
Margotta: "This draws sensation like a magnet, draws feelings and emotions, as when you open and close an imaginary door cautiously, over and over, adding the words 'be careful', sitting down calmly, adding words, walking with a quality of surety, running irritably, opening a door slyly, sitting with tenderness, walking with ease. These are magnets that draw the feelings to that particular body position. You change your body, you change your state. It begins with a thought. Sometimes we can affect a thought by changing the body".
Many times after people did intense, emotional work, Michael would say: "Change your body"..
I feel all the work now, in my body.
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Meanwhile in tandem with the excruciating writing sessions, we have been exercising to change our neuro associations, to interrupt present patterns and then to apply this to ourselves and to character through our writing together. |
We complete our work on "Waiting For Josephine." We discuss the pestilence from Hong Kong, that in 1920 abortion was accepted in Russia, though there was no abortion in France. An epidemic gives us a dramatic premise, a motivation for Josephine and Mama to leave Marseilles and go to Paris. We create a blockade, a quarantine that they have to get
through.
Now Michael says we need some specific details, focus on our subject. The book of photographs taken by Thomas, Josephine's father becomes an image system that we will work with. (like Rosebud sleigh in Citizen Kane)
We work with Aristotle's formula, otherwise attributed to Syd Field.
Act One - Marseilles: Josephine and Mama are in Marseilles, Papa Thomas is in Munich with his other family. Enroute to Marseilles for his bi-annual visit with his second family, Thomas is caught in a bombing, loses his memory and/or his eyesight.
Pg 27-30: Plot point one, our first turning point will be the plague that places a quarantine on the little fishing village where Mama and Josephine ponder what has happened to Thomas, who of course cannot reach them, due to amnesia.
Act two, Josephine escapes to Paris and becomes an art school model.
Act Two - Paris:
pg 30-90. The confrontation, how the elements of the first act arrive at
Plot point two - where a political demonstration in the street brings Josephine and Thomas together or Josephine and her half brother into a near incestuous relationship until he discovers his father's photographs of her.
Act Three - Munich:
Resolution - where Josephine finds her Father and her German half, through Thomas' first wife and family
We have approached this script from character not premise. We created a character so a story would happen. Now we struggle to find the premise. We have Josephine as our hero: Thomas' muse. We have Thomas' secret life, his life as an artist. We have to expose the double life and find a happy ending. As we have decided that that's what we want.
We need Josephine to move from being an art object to having an integrated human life.
We find the premise: Only art reveals the secrets unknown even to the artist.
It is through Thomas' photographs - his secret need to create - that Josephine is reunited with her Father.
Meanwhile in tandem with the excruciating writing sessions, we have been exercising to change our neuro associations, to interrupt present patterns and then to apply this to ourselves and to character through our writing together.
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Cayle Lorraine Sinclair. Photo: Kathryn Hud |
The tedious democratic process that Margotta has insisted upon is now revealed to have been an excellent way to learn about each other, our ideas, and our senses of drama. We have identified kindred spirits and developed together a story.
As we are about to begin work on the second film that we will improvise and shoot, a tragedy befalls one of our group when she receives word that her Father has died of a heart attack while riding a bicycle on holiday.
It was one of those crazy moments when reality intervenes and cannot be avoided. After our young colleague was assisted to go off to join her family, emotions were very high amongst us.
Margotta had us join hands in a circle. Many wept, sobbing - for our friend, for her father, for us and our tragedies.. the overflowing of feeling contained in our circle was very potent. When Michael spoke it was only to recognize the situation - "a sweet girl has had a personal tragedy … and it reminds us what is important - this time we have to live - the chance we have every day when we are lucky enough to wake up. And people - other people, is what life is really about".
Talk about perspective.
Over the next few days we create the second script, which evolves with our present reality. This time we begin with the END: A Closing Night Performance - a group of actors decide to 'go on' in spite of the fact that 'the director' doesn't show up.
Most appropriate for this TAKE ACTION seminar.
We specify The Beginning: A group of actors have variously been recruited by 'The Director' and billeted together in a small 'crummy' hotel in Sicily to make a film.
It is Day 7 and the Director is 'in absentia'.
We go off and create our bio's and back story which we will reveal in group as we introduce our characters, their objectives and obstacles.
Margotta reminds us that if we're clear about our objectives and obstacles they become playable actions versus 'states of being'.
Ah! how glorious to sit in a cafe in Trostevore, at dusk, sipping a Campari and soda and beginning in my notebook, the life of Jennifer Mercer, a Hollywood film actress who was approached by 'the director' at a Film Festival and invited to do an 'experimental' film in Sicily that will realize her aspiration to be 'a real actress', if she can take this step, this risk for the sake of her art.
I wrestle with Jennifer's lineage. Discover her parents, grandparents, marital status, hopes and dreams. My obstacle is that I can't trust myself to do the right things for myself, my objective is to move forward in spite of my fears.
Okay, so Jennifer and I have a lot in common. But as she develops and as we start to put the film together, first on file cards and then to shoot improvised scenes, she becomes a full blown intense human being in her own right. She surprises me with her passionate commitment and free flowing emotions. Jennifer discovers Martin's (Ciccio) beautiful script and unlocks the secret behind his creative with-holding. She comes to terms with the other American, Brett, a child star fresh out of rehab who came to life with hilarious poignancy under Melissa's deft comedic touch.
Everyone has created substantial biographies, back story that will fuel the scenes. The Italian actors seem so much more imaginative with their stories of circus life and peg legs, a one eyed photographer, a trapeze artist ghost, dope dealers, star crossed lovers, jealous lovers, lesbian lovers, porno queens, sexy company managers and we are availed of guest actors from the Actors' Centre Roma who drop in to play a scene, such as the lovely 'prima donna protagonista' who refuses to stay without a director and gets out before "The Storm" a.k.a Plot point one. The tropical hurricane that condemns us all to house arrest on the God-forsaken island, director or no director.
Once we have created the structure in 3 acts, we create 10 file cards apiece: our character's individual plot points. These will become our scenes. We lay them in on the basic structure, positioning them where they occur in the action, so that I know that the wire about my Mother's death arrives after the storm at the top of Act Two, when outside communication has been
re-established.
We flesh out the scenes by choosing the other actors who will work with you. Solo scenes will play 4 minutes, otherwise you get 8 minutes to improvise. We take time to 'meet' with the other actors we have chosen for our scenes, to fill them in and marry our choices with theirs.
Soon we have a long table full of 'The Script'.
The way it works over the next four days is that we shoot the movie, out of sequence, according to the blueprint we created together. Margotta begins each day with the challenge - who wants to work, which scene, where does it come in the story, who's in it ???? and away we go until the last actor is left standing.
The 'shoot' is terribly exciting. Primed from the days of exercising, we all plunge in full tilt. Ghosts appear, lives are altered, love is found, lost. We eat, sleep, live our movie while Rome bakes outside and we emerge for Chinese food at midnight.
It is wonderful that underlying all of Margotta's direction to us as we move forward 'director-less' and take control of our lives and the scenes is his contention:
"Compassion is the key to unlocking your character and your art".
Plot point two: on paper: a message from the Director.
We all gather in the hotel lobby and a tape is put into the VCR. Unbeknownst to us, last night Michael and some of the actors worked until 3 a.m. to create the 'message' which we are all so intent to hear.
Stefan, a French Actors Centre Roma member appears as the 'mastermind' who brought us all here and left us hanging on our own devices. He addresses each of us personally. You could hear a pin drop as one by one he reveals and comments on the objectives and obstacles that we had revealed to Margotta in the prep work.
There were thrilling moments of discovery and reactions elicited. The room was wired. Jennifer was a fountain of tears, as I waited breathlessly for whatever pronouncement I would receive. Melissa said I looked like I had received the Academy Award when Stefan told Jennifer that she was a 'true actress' and that she would put her fears behind her by avoiding the negative.
As we launch into denouement, Margotta creates a scene with everyone. We each pick a monologue from memory and all together work it in various ways. The directions come flying at us - to sing it, scream it, dance it... until the brocaded walls are whirling and the energy in the room is pounding.
Margotta moved amongst us shooting, then pulled back and retreated to the red velvet curtain draped over the stairs up to the dinner theatre. And as life and art will sometimes have it, just at that moment there was a burst of 'entertainment' through the curtain, music and applause and we have our ending:
The Opening Night Performance.
I trust that if you are able to read through these notes you will get the gist of what happened, of the creative process that we embarked on, that is the touchstone of this work that Michael Margotta is helping to perpetuate and keep alive. I know in some ways, I've possibly bogged it down with too much detail as to my own journey.
As an actor, I know that when I am in the process of acting, I am in the process of accessing 'feelings, and knowledge about human being'. I know that when I am locked into a version of life that does not have the 'acting' energy connected to it, I die a little and must begin the perilous exciting journey back to the sense of life that vibrates so that I am awake and alert and open to all the possibilities.
Thanks, Margotta for a truly spectacular time. Since all roads lead to Rome, I hope that I will find one soon to take me back to my friends and colleagues who share a respect and commitment to this work - the life of the imagination.
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About Cayle Lorraine Sinclair
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Cayle Lorraine Sinclair commenced her career as Cayle Chernin, part of the cast of the acclaimed Canadian film
Goin' Down The Road and has worked since steadily as an actor, writer, producer/director, and teacher.
Cayle created and performed a one - woman show based on Erica Jong's "Fear of Flying" at the Toronto Fringe Festival, did Equity Showcase's production of
"Mephisto" and has enjoyed a variety of roles from the mother of Elvis' love child on the Super Dave Show; a nosy New Yorker to Kathy Lee's 'Spinning Out of Control' diva; and Rose, Anita Doron's out of touch but not out of reach heroine in "Not A Fish Story", an acclaimed short film that played in The Toronto International Film Festival and can be seen on the Movie Channel.
She has produced and written a number of award-winning independent videos: Children's Broadcast Award winner, The Party's Over, In the Shadows, a Syrian Tragedy was broadcast on Israel TV and screened internationally. I Am Home, premiered at The Cape Town Film Festival, South Africa and played on Vision TV and WTN |
About Cayle
Sinclair | Installment One
| Installment Two |
Installment Three | Installment Four
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