Acting and its Refusal in Theatre and Film

Marian McCurdy

Description

Acting has traditionally been considered a form of pretending or falsehood, compared with the so-called reality or truth of everyday life. Yet in the postmodern era, a reversal has occurred – real life is revealed as something acted and acting is where people have begun to search for truth.



In Acting and its Refusal in Theatre and Film, Marian McCurdy considers the ethical desire of refusing to act – which results from blurred boundaries of acting and living – and examines how real life and performance are intertwined. Offering a number of in-depth case studies, the book contextualizes refusals of acting on stage and screen and engages in an analysis of fascist theatricality, sexual theatricality and the refusal of theatricality altogether.

The Devil Actor

Marian McCurdy

 

Refusal in Fascist Theatricality

Marian McCurdy

 

Aestheticization of Political Life

Marian McCurdy

 

Pact with the Devil

Marian McCurdy

 

Actors Become the Real Masters

Marian McCurdy

 

The Main Thing Is to Play Well

Marian McCurdy

 

Refusal in Sexual Theatricality

Marian McCurdy

 

Revolution in the ‘House of Illusions’

Marian McCurdy

 

The Plague of the Theatre

Marian McCurdy

 

From Concentration to Distraction Camp

Marian McCurdy

 

Falling for the Part

Marian McCurdy

 

Refusal of Theatricality

Marian McCurdy

 

Happenings as Refusal

Marian McCurdy

 

Simulation Superstars

Marian McCurdy

 

Damning Aesthetics to Hell

Marian McCurdy

 

Celebrity Suicide

Marian McCurdy

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Religious
• Performing Arts
• Theatre
• General officer
• Television
• Art
• General
• Performance
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783206704
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2017 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2017 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2017 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Emily Dann
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Production editor: Jessica Lovett
Typesetting: John Teehan
ISBN 978-1-78320-668-1
ePDF ISBN 978-1-78320-669-8
ePub ISBN 978-1-78320-670-4
Printed and bound by Gomer Press, UK
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction The Devil Actor
Chapter 1 Refusal in Fascist Theatricality
Aestheticization of Political Life
Pact with the Devil
Actors Become the Real Masters
The Main Thing Is to Play Well
Chapter 2 Refusal in Sexual Theatricality
Revolution in the ‘House of Illusions’
The Plague of the Theatre
From Concentration to Distraction Camp
Falling for the Part
Colour Section
Chapter 3 Refusal of Theatricality
Happenings as Refusal
Simulation Superstars
Damning Aesthetics to Hell
Celebrity Suicide
Conclusion The Devil Spectator
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
This book is the result of working simultaneously for over a decade as a student in the department of theatre and film studies at the University of Canterbury and as an actor with Free Theatre Christchurch.
Without the uncompromising artistic fearlessness, intellectual vanguardism and exceptional kindness of Associate Professor and Free Theatre Artistic Director Peter Falkenberg, I would never have written it.
Thank you also to my other university colleagues and Free Theatre collaborators and ensemble members who supported the creation of this book and played a part in the works I discuss: Liz Boldt, Greta Bond, Werner Fritsch, Emma Johnston, Sophie Lee, Stuart Lloyd-Harris, Sharon Mazer, Paul Millar, George Parker, Chris Reddington, Nicole Reddington, Ryan Reynolds, Aiden Simons, Simon Troon and Coralie Winn.
List of Illustrations
Figure 1: The Nazi prime minister (Rolf Hoppe) and his wife Lotte Lindenthal (Christine Harbort) in their theatre box greeting Höfgen (Klaus Maria Brandauer) in costume as Mephisto in Mephisto (Szabó, 1981).
Figure 2: The opening scene from Free Theatre’s Faust Chroma (Fritsch 2008) with actors Mephisto (Marian McCurdy) and Gründgens (Ryan Reynolds) karaokeing through a projection of this same Forest and Cavern scene from Faust (Gorski, 1960). In this shot Mephisto is now karaokeing the Faust role, and Faust, the Mephisto role.
Figure 3: The two Mephistos (Marian McCurdy and Sophie Lee) preparing for a performance of Faust Chroma .
Figure 4: Gründgens (Ryan Reynolds) and the two Mephistos (Marian McCurdy and Sophie Lee) observing scenes below from Gründ gens’ life in Free Theatre’s Faust Chroma .
Figure 5: Gründgens (Ryan Reynolds) and Mephisto 2 (Sophie Lee) near the end of Faust Chroma during Gründgens’ dying monologue.
Figure 6: Video from a Free Theatre production The Last Days of Mankind (Falkenberg 2000) was used as surveillance footage of the revolution in Distraction Camp (Falkenberg 2009).
Figure 7: An image from the opening sequence of Free Theatre’s Distraction Camp .
Figure 8: The dance floor and stage of Distraction Camp .
Figure 9: The Bishop Scene in Distraction Camp played by the Bishop (Ryan Reynolds) and Judith (Coralie Winn).
Figure 10: The Judge (Simon Troon), the Thief (Marian McCurdy) and the Executioner (Liz Boldt) in Distraction Camp .
Figure 11: A publicity photograph for Distraction Camp with the Camp Commandant (George Parker) and Delilah (Emma Johnston).
Figure 12: The Thief/Salome (Marian McCurdy) overseen by Madame Irma (Greta Bond) and Judith (Coralie Winn) in a recreation of a scene from The Night Porter (Cavani, 1974) in Free Theatre’s Distraction Camp .
Figure 13: A sexual encounter in Lust/Caution (Lee, 2007) between Jiazhi (Tang Wei) and Mr Yee (Tony Leung).
Figure 14: Nico in the left reel and Rona and Ondine as Pope in the right, in the final reels of The Chelsea Girls (Morrissey and Warhol, 1966).
Figure 15: Karen (Bodil Jørgensen) spassing in front of her family in The Idiots (von Trier, 1998).
Figure 16: Phoenix’s notorious appearance on the David Letterman Show was used as footage in I’m Still Here
 (Affleck, 2010).
Figure 17: Marina Abramović performing The Artist is Present at MoMA in 2010. Photograph courtesy of Scott Rudd www.scottruddevents.com .
Introduction
The Devil Actor

T he devil is the arch villain in Christian culture. His power lies in his ability to make us believe in what is not true. He does this by disguising himself, by pretending and lying: in short, by acting. Acting has been historically associated with the devil for this reason. The devil and the actor both have the ability to seduce us into a make-believe world. The actor’s power to make us believe is equivalent to that of a priest or shaman, and so the art of the actor endangers the established truths of a society if it is not contained. In Jean Genet’s Le Balcon/The Balcony (1957), the Bishop exclaims: ‘The Devil makes believe. That’s how one recognises him. He’s the great Actor’ ([1957] 1962a: 10). But so is the Bishop. Genet provokes us by showing how what we consider ‘good’ and ‘truthful’ is created out of exactly the same process as the acting and lying so inherent in the sinful arenas of the theatre (and brothel): a process of make-believe.
Acting, in the English language, has two different meanings. It means either doing an action, or pretending to do an action. Acting (pretending) is considered to take place in the theatre or on film, in places marked clearly as performance space, while acting (doing) is considered to take place in everyday life. Throughout the history of our culture there have existed circumstances where these two types of ‘acting’ have become confused – where real life has been revealed as something acted and pretended or where performance has been seen to contain elements of real-life action. 1 Early on in European culture, everyday life was seen in a metaphorical sense as theatrum mundi, most famously expressed by Shakespeare: ‘All the world’s a stage,/And all the men and women merely players’ ([1623] 1968: 87). Likewise, performance is often commended for the ‘lifelike’ illusion it creates. There are numerous works that explore such confusions of acting and living. Underlying this confusion is the threat that acting poses to the perceived authenticity of everyday life (and to the authority of the church). It is the desire to refuse acting (in theatre and in life) that results from the confusion of acting and living that is at the centre of the works of theatre and film I examine in this book. When I use the term ‘acting’ in quotation marks, I refer to acting (pretending) when it occurs in everyday life, outside the conventional spaces for performance and where it enters the realm of acting (doing).
My desire to write this book has emerged out of my own experience as an actor. In my everyday life I have experienced the expectation to behave in certain ways and felt that these expected behaviours either did not express who I really was or wanted to be or I have felt incompetent or fraudulent when attempting them. Unlike in life, where ‘acting’ roles are naturalized and unconscious, in the theatre, where acting and pretending is acknowledged, I have experienced the liberating possibility of having the license to experiment with and embody behaviours without feeling dishonest. In other words, in life I often feel like an actor and that I am pretending, whereas in the theatre I can be truthful and feel really alive. Antonin Artaud’s writing about the theatre best describes my own feelings about it, for example, when he writes: ‘When I live I do not feel myself live. But when I act, it is then that I feel myself exist’ (Artaud in Sontag [1976] 1988: 275). Perhaps as a direct result of this I have been acutely aware of the distrust, resentment and pure hatred of acting in the theatre that those close to me have often expressed. Their desire to refuse my acting in the theatre resulted in my own equally strong desire to refuse the ‘acting’ they expected of me in life.
As an actor with Free Theatre Christchurch under the artistic direction of Peter Falkenberg, I discovered acting in the theatre as a tool to point out and to explore for myself the way everyday life is in fact a domain for ‘acting’, lying and pretending. And I discovered acting in theatre and film as a way to refuse it. In the film Remake (Falkenberg, 2009), a confusion of acting and living was deliberately explored in an attempt to understand the Parker/Hulme murder case where two teenage girls murdered one of their mothers. The murder that took place in this film can be understood as a refusal of the ‘acting’ in life expected of these girls by society. Exploring my own ‘acting’ life in the film provided an opportunity for me to refuse this ‘acting’ as well:
Remake began for me as curiosity and narcissism but my desire to ‘commit’ to the film ultimately was as an act of refusal. A refusal to allow anyone to project their own desires onto my life and expect me to reflect them back. A refusal to be handed desires and fantasies that are not my own. A refusal to be cast in a role and directed towards a life that I don’t desire and an identity that is not mine.
(McCurdy 2007: 256)
Free Theatre has continued this exploration of the confusion between acting and living in three subsequent productions: Faust Chroma (Fritsch 2008), Enigma Emmy Göring (Fritsch 2008) and Distraction Camp (Falkenb