Art, Acting, and Daniel MacIvor’s This is a Play in Theoretical Perspective

Art is one of those elusive terms that seem to defy definition. Clearly it incorporates elements of aesthetics and didacticism, but not in any balance or format about which there is much theoretical agreement. Throughout history, many of the great minds have attempted to pin it down: Samuel Johnson in his Preface to Shakespeare, Henry James in The Art of Fiction, Oscar Wilde in The Critic as Artist, W. E. DuBois in Criteria of Negro Art, Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Viktor Shklovsky in Art as Technique, Jean-Paul Sartre in What is Literature, Althusser in A Letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre, and the list goes on. To stay within the theoretical confines of the course, the only real attempts to focus on the broad topic of art were attempted by Plato through the character of Socrates, who describes art as a wide term that is different for every genre it includes. “[T]he mark of differentiation is that one art means the knowledge of one kind of thing, another art the knowledge of another, and so I give them their respective names” (Plato 223). And later Boucicault will simply state that “no art becomes respectable or respected until its principles, its tenets, and its precepts are recognized, methodized, and housed in a system” (Boucicault 145). Certainly art is an enigma, and perhaps it should remain that way. When the wonder of an unknown is solved, it loses its wonder. It becomes formulaic and subject to its own definition. The closer we get to defining art, the more we kill its existence as its own mystery is a fundamental part of itself. Throughout history, acting theorists and playwrights alike have sought to break the traditions of the former definitions and conventions. As such, the best definition one could hope to give to the art of acting is that it is a population of conventions, variable in their application to genre, historical era, and socio-cultural sensibility. The presentation of these conventions must be left within the purview of the actor and his use and manipulation of his natural talents and strengths. Natural talent is paramount, followed closely by practical experience. Skill such as timing, realism or lack thereof, voice manipulation, bodily motion can only be improved, not installed as Stanislavski seems to think, and that improvement can only come through experience, on the stage (Dusmenil) or off of it (Fenichel). “The real difference between art and science lies in the specific form in which they give us the same object in quite different ways: art in the form of ‘seeing’ and ‘perceiving’ or ‘feeling’, science in the form of knowledge (in the strict sense, by concepts)” (Althusser 1481). Grotowsky polarizes the ““scientific” by which we mean discursive and cerebral” and “what we might call physiological pleasure” (Grotowsky 255). When acting as a ‘science’ becomes too laden with serious theory, it becomes worthy of satire. The course begins in this fashion as Plato parodies the actor in the character of Ion who is a self-admitted buffoon pretending to embody all knowledge. Subsequent theories presented in the course have been varied, paradoxical, era-specific, and yet all valuable and lucid in some way. Ultimately, however, they all fail to provide a definitive description or even a satisfying definition of ‘acting‘. The most logical termination to this body of texts would be a text that summarizes these conventions and ideas while satirizing the actor far enough to put the art of acting back into its proper perspective.
In his play, This Is a Play, Daniel MacIvor presents a light-hearted farce of the art of stage-acting. As a performer, the text requires the dexterous ability to move between two voices of a single person in contrast, and a willingness to look at one’s own ‘profession’ ‘with a grain of salt’. Each of the three characters presents a verbalization of the self-talk they experience during a performance in which MacIvor includes all of the nuances of ego and insecurity that are stereotypical of actors. These inner dialogues are superimposed on to an ’actual’ play that is presented in typical modern realism. MacIvor moves seamlessly between the two and is unapologetic about their mutual and oscillating presence in a single scene or dialogue. Inherent to this structure is an editorial examination of almost every relevant acting theory presented in the course and it does so through the applied voice of fictional actors in dialogue both with each other on stage, and with themselves. In this way, MacIvor explores his own experiential reality of the actor who must variously ‘be’ the character, but cannot escape being themselves simultaneously.
MacIvor primarily seems to be ridiculing Stanislavsky’s notions that an actor needs to mentally become their character before they begin performing. Early in the course, and in history, Plato describes actors and audiences in fairly disparaging terms. Not only does he suggest that actors are idiots who know nothing and are therefore not qualified to imitate the art/knowledge of others, but also that there is a certain insanity in transferring false emotions to the audience. Through his character Socrates, he asks, “When you chant these, are you in your senses? Or are you carried out of yourself, and does not your soul in an ecstasy conceive herself to be engaged to in the actions you relate”. To which Ion responds, “whenever I recite a tale of pity, my eyes are filled with tears and when it is one of horror or dismay my hair stands up on end and my heart goes leaping”, and that he sees the audience “every time, weeping, casting terrible glances, stricken with amazement”. Socrates then rhetorically asks, “what are we to say of a man [. . .] [who] weeps though he has lost nothing of his finery? Or he recoils with fear, standing in the presence of more than twenty thousand friendly people [?] [. . .] Shall we say that man is in his senses?” (Plato 221). In this fictional dialogue, Plato sets the stage for centuries of debate surrounding the psychological state of empathy that actors must have while performing. Stanislavski takes the debate to its ridiculous extreme suggesting that actors must enter a psychologically unconscious state of full empathy with their character before performing. It would seem that he means at the expense of an actor’s self-awareness. Although his ideas regarding the employment of action are highly practical, Diderot had already observed the impossibility of employing Stanislavsky’s theory. He states that if the actor “is himself while he is playing, how is he to stop being himself? If he wants to stop being himself, how is he to catch just the point where he is to stay his hand?” (Diderot 15). He goes on to contrast two categories of actors – those who perform “from the heart” and those who perform “from thought” (Diderot 15). He notes that the former category will have uneven and weak performances. The footnote to the passage also points out that “actors learnt by experience the unwisdom of relying on inspiration alone” (Pollock 15). David Cole brings the actor and the character back together by recognising their simultaneous coexistence in a more realistic appreciation of the art of acting. “[C]haracterization – consists largely in an attempt to endow one’s character with the inner life the general reader has had to leave off being in order to play him” (15). MacIvor’s entire text demonstrates a self-talk of actors while performing that is definitively at an empathetic distance from their characters.
Early in the text, MacIvor has the Older Female Actor (OFA) exemplify her self-awareness. Her line reads, “(to audience) Confused by the moody lighting and the empty stage? Nervous because you were expecting a comedy? “Oh no” you think “it’s experimental!” Relax!” (MacIvor 82). Not only is she empathetically distant from her character, she is mentally aware of her effect on the audience, as was Ion in Plato’s text. She is also poking fun at the unpopularity of avant-garde theatre in which Brecht admits “the audience would gradually stay away” (Brecht 27). Still in a state of self-awareness, the OFA shows nuances of insecurity and awareness of her type-casting, and all while she is performing. “You know me! I’m the Older, but still attractive Female Actor; wise and gruff and charming, rough around the edges but soft on the inside. In actuality I am a mother image for the playwright” (MacIvor 82). Similarly, the male actor (MA) is not at all lost in his character, but in his fantastical motivation to emulate famous and ‘brilliant’ actors. “I fantasize about Robert DeNiro” (MacIvor 84). The interactions of the characters also work to demonstrate their mutual distance in thought from their characters with an interesting and paradoxical perspective on unspoken collaboration (LePage) that occurs in the similarity of their thoughts, while being mutually disparaging.
MA: I think: she thinks I can’t act.
FA: I think: he can’t act
(MacIvor 84)
And while onstage with her two younger contemporaries, the OFA is mentally elsewhere. “I look at him, I look at her. I wonder if I left my cigarette burning” (MacIvor 95). MacIvor most clearly shows that the actors are not entrenched in the empathy of their own characters but quite aware of themselves by having them have to remind themselves to “Focus” at two points in the text. (MacIvor 84/94). These moments are also reminiscent of Cole’s notion that good acting will emerge if the actor simply remains interested in what they are doing.
But MacIvor gives some leeway to Stanislavsky’s theory by suggesting that the three actors are at least satisfactory and they are certainly focusing on the action their characters would employ, if nothing else. Moreover, the dialogue on page 86 between the actual characters about rhetorical questions is joined so seamlessly with the inner dialogue of the actors that it is a moment in which it feels like the actors have become their characters. MacIvor shows that the ‘method acting’ system can be applied and that actors can get swept away with an internal empathy for their characters but that it occurs simultaneously with a self-awareness and only in the passion of the moment, not as a preconditioned state of unconsciousness. Later, MacIvor has the idiotic MA state in his self-talk that he is “entranced by thoughts of my dead brother” (MacIvor 97). However, MacIvor follows the ‘rhetorical question’ scene only a few pages later with the stichomythia of self-talk in which each actor simply states the number of line they are reciting. “I say my second line”, “I say my third line” (MacIvor 88). Comically, but realistically, they get the order mixed up (which occasionally does occur in reality) and they scramble to make sense of the situation and recover it. The juxtaposition against the actors’ recent deep empathetic involvement clearly shows that they have become uninvolved and at a Brechtian distance from their own characters.
More than exploring the self-awareness and empathy paradox, however, MacIvor touches on a variety of other theories from within the course. At one point he takes a comic look at actor stereotypes and insecurity, when the male actor remains preoccupied with Robert DeNiro at an inopportune moment. The FA asks herself, “I wonder if he’s gay?” and the MA immediately echoes, “I wonder if I’m gay?” (MacIvor 94). MacIvor revisits the notion of actor insecurity several times, but most obviously when the MA thinks, “I worry that I might be spitting” (MacIvor 89). He even touches on the theories of Appia, who observes that the actor has become subservient to such elements as lighting and setting (which I can extend to props).
OFA: “I give him the bowl of soup.”
MA: “I take the bowl of soup. [. . .] She wasn’t supposed to give me the bowl of soup.” (MacIvor 90).
MacIvor revisits the OFA’s self-awareness and touches on Goffman’s description of an actor who is cynical about their performance or material. “OFA: I begin a monologue that you can tell was stuck in after previews because no one understood what the hell was going on. Relentless exposition peppered with lame humour” (MacIvor 92). Furthermore, in Brechtian style, she is aware of the text, distant from it and analyzing it. Brecht would have the character physically display her editorial dislike of the text and it seems from her inner monologue that she is bursting to do so, but in the realist play that she is staging, it is of course inappropriate. MacIvor intimates Cole’s loss of ‘first read thrill’ that comes with the repetitive nature of the OFA’s profession. “OFA: You look at your watch and shift in your seat and I’m out of here” (MacIvor 82). MacIvor makes fun of teaching platitudes. “MA: “I enter with conviction!” (MacIvor 83). Of course, ‘conviction’ is a vague trope with no real specific meaning, but is relentlessly repeated by directors as an objective for actors. MacIvor finally comes full circle to the theories presented by Plato in the words of the MA, “I don’t understand this speech but manage to fake it” (MacIvor 83) simultaneously demonstrating that an actor doesn’t need to know everything to be effective while satirizing the poor quality of acting it represents in the idiocy of the Male Actor, much like Ion.
MacIvor concludes the play and rounds out his thematic exploration by demonstrating that actors are involved in a subjective art form in which there are many theories and motivations for good performance.
FA: I think about Uta Hagen
MA: I think about Robert DeNiro
OFA: I think about Jack Daniels
(MacIvor 101).
For the FA it is about theory and training to a scientific skill. Cole points out that “in our own day, Uta Hagen exhorts her students to acquire “a thorough education in history, literature, English linguistics” (6). For the MA acting is about fame and glory, and for the OFA it has become a mundane profession requiring the use of alcohol to endure. And in MacIvor’s text he answers why. It is “because we are actors” (MacIvor 101).
All the theorists within the course present valid, if not conflicting, points of theory about acting. Unfortunately, by the time and in the work of Stanislavski, the theory had become too heavy and pedantic to be very applicable and it seems to have drained the joy of ‘playing’ from the art form. Artaud suggests that a “longstanding habit of seeking diversions has made us forget the slightest idea of serious theory” (Artaud 25) which demonstrates a pedantic overload in direct contrast to the “playing” described by LePage, which allows theatre to be taken seriously without overlooking its value as an entertainment diversion. The Euro-avant-garde movement immediately followed Stanislavsky. It made the theory even heavier with ideas of alienation, psychoanalysis, and cruelty. Only recently have theorists like Cole and LePage attempted to inject some levity and simplicity back into acting with phrases such as “Forget about the public: Think about yourself . . . If you are interested, the public will follow you”. Or LePage’s musing on this lost art. “I think there’s an important word that has lost its sense in theatre, and that’s the word ‘playing’. It’s become a profession, a very serious word, but the concept of playing has disappeared from the staging of shows”. MacIvor’s play embodies all of these theories and does so in a way that is light-hearted and full of the ‘playing’ that LePage describes. It is reminiscent of Moliere’s brilliant Rehearsal at Versailles as it is in the form of a play, metatheatrical, takes a poke at the insecurity and neuroses of actors, while examining genuine realities of stage performance. It simultaneously explores and maintains the mystery, joy, skill, and paradox of acting. MacIvor’s play is a contemporary Canadian macrocosm for the entire course and in a format that students would both enjoy and understand: the perfect piece with which to close the course.

Works Cited
Althusser. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.
Artaud, Antonin (1995). Theatre and Cruelty. Acting (Re)Considered / Phillip B. Zarrilli, ed. Routledge.
Boucicault, Dion (1958). The Art of Acting. Papers on Acting / Brander Matthews. ed. Hill and Wang.
Brecht, Berthold (1964). A Dialogue About Acting. Brecht on Theatre. London: Methuen.
Cole, David (1992). Acting as Reading / The Reader as Actor. Acting as Reading: The Place of the Reading Process in the Actor’s Work. University of Michigan Press.
Diderot, Denis; Walter Herries Pollock, trans. (1957). The Paradox of Acting. Paradox of Acting and Masks or Faces / Denis Diderot; William Archer. Hill and Wang.
Grotowsky, Jerzy (2002). Statement of Principles. Towards a Poor Theatre. Routledge.
LePage, Robert (1996). Robert LePage in Discussion with Robert Eyre. Twentieth Century Performance Reader / Huxley, Michael. Routledge.
MacIvor, Daniel (1992). Daniel MacIvor 2 plays Never Swim Alone & This is a Play. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press.
Plato; Lane Cooper, trans. (1961). Ion. The Complete Dialogues of Plato / Edith Hamilton; Huntington Cairns et al. Pantheon Books.