Heartbreak

THE ACTRESS

“Tears forever flow in the river of my heart.” Angelica

What is going on here? In a word what is going on is that Angelica stands as a spectator to her own emotions. She observes them as others would observe an external object, whether tangible or otherwise, but the object of Angelica’s observation is herself in the form of her own emotional states.

There is a conceptual distance between Angelica as observer and Angelica as the stage upon which her emotions strut their hour. That conceptual distance gives rise to its articulation which, of course, does not take the form of conceptual analysis – Angelica is not a philosopher – but rather the form of ethereal analogy. Angelica observes her own emotions as like that of an angel whose wings have been broken, that have been torn off like the innocent petals of the daisy. In the river of her heart, her tears flow forever.

However Angelica is not simply a neurotic observer of her own emotional states since the articulation of those states is intended to arouse comparable states in the listener. Indeed, the greater the arousal of those states in her audience, the better is Angelica’s performance. For Angelica is, “au fond,” an actress. Angelica is just doing the thing that actresses do.

For the Romans, of course, the actor was to be despised. He had no center. He was like the onion – remove each layer of its skin and no core is discovered. He lacks an identity. He is a chameleon. However, from the actor’s perspective, the stage really is the thing. While the rest of us experience emotion of various sorts as an accompaniment to the perception of some disturbing event or thought, Angelica’s thought – such as it is – is self-directed toward her emotional states. The rest of us, for example, feel anger when confronted with injustice. We feel sadness when confronted with the plight of someone dear to us. For Angelica, however, that someone dear to herself is herself. Like all actors, Angelica is self-absorbed, captivated by the picture of her tears flowing in the river of her heart.

But – and this is important – acting is not a naturally occurring achievement. It may appear to be such but that is just the visible manifestation of successful technique and technique requires practice, it requires devotion to the thespian art. Of what does that art consist? It consists of a symbiotic relationship of the actor and her audience.

Listen to Laurence Olivier, perhaps the greatest actor ever, on his role of Shakespeare’s “Henry V”:

“In my first season at the Old Vic in 1937 I wanted to completely different in every performance. This is nothing new to an actor, of course, indeed it is what every actor should be about, but I was determined to demonstrate
as much versatility as possible. Something that has always been part of my theatrical life: I like to appear as the chameleon. Nothing has given me more pleasure than knowing I have tricked my audience and been on stage for more than five minutes without being recognized. There are some occasions when you stand in the wings and cannot wait to get in front of the audience. You can smell the excitement, feel the adrenalin pumping, like being drunk on spring water.” (“Laurence Olivier On Acting,” 1984)

So let’s all now raise our glasses to Angelica. May her time on stage be like being drunk on spring water!

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!