The Actor as Creative Artist

Irish Jesuit Province

The Actor as Creative ArtistReview by: Gabriel FallonThe Irish Monthly, Vol. 75, No. 893 (Nov., 1947), pp. 474-477Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20515731 .

Accessed: 11/06/2014 10:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Irish Jesuit Province is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Irish Monthly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.85 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 10:21:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ijp

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20515731?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


474

Sitting at the Play

The Actor as Creative Artist

By Gabriel Fall?n

? T BELIEVE, if things had gone

1 smooth with me," wrote R. L.

Stevenson, "

I should be now

fallen in mind to a thing perhaps as

low as many types of bourgeois?the

implicit or exclusive artist. I have

often marvelled at the impudence of

gentlemen who describe and pass

judgment on the life of man, in almost

perfect ignorance of all its necessary elements and natural careers."

Author versus Actor

One is painfully reminded of this

rebuke of Stevenson's on reading (in The Standard of September 29th) Mr.

Patrick Kavanagh ?s declaration that *'

to watch the actor assuming the

r?le of the creative artist is as pathetic as a girl trying to take the part of a

man in real life ". Mr. Kavanagh is a man of letters, a poet ; and, without

doubt, a creative artist. So far as I

have been able to interpret his declara

tion and the context from which it is

culled, I assume that Mr. Kavanagh wishes it clearly to be understood that

he does not consider the actor to be a

creative artist.

The matter is an important

one.

The literary ascendancy which has

asserted itself in the English-speaking

theatre since the beginning of this

century has tended to assume and to

broadcast its assumption that the

actor's only true concern in the theatre

is, or ought to be, the intentions of his

author, that the actor can be nothing more than a docile interpreter, and

that "

creation "

in any sense has as

much to do with an actor as knitting with a pig.

Like Mr. Kavanagh, Mr. Frank

O'Connor is a man of letters, a poet,

and a creative artist. But across the

threshold of the theatre the re

semblance to Mr. Kavanagh ends.

For Mr. O'Connor, before he enters,

stoops to admit that "

the average writer knows about as much of the

machinery of a theatre as he does of the inside of a Flying Fortress ".

Naturally, when Mr. O'Connor (or the

average writer, for that matter) decides to enter the theatre in this

(alas ! uncommon) mood of humility, he learns things. The . machinery abides his inspection ; the theatre

responds and unfolds itself.

One of the things which Mr.

O'Connor has learned in the theatre is

that the actor is a creative artist. "

Creation," writes Mr. O'Connor, " is the very life blood of acting."



THE ACTOR AS CREATIVE ARTIST 475

And he gives his reasons. " There

is no other way of unpacking the

author's tight, selective fabric of

vision ; of supplying us ivith all the

information that Shaw tries to supply us with in his stage directions ; of

reminding us that Lady Wishfort

isn't always absurd ; that she has

attractive little gestures that echo the

gawky schoolgirl she used to be, and

that she will grow old and die like the rest of us. It is only when that has

been done that the actress can really

'give us the authentic Congreve touch

?the Mozart quality in him?which makes his wittiest speech die away on

the most wistful cadence."

Nothing here of the player being

monstrously pathetic in assuming the

r?le of creator. Or of the necessity for the author, so feeling, to try to

do the actor's job for him by over

packing his play with stage directions.

That was the attitude of the literary

ascendancy in the theatre, of Shaw, in

particular. It is interesting, there

fore, to find Mr. O'Connor holding that

" stage directions like Shaw's are

futile ". And for the reason that "

every artist?painter, storyteller,

dramatist or actor?is bounded by his

own experience, and it is out of this

experience he must draw his inspira tion ". Exactly. As one who has

had to shoulder the burden of attempt

ing to accept Mr. Shaw's stage

direction, both as actor and producer,

I can join Mr. O'Connor in his con

tention that they are hopelessly futile so far as the theatre is concerned.

They may survive as literary curiosities, and do fulfil a practical purpose in assisting the reader to

digest the author's brilliant tracts.

But that is to deflect from the subject in hand.

Interpreting the Author

Anyone who wishes to contend that the actor is an

interpreter, the

author's interpreter, will have some

difficulty in finding an actor to dis

agree with him. But if he wishes to

under stand just what this r?le of inter

preter means he will need to learn

something more about the theatre. It

is the common lot of authors?or,

rather, of some authors in particular?

to find themselves dissatisfied with the

particular interpretations which actors

give to parts which these authors have

written. In nine cases out of every

ten these are the authors who come to

nothing in the theatre. It is rarely one finds one with the grace to see and

the humility to say what O'Casey saw

and said on the first night of his first

play, The Shadow of a Gunman.

Turning to the late F. J. McCormick, he said : "

Well, F. J., you didn't

play the character I wrote?the one I

had in mind, that is?but you created a much greater one ". That was

O'Casey's first lesson in theatre; and

while he remained in this country he

profited by it. Juno and The Plough,.



476 THE IRISH MONTHLY

at any rate, were written with their

interpreters in mind.

As Mr. O'Connor points out, the

player's part in the theatre is both

interpretative and creative. In so far

as he interprets, he resembles a

musician "

but as a creator he is just like the painter, the dramatist and the

storyteller ; a man who observes and

meditates ". It was from a sense of

this r?le of creator in her calling that a famous French actress cried out : "

Ah, yes, they do well to applaud me ; for have I not given them my

life!" Experience, observation and

meditation, those are the qualities which the player, bringing to bear on

his function of interpreter, turns to

creative account.

In the Light of the Player's

Experience

Mr. O'Connor points his contention

that the player must draw inspiration from the player's

own experience by

an example taken from a radio play of

his own. In Mr. O'Connor's opinion,

it was one of the finest performances he had ever seen or heard. I am in a

position heartily to agree with him.

The play was The Long Road to

Oomeragh : the actress, Rita O'Dea.

Mr. O'Connor tells us : " When I

praised the actress who took the part of the old woman she said : '

I was

thinking of my mother ! '

I said : * I

was thinking of my grandmother '

".

And he goes on to say : " Why we do

that sort of thing I don't profess to

know. It is not that we copy any

model, for the conception of the

character must exist before one can

even think of a model, and afterwards

it must live a quite independent life, which will equally fit any grandmother and the actress's mother. I suspect it

is really a way of systematising our

ideas, of fitting them all into one

natural frame. When she had done it, the actress knew as much about the

character as I did. That was her job

of creation, and it would have been

useless for me to try to do it for her '\

It would be interesting to discuss

this process in greater detail with Mr.

O'Connor. However, the point is that

his contention is well held. I have

taken the liberty of italicising the

operative phrases.

One of the most creative actors in

the British theatre is Charles

Laughton. In the opinion of Hugh

Walpole, Laughton is England's ?<

supreme creator ". Be that as it

may, I remember having a discussion

with the actor on this aspect of his art on the occasion of his appearance in

O'Casey's The Silver Tassie. In the third act of that play Laughton inter

preted a speech in a manner which, so

to speak, tore the hearts out of the more sensitive members of his

audience. I questioned him about it

and discovered that his source of

inspiration taken from life and

experience was far removed from the



THE ACTOR AS CREATIVE ARTIST 477

particular situation which that moment

in the character's life revealed. I

mention this merely in order to show

that the source of inspiration, so far

as the player's creation is concerned,

is not always as obvious or as facile as

Mr. O'Connor's illustration would

appear to suggest.

Angles of Vision

However, the whole point of this

article is to make clear to people of

Mr. Kavanagh's turn of criticism that

there are more things in the theatre

than are dreamt of in their restricted

philosophy. It is for this that A. C.

Ward in his introduction to the

Oxford University Press edition of

Specimens of English Dramatic

Criticism suggests that a more satisfy ing kind of criticism might result if

all intending critics were required to

undergo a portion of their apprentice

ship in the practical work of the play house. Indeed, the suggestion was

made some years ago in this city by Miche?l MacLiamm?ir. There is a

great deal in it. Mr. O'Connor's

experience in the theatre has obviously served him well. Mr. Ward goes further and would have his drama

critics in close acquaintance with

audiences on each social level. And,

indeed, this is a part of the apprentice

ship in which the author and the actor

might well join the critic.

Except to those who study the theatre in a philosophical vacuum, it

must be obvious that Shakespeare, bred in the tiring-room and on the

boards, an actor before he was a

dramatist, appreciated the creative

qualities of his colleagues. As Walter

Raleigh tells us, he was no lordly poet who stooped to the stage and

dramatised his song. He had no ivory tower conceptions of the theatre. "

He accepted the facts and subdued his hand to what it worked in ".

The trouble with some of our moderns is that when they meet with something

which does not fit into their own par ticular?and very narrow?scheme of

things, they ignore it or treat it as a

monster. This, of course, is the very

ecstasy of criticism !

U



Documents

The Actor as Creative Artist