Stanislavski and SNM: Incompatible? Nope!

Stanislavski and SNM

Constantin Stanislavski – the father of modern acting technique. An actor himself, plus a theoretician, director, and teacher, Stanislavski devoted his life to the theatre. He wanted to make the theater of his day more ‘realistic;’ he wanted a codified, effective method for training actors; and he wanted a technique that would encourage the illusive but ultra-potent state of what he called ‘inspiration’ to manifest itself frequently, even reliably. Stanislavski changed acting forever, and his writings form the foundation of theory/practice for almost every great acting teacher who taught in America from the 1930s to the present. Uta Hagen, Stella Adler, Michael Chekhov, Boleslavski, Strasberg, Harold Clurman, etc. are all Stanislavski-based. Consequently, it is the most common technique still taught, in some form, to American actors at the secondary and undergraduate levels.

After seeing SLEEP NO MORE for the first time, I began to wonder if Stanislavski’s system was relevant to that show. SNM is so ‘strange’ in that it’s not totally linear/chronological, there are few spoken words in anything except in 1:1s, the stories unfold primarily through movement and dance. Can you apply something generally associated with naturalism to something that is pretty ‘out there’ and avant-garde? Well, I have found it fruitful to explore Stanislavski’s notions of ‘realism’ and ‘naturalism.’

In Stanislavski’s youth, theatre was of the declamatory type – the actor was charged only with being heard and proper execution of the stylized physical poses that supposedly communicated emotions or mental states. In many ways, all of Stanislavski’s work was a reaction against that norm which he found unsatisfying both as an actor and a spectator. Stanislavski sought something more authentic, expressions of the real human condition. BUT Stanislavski also meant “truthful” – not absolute photo/emotional-realism. Those aren’t interchangeable terms. Still, Stanislavski’s work is most often associated with naturalism, hence my interest in whether his ‘normal’ means of preparing a character, analyzing a text, or experiencing a theatre piece can be applied to something as different as SNM. So, I went back to my Stanislavski texts, and was delighted to read this quote from Sonia Moore, who studied at the Moscow Art Theatre:

"[Stanislavski’s system is] not a series of rules for staging a naturalistic play or any other play. These teachings are beyond the limits of one theatrical direction in their historical significance. Stanislavski believed not in naturalism, which presents the surface of life, but in … truth of content. … This is even more important in an unconventional production… . There is no contradiction between unconventional staging and an actor who lives the inner experiences of the character. It is the truth of the actor’s behavior that will keep the audience’s attention."

After my last viewing of the show, I had the amazing opportunity to speak peer to peer to some of the actors at the bar, and I’ve continued the conversation with a couple of very gracious performers upon my return to Dallas. They had their basic training in Stanislavski methodology. One actor assured me that the characters they play each have a fully-developed “through-line” that accounts for everything the character does moment to moment. Even for characters who were less specifically delineated, this actor told me that they have taken the time to develop a whole back-story with given circumstances, motivated idiosyncrasies, etc.

It also leads me to something I experienced fully – the sense of this highly stylized production being more ‘real’ than most realism I’ve seen. The choreography, its execution, and the focus and intensity with which the actors interact with one another (and the audience in 1:1s) initiates a kind of crucible effect. Noble emotions, dark urges, psychological torture, joy and pain were all put by the creators through a refiners’ fire, and everything that was mixed in, muddled, or superfluous was burned away. What is left, and beautifully performed each night, flies at the audience in a potent barrage of concentrated, unadulterated reality. It’s not ‘box set’ realism; it is HYPER-realism that is able to bypass a spectator’s intellectual guard rails and critical sensors and penetrates straight to the soul level. The Macbeths’ lust and their guilt, the witches’ joyous bacchant frenzy and their remorse in the aftermath, Hecate’s haunting loss and urgent desire….. It all comes through and Stanislavski’s term ‘truth of content’ describes the SNM brand of ‘realism’ beautifully.

A final application of Stanislavski thought I’d like to apply to SLEEP NO MORE is that of actor intention. For Stanislavski, the ideal an actor strives for is what he calls the ‘creative state,’ which is the environment most likely to produce that indescribable, jointly-experienced “magic” only theatre can provide to the actor and spectator alike. Stanislavski described the phenomenon this way:

"After an actor has consciously prepared the pattern of his role and approaches the play’s events as if they were happening for the first time (…which makes every performance different), his contact with the audience may give birth to true, spontaneous actions that are unexpected even by the actor himself. These are moments of ‘subconscious’ creativity when an actor improvises although his text and the pattern of his role are firmly fixed. Such creativity or inspirational improvisation is the goal and essence of the Stanislavski school of acting."

This idea is often misinterpreted, or the emphasis is misplaced, and it’s distilled down to meaning that performances are best when they’re spontaneous, unexpected, and improvised. But re-read the other parts of the quote – ‘After an actor consciously prepared’ and ‘although his text and the pattern of his role are firmly fixed.’

In online interviews I’ve seen and read with the SLEEP NO MORE creators and original cast members, reporters remark that the piece feels so free and improvised. The cast and creators are quick to inform the reporters that they are mistaken – the whole is carefully and deliberately crafted, that choreography is set and indelible, that performers do not ever deviate from what has been prescribed.

So, why does everyone think it’s an improvised free-for-all? Because that’s what it feels like – the audience is “inspired” in a kind of magical way, when the actor has done and continues to do their job properly. Sonia Moore explains: “We find that [inspiration] is born through the conscious effort of the actor who has mastered his technique. Inspiration is the result of conscious hard work; it is not a power that stimulates work.”

On the other hand, the creators and actors are also quick to admit that the audience’s energy and reaction adds an unknown quantity to the mix, a kind of spontaneity that can change, or perhaps more precisely – co-mingle with the indelible. One actor told me: “[The spectator] nuances more than changes [a scene.] Everyone brings a different energy into that space and all of those energies can affect you differently and bring out different shades of something.” But if an actor hasn’t done their homework sufficiently, or if actors do not treat an individual performance as something that’s happening, as Stanislavski said, “for the first time,” differences can throw them rather than inform and enhance, and the audience will disengage.

SLEEP NO MORE therefore requires an actor’s constant, focused attention – another Stanislavski staple. As one SNM actor told me, “You have to work hard to stay focused and make your thoughts that much more razor sharp and clear without words...if you drift off and imagine your grocery list for five seconds the audience will know or sense that you're not 100% in it...they're very intuitive… .”

And that quality was one of the things I loved most about SLEEP NO MORE – the actors’ dedication to the work, to each moment, to each other, and to the spectator. As I mentioned in a previous post, the day I saw THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL on Broadway, it was apparent those actors had forgotten the Stanislavski truth they were undoubtedly taught at some point: “My task is to elevate the family of artists from the ignorant, the half-educated, and the profiteers, and to convey to the younger generation that an actor is the priest of beauty and truth.” The BOUNTIFUL folk erred wildly on the side of being ‘profiteers’ rather than being ‘priests of beauty and truth,’ a heinous sin considering the BOUNTIFUL performers were the veteran pros. The SNM kids had far greater artistic integrity and were infinitely more effective because of it.

So, even all this many decades since Stanislavski tread the boards, and even though he is associated with naturalism, Stanislavski is as useful and applicable today to the ‘normal’ and to the cutting-edge, the challenging, the experimental, and the game-changing.

"I Am a Camera"

"I Am a Camera"

Okay, so maybe the title of my last blog – FINAL Thoughts – was a bit premature. We are going on 3 weeks since I saw the show, and still the mental kettle burbles. All I said in that post – that the show was a very special, personal experience for me—remains completely true. I just feel like saying more.

My thoughts today run toward something a cast member said to me. As an actor myself and a teacher of acting, I asked what made this show different from the perspective of an actor. The cast member said that it was more ‘cinematic’ than theatre generally was because of the proximity of the spectators.

For anyone not familiar with the difference, the major contrast is size. When you are acting on stage in a house which seats 499 or more, in a sense, you have to play all the way to the back row. Tiny gestures, subtle facial expression changes – they don’t read. People can’t see them when there’s that much distance between you and them, so everything the actor does has to be a little bigger (or a lot bigger, depending on the style of theatre you’re doing.) When you’re acting for camera, it’s right in your face, and the mic is right there as well. Because the camera is so close, and because when the image is shown to viewers on the movie screen, they will have jillion-foot wide/tall image of you to gaze at and interpret, the acting can (and has to be) tiny. Supremely understated facial expressions will read beautifully, powerfully. Film folk tease theatre actors, telling them to ‘bring it down a notch, or ten,’ and theatre folk tease film actors, telling them ‘no close-ups in theatre; get it all the way out there to back row.’

Theatrical acting becomes more cinematic when you’re playing in a smaller venue – a black box space that seats 100 or less—but there is still more separation of actor and spectator than at SLEEP NO MORE. The SNM audience is *right there*. A spectator can be anywhere from thirty feet, to three feet, to three inches (or less!) away from an actor. Movie cameras can get crystal-clear close-ups of actors, but most theatre patrons (especially those of us who sit in the “nosebleeds” I can afford) can’t do the same with stage actors. In SNM, spectators can get close enough to be able to look over an actor’s shoulder and read what the character is writing (and misspelling one night I saw the show. I’m sure it was a character choice….) Even if you keep your distance, you can still hear the actors breathe, and if you’re close, you can feel their breath on your skin. A SNM actor doesn’t have to be ‘bigger’ necessarily, because all the details, even the tiniest, read to the spectator who is literally sharing the performance space with the actor.

An aside: I also want to talk about how much of SNM is actually ‘theatrical’ more than realistic, but how and why their brand of theatricality is actually more REAL than realism. That’s for another day though.

The proximity of the spectator brings me to another of SNM’s cinematic values – that of spectator as camera. Each spectator is the “camera” through which the scene before them is recorded, in our memory at least. We have two sophisticated auto-focus lenses, and we can pan, tilt, zoom, rack/deep/or selective focus to our heart’s content. Additionally, the entire room we’re in is within our ability to keep in frame. Some of that is possible in a regular theatrical experience, but unlike a typical theatre where we are tied to our specific seat, at SLEEP NO MORE we can also cinematically track and truck at will. In fact, we go it one better and actually become a kind of steadicam. No need to lay track or stay only parallel to the action. We can (and must!) ascend and descend staircases, do curlicues, enter and exit through countless doors, dash down hallways, cut around corners, negotiate mazes (and damned high windows, and through the bars of wrought iron gates…or not.) We can look at anything we want from almost any angle, even extreme close-up, at any moment we choose. Can’t do that in a typical theatre space. You can do it with a camera while making a movie, but the director selects the angles for us, and the spectator cannot change them. That is where SLEEP NO MORE actually improves on cinema AND theatre.

The final cinematic element that comes to mind is that of dreams and fantasies. Most everyone has had the experience of dreaming you’re watching a movie, and then as the dream goes on, you go from spectator to participant. The nightmare version I had as a child: I’d be watching a horror movie about witches, and suddenly there I was running from the rapidly approaching witch myself. More pleasant iterations of that dream began to occur when I discovered porn. I won’t elaborate, but you get the idea. Spectators also sometimes wish that the cinematic characters they love were real and that they could commune with them, fight at their side, comfort them, and generally live in that world along with them.

In SLEEP NO MORE, you get to! (Kind of.) You get to live in the world, for up to 3 hours, right along with the characters. You can go where they go, and even their most intimate or helpless moments are not hidden from you. Every prop or piece of set dressing that is tactile for them is for you too, and you are welcome to touch it, manipulate it, read it, feel its weight. You feel the dirt under your feet in some rooms, the cold of the corrugated metal that lines hallways. You can sit on furniture, smell the smells, feel the temperature differences and water droplets, hear the sounds, even taste some things. When they run, you run too, and your muscles ache after a break-neck dash up the stairs, and your breathing and heart rate quicken because of actual physical exertion. Your excitement level piques too as you are part of the chase, a ‘partner in crime.’ It all feels real because, in many ways, it is! Again, it’s an extension, an upgrading of both theatre and film.

SLEEP NO MORE appeals to cinematically-based romantic fantasies as well. Who hasn’t, whether sleeping or waking, fallen a little in love with a character and wished they were real and could return your feelings in kind? In SLEEP NO MORE, the beautiful leading lady or handsome gent sometimes fulfills that fantasy! Out of the crowd, a SNM actor will see something in you, over everyone else that cycle. They actually “come down out of the movie screen” in a surreal Woody Allen PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO moment and take your hand. But unlike PURPLE ROSE where the movie character comes into the spectator’s world, the SNM actor invites you, and only you, more deeply into their world. For an intensely magical span, you’re in the moment together, just the two of you: they need you, they connect to you, they are emotionally vulnerable with you, they touch you, they tantalize you, and you are their whole world. It is exquisite! Then, almost as quickly as it began, it’s over and you go back to being ‘just camera’ again. But to have that experience at all?!! A fantasy become reality!?! It just doesn’t happen in real life – ever! Except at SLEEP NO MORE.

While SLEEP NO MORE borrows liberally from dramatic literature, it also borrows more than just music/themes/characters from classic Hollywood. It’s the rarest of invitations for the spectator to experience live theatre by becoming both the cinematographer and a participant in their own, ‘gonzo’ movie. It just doesn’t exist anywhere else – not crafted and executed to this level.

Final Thoughts

Final thoughts

I continue to contemplate my SNM experience, going on two weeks later. In Maxine Doyle and Felix Barrett interviews, they say that’s one of their goals – to have SLEEP NO MORE still burbling around in people’s heads and guts long after they attend a performance. I think I may ‘boil and bubble’ into infinity, and that's not a bad thing! I think, however, that I am done with public forums for my SNM thoughts and feelings.

As the creators keep saying in interview after interview, SLEEP NO MORE is mostly about the individual spectator’s journey through the performance space, their interface with the spectacle found there, and their cogitation about it later. I thought that was a cop-out the first time I heard it. It sounded condescending, something to keep us plebeians from knowing too much and to keep us in our ever-aweing but uncomprehending places. It also sounded suspiciously evasive, perhaps to keep us from discovering the lack of substance both in the creative process and in the final product. Also, as an academic, I felt driven to dissect it, to deconstruct it, to simplify it, to own it so I could hold it ALL in my hands in a tangible form I had thoroughly scrutinized. I thought that would lead me to full understanding and explain to me why the experience got so deeply under my skin. I wanted to conquer it!

It’s not that the intellectual is bad. I think it gave me more insights and causes for appreciation than I would have had without it. I believe, for example, this show is a realization of the mad genius Antonin Artaud’s notion of “Theatre of Cruelty.” Even Artaud himself didn’t have a clue exactly HOW to do it, and his writings were more theoretical idealism than practical, I think the SLEEP NO MORE people have done it. I also think, perhaps, the ‘theatre of cruelty’ experience isn’t workable on a sizeable scale, but possible only on a spectator to spectator basis, which is why SLEEP NO MORE’s mantra of traveling the space alone is so instructive. I thought I could write a book on that, and someone still may. I also think SLEEP NO MORE is a realization of the ‘Holy Theatre’ spoken of by both Peter Brook (THE EMPTY SPACE) and Jerzy Grotowski (TOWARDS A POOR THEATRE), and I think the actors in SNM are or try very hard most nights to be ‘holy actors,’ as described by Grotowski. My experience I would certainly characterize as “sacred.” I think Nietzsche’s notion (from THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY) of the most potent theatre having both the ‘Dionysian’ and the ‘Apollonian’ in equal, complementary quantities is a rare and crowning achievement of SLEEP NO MORE. There are academic papers and explorations to be had along all these lines. I also think SLEEP NO MORE will eventually become a chapter in an Oscar Brockett book, (or whoever is *the* theatre history textbook guy in the coming years.) Even while I was seeing the show, I thought: “This will get written about in the future, and I WAS THERE! I saw it with my own eyes.” And I wanted to be one of the academics who wrote about it!

But I have realized that this quest is wrong-headed, for me anyway. As I continue to process, it isn’t primarily ‘academic’ things that pinball around in my waking hours or tango seductively in my dreams. It’s the emotional, the visceral, and the personal, the deeply personal in some cases. It’s not that I am incapable of producing scholarly commentary; it’s that I don’t really want to, not about this. It’s too special. Engaging solely in deductive inquiry compartmentalizes, reduces, even cheapens what was ethereal and soul-invigorating. Like a picturesque tapestry – if you continue to pick and yank, the thread unravels and what you’re left with is a boulder-sized ball of multi-colored string. The artwork itself and the enchantment it induced are both gone forever.

Some amazing things just don’t ‘translate.’ They cannot be quantified or fully explained to the rational mind. That’s why words like ‘sublime’ and ‘miraculous’ exist – to describe the indescribable. And that was SLEEP NO MORE for me.

Sublime.

A TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL and SNM

A TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL and SNM: It wasn’t even close

I came to New York expressly to see SLEEP NO MORE. I knew it was dense enough that I wanted to see more it than once, so I bought tickets for two consecutive nights, figuring I could sufficiently dissect and absorb all it had to offer in two viewings. I also had hopes of seeing some other Broadway shows while I was there – perhaps a Wednesday matinee and another show on Wednesday night.

One of my favorite playwrights is Horton Foote, and I love both the film and play versions of A TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL. I had a chance to engage in a workshop with Mr. Foote when I was in graduate school, further cementing my appreciation for him and his ability to eloquently capture the pathos and dignity of ordinary men and women ‘living lives of quiet desperation.’

After seeing SLEEP NO MORE the first time, it became painfully obvious to me that twice would not be enough. I say ‘painfully’ because I was so totally enraptured by my first experience, the thought of only getting to see it once more literally caused me emotional pain. I consulted my traveling companion, and she agreed to see SNM again, but I insisted on purchasing the tickets since it was me pushing the SNM agenda. So, I bought tickets for a third night of SNM, even before we’d seen it a second time, and we both lamented that we hadn’t purchased tickets for the Sunday night we arrived too! But part of me still hungered for TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL too. It was Cecily Tyson, for heaven’s sake, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Vanessa Williams, and it was a limited engagement, a once in a lifetime chance. My wonderful traveling companion saw my sorrow at letting BOUNTIFUL go, and while I was in our hotel room shower, she purchased tickets for both of us to the Wednesday afternoon matinee performance of BOUNTIFUL. Not just any tickets, mind you. She got us on the 5th row of the orchestra. I was grateful to her for that gift, and I leapt into ‘Professor mode’ and regaled her on the wonders of Horton Foote and provided an introduction to the characters and world of BOUNTIFUL.

We experienced SLEEP NO MORE again on Tuesday night, and it was even better, for both of us, the second time. I was glad we had tickets for the next night as well, and I was actually looking forward to Wednesday being the perfect theatrical day – BOUNTIFUL in the afternoon and SNM in the evening. Well.....

The thing people noticed immediately when I returned home was how little I spoke of THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL, compared to my effusive ramblings about SLEEP NO MORE. I began to examine my feelings about BOUNTIFUL more carefully, and came to the conclusion that the direction was clumsy and panderously sought to elicit laughs in all the wrong places, but even more importantly, the actors didn't displayed much artistic integrity. This beautiful script, this gentle show, but at the Wednesday afternoon matinee, all but one cast member was guilty of ‘phoning it in’ for long stretches, and some for the whole show. Instead of being fully engaged with one another or with the material every moment, the actors mostly went through the motions. I suppose they believed that the audience was so in awe of what big stars they are that we wouldn’t notice, or that they were so good, they could sleep-walk through the show and still blow our socks off. Well, I noticed. I know the difference between passionate artists and lazy ones on auto-pilot. While I cried some during the show (mostly at the script itself and the plight of its main character, which touches some personal, emotional buttons for me) my "socks" were still firmly, disappointingly in place as I left the theater.

I am not sorry I saw it (though I think my traveling companion was, and about the pricey tickets too), but BOUNTIFUL’s potential power went mostly unrealized. These renowned actors, receiving salaries and accolades far beyond what the young SNM actors are getting Off Off Broadway---and my preference was for the SLEEP NO MORE cast. I say that without a nanosecond of equivocation.

It wasn’t even close.

The SNM kids had more professional and artistic integrity, more focus and commitment, and more demonstrated love for their audience and their craft than did these supposed veteran pros. It was palpable, and a huge part of why SLEEP NO MORE got so deeply under my skin and continues to rumble inside me. I hope mightily for greater fame and fortune for all the SNM cast members, as they are a mind-bogglingly talented lot, but I pray that success will not make them lazy and remove that precious integrity from them. It is a crime anyone lucky enough to be a working professional actor allows it to happen, EVER.

My Director's Lens and SNM

Production Still from SNM

My Director’s Lens and SNM

I have been directing theatre for more than two decades -- since I was 22, younger if you consider directing scenes I did for classes.  I came to it as an actor myself and am a reasonably good acting coach because of that.  I have skills, I have a decent eye, I have excellent intuition, I can make pretty stage pictures, and I have heard from many that I am a “good director” (whatever that really means) and a pleasure to work with. 

Sometimes it goes to your head a little – your healthy levels of confidence morph into a kind of egotism you may not even be aware of.  You watch the offerings of other directors, and shake your head metaphorically at what you perceive as clumsiness.  And even if it is a worthy effort, you think, “This is pretty good, but if I had an hour’s rehearsal with these people, I could make it great!”  And then BAM!  You are confronted by a creation of actual genius, and you have what I call the “Salieri Moment” (referring to Peter Shaffer’s AMADEUS).  You realize you were actually a mediocrity all along. 

I had that humbling experience when I attended SLEEP NO MORE in July of 2013.  I was dumbfounded by the way the creators had put seemingly disparate elements together to make a cohesive whole.  The imagining and design of the space was beyond my comprehension – so much creativity. The choreography and acting sent my head, my emotions, all my senses, my guts, and my very soul into a cathartic ecstasy unlike anything I’d ever experienced in a performance space.

I cannot emphasize enough how very rare that is.  I love theatre, I have seen and made theatre that penetrates deeply for me, my acting partners, and the audience; and for my cast and their spectators when I’m directing.  I know art’s power, and I don’t mean to imply that I don’t feel it often.  I do.  No other reason to sacrifice the time, your social life, personal relationships, sleep, sweat, and tears if it doesn’t move you.  It DOES move me, like nothing else.  But I have never before been provoked and engaged to this degree, and never for this long after having experienced a show.   

On my third and final seeing of the show, the director in me began thinking of things that aren’t usually a concern when you’re dealing with straight proscenium or even black box theatres.  SLEEP NO MORE is a kind of ‘promenade theatre’ in which the audience moves to follow the action.  But it’s even more complex than that in SLEEP NO MORE.  Because action is happening simultaneously in different rooms, on multiple floors, and it intertwines, it isn’t just a matter of mapping a pathway for a single audience moving as a group.  Theoretically, individual spectators can go wherever they want, follow who ever they want.  What an absolute nightmare for these directors – something very complex on top of a show that is already dense and difficult!  I became aware that the directors had indeed thought through audience traffic patterns, and employed many discreet means of herding spectators in the massive, multi-level space.  Not only did they have to block the actors, they managed to block the bulk of audiences too without even knowing who or how many they would be.  Absolutely astonishing, all the elements they had to think about, all the challenges they had to solve, and the ingenious ways they solved them.

Even with all my academic degrees, all my experience and understanding, all my artistic passion, I will never be of this caliber.  In fact, I am a hack, comparatively, and that’s not self-deprecation.  It’s just true.  In Peter Shaffer’s AMADEUS, Salieri becomes very angry with God because he believes God has made him a mediocrity, and then rubs salt in the wound by granting him perception enough to recognize the sublime without skill enough to create any himself.  That is not me.  

I am eternally grateful for the completely immersive (‘emursive’!!) and humbling experience!  After the show, I tried to express to one of the actors how enamored I was of the whole experience. She was gracious, but I knew it was coming out like something she’d heard a million times before.  I explained further that when a magician does a wonderfully executed trick in a room of astounded lay people, he has accomplished something fantastic.  But when a magician does a wonderfully executed trick in a room full of other magicians, who are watching both as spectators and as peer artists, THAT is when you know you’ve done something legitimately miraculous.

SLEEP NO MORE blew my spectator socks off, touched me to the core in intensely personal ways, taught me a timely lesson in humility, and reminded me of all the reasons I love and want to continue to make art.  Though my artistic offerings will never be as inventive or deft, and the positive impact will occur on a much humbler scale, they are still worthwhile in the grand scheme of things, because art does make a difference in people’s lives – lay people and other artists alike!

Nudity and SNM

Hecate and Sexy Witch in a production still from SNM

SHOWGIRLS, Nudity, and SNM

Yes, I’m talking about the Paul Verhoeven debacle – that SHOWGIRLS.  What could it possibly have to do with SLEEP NO MORE?  Not a lot, actually, but it came to mind as I pondered my SNM experience.  Also coming to mind was the snarky but on point audio commentary by David Schmander on the version of SHOWGIRLS I giggled my way through.

SHOWGIRLS has a lot of nudity!  I remember stumbling onto it sanitized for tv.  Having seen the original, I have to admit being curious if the tv version would be a mere 10 minutes long when they got through cutting out everything that would have to be censored for American television.  Instead, I laughed wildly at the floating purple blobs CGI-ed over bare breasts during naked dialogue scenes that were deemed vital to plot (or the lack thereof.)  David Schmander’s commentary posits that for a movie with that much bare female flesh in it, SHOWGIRLS features the most unsexy nakedness he’s ever seen. Though meant to be titillating, it’s not.  It actually becomes kind of melba-toasty as the film goes on.

As we left the show the first night, I said to my student and friend who had accompanied me, the nudity in SLEEP NO MORE is also kind of unsexy, but for reasons of artistic competence, rather than Verhoeven/Eszterhas ineptitude.  We agreed too that the sexiest things we’d seen were when characters were fully clothed.  SNM’s nudity was used in a totally different way, for different reasons, and with different results. We also remarked that the show’s producers limit attendance to those age 16 and over.  The MPAA, in all its uptight, Victorian wisdom, would have given a movie containing SNM levels of nudity an NC-17, blocking it from the view of 16 year olds, most of whom are more than capable of appreciating this show.  I was reminded how nice it is to be in the ‘Blue State’ of New York, as my own hyper-Red, Bible-belt state of Texas would not have allowed 16 year olds into SNM.  It also made me ponder the use of nudity typically in cinematic and performing arts, and its use in SNM.

The first night I saw SNM, I saw two completely naked men (Macbeth and ‘Witch Boy’).  SHOWGIRLS, as with most mainstream Hollywood films, contains no full frontal male nudity.  During the course of my three experiences with SNM, I saw a total of four different totally naked men, two different totally naked women, and three (maybe 4, I’m not sure) different topless women.  It wasn’t my first experience with nudity on stage, and I am not a prig, so it was not really troublesome to me.  As I also draw, primarily figural stuff, aesthetically I was taken with how gorgeous dancer bodies are. Their lean, athletic lines and cuts, and the grace with which they move and alight.

The girls have no boobs to speak of – professional dancers seldom do – so the female nudity wasn’t something skanky out of a strip club, where what you actually see is extravagant plastic surgeon handiwork rather than heaven-granted /exercise sculpted beauty.  And the male nudity, which Americans seem ludicrously terrified of in their art – again, the ‘porn’ aspect was not in effect.  Porn is pre-occupied with ridiculously non-proportionate size and apparent virility – the interest isn’t in ‘every man’ or even in “Vitruvian Man’s” physical perfection, which all of the beautiful SNM guys matched.  So SNM was very different from nakedness most Americans are used to, aroused by, or prudishly shun altogether.

The nudity in SNM also has a different intent than we’re used to in American performative arts.  I saw Macbeth fully nude the first night I saw the show.  In the scene, he was in bed holding his wife, covered by a sheet.  She was clothed, but he was bare-chested and, I rightly presumed, nude underneath. Mostly though what I noted was his mood: brooding, distracted, ill at ease, almost tiger-in-a-cage frustrated, though he was still.  He eventually threw the sheet back, arose from the bed, and moved across the room to dress.  Totally naked man, and absolutely nothing sexual or exploitive about the moment.  Just a scene that has played out in bedrooms of married couples a million times a day.  It was casual, familiar, and drew little attention to itself.  The actor was also, for lack of a better word, “normal”— not a kind of scary aberration of nature, as some porn guys are in the genital department.  On a different night, I saw a different Macbeth come back into his bedroom suite, bloodied from a murder he’d committed, and exceedingly distraught.  His wife comforts him, helps him undress, and puts him in a bathtub where she tries to help him wash away the evidence of his crime and to assuage the guilt that’s palpably emanating from his entire countenance.  Again, nothing salacious about the nudity.  In fact, rather than being ‘turned on,’ I felt sympathetic toward him.  Even though you know what he’s done, I ached at his aching. I ached at his wife’s fervent but ineffectual attempt to comfort him, to take his pain away.  He was physically naked, yes, but not in a sexualized sense at all. The character was at the zenith of emotional vulnerability, and his soul was flayed bare as well as his body. 

Later, Lady Macbeth (I saw two different actresses do the role on different nights), driven mad by her own guilt and culpability, is institutionalized.  She is brought into a communal bathing room, stripped of all her clothes by a nurse there, and put into a bath tub of water, where she enacts the most heartbreaking, tortured, wordless version of ‘Out, out damned spot’ I have ever witnessed.  Yes, she is naked – completely – but it’s not a turn-on to anybody.  Lighting left her lower body mostly in shadow, though nobody was gawking anyway.  The choreography is the embodiment of mental anguish manifesting physically, and both actresses’ performance of it was absolutely riveting. It’s literally painful to watch, and my thoughts were, again, those of sympathy, with nothing remotely spicy ever entering my head.

And later still, I wandered upon the much blogged about ‘witch rave’ scene.  Basically, three people – two girls and one guy (I saw two different actors do the ‘Witch Boy’ role and three, maybe four, girls play the witches) – converge and become intoxicated on substances, Hecate’s influence, and the ambiance, and they dance together.  Their dance gradually becomes a frenzied Bacchant revel, or something out of a Puritan’s nightmare about consorting with the Devil in the forest.  At first glance, it seems that it is going to be erotic.  The girls tear the boy’s clothes off, the girls strip off their own tops, there is kissing, touching, and ménage a trios-like cavorting.  It is excessive, and though the choreography and such are set, the depiction is of characters out of control, who have lost reason, lost a sense of right and wrong, and have become the wild personification of the most feral human instincts and desires.  And then it gets darker.  Out comes the blood (theatrical “blood,” but still…), out comes some ‘Satanic’ imagery, and out come the MACBETH warning prophecies: a bloodied baby, Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane, etc. 

And then it gets darker still, but not as you might expect.  The witches begin to sober up, come to their senses, come to an awareness of what they have done, and they are horrified by it and that they were capable of it in the first place.  Each sorrows and suffers in her/his own way – you can only watch one as they all end up different places after the rave scene.  I never did see the Witch Boy’s ordeal, but one night I saw a girl witch do a frenetic dance of torment.  At the end, she collapsed on the floor in a fetal ball of emotional agony, weeping real tears, and she reached out to a spectator.  The actress is about the age of the college kids I teach, and I suddenly felt very protective.  I wanted to reach back, to pick her up, to hold her in my arms, as I have done with many momentarily distraught theatre kids in my teaching career.  I saw the same instinct in the spectator standing next to me, but unlike me, she actually DID reach out to the girl on the floor, but Hecate forcefully intervened.  As Hecate shook the witch, roughly, and redressed her, I realized that the actress had been topless for the entire turmoil dance. I hadn’t noticed because it wasn’t what I was looking at.  It was the pain I connected to, not the nudity, which was again an expression of vulnerability, not something sleazy.

The second night I saw the show, after the rave, I didn’t stay for that witch’s ‘gnashing of teeth’ dance.  It was a little overwhelming the first time, and I didn’t need to experience that again. But I accidentally stumbled upon a room where the other girl witch was dealing with her guilt and pain at having been so Bacchant earlier.  She was crouched in ball in a corner of the room, holding herself, rocking, keening without sound.  She eventually found a basin of water and a wash towel, and she proceeded to do almost what Lady Macbeth had done – try to wash it away. She frantically scrubbed her torso, her face, her neck, her hair – trying to remove the blood, the sweat, the smells of the other people, and her ‘sins.’  Then she slowed to a stop, dipped the wash rag into the water again and turned to the spectators – she had three of us at the moment. She looked at each of us yearningly, helpless and childlike.  Then she seemed to offer the rag to a spectator, who did not take it, not knowing what to do or being totally uncomfortable about the situation.  She offered it to the 2^nd spectator, who also didn’t take it, and I saw what looked like a little desperation on her face, so I followed my instinct this time and reached my hand out to her. She looked at me with relief and gave me the rag.  She then turned away from me, squatted back down, and moved her long blonde hair out of the way, exposing her bare back to me. So, here is a topless performer, and a spectator being invited to touch her.  And all I felt were compassion and fierce maternal protectiveness.

It was actually a little cathartic for me.  I was able to do for this girl what I wanted to but couldn’t for Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and the other witch – comfort, care for, try to ‘make it better.’  I gently washed her back, her shoulders, her neck.  I got the blood off, I dried her with the dry bottom of the rag, and she let me.  I could feel the character’s tension relaxing under my touch.  As she began to rise, my next instinct was to hold up the towel and block her from view of the other spectators while she put her clothes back on, but she leaned in, took the towel from me, and whispered ‘Thank you’ in my ear.  It seemed an utterance coming from both the character and the actor because no one else had been willing to participate.  She then, totally in character, dressed, did a quick something with her damp hair, put her jazz shoes back on, took a deep cleansing breath, and she was out the door to her next designated location and activity. 

As far as genuine, arousing raciness in SNM goes – the scene in which Lady M uses a dance to convince her husband to do what he wants to do and kill Duncan simply DRIPPED with seduction and eroticism!  And both actors were dressed. A roughly athletic, homoerotic dance between the porter and the boy witch in a phone booth oozed carnality.  Both were fully dressed.  An equally vigorous and steamy pas de deux between the ‘Sexy Witch’ character and another male character, all over furniture and up the wall, quickened my breathing and heart rate. Again both were dressed.  A dance between a woman and man on a pool table gushed ardor all over the room, and they were both dressed.  All THAT stuff was sexy as hell, but none of the nude scenes really were.   

SLEEP NO MORE is an amazingly challenging and contradictory text that wreaks havoc with tradition and a spectator’s sensibilities and expectations.  I think SHOWGIRLS wanted to do that, to evoke ancient archetypes and profound emotion, but critic and commentator David Schmander bestowed upon SHOWGIRLS this dubious honor: “’Showgirls’ triumphs in that every single person involved in the making of the film is making the worst possible decision at every possible time.'' Conversely, with SLEEP NO MORE, every artist involved in the creation, arrangement, layering, and nightly execution of this exigent wonder was/is making absolutely the best possible decisions at every possible moment. 

So, yes, expect nudity at SLEEP NO MORE, but be forewarned that it won’t be what you’re anticipating.  While there are wonderfully sensual delights to observe, most of the tantalizing grip of this show comes at the cognitive and affective levels, not the libidinal one.  It’s blissfully visceral, yes.  But not like *that.*

My Hecate Encounter

Zhauna Franks -- from the official SNM web site

My Hecate Encounter

The second time I saw SLEEP NO MORE, I received my first 1:1 encounter.  It was with Andrea Murillo’s Nurse Shaw.  There is something indescribably extraordinary about your first one. It’s sort of like the first time you fall in love – it’s unexpected, it’s frightening, it’s euphoric, and feels overwhelming in myriad terrible and magnificent ways.  It tantalizes in the moment, and causes angst in the loss.

The next time I saw SLEEP NO MORE, I actually went looking for a 1:1 encounter with a guy this time.  I will always be a little in love with Andrea Murillo (or Nurse Shaw or maybe both)—she gave this somewhat jaded spectator my first satisfying “fourth wall” IMPLOSION experience.  And I excitedly wondered what it would feel like to fall in love for just an electrifying theatrical moment with a young, handsome, hard-bodied fellow.  Well, the guys weren’t biting that night, or they weren’t biting me.  But rather than put the blame on myself, I ‘sour grapes-edly’ dismissed it as their personal proclivities dictating spectator choice as they all seemed to be picking other guys for their 1:1s.

I wandered down into the rep bar, where nothing was happening at the moment.  No one else was there, and I availed myself of the opportunity to admire details – set details, lighting details.  I even looked for glow-tape (a theater staple to combat the dangers of darkness on- and back stage), which I didn’t find.  (These actors must have ‘night vision’ contacts or something!) Having soaked up the ambiance, I was on my way out just as Hecate was emerging from a locked room in the corridor.  She immediately made eye contact, scaring the hell out of me again.  I thought I was going to be chastised for examining set pieces closely to see how the witches stayed safe standing on a cabaret table in the dark, with strobe and laser lights to disorient them.  She didn’t chastise.  She told me to wait there, because she had something for me.

I then realized that I had stumbled on what was to be my second 1:1.  Granted, it was another girl, but hey.  Nothing unpleasant about that, and she had an inviting smile and gentle eyes.  I decided to trust her and let her take command. I didn’t even mind when she took my mask off as I knew it was coming this time.  And when it was off and she was looking at me, I felt a kinship, almost like greeting an old friend.  Again, I will not say what exactly happened in the encounter.  I will say it was ‘narrative’ (which my first had not been) with physical elements.

What I want to talk about most is something I don’t know if I can truly explicate with words.  I will try. There is a critical theory called Reader-Response, which basically states that it really doesn’t matter what the author(s) of a work intended, it’s what the reader takes from it that is important.  And the ‘reader’ will draw insight from a text according to their own experiences.  The reaction I had to my 1:1 with Hecate, played that night by the beautiful Zhauna Franks, can only be described in terms of Reader-Response.

I came to NY and SLEEP NO MORE at a time when I was extremely vulnerable and low emotionally and psychologically. Some terrible things had happened to me recently, and I was taking them very hard.  I tend toward melancholia anyway, so when real tragedy strikes, I feel its sting more than I think a lot of people do, and it is very difficult for me to climb out of the chasm I get lost in.  Loved ones expressed concern and offered help, but I could not stop despairing.  I did not want to go to NY, though the tickets were already purchased and I had a traveling companion who would have to go without me if I didn’t make the trip.  I just felt too down to go somewhere I was supposed to enjoy, too hurt, too guilty about my culpability in what happened, too hopeless….  Ultimately, my super-ego intervened and pointed out that I had a duty, and that SNM was something that I had really wanted to do before sadness struck, so I girded my loins with my big girl knickers, and I went, still carrying the burden of grief and sorrow heavily on my shoulders.

My reaction to my Hecate 1:1 has absolutely nothing to do with the dialogue author’s intent, and is not connected to the SNM stories in any way.  But the almost maternal touch of the actress and imagery from her monologue penetrated deeply. There was much more to the story she told, and I may not even be getting these details correct.  They are what I absorbed and remember though :

·         Tears. Enough to fill a bottle. Tasting salty tears.  That had profound resonance for me as I had cried and tasted a lot of tears in recent days.

·         A boy, frightened and lost in a forest. He just went deeper and deeper in, and he could not seem to find his way out no matter how he tried. Also weightily relevant for me as I was feeling under water and unable to reach the surface.

There is more I cannot share because you would not understand, but I know the perfect timing which allowed me to hit both Hecate and this 1:1 was not an accident.  It was divine intervention, and a reminder that I was watched over.  I was utterly blown away.    Suffice it to say, that not only did the encounter touch nerves, it soothed them. I had a catharsis of Aristotlean proportions.  My experience was a kind of Holy Theater, and something very sacred to me.  I felt burdens lift for reasons I couldn’t fully fathom but have contemplated mightily since.  I realized all of humanity suffers sometimes, and I realized that some of the ways we get through it are by making and experiencing art, by lightening each others burdens, by touch and holding hands and embracing one another, even a stranger.  As with first love, my first 1:1 was intense, provocative, and wonderful.  My second 1:1, however, as with more mature love, touched my soul and continues to help in a much needed healing process.  

I had a chance to talk to Zhauna out of makeup, costume and character after the show.  A lovely human being, as well as a very fine actress.  She remembered me and told me that she had perceived that I was frightened, so she had nuanced the encounter to accommodate what she was getting from me.  She said it can have a different energy to it, depending on the attitude and demeanor of the spectator, but she had selected the one that seemed right for me.  How fabulously in tune she was, for frightened I was, and an emotional wreck.  But theatre helped.  New York City’s magic helped.  My patient, wonderful traveling companion helped.  SLEEP NO MORE helped.  Hecate helped.  And Zhauna Franks’ instincts and skill as a performer helped immensely!  I was so glad I missed sexy, fantasy trysts with nubile lads. They would have paled in comparison.

I want very much to go back and experience the show again, and again, and again.  I don’t know if it will run long enough for me to do that as I live Dallas.  But if/when I do go back, I don’t know that I’ll seek any more 1:1s.  I have had the absolute best.