Much has been said about who can be considered a creative actor. There are a lot of uncreative actors who, as that famous director says, have to be carved like wooden dolls to draw a shape from them or set them to motion like mechanical dolls to start moving. But here in this introdution, I address the actorswhose great contribution in theatrical team (group) work and his " theatrical thinking " cannot be denied and ignored. An actor, whose active presence on the stage and his turningto the right or left, is much more than a tape recorder and a moving machine.
Theatre and Actor
To provide a highly rhetorical text and a smashingly decorative stage, to imbue these both with heavenly tune and music, to hire the most astute experts to perform all kinds of extraordinary acrobatic movements, to provide the most beautiful and elaborate costumes and make-up do not worth a penny if there is no appropriate actor or actress. It is the performer who gives credit and meaning to all these things. None of these is by itself theatre; whereas the actor/actress can all by himself/herself generate the most effective performance if s/he knows the mechanism and the shaping constituents of his/her career. S/he knows well that the most important part seen on the stage is " that " (attraction?) which emanates from his innate existential substance. The more purged this " that " is, which is less related to his/her external appearance, the more outstandingly s/he shines on the stage. A good actor or actress knows well that this purgation is the result of tearing up the mask which ordinary life and routine daily customs have imposed on him/her. But theatre, although is itself an artificial art, requires truth and sincerity in order to see reality. The actor/actress is the saint of the stage. Purgation has endowed him/her with a kind of sacredness. The stage of theatre is the temple and the play is his/her prayer.
What is important in theatre is not the words, but what the actor's/actress's consistent organism dose with these words; what the harmony of his/her mouth, eyes, head and legs do with these words. These words are charged with stillness, motion and leap and it is the performer who gives them stillness or dynamism. Words consist of homogenous and heterogeneous sounds and the actor/actress gives them life, otherwise these words on the paper are nothing but some signe. These words may belong to the performer or even quit to be words. They can be fury, sound, or artificial language or anything else. They can boil out of heart to appeal to the audience's heart. The actor/actress, who has found his/her existential unity, has thrown away the fake mask; his/her faith and manifestation of his/her art can be observed. His/her power is in that transparency and purgation; s/he, just like mirror, has the reflection of the audience.
The Subject
Theatrical thinking is the unrecorded and evasive thought which is born from the mutual corporation of the view of the performer and that of the audience; it is able to create, in two dimensions of time and place, just a small and condensed slice of this fluent existence, which is temporary and mortal. Whereas literary thinking is a recorded thought and can link and capture moments of this fluent and fleeting existence and thus inevitably free from the dimensions of time and place and exempt from temporary and mortal life. Theatrical thought owes its perfection and ascent to the "actor/actress" : the more perfectly and comprehensively the performer acts, the more evident and objective is the manifestation of this theatrical thought in his/her work.
The Atmosphere and Theatrical Polish(Spectacle)
"Theatrical thought" is in the meanwhile the representation and manifestation of our interpretation of the concept of theatrical "atmosphere" or spectacle. We are all familiar with Peter Brook's suggestive expression of "empty space". We know that for creating any possibility we should first avoid littering this space and provide an empty space for acceptance and creation of a new possibility. The 19th century, naturalistic of "decoration" not only fails to provide such a possibility, but also prevents the growth and soaring of such a thought. Appia substituted the notion of "space" for "decoration" and in this space this is the actor/actress who is determinate. This is him/her to give it meaning. Appia says, "Do we want to make a forest where a few people inhabit there or show a few people who are in the woods?" He chooses the second alternative. The concept of "decor" means putting a rein or yoke around the thought and imagination of man. On the other hand, the notion of "space" and leaving to the performer the spatial suggestion or implication of the event means to develop the theatrical thought. In our traditionaltheatre also, instead of showing the audiebce a real picture of reality or nature and limit the mind and imagination of the audience, with one sentence or with very plain or minimum furniture you can present the setting of the event and leave the rest to the imagination of the audience. Our traditional theatre, instead of fixing the audience to a point and making the space inflexible, leaves it to the audience's subjectivity and imaginative power. Therefore, in this theatre also decor does not exist in realistic sense; with a few carpets, chairs and pieces of cloth, a "space" is ready for acting and "theatrical thought" is dramatized.
In France, instead of saying the play of Molière or Sartre or Marivaux, they say the theatre of Molière or the theatre of Marivaux, which is wrong. All of these texts and many other ones are dramatic texts which are considered dramatic literature. The written text, as soon as written and finished, has its own merits or non-merits and belongs to the field we call "literature". The written text is an artistic reality which exists in an objective sense. We can read it as a "literay" text related to "literature". But to publish them with the title "theatre" is wrong since they are not "theatre" : they are dramatic literature. In the same manner, the theatre which confines itself to the visualization of dramatic literature is not "theatre". To visualize a text with the aid of actors and actresses, stage setting and costumes does not produce "theatre". The only live element in such a work is probbably the same literary text; the text by itself is not "theatre". This is the actor/actress who can convert it into theatre by using the text as the raw material and playing with it, by revealing its different tones, by integrating the sound of language and its verbal music, by discovering and balancing its silence and its internal clamor and by putting together its unwritten parts.
(Cet article en persan a été résumé et traduit en anglais par "Persian Art" Vol.3 N°12 Apr-May 2008)
