Scene4-Robert Epstein-Stage Directions-April 2001

hen Sanford Meisner gave his actors the radical admonition to cross out all the stage directions when first getting the play they were to work on, he did not make any distinctions between different types of directions.

For years, disputes have raged over the extent to which the playwright’s written directions should or must be followed by directors and actors, and it is an argument that cannot be resolved very easily. Some playwrights use sparse stage directions, and either trust or require the dramatic team to discover themeaning of the text through rehearsal and interpretation. Others give the most explicit sorts of directions and expect them to be followed. Edward Albee is famous for shutting down actual productions when he discovered that they had not followed his written instructions to the letter. Arthur Miller has sometimes gone beyond this, insisting on interviewing prospective directors as to their intentions for his plays, sometimes sitting in on rehearsals and becoming part of the creative team.

Some directors are intent on reproducing the entire written text, including stage directions, to the letter. Others resent the micromanagement of prolific instructions and feel it steps on their own creative role in directing and interpreting the written play and turning it into a specific production that bears their mark. Many actors will attempt to take the stage directions and turn them into interesting, motivated behavior. Other actors will want to throw the directions out altogether and improvise to find an original meaning and action for every line in the spoken text.

Meisner believed strongly that the actor’s job was to ‘live truthfully from moment to moment under a given set of imaginary circumstances’. This is how he defined acting. While the actor was obligated to say the words of the play which carried the information and material the playwright had written, it was the actor’s creative task to discover and develop the underlying meaning and action for these words. When Meisner said ‘cross out the stage directions’, he was underlining the importance of the actor finding original action out of the living situation of rehearsal, ‘on his feet’ as it were.

It is possible to say a line of text many different ways, as we have seen in recent articles in this column. We have spoken about the way that content can be emphasized by accent, rhythm and phrasing, but this is only part of the way in which meaning is drawn out of a text. We have also spoken about the actions that are chosen to accompany the text thus phrased and this adds a three-dimensional element to what the words signify. It creates the behavioral life that the words only imply. And there is another layer of meaning, sometimes called subtext, which is the point of view or emotional expression that comes out through the way the words are said.

A Meisner exercise which helps actors to understand this juxtaposition of written and spoken meanings is to say a line but mean something else while saying it. I can say ‘I love you’ and have a number of interesting meanings for those rather global words. In fact, I have said to actors that ‘I love you’ hardly ever means ‘I love you’. If I say ‘I love you’ while expressing ‘You’re just okay’, the flatness and dismissive tone will give an interesting edge to the words. This is also one of the devices of comedy. Sarcasm, which is often overused in comedy, is popular precisely because it plays against the words and allows a more interesting meaning to come through. ‘You’re really nice’ becomes: ‘You’re really nice!,’ meaning the exact opposite of what is being said. But there are many more subtle shadings of meanings that can come through the words. ‘I love you’ can mean ‘I’m desperate to sleep with you’. It can mean ‘I’m so lonely I wish I could love you’. It can mean ‘I’m tired of you asking for approval’, in which case the words may come out impatient, clipped, edgy. There are many ways to allow meanings to come through what would otherwise be pre-set verbal meanings that are attached to the words themselves. But just as ‘I love you’ hardly ever means ‘I love you’ there are hardly any sentences in the English language that simply mean what they say.

If I ask you for a glass of water, I can ask nicely and the meaning might be ‘I would be so grateful if you would help me out’. If I say ‘Hey, you – get me a goddamn glass of water and do it NOW’ the meaning is not so nice , but I can say that same thing with my point of view and imperative behavior even if the words are just: ‘Would you please get me some water.’

Let me be clear that I am not here advocating line readings. A line reading is a manipulation of speech that indicates an emphasis of content in the words. Finding alternate meanings, or active subtext, is something different. It is an expression of an underlying intention that comes through the words, but not through the words themselves. It is on the level of a thrusting palm, an angry or pleading tone, specific feelings and intentions that are communicated with the body, that these meanings take place. It is not merely through vocal shaping or emphasis, and these meanings and intentions have to be discovered through the push and pull of relationship, through human contact, so that they are real. This was Meisner’s imperative to the actors he trained.

What does this have to do with stage directions? I would like to continue where Meisner left off and distinguish between several types of stage directions, and to show the stage directions that directly interfere with the discovery of meanings as described above, and which must be abandoned by the inspired actor who hopes to bring life to a role.

1. There are overall descriptions of sets and settings, background information on the characters – who they are where they come from, that may be found at the beginning of a play and at the beginning of scenes or major segments of scenes. These descriptions are general stage directions and can be called setups. These directions should not be crossed out, they are the information the actor needs to understand the basic reality of the given circumstances. It is these given circumstances that define the basic life of the play and of the role.

2. There are statements of actions or activities that the actor is given to do at a particular point in the play. If these are not directly tied to the text, it is a matter of opinion whether they need to be followed or not. Meisner would say to cross them out. The playwright proposes an action or behavior. The director and actor may use it or choose another logical action in its place. Many playwrights would object to this, and say that the actions they have chosen are an essential part of the play.

3. There are stage directions which give actions or behaviors that must be followed in order to make sense of the text. If the spoken text says ‘Why did you slap me?, the stage direction (she slaps him) must be followed. This is the obvious exception to Meisner’s directive, whether or not you agree with the other cases described.

4. There are stage directions that give a detailed description of how the actor should feel and behave for specific lines. These are the parentheticals, which give the actor an exact rendition of what he should be doing and feeling at each moment. These are the stage directions that are anathema to an actor who believes in rehearsal as a process of discovery. It should be obvious to anyone that there is no creative discovery in a role that is already totally pre-set. Even when parentheticals are not present in a play, there are some directors who will supply just this kind of direction before allowing the actor to discover anything in rehearsal. If an actor has been trained to find and develop the role through rehearsal, these sorts of directions given in advance, whether the source is the play or the director, drive the actor insane. These are precisely the types of directions that Meisner was most anxious to have crossed out, because they represent someone else’s development of the role and pre-empt the actor’s work.

A few examples of the use of stage directions:

1. Eugene O'Neill had many parentheticals in his earlier plays. They are almost absent from the mature O'Neill. He seems to have granted more power to the spoken text as he grew as a writer.

2. There is a play by John Olive, STANDING ON MY KNEES, about a young man involved with a schizophrenic female poet. At one point he hands her poetry manuscript back to her and says he hasn’t had time to read them, and indicates that she should take them back. This is the type of stage direction that cannot be crossed out or changed. It is essential to the meaning of what is being said and done at that point in the play.

3. There is another type of stage direction where there is not much spoken text, and the playwright has plotted out a careful series of actions. In this case, the actions take on the status of text and should generally be followed. This is true in some Beckett plays. A good example of this is the scene in Tennessee Williams’ NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, in which Shannon has been left tied up by his tour group, and he is trying to convince the young female proprietor of the hotel to untie him. Williams describes him as being tied up. There is a further description of the young lady brewing and then feeding him some tea, as he cannot hold the cup himself. And at a certain point he manages to free himself, then complains that she didn’t help him get out and left him to fend for himself. All of these actions form a sequence of their own, which coordinates with the text sometimes loosely, sometimes directly. There are areas in the sequence where the actor might find his own specific actions and behaviors, but it is obvious that the main actions have to be adhered to, the ones which demarcate cadences – specific definitional points in the spoken text that conclude segments of the sequence.

Another sequence of this type is in Williams’ CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, in which Brick, the injured and alcoholic football star is interrogated by his father, Big Daddy, as to why he started drinking. Williams indicates a series of actions, including Brick standing up and trying to leave, Brick trying to get up and get himself a drink, Big Daddy knocking him down, Brick crawling for his crutch or towards the bar, Big Daddy reaching out to help him up, etc. Again, some of these actions can be embellished or replaced by similar or equally truthful action according to the way the actors improvise with each other, but the basic sequence must be respected to make sense of the text, and the main actions, the cadence points of each segment, must be done.

At one point Big Daddy says ‘C’mon, take my hand’ and Brick says ‘I don’t want your hand’. Big Daddy also says: ‘You’re out of breath. You’re sweating like you’ve run a mile’. At one point Big Daddy says: ‘Whoa! Hold on there. Where are you going?’ Brick says he wants to get some air. ‘You sit back down there’ says Big Daddy. Brick had better be standing when Big Daddy orders him to sit back down. These descriptions are in the spoken text. If they’re in the text, the actor has got to do them in one way or another.

There is still room to improvise within the indications that are given even while respecting the necessary actions that correspond to the text. When Big Daddy says ‘Here, take my hand’, Brick can wave him off, he can push his hand away, he can give him the finger, he can laugh at him. There are plenty of things Brick can improvise when he says ‘I don’t want your hand’. If an actor thinks he is the prisoner, rather than the recipient of these directions, he may be inclined to give a simple, literal depiction of what is in the stage directions, and this does not an inspired performance create. All the little possibilities that are given by the text, given even by the necessary stage directions, the ones that can’t be changed, should be an impetus for the actor to find new things, to follow his instincts and come up with creative choices, whatever the constraints. And when the stage directions are not absolutely necessary, when they step on the actor’s role in the process and deprive him of his discovery process, they should be crossed out and forgotten, or at least read for information’s sake but not taken literally.

The Tromeo group's film Tromeo and Juliet is a horribly absurd slacker-punk version of Romeo and Juliet, but I think it does more justice to the play and has more beautiful horrible acting in it in certain sections than any other R&J I've seen. And the T added to the Romeo lets you know that it's not the original, although they mangage to maintain *all* of the text while riding on motorcycles and attacking people with chainsaws.

Guess they didn't follow the stage directions!

On the other hand, some stage directions are so essential that if they are ignored the play is totally destroyed. At the end of WAITING FOR GODOT, Beckett has the two protagonists say "Let's go", "Yes, let's go," or something to that effect. This dialogue is followed by the stage direction: "[They do not move.]" If that final stage direction is ignored, the play is RUINED. The whole play leads up to that final stage direction. In that contradiction between their words and actions, the entire meaning of the play is summarized and finalized. If you have them say those words and go, Beckett's existential masterpiece is turned into a silly play with little meaning.

Alfred Jarry's UBU ROI is a masterpiece, parodying the French bourgeoisie of his time. The characters exchange inanities and his indication for the entire play is that the actors speak in an expressionless monotone. If that is changed, the intention of the play is lost.

So why did Sandy Meisner say to cross out all the stage directions. I have a theory about this. First of all, I don’t think he meant to cross out Jarry’s indication that the entire play should be spoken in a monotone. But further, I think that Meisner believed that a competent, highly trained actor would be so familiar with the text and would have such a good understanding of the implications of what he was saying, that he wouldn’t need the stage directions, and all they would do was make him conscious of stopping and imitating action rather than finding it. When you stop to think about it: If the actor has heard the line “Why did you slap me?” fifteen or twenty times, don’t you think she is going to instinctively do the slap on the sixteenth time, or well before? A truthful actor will absorb the necessary implications of what is being said. I believe that Meisner thought that the resultant behavior would be more real than simply following the directions, and that – who knows? – from time to time the actor might even find something new.

Robert Epstein is the Program Director
and Instructor of The Complete
Meisner-Based Actor's Training in
Washington, D.C

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