winter - SUA - rehearsal 3 - gesture

I went and spoke to my friend Lucio after he saw the presentation at SUA. He said he liked what we’d done but we’d only used one of three types of gesture. He’s studied this sort of thing and gave a very precise breakdown of gesture as action; gesture as symbol and gesture as something else.

I’ve never studied Meyerhold; nor any of his descendents. My perusal of the idea of gesture has been instinctive rather than educated. However, I have spent the greater part of the last five years reading scripts, rather than exploring the possibilities of the actor, and it’s only now, after directing three relatively big shows in recent years that I felt ready to engage with a breaking of the rules in this fashion.

Gesture is obviously a part of the actor’s armoury. When an actor puts his or her hands together in a supplicatory fashion; when an actor raises an eyebrow; when an actor shrugs their shoulders… These are all gestures. What we wanted to do with this process was investigate how we could develop this vocabulary and integrate it in a more elaborate fashion.

Fosse himself has sent me an email and he had one key note in it which was to concentrate on the use of repetition. This has already been alluded to with regard to the text, the written language, but it seemed a viable exercise to repeat it with regard to physical gesture as well.

To offer two concrete examples. The woman in developing her relationship with the man presents and pursues the idea that she is his ‘Lady’ or ‘Princesa’, as we translated that term. Margarita used a gesture to depict this idea (not the words, but the idea) which was a kind of curtsy. At first, when her character does this, it’s baffling. What is this seeming, stumbling wreck of a woman doing? However, as the gesture repeats it the gesture takes on a clearer resonance. It articulates an idea of herself which has remained extant in spite of her dissolution, something she can cling to as she clings to the man. As she alters through the play, the audience’s understanding of the gesture alters, as does her usage of it. In the third scene, she adopts it ironically. Furthermore, the man now references it in his bid to convince her of the truthfulness of her declaration that she is indeed his lady, even as she now rejects the notion.

One of the man’s gestures, articulated by Carlos, revolves around his unspoken relationship with his wife. This involved holding his hand over his mouth and emitting an strangulated sound from the throat. It’s the sound of someone struggling with a pain or a weight which is never explained in detail. The tragic nature of the Man’s character emerged through it’s usage. The things we cannot say are the things which are hardest to bear. It also highlighted the pathetic aspects of the man’s predicament, something Margarita’s woman was not afraid of teasing him about as she mocked his strangulated cry.

The gestures helped to open up the inner world of the characters. By using them repetitively, they also became an understandable part of their vocabulary. Whether they were necessary for performance or whether they should remain as a rehearsal device will be the subject of further discussion.

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