Director Bogart Stresses Deep Involvement in Theater

Author: Laura Rockefeller

On Friday, Feb. 14, Anne Bogart, one of the most influential directors in contemporary American theater, spoke to a packed audience in Wright Memorial Theater. She has become well-known through the work that she and Tadashi Suzuki have done with the SITI Company, which they founded in 1992, and for the work that she has done with the Viewpoints theory of acting.
Bogart admitted at the start of her talk that her lecture's title, "Six Things I Know for Sure About Being a Director in the American Theatre," was slightly misleading because, "the assumption that you know what you're doing will kill what you're doing."
In her discussion of the role of an artist in contemporary society, Bogart placed the most emphasis on the ability to listen and to be ready to react and adapt to change.
In presenting the first of her six things -- "recognize, articulate, violate and transcend inherited assumptions" -- Bogart stressed this idea that an actor must always continue to question.
She explained that there are three assumptions that she considers extremely detrimental to American Theater: the word "want," the misunderstanding of Stanislavski that American actors have inherited and the all-too-prevalent idea that when an actor finishes school, he or she has finished learning.
She encouraged the actors in her audience not to take the easy way out by simply asking their director, "What do you want?" but rather to "get deeply involved in what you're doing."
She commented that after listening to the Security Council Reports on Iraq on the radio that morning, she had become increasingly aware of the need for people to express themselves and to articulate their ideas and feelings.
As she said, "The business of theater is the business of articulation."
The example that Bogart gave to support her second point, "Consider context," seemed to resonate with her whole audience. She explained, "I am now looking at the world through the lens of potential war." Bogart claimed that the effect of a single production can be drastically altered by the context from which its audience comes.
She commented that, when directing a production, she asks herself, "Who is there, and what is the audience bringing with them?"
She explained, "I have to consider the world we are turning into" and how that will effect people's perceptions of her work.
While being mindful of the audience, Bogart explained that directors and actors also have to "choose high stakes."
She pointed out that in theater, "one must attempt something, or else the work you do has no energy." In purely statistical terms, she stated that, out of the 10 richest corporations in America, seven are media outlets. In this sense, live theater, as one of the few media that is not controlled by big business, has a heightened responsibility to take risks and "do extraordinary things."
Theater is free to articulate and examine controversial ideas and to explore areas where television might fear to tread.
"Cultivate aesthetic arrest" was the fourth piece of advice that Bogart imparted to her eager listeners. She took her example for this point from James Joyce's novel, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," in which he describes two types of art, static and kinetic. Joyce was an advocate of static art -- art that stops you.
Bogart explained, "What this static art creates is something called aesthetic arrest." As an audience member, one is forced to bring out your experiences to meet the piece of art before him or her. She commented, "It's very easy to make everybody in the audience feel the same thing -- I call it fascism." What she sees as a director's challenge is to have her art meet each member of the audience and force that person to really encounter her work. "In this climate," she remarked, "I don't see how we can do anything but ... create art that is present."
Bogart then confided in the audience that her new favorite word is "attitude." Her fifth point, "Attitude determines outcome," was an attempt to undermine the stigma that she believes Americans place on the word "attitude." She explained that she sees attitude not as a bad thing but as "an outwardly directed energy that changes depending on what it comes into contact with." A strong and positive attitude is something Bogart seeks in her actors. She said that actors censor themselves too much. Instead, they need to feel freer to share their energy with the audience.
Lastly, Bogart advised her audience to "welcome resistance." Especially in such an uncertain and dangerous time, Bogart emphasized that we must all ask ourselves, "Where are we going and what can we do?" She said, however, that she had not as yet been able to find an attitude with which to deal with the burgeoning war with Iraq. "I literally have no words," she said, looking down and not at her audience for the first time in the talk.
On the following afternoon Bogart put some of her points into practice in a workshop in the Center for the Arts Dance Theater. Twenty-two acting, directing and dance students and a handful of professors attended the workshop. All of the exercises she had the students try were physical and designed to help them listen better to the other people on stage with them, so that they would be more open to reacting to changes in their energies and attitudes. It was amazing how the exercises Bogart had them do could change people from moving around the stage without any direction - except to be aware of the other actors - into something that looked and felt like a choreographed dance.
The comments from the students who participated in the workshop were overwhelmingly enthusiastic They said she had shown how powerful it could be when a company of actors opens itself to the reasons they are on stage and of the other actors with whom they were performing.