Structurally, Betrayal works backwards starting with the end of a marriage, progressing to the beginning of an affair. Our rehearsals are following the chronology of the characters rather than this structure, following them in key moments of the affair and beyond. So this week we started at Scene 9. We’ve rehearsed 5 scenes now, with 4 more to explore and discover next week. This structure has demanded the actors to approach each scene considering what has come before, and how they enter into the scene (as Stanislavski would have called it – the given circumstances). Another of his fundamental ideas, the through-line, is the impetus behind this rehearsal structure.
Episodic in nature, and spanning almost 9 years, the play’s scenes are mostly only between 2 characters at a time, so rehearsals have been intense in focusing on individual characters. Not only are the cast engaging with their characters, but also their relationships with the other characters. The power struggles in the play are something which the actors seem to be especially enjoying exploring too; who has the power in this scene? Who thinks they have the power? What do we even mean by conceptualising and abstracting power?
Questions, questions, questions. In any play, we always have to question the veracity of what a character says – with Pinter, this curiosity escalates into suspicion, even scepticism at the words spoken. The language is sparse, curt, and sometimes unforgivingly monosyllabic, yet beneath the surface, the play is teeming with detailed ambiguity. Often this is called subtext; yet that word itself is too simplistic. It’s too simplistic and binary to suggest that there is simply a contrast between what a character is saying and what they are feeling. It is the gap between the various semantic meanings of the words people say, and the various thoughts that are flooding their brains at moments of crisis, which is of interest in Betrayal and elsewhere. Throughout the play, the characters are trying to conceal things from their friends and lovers – yet sometimes the interplay between concealment and the hidden conflate. It is, suitably enough, very difficult to convey this notion in words. Ultimately, in simplistic terms, in rehearsals we are not just asking why a character is saying or doing something, or merely how the actor might portray this, but also what they might actually be saying . And by saying, we mean what are they communicating – corporeally – voice and movement, respiration, everything. In Betrayal, the what and the why are often conflated – how can we ascertain why someone is doing something if we don’t know what they are doing? But paradoxically, how can we determine exactly what someone is actually communicating if we don’t know what is motivating them?
The actors have embraced these challenges and have already progressed in their acting drastically. Certain sections of scenes really are sparklingly alive with their nuance and depth. We still have a considerable way to go, but I’m pleased to report that the actors are thoughtfully engaged with the play and their characters.
For me, personally, since the play is set in internal spaces, the blocking has been relatively straight-forward. At first, I was moving them about a bit too much. It soon became clear that the movements within each scene, had to be minimal. As a director, one has to strike a balance in a naturalistic play between motivated movement and variation of the stage imagery. One scene is set in a restaurant, so it is compulsory to the style of the play, that they remain primarily sedentary. Yet in other scenes we try and vary this, correlating with the shifts in tone of a scene, or a sudden thought that motivates movement.
The Corpus Playroom, where the performances will be (cheeky plug alert: 9.15pm, 9th -13th Nov’10; £5/6), is a unique L-shaped space. While the stage itself is a rectangle with an upstage door and walls, the audience sits facing two sides of the stage. At the other two sides of the rectangle are walls – which creates an internal room-like space- perfect for Betrayal. In having audiences on two sides, a director has to think carefully about blocking-in the positioning with the actors. Although it is evidently important that an audience sees enough of the actors faces, and not just their profiles, one has to avoid having actors trying to be equally visible to both sides of the audience at any one time. If this is done, and productions in the Corpus Playroom frequently suffer from this, it feels very flat, very 2-dimensional, artificial even. The audience subconsciously is aware of the actors’ attempts to always be seen. Instead, the blocking has been made on the diagonal. This means that if a pair of actors is talking to each other, one of them might have their backs to one side of the audience, and the other might have their back to the other side. While this might sound counter-intuitive, this allows for the best use of a space like this one, and ensures the movement of the actors looks ‘real’ and not ‘flat’, when you have audiences watching the same play from different angled sightlines. So instead of presenting everyone with the same image, we’re presenting different perspectives to audience members depending where they are sitting.
Initially, the actors kept slightly turning their bodies to try and ‘open themselves out’ to the audience, avoiding having their backs to any audience member. For an end-on staging, this would be a sensible thing to do; in a space like the Corpus Playroom it just looks artificial. The actors are less conscious of this now and are ‘closing themselves off’ for want of a better phrase, and allowing for a sharing of sightlines.
I’ll write next weekend to update you on what has been going on in our 2nd week.
