Nick Read » performance

Je t’aime.

Nick Read — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 18:25:13 +0000

In one video, the artist stopped people in the street and asked them to look into the camera and say ‘Je t’aime’ (I love you). Her subjects found it so difficult. Their body language was so defensive. They laughed, looked away, crossed their arms, shuffled their feet, lit a cigarette. Some just couldn’t do it at all. Just three words, but these three words carried such heartfelt hope and desire that uttering them, even to somebody they had not met before and would not meet again, carried a dreadful risk of rejection and destruction. As they composed themselves to do it, their faces became softer, more child-like, more appealing, more vulnerable. Their gazes lingered on the camera as they tried to assess the risk. It was as if saying I love you stripped away a defensive mask and made them appear loveable. The words meant so much.

So much human expression is defensive posturing. It feels so dangerous to reveal our needs and desires. We need love so much, yet are terrified of its power to subsume all the meaning in our lives and potentially destroy us.’ If we ever doubted love’s affect on the human psyche, just look at these faces. Strangely, it is the men not the women who seemed more vulnerable and frightened. Perhaps they have more to lose.

‘Emportez moi’ (Sweep me off my feet), at the MecVal Centre in Paris, is a brave and powerful evocation of the power of passion to bewitch and destroy, to throw us off balance into the white waters of emotion in ways both wonderful and painful, always at the risk of losing ourselves.

The works include videos on the interplay of harmonised gazes and movements, the tenderness of a caress, the passion of a kiss, the ecstacy of multiple orgasm, the spontaneous lament of lonely men in a late night bar (crying over you), even the poignant tableau of the two parakeets, who died for their love. As mediums for longing, impulses, illusions and abandonments, they express sorrow and solitude as much as they do hope, expectation and ecstacy.

As the programme for the exhibition points out, ‘perhaps the true subject here is the deeply human appetite for encounter; the search, the desire, transport and the vertiginous sensation of possibility.’

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Beauty with Balls; an appreciation of Ingrid Bergman

Nick Read — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 07:30:53 +0000

I think I was in love with her from the start as she gazed steadily at me with moist lips and knowing eyes from the flickering monochrome screens of such classics as Casablanca, Notorious, Spellbound, The Bells of St Mary’s, and For whom the bell tolls. Her face expressed vulnerability and innocence, yet also courage; a lonely, shy girl next door trying to survive in a dangerous world. That was her appeal. Clearly, she needed me and only me to love and look after her. Aa-ah! But that was before the brisker virtues of Julie Andrews and the smouldering hot house appeal of Julie Christie.

Ingrid Bergman was for my sixpence, the greatest film actress there ever was. She was a natural, right from the start. She loved the camera; it held no fears for her. Maybe it was because she enjoyed posing for her photographer father, Julius, so much. He once commented that one of the children he photographed would some day become famous. Little did he know that this would be his beloved Ingrid.

It was perhaps the tragedies of her early life that gave Ingrid that look in the eyes, that orphan appeal for love, that came straight through the camera and said ‘Hold me, look after me. I love only you and I need you so badly! It was irresistable!

Ingrid was deeply affected by the story of her parents romance. Her beautiful mother, Friedel, had fallen in love with Julius at the age of 15 when she saw him sketching in the park but had to wait seven years before her parents considered his prospects sufficient to look after daughter. The marriage was blissfully happy, tinged only with a wistful sadness when Frieda’s first two children died in infancy. Then Ingrid arrived and was adored by both her parents, but just two years later Freida died. Ingrid had little recollection of her mother, and was loved and cherished by her father, but when she was just 12, her beloved father died of stomach cancer. At the time she consoled herself by reading Friedel’s love letters to Julius during their long period of waiting. This may well have implanted the longing for romantic love that shines through the eyes in all her screen parts.

The eyes have it. Ingrid was not an iconic beauty, she was tall, had slightly prominent teeth , refused to pluck her full eyebrows, but she looked healthy, had flawless skin and that look. Always the look! And she was a chum, the girl next door you could lark about with. She had a mischievous penchant for practical jokes.

After her father died, Ingrid was looked after by aunts and uncles, who deeply opposed her ambitions to be an actress, but relented after exacting a promise that if she failed the auditions for the Royal Stockholm Theatre at her first attempt she would abandon all notions of the stage as a career. She didn’t. She was a natural. Film roles followed and by the age of 21 she was a celebrity.

Over the next ten years she moved to Hollywood and made a sequence of films. She was an instant box office success. People loved her natural beauty, her innocence, her girlishness, her intelligence, her sense of fun. But Ingrid was a young woman who knew what she wanted and how to get it. She was a bird with balls. She would deliberately take on the difficult roles which didn’t always cast her in the best light. She loved acting. She loved the challenge and the celebrity. She loved being loved.

But in real life she was always looking for that special romance, that perfect bond of intimacy, that constant warmth of feeling; the man who would adore her, cherish her and keep her safe enough to pursue her ambitions. She wanted the consistency of a deeply intimate relationship to give her the confidence to risk the excitement of the challenge of a new part. The two were not always compatible and her men did not necessarily want to play the house husband to the famous actress.

She married Petter Lindstrom, who was a dentist, when she was just 22. He was her first long term relationship and was somewhat older – maybe that was part of the attraction for her; Petter could look after her. But he was a bit cool and distant and tried to curb her exuberance, control her behaviour, watch her weight. He didn’t like the way she frowned and somewhat jealous of her relationships with her leading men, although she took her responsibities as wife and mother very seriously and was not unfaithful. By 1943, at the height of her fame, she suggested to Petter they might get divorced. There was nobody else but the marriage had rigidified and her career had left it behind.

Then she met the mercurial maverick director, Roberto Rossellini. It was love at first sight. He was married with two children, she with one. There were difficulties getting divorces. People were scandalised when she moved to Rome and began living openly with Rossellini and so soon obviously pregnant. She got terrible letters. Offers of parts in America dried up overnight. Besides, Rosselini made it clear that he wouldn’t allow her to go back to America or to work for any other director but him. Their professional association arrested both their careers. Their affair turned her from goddess to whore overnight. She needed to draw on great reserves of courage to live through the scandal of her affair and marriage to Rosellini, and the separation from her daughter, Pia and from Petter, whom she still needed as a friend and helpmate. But she was in love and at times of her greatest loneliness and fear, she could always escape into her role in the play.

She had three children very quickly by Rosselini, Robin and the twins, Isabella and Ingrid Isotto, but her relationship with Rosselino was becoming difficult. He worked like an artist, he wasn’t disciplined. He used amateurs and never knew the script in advance, expecting the actors to improvise. He would suddenly leave the set and retire to his bed for days. Ingrid was a professional, she needed consistency. He gave her the kind of controlling inconsistency where only he knew the answers, which came to him in a flash of inspiration. She longed to work with other directors, but Ingrid was his property. Eventually after seven years, he went on an extended project to India. He was away a year and returned with his own Indian family.

Ingrid’s subsequent marriage with the Swedish producer, Lars Schmidt went much the same way. She was working again, rebuilding her career and may have neglected the marriage a bit, taken Lars for granted. There was an element of self destruct in Ingrid. When she had the love she craved, the consistency she needed, she became insecure and bored and needed to escape into another role. She couldn’t hang on to the marriage. It sort of drifted away. Ingrid was always comfortable with acting. It was life that made her nervous.

‘The greatest loneliness’, she once said, ‘was the loss of intimacy with someone you had once been close to, of being with them and finding you have lost the ability to connect.’

Ingrid ignored the lump in her breast at first because she was in a play and about to start a new film. By the time she got it treated, it had spread, but she carried on acting, often in great pain. Her last project was a portrayal of Golda Meir; she kept her grossly swollen arm elevated all night so she could do the scene where she was required to lift both arms up in a typical Golda Meir gesture – she was that professional. As she got older she became more forthright, if she didn’t want to do something, she didn’t. She had no need of pretences any more.

Impulsive, amusing, needy, sentimental, though at the same time kind and generous and loyal to her friends, Ingrid was never the celebrity; she could not be aloof. She needed to connect to people too much. But there was always something of the orphan about her, clinging on to her previous emotional securities, meaningful objects, letters, photographs, friends and dreams. She was the beautiful empty princess. ‘My life was always concerned with finding and holding on to love,’ she commented towards the end. She never stopped looking for the quality of intimacy her parents had enjoyed but had never realised that their relationship too would have transformed into something more mundane had it lasted. Better for us, the millions who have fallen in love with the image that Ingrid expressed, that it didn’t.

Ingrid Bergman died of breast cancer in 1982 on her 67^th birthday. The English edition of Charlotte Chandler’s biography ‘Ingrid’ was published by Simon and Schuster in 2007.

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Possession; on stage and off it.

Nick Read — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:56:09 +0000

Good actors, declared Sir Richard Eyre, speaking last week at The Guild of Psychotherapists annual lecture, have to be possessed by the characters they are playing. They have to immerse themselves in their character’s world, feel what it is like to be them, experience the passion and then act it out. It is impossible for an actor to experience the same degree of emotion every night. They would be emotionally and physically shattered by it. Having just seen Fiona Shaw in a matinee of Brecht’s, Mother Courage, I observed how much that performance had taken out of her, but as the run continues, she like all good actors will distance herself from it; express the passion but not be overwhelmed by it. Judi Dench, according to Eyre, exhibits the perfect balance. She allows herself to become possessed by the role but maintains an observing eye. Actors are people who imitate others. They great pretenders, experts at the arts of deception and seduction, but they have live in the real world too.

Richard Eyre summed up the qualities of good actors. They must be conscious of themselves but not self conscious. They must be narcissistic on stage, but humble off it, they must live the role but then forget it. They must have a perfect balance of good sense and warmth, rationalism and emotion. They must captivate their audience, but then become anonymous. They must create empathy in people’s minds and leave. They should feel the part, but never try to go beyond the feeling.

Courage is essential to a good actor, death to a bad one. Actors must present a buoyancy of spirit even though their heart may be breaking. Eyre described finding Ralph Richardson looking glum after rehearsal. He asked him why. He replied ‘Oh dear boy, I just learnt today that my brother has burnt to death, but’, he added thoughtfully, ‘there’s one consolation; it can’t happen again.’

Actors must learn to contain their emotions, avoid being too worried about their performance, work as a team and but never imagine they are the play. It’s a route that runs close to madness. The psychotic actor, seduced by celebrity and fame, can imagine that they are the stage, upon which others play out their emotions.

It seems to me that acting is not too different to psychotherapy. The effective psychotherapist enters the clients world sufficiently to set up a confident and trusting therapeutic relationship They have to understand, empathise and be compassionate, yet maintain a detachment. It’s a delicate balance that cannot be prescribed, only felt. The quality of any therapy depends on the quality of that engagement. Like the actor in relationship with the character, the therapist must maintain an observing, intelligent mind. They must not descend into their client’s abyss, they must remain on the brink, in communication, connected, yet able to see the possibilities of freedom. There is no redemption, no rescue, if both get lost.

But doesn’t the same principle apply to all relationships? We are, after all, social creatures. We need to engage with other people but we must not become them. The joy of human relationships is that we bring our independent selves to any relationship, creating the possibility of insight, growth and the joy of discovery. Merger may seem like stability, security, but it’s stagnation. We mustn’t seek to confine others with bonds of obligation and dependancy.

But what of falling in love; that wonderful delusion of discovering ourselves in the other? Therein lies a madness; a suspension of reality in the service of the dreadful seduction of the feeling. People can fall in love with falling in love and often do. They can be completely lost in the abyss unless they maintain the observing eye of the director that can see how the play could work out. But what would happen if they fell in love with the director?

And what about actors who play the same character for years on the radio or in television soap operas? Norman Painter, who played Phil Archer, died last week aged 86. Three days previously, he had recorded an episode for November. He had said he wanted to die in the role. So had he become Phil Archer?. Therapy too can go on forever. The patient may get out of the abyss into the therapist’s safe house, only to find herself unable to leave. Many couples persuade themselves and others that they are in love forever. So why can this seem so boring? Have I just become an old cynic?

Afterwards, finding Sir Richard alone with a glass of wine, I explored the idea that directors combine the characteristics of therapists and actors. They work with the company as well as the play, coaxing the correcting nuance out of the actors, calming their insecurities, interpreting plot and character. In this God-like status, I added, warming to my argument, was there not a danger that they could become the stage, upon which others play out their emotions, like the charismatic conductor of a symphony orchestra? Perhaps I had gone too far. Eyre looked alarmed. He replied, somewhat huffily, that he never analysed what he was doing; it was intuitive. In any case, the director is not the stage. The plays the stage. A-ah! I could have pursued this, but at that point, some ‘lovies’ came to the rescue and I departed, stage left!

Sir Thomas Beecham was immensely narcissistic, but he recognized the knowledge and talent of his musicians and did not attempted to impose his will on the orchestra, merely guide it.

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Duet for one; the destructive narcissism of the performer

admin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:03:24 +0000

Stephanie was a virtuoso violinist until she was struck down with multiple sclerosis. Now her fingering is clumsy, her bowing uneven, her music sounds scratchy and discordant. She can’t do it anymore. She is destroyed. Music was her whole life. It was her joy and purpose. Each note joined her in mystic union with the fellow acolyte who notated it centuries before. It was her religion and her ecstacy. When she and her husband met, they made music as a preliminary to making love. Duet for One, probably Tom Kempinski’s best play, slowly strips away Stephanie’s resistances and defences to reveal to full shocking horror of the devastation she tries so hard to conceal. Juliet Stevenson plays Stephanie with the neurotic intensity only she can command. Henry Goodman gives a wonderfully nuanced performance as the beleaguered psychotherapist, complete with middle European accent. We slowly learn that Stephanie was encouraged to develop her musical talents by her mother, who was herself a concert pianist until she gave it up to help her father in his chocolate business. But, tragically, her mother died when Stephanie was just nine. Her father was distraught and took to his bed. The business failed. He told Stephanie he was not going to pay for her to have music lessons any more. She had to get a proper education, a proper job. Stephanie fought her father, refused to do any school work unless she could study her violin. The conflict was long and hard, but eventually her father capitulated. Stephanie had won. She had to. With mother gone, music had become the only meaningful thing in her life. When other girls might party, shop, visit coffee bars or night clubs, Stephanie practiced – at least three hours every day! At 18 she won a scholarship to music college and the dedication intensified to eight hours a day. Most music colleges produce one virtuoso every ten years. Stephanie was that one. But now she could no longer make music, her life had lost its meaning. The acme of musical performance, being a concert soloist, demands enormous dedication, a concentrated focus on the self and it’s achievement. It is perhaps the most extreme form of narcissism. Performers are obsessed with their capabilities for most of the day every day. They strive for perfection. They have to keep testing and retesting themselves, all too aware that a precipitous entry, a slightly flat note, a false emotional balance, could mean disaster. A performer’s life is one of continual insecurity. They are a bit like the specialist rock climber. They live on the edge. They don’t just make music, they have to own the souls of their audience. They need the next performance to reassure them, to gain a momentary respite before the pangs of self doubt creep in again. They only see the failures. This fuels the engine of addiction. Even the peerless Vladimir Horowitz left the concert platform after 12 years, feeling unable to live up to his own reputation. And Jacqueline Dupre, whose story resonates with Stephanie’s, was constantly concerned that she lacked technique. Perrformers have to live with their destructive demons. They can never be good enough and for that they must be punished. Some, perhaps most, come to hate the monster they have created and wish to destroy it. Perhaps with Stephanie, as with Jacqueline Dupre, the seeds of destruction infected her immune system, causing it to destroy the lining of her nerves. Illnesses often have a meaning and a purpose. Multiple sclerosis may seem tragic for a musician, but it may free them from the tyranny of performance and all the parental ambition that went with it. There is an irony behind why an illness affects that very function that is so essential. It exposes ambivalence. Sooner or later, performers, sportsmen, actors, celebrities of any tone, want to be what they are and not what they do. And now Stephanie doesn’t have music, she has, for the first time in her life, to learn to live with other people, to collaborate, to belong, to trust, to be ordinary. It is the most difficult thing she will ever do. Duet for One played at The Theatre Royal, Bath on 17th March.

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