In my first week in NYC, I went, with my friend Camille, to The Liar’s Show, down on the Lower East Side. Four storytellers told stories and the audience voted on who was lying. Afterwards we went to dinner with some of the organizers and I ended up in conversation with one of the storytellers and his mother who, it turns out, is an actress. She told me of Polaris North, a group of playwrights and actors. She told me that the public could attend readings there (the audience is asked for feedback to help the playwright improve the play), and that one could also audit their workshops a couple of times before joining.
Not living in New York, it did not make sense for me to join. But, when I returned for my second two weeks in the city I attended a public reading at Polaris North, and was invited to approach the workshop leaders to audit while I was in town. I did. The workshop leaders and the members were extremely welcoming.
On a Saturday, I audited a playwrights’ bootcamp, a workshop lasting for about four hours. This was very much like a regular fiction workshop, except that the roles were read aloud by the various members attending before the group and leader critiqued the work.
On the following Monday, I audited an actor’s workshop. I’m sure that, for actors, it probably would have been commonplace. But, unlike the playwrights workshop, this was, for me, a new experience, and I found it fascinating. An actor would perform a prepared monologue. The leader and the group would critique the performance. The leader might say, “no–too much. Do less.” Or, “no, not strong enough. Give it more.” And the actor would immediately redo the monologue with a slightly different take, often subtly but identifiably different. One actor redid her monologue several times, and each time there were subtle but varied interpretations that gave distinctly different nuances to the character.
In the book Stella Adler on America’s Master Playwrights, edited by Barry Paris, Adler says of the actor, “Your job is not to ‘act.’ Your job is to interpret.” She notes, “That histrionic side of the actor is what he is and what he adds to the play. The play is dead. It lies there. The other side is the side that people fool around with.” I’m not sure I’d call a completed play “dead.” But (except for out-of-town try-outs and resulting rewrites), it is complete. Done. Something that the director and actors will now make their own. It is a matter that writers of novels, short stories or other sorts of literature do not need to consider. Observing the way in which the actors at Polaris North “fooled around with” their monologues was instructive to me–indeed to anyone who is not already in theater–who may decide to write plays. One must recognize that they need to leave space for the actor to interpret.