Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

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Volume 12 Number 3, December 2011

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Soto-Morettini, Donna, The Philosophical Actor: A Practical Meditation for Practicing Theatre Artists. Published UK/USA Intellect 2010.    228 pages.

ISBN 978-1-84150-326-4   EISBN 978-1-84150-390-5. Paperback Price  £18.53

Reviewed by

Jane Gilmer

National Institute of Education, Singapore

“The future of theatre is in philosophy.”[1] Bertolt Brecht

The Philosophical Actor: A Practical Meditation for Practicing Theatre Artists by Donna Soto-Morettini explores the notion of a philosophical re-consideration of theatre through the activity of the actor in practical meditation. Reading the book it is clear that Soto-Morettini has ‘lived’ Brecht’s inference that the future of theatre can be found in philosophy: She writes introspectively, from the inside-out, reflecting on her experiences teaching theatre, while engaging in some hard core thinking - this is what makes her work a meditation in practice. As she points out: “I think the whole purpose of philosophy is to force a little reflection by encouraging us to do a rigorous examination of our working assumptions”.[2]

Who is the Philosophical Actor? Soto-Morettini describes the philosophical actor as an actor who wants to think about their process and about the language used in rehearsal and in the classroom.[3] In other words, wherever a philosophical reflective practice is taking place in the theory and the practice of   acting – there resides the philosophical actor. Moreover, contemplating her book title, one could easily ask, what she really means by ‘practical meditation’? Having read through the book several times it would seem to me, and she confirms this in the latter part of the book, that the sort of meditation that she is alluding to, is the extra-cognitive kind - an experience of being that is no longer bound to psychological dualism in a Cartesian sense, but has an ‘experiential’ quality not unlike Phillip Zarelli’s ‘white space’ or ‘silence’ - a ‘between’ and a mindfulness, where there is a conscious integration of body and mind, or a toleration of contradictions. [4]

The underlying premise of Soto-Morettini’s discussion is an exposition of the question: “…is there something to be learned from a ‘philosophical’ examination of our conventions and our language – including our common sense ideas about ‘mind’, identity’, ‘meaning’, ‘emotion’, ‘truth’, ‘intention’, ‘behaviour’ or ‘body’ – that can advance our practice as actors and directors?”[5] I wondered on my first reading, is she really challenging us to consider something new? Indeed, many of us have pondered and grappled with such thoughts during our own theatre trainings and, teaching/lecturing careers and, are more than likely ‘meditating’ on them right now. However, what Soto-Morettini accomplishes by asking these questions, is qualitatively different from many other discourses and theories on acting, because she philosophizes them: Skillfully conjuring thoughts from subconscious depths, capturing them, and then writing them – in a sort of Cixousian ‘writing-of-the-collective body of theatre’, she harnesses the zeitgeist and rides the waves of the ‘cognitive revolution’ challenging us to perceive how we work, while rightfully declaring: “As far as I know, this book is the first sustained attempt to consider acting theory and practice in light of the ‘cognitive revolution’”. [6]

 The content of the book is not at all exhaustive – there is plenty of room for a more expansive [r]evolution to take place, in the future. However, what is interesting about this work is that is it addresses us each personally, by each chapter asking a reflective question and then theorizing it. Introducing one question after another, Soto-Morettini takes the reader on a meditative journey. In chapter one for instance, we are challenged with the question:   Am I Acting? In chapter two: What was I thinking? Chapter three asks us to consider our feelings with the question: How am I feeling? Chapter four turns from self-reflection to reflection of other with the question: What were you thinking? And finally, in chapter five entertaining, an ultimate existential question: Where I am I? By concomitantly asking such questions, she effectively positions the work philosophically between analytical and embodied philosophy.

In terms of knowledge making, what she contributes is to clearly articulate a consideration of theatre, as embodied philosophy, where the actor, perhaps, no longer a Faustian figure, who surrenders all to the director or trainer of acting, is now a truly Deleuzian post-everything ‘character’ and becoming individual, who has the capability of instigating an internal revolution in perspective by sharing philosophical command. During Soto-Morettini’s own search for meaning in her teaching of theatre, she describes how she continually confronted the notion that the actor is always being challenged to find truthfulness in performance – asking us to consider what is truth?  Meditating on the notion of truth-making, how can she not suggest we delve into the realm of ethics, and philosophy?  It is this sort of discourse that she effectively accomplishes with this book. As a practicing theatre artist and academic, I can attest that theatre as philosophy in action poses a very real and direct threat to the mindset of Cartesian dualism, which is possibly why we ‘tribe’ of theatre people often exist in the shadow lands of institutional life.  In this regard, Diderot’s paradox, unpacked by Soto-Morettini as a central issue in how we historically relate to theorizing theatre, is clearly suited to the philosophical past, not unlike Hamlet’s  performative  ‘…to be or not to be…’,  albeit, nihilistic search for meaning.

Not surprisingly, and exhausted from the pressure of having to reason acting dialectically, as I mention above, in ‘new’ cognitive thinking, the author suggests that there seems to be an urge to consciously  hold the tension between opposites, and to work out what we are now identifying as ‘between’ or ‘middle’ spaces. Exploring these creative spaces, or the ‘to be and to be’, would seem to me to necessitate a paradigmatic shift in consciousness, towards a hermeneutic sense of ‘constitutional’ wholeness. Moreover, by overcoming our existentially challenged inner Hamlet, we may find a more balanced sense of ourselves as actors.  As Soto-Morettini points out: “Most acting theorists don’t really grapple with the mysteries of the constitution of our personalities” – a statement encouraging us, to question whether we are essentially constructed the same, and whether we force our-selves to work out of an artificial homogeneity, as a blueprint for what is perceived as consciousness in theatre.[7]

The prevalent Cartesian mind-body split may have been a necessary contribution to the development of the western psyche, but its materialistic and hegemonic orientation repressed essential qualities of being-human, and by extension, the sense of transcendence needed for theatre. And so it is to the East, in the quest for a different cognitive perception, particularly of ‘Self’, that a number of twentieth century theatre practitioners, to include, Michael Chekhov, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht and Jerzy Grotowski, went to find answers and inspiration. Their explorations are what Soto-Morettini draws our attention to, in chapter five: ‘Where Am I’? It is in this chapter that she discusses how the acting process requires complex thinking to extend the viewpoint of what is possible for the human being to experience, and, notes that it is this search that drives the actor, to push philosophical boundaries[8].

That Soto-Morettini has invoked a ‘way’ to a 21^st Century thinking about theatre practice in The Philosophical Actor suggests that the actor now has a integral part to play in taking responsibility for their learning and training process - to be psychologically engaged in their process while questioning and being questionable.  Meditating into this way of theatre thinking, and partaking of creative and conscionable learning processes, the actor can now enjoy being a part of what is rapidly constellating as educational reform. With this cognitive shift, there is something refreshing and energizing, a directive for ‘new’ theatre perhaps? At last, Soto-Morettini instigates a discussion to do with what many of us think about but, don’t fully discuss, raising the question: So what does a philosophical approach to acting look like?[9]  As the author reminds us, the assumption of following the great theatre masters, [like gurus], has compelled us in the frame of how it’s done’ for too long a time? Perhaps the philosophical actor is simply someone who is courageous enough to dismantle ‘fixed beliefs’ in order to become a better and more ‘truthful’ actor?

Throughout the book, Soto-Morettini often refers to Michael Chekhov as a theatre practitioner who works with ‘new’ cognitive processes. Having trained in Chekhov’s technique along with Rudolf Steiner’s indications on Speech and Drama, for four very full-time years, and having worked with these techniques for many years, I find it interesting that she sees Chekhov as a practitioner/theorist whose theatre technique has the potential to offer what Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe and others see as an “optimal actor-training” - a training that works with the whole human being.[10] A seeker of acting processes that could address the actor wholistically that is, physically, emotionally and spiritually, Chekhov offers something quite unique to the actor, with a particular focus on training the imagination as a key to creativity. Chekhov does owes a debt to Steiner for the applied development of his concept  ‘the higher Self’ or ‘higher ego – a state of being that can direct the actor, into a conscious transcendence, so that the actor experiences being both the observer of their performance while performing, making for a deeper more engaged acting. Soto-Morettini also makes mention of Chekhov’s concept of the Psychological Gesture or ‘PG’, as a technique that challenges working with ‘emotional memory’ and the messiness of working with our own emotions. The ‘PG’ is a technique that evolved out of Chekhov’s experimental work with Stanislavsky and others at the Moscow Art Theatre, and then further developed once Chekhov was introduced to Steiner’s eurthymy, where speech or music become visible through movement, as a way to exploring and depicting emotions intuitively through gesture, rather than analytically - thus departing from logic-centered analytical theatre, and mainstream philosophy.[11]

Ending this review, I am left with the thought that if we undertake to become philosophical actors, we could contribute to an ongoing myth busting and reconstruction of theatre praxis. Furthermore, in the pursuit for a deeper and richer experience of being a theatre artist, it is possible, that by learning to occupy ‘between’ spaces, we will take a quantum leap, where our ‘actors’ logic will become aligned to our intuition, so that it constellates into what Soto-Morettini describes a ‘BEAUTIFUL’ acting [perhaps, a form of ‘future-acting’?]: “Acting that appeal[s]ed intuitively to our sense of the symbolic, the significant and the aesthetic? Acting that wasn’t the result of purely logical processes (which we know is pretty hard to imagine anyway), or a tacit subscription to a simple kind of correspondence theory? Acting that moved us closer to spiritual realizations, to worlds we have yet to imagine, to possibilities we hadn’t considered”.[12]