Pr22t 091

Actors: does our experience of a story change with context?

Introduction My PURE RESEARCH proposal to was to run a performance/audience lab that investigates an actor’s relationship to story in different performance contexts. As a professional actor myself, I work in theatre, film, television and voice. I consider myself well-versed in the different technical demands that each of these mediums requires, while specializing in none. I also teach acting for both camera and stage at the college level. Last year I began pursuing my MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies through a lowresidency program in Vermont. (I’m in my third semester of a five semester program).

Part of my inquiry is to investigate the performer/audience relationship.

One of the questions that has always intrigued me about acting is how much my relationship to a story can change from context to context, or even from night to night.

I may be in a run of a play and if it’s a good night, I feel like I am very close to that character - that I have complete authority over that character and story. There is a symbiosis of energy and belief. It is easy, it is pleasurable. I discover things about the story I never knew before. Even deep into a long run, the story can surprise me.

Other nights, a cold response from an audience can have me doubting my abilities, the truth of the story. I feel unconnected, fake - or distracted and I just “phone it in”, boring myself with the story and choices that were made months earlier. On film sets, the somewhat unsettling sensation of walking into crowd of strangers deeply involved with their technical instruments (including phones), then delivering a sliver of a story, a fragment of character - working hard to relax, stay connected and open to the moment of the story, and also ignore the machine around you. And the story......what’s the relationship then? Depending on the size of the role, it’s quite possible I have never read the whole script. I have no sense of what my contribution will look like in the final product. Though using the same skill set in both theatre and film, I feel like a very different actor in each and my experience of my acting and the story is completely different.

In my attempts to dig deeper into how the these contexts affect our experience of storytelling, I found plenty research on how an audience is affected differently in live versus screen mediums but very little writing or research out there solely from the actor’s point of view. There are reams of actor’s biographies in which they may discuss the technical adjustments they’ve needed to make in their performances to suit the various mediums ie: how to act for camera, but none of them really discuss how it affects their experience of the story.

It is this question that prompted my research proposal with Nightswimming. I devised a performance experiment that would have a group of actors perform the same material in front of both live and camera audiences. While I recognize that I would not be able to

replicate the circumstances of our professional lives with great accuracy, this was the closest I could get. A description of the four audiences is below in Method.

The other significant consideration in my research was how to gather and understand the information that came back from these experiences. Anectdotal evidence didn’t seem to be specific enough and was too suceptible to the influence of others. As well, it doesn’t always get at the unconscious experience. I looked to the science field to see if there were models that could be used. I initially wondered if one could measure hormone levels and other indicators of pleasure/discomfort to actually get inside the physiological experience. I discussed this with a good friend who is also lead researcher at the University of Toronto, Dr. Rachel Tyndale. She pointed me to the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) which is a tool used in the scientific field to quantify and measure subjective data. It is used widely in pain, depression and addiction trials. It works from a narrative question and the respondent indicates their answer in relation to descriptors. This answer is then quantified according to where it is indicated on the line.

For example:

When you woke up this morning, did you feel...Hungry?

Not very _____________________X_________________________ Very The line between Not Very and Very is exactly 10cm. The ‘x’ is measured with a ruler as to where the answer falls and that becomes the numeric value for that answer. The data is most useful when it is in relationship to a series of questions to give a composite picture of an experience.

With the help of Dr. Tyndale and Brian Quirt (AD, Nightswimming) I created an 80 question VAS survey that asked questions of the actors in relation to their immediate experience. I used vocabulary from the acting world - words that may be meanless to the average citizen, but are bandied about with regularity in our field - words such as truthfulness, engagement, self-consciousness, nervousness, relaxation and focus. I also collected information measuring actor’s heart rate and blood pressure.

I knew that I was collecting a LOT of information and I was not entirely sure what we would be useful after all was said and done. In many ways, I was experimenting with the experiment. Would this method of interpreting a highly subjective experience convey any information (or data, in science speak) that reflects our experience of our craft?

Would the VAS be a useful tool to gather data? What would the potent indicators from the VAS be? I acknowledge that I was spreading the net wide - too wide perhaps. Each of these individual elements could be parsed down and run with participants to get a truly synthesized picture of what that experience is.

The Method:

Actors would perform the same piece of material in front of the following four audiences: A) a full house audience; B) A Camera and film crew; C) solo camera; and D) solo mystery audience member. The purposes of the solo camera and the solo audience member were to distinguish how the presence of just one human, or just the presence of a machine would affect the experience.

Immediately following the performance experience the actor would fill out the Visual Analoge Scale Survey as well as test heart rate and blood pressure.

Description of participants and materials: I hired 18 actors over two days. The actors came from a range of experience and ages.

They all work professionally; one exclusively in theatre, one exclusively in film/tv, and the rest work regularly in both mediums. The ages ranged from 26 to 60. We had 12 women and 6 men.

Each actor prepared a piece of performance material under five minutes. The material had to be something s/he had performed professionally in the past. I intentionally excluded new material as I wanted the variability of that “first time discovery� out of the equation. I did not curate the material ie: the actors each selected their own piece, although I did seek out different types of material - dance, direct address monologues, songs and scenes. For our lab, we had 3 scenes, 2 dance pieces,1 song, 1 magic performance and 9 monologues (some direct address, some not).

The questions in the VAS were grouped according to four main areas: Connectedness; Change in way the story was told; Discovery of newness in the story; and Satisfaction. (see attached survey)

My Assumptions: I went into the experiment the lab with the following assumptions based simply on my own personal experiences and biases as an actor: That the story would change significantly for the actor from audience to audience.

That a change in the way the story was told (according to technical adjusments made for the context) would permit new discoveries in the story.

That a live attentive audience would be deeply satisfying.

That the solo camera would be the least satisfying, but the most freeing Men feel more comfortable in front of an audience.

That time of day and repetition would affect the pleasure - ie: as actors became more relaxed throughout the day, they would take greater risks and have more fun.

I thought that people would discover newness in front of the solo camera, and perhaps the solo audience given that these unlikely audience scenarios.

My Questions: What are the key indicators of the experience of story and then how affected is that by the awareness of the audience, and the context (room)

Day One and Two Observations: Our days ran very smoothly.

CHALLENGES and LIMITATIONS Not being able to fully replicate the full audience - our audience became the house of ‘supportive actors’ - rather than a ticket buying crowd.

Shortcomings with the VAS - questions that were confusing. Too many questions.

Time restraints - not able to collect data from the Day One group for Audience 4 - ran out of time as our camera and crew started late and it took far more time than it should have.

So many other relationships and information within the data but due to time constraints and a lack of ability on my part, I am unable to delve into.

______________________________________________________________________ ** this section is just some notes I jotted down.

I am immensely grateful for this opportunity. It has been challenging. The thinking and the crafting of the Visual Analogue Scale, the processing and analyzing of the numbers has been a degree maker in itself - especially for someone like myself that runs from these things. But also the opportunity to engage with my professional peers in a completely different form. Outside the exploration of a script, or someone else’s narrative - it is an exploration of our narrative, our experience. The constant dance of flexibility that we do so willingly. the testing of this scale as a possibility for further research.

What I have learned: I can over complicate things - but perhaps this is my process towards simplicity.

I’m so interested in so many things, that focus on one item is challenging.

Actors experience story differently in every medium - we are all different.

Data analysis is cool. It’s also hard. You have to have a head for it.

Perhaps the questions are best described as learning and changing.

One is learning - learning something about the story because of the context.

One is change the telling of the story because of the context.

Does the audience/medium determine

Observations Day 1 Observations Day 2 Follow-up with actors.

observations about myself: typically I over complicate things Really I could have done simply one.

Typical of me to take too much on.

An attempt with the different descriptors to

Is audience awareness related to satisfaction?

Does the audience awareness correlate to the story

Many thanks to the participants: Allegra Fulton, Tony Nappo, Diane Flacks, Tanja Jacobs, Alex Williams........

Nightswimming: Brian Quirt, Rupal, Rachel