The Actors Center Journal Vol. 2, No. 3, July 2010
Ben Cameron’s Response to J. Michael Miller
A few thoughts about your proposal and your concerns:
1) Every chapter brings a sense of loss as a new chapter opens: indeed, as someone said, “If there’s no anxiety, you’re not really contemplating change.” I’m sure that folks bemoaned the appearance of Kean and Garrick, while others bemoaned their being supplanted by successors—and we all know how some people thought Brando ruined acting, while others…Anyway, you get the idea.
2) I don’t know that we can be clear about whether the actor’s craft will change—as it did with Stanislavski redefining the craft. I think what is clearly on the table is the sense of the actor’s role in the larger society, the environment in which she/he works, etc. In retrospect, the notion of the Artistic Home may have created insular, hermetic environments that kept the artist shielded from the world. Now, whether we like it or not, that sense of insularity is being dismantled both by technology and by consumer expectation—people expect access, transparency, and more. The new chapter may be that the artist must be OF the world, not apart from it.
3) This could also place a new role on the artist as cultivating arts participation, not mere observation—but again, this could be an opportunity. In the early days, actors at the Guthrie coached clergy on delivery of scripture (among other community connections). Most studies show that people who participate in the arts are actually MORE appreciative and responsive to the professional. The Rusty Musicians Program at the Baltimore Symphony—in which the orchestra includes trained but lapsed musicians at select concerts—is doing enormous things for driving attendance at the regular concerts that feature only the professionals. And Anne Bogart’s company now revels in public rehearsals—shouldn’t there be a lesson in that?
4) At MIT recently, I spend a day with engineers and scientists talking about innovation. They emphasized that the pedagogy in the science classroom hasn’t changed—when you teach organic chemistry, there are basics to be mastered—but that innovation comes outside the classroom in the realm of applied research. There may be an analogy for your work with the actors center—emphasizing the rigor of the craft, even while the applied research—e.g. production and all that goes with it—is open to new practice and interpretation.
5) I think in essence that we’re moving from a hierarchy—in which the professional sits atop the pyramid—to a spectrum where people more easily move between worlds of professional and amateur, and the rigid divide between the two loses much of its meaning. We’re seeing avocational artists doing work at professional levels (especially in film, for example) and increasingly professional artists choosing to work outside conventional arts organizations because the work they feel called to do can’t be accomplished solely in the concert hall (people like Liz Lerman, or Michelle Hensley at 10,000 Things, or arguably even Anna Deveare Smith). That doesn’t mean that the highly crafted actor disappears—it’s just that they don’t dominate the landscape in quite the same way.
6) As a close, someone compared this moment to the religious reformation, which resonates with me. Yes, both are spurred by technology; yes both will cause massive upheaval in business practice; and yes, both challenge who holds the monopoly on spiritual experience (the priest or the artist vs. the common man). But the Church didn’t go away—it simply lost its stranglehold/monopoly on what religion had to mean, even while new ways of thinking about religion sprang up. We may experiencing that moment in the arts—and one we should take a lesson from the Catholic Church about how to be a bit more responsive (and responsible)….
Hope this helps. Ben