GIL LAZIER
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INTRODUCTION
I met Gil when he cast me in a production of “Other Desert Cities” in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We got along well and stayed in touch, often meeting for coffee or food when I was back in New Mexico for auditions or projects. We often found ourselves talking about deep topics related to spiritual practice and theatre arts.
Gil Lazier is a distinguished theatre educator, director, and scholar with over 80 productions to his name, both in the U.S. and internationally. A passionate advocate for actor training and philosophy, Dr. Lazier integrates his devotion to Siddha Yoga into his theatrical work. He served as Dean of the Florida State University School of Theatre from 1982 to 1999 and held leadership roles at the Asolo Conservatory, Banyan Theater, and the American Theatre. Recognized for his contributions to theatre education, he has received numerous honors, including the Florida Theatre Conference Distinguished Career Award and the Career Achievement Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. A scholar of Stanislavski’s acting theories, Dr. Lazier has published over 30 papers and directed masterworks by Albee, Chekhov, Ibsen, Shakespeare, and others. He also pioneered international theatre exchanges, notably between American and Russian students at the Moscow Art Theatre.
I met Gil when he cast me in a production of “Other Desert Cities” in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We got along well and stayed in touch, often meeting for coffee or food when I was back in New Mexico for auditions or projects. We often found ourselves talking about deep topics related to spiritual practice and theatre arts.
Gil Lazier is a distinguished theatre educator, director, and scholar with over 80 productions to his name, both in the U.S. and internationally. A passionate advocate for actor training and philosophy, Dr. Lazier integrates his devotion to Siddha Yoga into his theatrical work. He served as Dean of the Florida State University School of Theatre from 1982 to 1999 and held leadership roles at the Asolo Conservatory, Banyan Theater, and the American Theatre. Recognized for his contributions to theatre education, he has received numerous honors, including the Florida Theatre Conference Distinguished Career Award and the Career Achievement Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. A scholar of Stanislavski’s acting theories, Dr. Lazier has published over 30 papers and directed masterworks by Albee, Chekhov, Ibsen, Shakespeare, and others. He also pioneered international theatre exchanges, notably between American and Russian students at the Moscow Art Theatre.
James and Gil in Albuquerque, 2019
PART 1: Family Roots & a Life in Theatre
JW: Looking at these notes I’ve compiled about your work, what stuck out to me is something in your bio: it says “Dr. Lazar is an expert on actor training and philosophy, having studied and observed leaders in those areas. He is a devotee of Siddha Yoga and applies those practices to his work.” When I read that, I thought, “No wonder we’ve enjoyed connecting over the years,” and I thought that you are a perfect candidate for the kinds of conversations I like to have. So… to start with, was there a formative experience or a spark of a moment when you realized that theatre (and acting) was the direction for you?
GL: Well, I come from a family that has a tradition of performing (singing, mainly) on both sides of the family. My family supported my wanting to go into theater, because they were all involved in it on my mother's side. In fact, the first union stagehand in the city of Pittsburgh was my uncle, so he used to let me stand in the wings. I started watching stage shows when I was seven, and my heroes at that time were people like Sophie Tucker, Charlie Chaplin, and WC Fields. My uncle knew all these people because they would come through Pittsburgh and perform. I've got lots of examples of how I was exposed to performing arts early on. My great aunt was the first piano player for the first Nickelodeons in the United States – the first silent movie house in the United States. This is all just on one side of the family. On my father’s side, he was a great dramatic tenor, and his sister was the head solo for the Paul Whiteman orchestra and connected with Gershwin. So, I got it from both sides, and I started performing when I was a child. I started singing when I was seven or eight years old and continued developing my singing voice, so I got into performing in musical theater. So, that's my family. Also, beyond the people who were performing or working in theater at that time, I was surrounded by music all the time - opera mainly. So, there was just no question that I was going to go into it professionally. I was going to continue singing, but I got my first experience on stage playing Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls. That was the first time I was on stage in a musical back in 1960. Now, let me say this: in my career, I was able to meet people who were (or thought they were) affecting actor training, so we can talk about that if you’d like.
JW: Yeah, I’d love to hear more about that as we go along. To recap, what you’re saying is that there was a generational element at play. Not everybody comes from a family of artists or performers, but that can be a huge leg up.
GL: Indeed. Yes, it was.
JW: I know you grew up in Pittsburgh, but where were your ancestors from?
GL: Lithuania. Both on my father's and mother's side. They came over on a boat from Lithuania in the early 20th century.
JW: I see, so eastern European generally. So, going back… you knew you wanted to pursue a career in theatre, so you did a BA in theater in Pittsburgh, right?
GL: I did, and soon after, I worked at some major venues. I worked summer stock at the Pittsburgh Playhouse and got my equity card. This was in the early 60s, so it was a time when people were getting interested in what acting was: what it meant and how you did it. I did too. Whereas, coming up in the late 50s and early 60s, I grew up at a time when the Stanislavski system was completely standard among the general population because of so-called “method” acting.
JW: Yes, and that would have been prior to the big cultural and pedagogical changes that were to come in the late 60s and early 70s, but at the time you were growing up and training, the American “method” was monolithic.
GL: Well, the main argument in the 50s and early 60s was between British acting and American acting, between external acting and internal acting. The actors who were British represented a particular school of acting, and the actors who were American were just beginning to represent another school, so back then, I was right in the middle of that.
JW: I see. So, you were training as an actor and starting to get interested in deeper questions about acting, and this was a period when people like Strasburg, Adler, and Meisner were coming in full bloom, yeah?
GL: Yes. Historically, yes. I don't know if you're interested in this, but I tracked the genesis of the Stanislavski system, however you want to call it. Later in my life, I tracked its origins and became interested in how it developed. I’m not just a performer and a director but also a researcher, so I became very interested in seeing what the issues were: how the “method” got to the United States. These great American acting teachers (Stella Adler, Harold Clurman, Sanford Meisner, Bobby Lewis, Lee Strasberg) fascinated me. The commonly known history is that the Stanislavski system came to the United States when the Moscow Art Theater toured to the US back in the 20s. They performed in the United States in 1923-24. The Americans who saw the performances raved about them, and that started interest in what the Moscow Art Theater was doing. Interestingly, the development of this carried through to politics; if you go back and look, a lot of the Americans who were interested in the Stanislavski system were also interested in the fact that the system developed in parallel (to some degree) with the socialist revolution in Russia. I also discovered that Stanislavski had become interested in yoga and meditation shortly after the Russian Revolution, specifically through a Canadian yogi that he corresponded with.
PART 2: Yoga's Influence on Stanislavski
JW: Yes, I’m fascinated by this yogic element of Stanislavski. I've come across this character before (I believe his name was Schuler or something like that) and I forget where I read about him.
GL: This so-called “Indian yogi” was not actually Indian; he was an American. So, some details of the story are not verified, but this is what I recall. Most people agree that an American author named William Atkinson wrote under the pseudonym Swami Ramacharaka. Some people claim that Atkinson met an Indian man named Baba Bharata at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Baba convinced Atkinson that there was a connection between breathing, relaxation, and control of the mind. So, William Walker Atkinson became a student of yoga and started writing pamphlets in English about the connection between yoga and breathing. These were eventually translated into Russian, and that's how Stanislavski learned about yogic techniques and became interested in the connection between breathing and relaxation and concentration. So, Stanislavski learned about yoga from a translation of something an American guy wrote about Indian yoga.
JW: Okay. An American guy who was studying Indian yoga?
GL: Yeah. So, that's the deal, and I was fascinated by that. The way scholars discovered Stanislavski used these yogi techniques was through notes of his students at the Opera Studio. Stanislavski was also running the Opera Studio in Moscow at the time, and he began teaching his opera students the effect of breathing on the mind. So that's the story.
JW: You know, it's funny, I mean, we had corresponded a little bit about this topic, so I looked for material online, but if you have anything written about that, I'd love to read it. I may have misunderstood something I read, or it may be a kind of mythology at this point, but I'm sure there's some good scholarship out there. Anyway, the way I remember it (or heard it) was that there was a Russian who went to India and came back, and his name was Suler or something. In any case, there was a whole chapter about this Suler guy in that book I read. The way it was written, it was almost like a Rumi and Shams kind of connection, where Stanislavski had this very intimate connection with this guy who had come back from India: a relationship that was possibly romantic or sexual. Perhaps I read too much into it. Anyway, as I recall, Stanislavski was exposed to all these yogic concepts and practices this Suler guy had learned in India, so Stanislavski started using them in his training with actors. Mostly obviously in his books, Stanislavski writes about radiation in a way that sounds a lot like pranayama and subtle energies from the yogic tradition. Also, when Stanislavski talks about circles of concentration, he’s talking about…
GL: Well, let me just cut in for a second. So, I'm not in any way disputing any of the documented stories that you might have read about how Stanislavski got connected with Indian mysticism. And it very well could be that he had a Russian friend or Indian friend, who reinforced what he learned elsewhere, but the document that most people that I know refer to is called something like “The Science of Yoga and Breathing”, and you can still get it. It’s available; you can look it up on Amazon. William Walker Atkinson was the author’s name. So, I'm talking specifically about the use of breath here, and as you say, there are a lot of other examples of what might be called a mystical approach to acting that are documented in notes from his students during the time, nothing directly from Stanislavski, but there is certainly suggestive evidence from his students.
JW: I also remember reading something about telepathic exercises of some kind. Stanislavski was apparently trying to get people to communicate and understand each other without speech or even movement, just thought. Anyway, let's circle back a bit…
GL: I’d like to add one more interesting element to this discussion. A lot of information about Stanislavski didn’t come out until the 90s. It was heavily censored by the Soviet regime before that. Up until that time, a lot of the writings of Stanislavski I've read were actually in a kind of code when referring to things like yogic breathing exercise, because the Soviet government censored anything vaguely spiritual. For the last six years of his life, Stanislavski was virtually incarcerated by the Stalinist regime: not permitted to leave his house. So, there's new information that's come out, mainly from a guy whose name is Jean Benedetti, who is considered the world's foremost Stanislavski authority. So, whether that's relevant to our discussion, I don't know, but it always fascinated me that Stanislavski himself was limited in his writing by his government.
JW: So, everything Stanislavski wrote in his early books, like An Actor Prepares and Creating a Role (those three early, well known books), and even his memoir “My Life in Art” … you're saying they were highly censored, or that he was potentially writing in a censored way, approved of by the new communist anti-spiritual regime, is that what you mean?
GL: In terms of any kind of spiritual discussion or mysticism, yes. Additionally, there are new translations of those three books. So now, there's a version by Benedetti, in which she put together the first two books as one book, which is the way Stanislavski originally saw his writing. It came out around 2010, I think.
JW: Yeah. I hadn't considered that before: that he was under a socialist communist regime for the latter portion of his work. Obviously, they would have had a strong opinion about any spiritual or mystical content. So, when did you shift from being interested in being a performer to consciously being more interested in directing? I’m also curious, was your interest in the deeper questions of acting because you were already interested in spiritual things, or were you like a lot of actors: did working on yourself as an actor lead you in the direction of spiritual things?
GL: First, I had no interest or knowledge about spiritual things in general, and certainly how they related to acting; it wasn't part of my consciousness. As I mentioned, the issues when I was growing up as an actor were between British technique and American methods, but those conversations don't really exist anymore, not in the same way. So, I was not spiritually inclined, and my acting training didn’t start me down that path. To answer your first question, I started directing kind of as a fluke, in college I discovered that the research you do as a director appealed to me, so I started directing. At the time, I was married and didn't want to go into the service, because the Vietnam draft was happening, so I decided that I was going to stay in school. I worked straight through a PhD and began to study acting theory. So that's how I really got from acting to directing. I found that directing was easier and more fun for me. Also, there were social and political issues going on at the time that made directing more interesting to me than acting. When I got into directing, I began to see that there were things about acting that were important to me that were very different from how directing was taught at the time. When I got into directing, it was taught very mechanically. At that time, John Dean and Larry Corolla wrote well-known directing books, they were very technically oriented, which didn’t match my own experience at all watching actors. I could feel when actors were telling the truth, inherently, and that's what I've learned to reinforce.
JW: Yes, but how do you write a handbook about “knowing and telling the truth”? You can’t, or at least it would be very difficult. What you said a second ago does make me curious about something else. You were saying that you weren't spiritually inclined at first, but in terms of a timeline here, we're coming up on the late 60s, so if spirituality wasn't something you were exposed to at a young age or that came to you through your own actor training, then what was the genesis of your interest in a spiritual path?
“Ghosts” by Henrick Ibsen, Directed by Gil Lazier, 2010, Banyan Theatre Company
PART 3: The Experimental Sixties
GL: So, I was in New York in the late 60s. I lived in New York until 1970. I was there during what I considered to be the most fruitful and amazing revolution in theater practice that I had ever experienced. I discovered a couple of things: first, that people were doing exercises in companies - I’m not talking about individual actors, I'm talking about companies. People were doing exercises in companies that were very close to what I had read about Stanislavski doing in the Moscow Art Theater - very close. These exercises had to do with inner awareness, a sphere of influence, all those things, and I saw a connection with the work of, for example, the Open Theatre. I became friends with a man who oversaw an organization in New York called Universal Movement Theater Repertory, which he was a producer of. It was a national connection of companies that were doing “experimental” theater work. I became tremendously interested in that kind of work, so I sat in on rehearsals, and watched productions they did. I saw the work of the Living Theater at the time. I became, not close to, but friends with, members of the Living Theatre, including Julian Beck and Judith Melina. They were doing work with Joe Chaikin, who eventually created the Open Theatre. That whole bunch of people in the late 60s, I got connected with them. So, that really pushed me along in saying, “Wait a minute here - there's something more important about acting than how you open the door!” I became very, very interested in that something more.
JW: At some point you either saw Grotowski and some of his work or met him… and maybe some early Peter Brook stuff, too?
GL: Yes, I did a workshop with Peter Brook, and I saw Grotowski’s “The Constant Prince” and “The Akropolis”. I was friends with a group of acting teachers who were interested in all this stuff at the time. Richard Schechner became a friend of mine, and Richard is still out there doing his work. So, getting back to your question about my path… during this time in New York, I also started reading about spirituality and mysticism, books by Ram Dass and others. I noticed the connection between what I was reading and practicing, spiritually, and the sorts of company exercises that some of the avant-garde of the time were practicing. I also went through a psychedelic period in the late 60s, which got me closer to Ram Dass. I met him a couple of times, and through him, I was introduced to my guru, Swami Muktananda. So, that's what happened. There was this big movement in the late 60s; all these companies were trying different exercises. They were all different, James, in the sense that nobody was teaching doctrinaire type stuff. They were doing their own thing, but there was a connection between all of it; that was irrefutable. I decided that if I was going to really get into this spiritual path, I had to start practicing meditation, so that's what happened.
JW: I'm fascinated to hear more about how meditation started to shift or inform your artistic work. I would especially love to hear more about your experience with Siddha Yoga (which I don't know a lot about). I do have a bit of a sense of it: that it's not, for example, like Zen. It's not just sitting, pure and simple: not just an emptiness or pure presence sort of thing. If I recall correctly, Muktananda, who was your Siddha Yoga guru, was sort of famous for, I don't know what you want to call it, “energetic fireworks” or extraordinary kriyas: shaking and such. Yeah? You tell me. I heard all kinds of radical stories, if I recall correctly. I think the word “siddha” means something like a spiritual superpower, yes? Is that one way of translating the word, as a sort of spiritual superpower?
GL: Well, now I'm putting labels on Siddha Yoga right now as we talk, and people can argue easily with that, but it's pretty well established that the genesis of Siddha Yoga came through Baba Muktananda and his guru Bhagavan Nityananda, and the current head of the lineage, Gurumayi, but the Genesis of this system is Tantric Yoga, which is based on the idea that you can become realized, you can get closer to self-realization, through form rather than non-form. So, there are practices or exercises that are taught, not to bring you to realization, but to clear your mind so that you experience what you already have.
JW: Got it, so Tantric Yoga is more about realization in form or through form, and that it’s about clearing the mind so you can experience what you already have rather than getting somewhere or achieving something that’s not already true.
PART 4: Via Negativa
GL: That's right. The issue is, can you get to self-realization, that is can you get to perfection, through the body? Is there a way to get there through various practices? Some spiritual teachings say that spiritual realization will only happen when it happens; you can't do anything about it. However, Baba taught, “yes, you can do something about it.” You can use breathing exercises and hatha yoga to clear your mind, to clear thoughts away so that you can experience the essence of reality that's already present. That blew me away. It blew me away in terms of my work in theater too. I realized that ultimately the process of acting is not additive but subtractive. You take away, you take away, and you take away - and then your essence, the beauty that's in you, comes through, and it manifests through the medium of the character. That was the connection for me between spiritual realization and my theatre work. So, getting back to directing, when I work with actors, when they're truthful, it's when they're not cluttered. Their mind is not cluttered, their essence shows through the role. Some actors have this naturally, while some actors must learn this through a process of subtraction. Grotowski called it the Via Negativa. Take Brando, for example; his essence naturally showed itself through every role. He was the greatest actor I've ever seen, because nothing was more important to him than to get down to it. Now, that's a supposition on my part, but that's what I saw in him. So, when I direct a play, of course, I work on externals. Let me say, parenthetically, it's now almost impossible to use exercises with actors in professional theater. You can't do it, there's no time. You can't do it. I used to spend time on exercises in rehearsal. Before I went into rehearsal, I would do a two-day workshop with my actors, during which we would do exercises. Then, I would do half an hour of exercises every night and every day, before starting rehearsal. We’d do exercises you’ll probably find in Stanislavski’s system, if you look for them, because they're breathing exercises and relaxation exercises, to get down to the essence. Those exercises free the mind, as far as I'm concerned. Now, of course you still need to do homework, you need to understand the character and circumstances, but when it really works, you're touching that which is inside. That process is subtractive, not additive.
JW: Yes, the via negativa, as Grotowski called it. Yet, to some degree, the opposite is true with regards to practice. I don’t know who said this… there are several overlapping stories in my head, but it goes something like this…. “Enlightenment is an accident, but spiritual practice makes you accident prone.” I think that goes for artistic work too: true inspiration is a grace, an accident, but devoted work makes you accident prone.
GL: That's great. Yeah, I love that, but Stanislavski and Baba Muktananda both felt, as far as I know, that ultimately, you had to get down to the truth inside you. And the truth is inherently beautiful.
JW: So, you lived in New York during this period, late 60s and early 70s. Obviously, the counterculture during that time was a revolution on many levels. People were trying new things, and there was an influx of wisdom from the East. That was all more than 60 years ago now. Since then, it feels like we’ve been just trying to integrate what exploded during that time. So now, what you have is a yoga studio on every corner. Buddhist or Hindu Temples or even secularized meditation centers are commonplace in most metropolitan areas. Mindfulness practices are being researched at major universities and research institutions, and those same practices are being taught in schools, prisons, and workplaces. There are meditation training centers now in LA that are so commercialized, they are popping up like yoga studios once did. There are fifty-year-old educational institutions like Naropa University or the California Institute of Integral Studies that offer master’s degrees and PhDs on various kinds of contemplative psychology, art, or education. Overall, so much of what was a radical introduction during the 60s and 70s have become integrated into mainstream culture. Arguably, watered down, but still! Thinking back to that period of exploration we are talking about makes me curious about where the explorers and innovators are now. Where are the exciting innovative theatre practitioners? Then I think, “Well, maybe this is just a boring period after an explosion: a period during which everyone is just integrating what happened during the 60s and 70s - trying to make sense of it and stabilize it. Still, I think, “Where is the exciting innovation and exploration in theatre these days?
“Hay Fever” by Noel Coward. Directed by Gil Lazier @ Asolo Rep 2004
PART 5: Duck Soup & Going to the Source
GL: Well, it's a good question. As you probably know, one of the things that destroyed all this experimentation was money. People couldn't afford it. So, there is no direct line that I know of, between that period that we're talking about and what's going on today. People can't afford it. So, that's one of the things that happened to the experimentation that companies were doing. The Open Theater lasted for maybe six or seven years, and then it fell apart in 1971. It fell apart, because they couldn't afford it anymore, and the actors went on to make a living. So that's one dimension of it. Also, your discussion about the multiplicity of the yoga studios and meditation training available now and so forth… that's great, that's wonderful, but there are some downsides. My guru used to tell a story about a starving village in India. I'm going to shorten this because he could make it go for 20 minutes. The story is that there is a starving village in India, and there were variations of this, but one of the people in this village got a hold of a duck. He wanted to be magnanimous, so he put the duck in a pot and started cooking the duck. The odor went all over the village, and everyone started lining up to have this duck soup. Well, it was a big pot, but as more people came, he started to add a little water to replenish the soup when it got low, but when it got to the 40th or 50th person in the lineup, that person tasted nothing but water. Furious, he went to the guy with the duck and said, “What's wrong with your soup?” The man responded, “There's nothing wrong with it. It's just the soup of the soup of the soup of the soup of a duck.” The idea is that you have to look for the duck, if you really want to know what's going on. That's what I tried to do when finding a path for myself. I wanted the duck; I didn't want the watered-down duck soup, three times removed. I don't want to put anybody down who is doing good with yoga and mindfulness and so forth, but they really need to know what they're doing, and a lot of them don't. Of course, there's nothing wrong with duck soup if it helps you, but you are not going to get to the duck that way.
JW: Yeah, on one level, yoga and meditation have been commercialized and secularized, leaching out some of its depth, but on another level, I do think commercialized practices can be a gateway drug in a good way: a Trojan horse in a positive sense. For instance, someone might try a yoga class at the gym, but then at some point you find out there's more to it, and then you go deeper when you’re ready. “When the student is ready, the teaching appears”, that sort of thing.
GL: Yes, it can be tricky, but I believe you will go deeper when the time is right - period. When it’s your time, you will be willing to do what you need to.
Part 6: The Director, The Witness, & Truth
JW: So, you ran an actor training conservatory at Asolo Rep in Florida, and you directed something like 80 productions over the years, some of which were very successful internationally, even in Moscow (which I've heard you talk about in various contexts). So, a lot has happened since that period in New York. You’ve been practicing and integrating all the artistic and spiritual inspiration you were exposed to. Also, you started on the path with Muktananda during that same time in New York, is that right? I imagine your practice has deepened, or stabilized, over the last number of decades, yes?
GL: Yes.
JW: I'm curious, were there any peak experiences for you (as an artist, director, or teacher) during which you thought, “I'm getting at what I've been trying to get at in this mix of spirituality and theatre! This is alive for me!” Maybe it's not the fireworks moments, maybe it has been more of the steady, “chop wood, carry water”, daily practice kind of thing. Jack Kornfield wrote a great book called “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry”; it’s about how awakening is, to some degree, no big deal; you just get right back to simply doing the work. In any case, do you have any peak or artistic-spiritual creative experiences you can share?
GL: If I told you that I knew how to direct in a way that would bring out the indelible spark of beauty, I'd be lying; I don't know. I have a belief system myself, and I believe that the process of acting is ultimately one of taking away, rather than adding. Now, I believe that if I'm ever being a good director, it's because I see the truth of the people that I'm working with. When they get it, when they hit that truth, they know it, and I know it. Maybe they don't define it in the way I defined it, but I know when I'm dealing with the truth, and I let it go. I let them do it. I had to learn that the hard way over (I don't know how many) years of directing, because I was sticking my nose in things that I had no business sticking my nose into as a director. I learned a lot about that in Moscow, because I was dealing with actors who didn't know me at all, and I was dealing with people who had totally different training, or at least I assumed they did. These actors were graduates of the Moscow Art Theatre School, and the star of the production that I did over there was the head of the Moscow Art Theater school, who then became the head of the Moscow Art Theater. So, I was working with somebody who had great credentials, let me put it that way. And boy did he know when he'd hit something that it was right. I didn't have to tell him. I saw it. He knew it. So, for me, directing is about seeing the truth, and I'm all about just fucking around until you get there. How you get there might be different for each actor that you work with. So, have I done productions that I thought were mostly truthful? Yeah, I have. I know which ones fail, but that's all it's about. If you want, you can talk about seeing the truth in imaginary circumstances, which is a variation on the old Meisner slogan. Jumping around a bit here, but as far as teachers that I deeply respect, Meisner is probably the one I respect the most. I never met him, but I was friends with his assistant Bill Esper for a long time. Bill knew what the Meisner system was all about, and how to teach it. I don't know about people who work with Bill now. That's third generation noise. I don't know. It might be “duck soup”. I just don't know how good it really is.
JW: Yeah, I think Meisner’s work was a unique and invaluable contribution. David Mamet, one of Meisner’s students, often quoted Sandy Meisner, saying “Invent nothing, denying nothing.” That one sticks deeply in my mind as it relates to my work, and life too! The funny thing is, in a way, Meisner was trying to get people to be present and tell the truth, you know! As simple as that.
GL: There! That’s it, but being present is the avenue toward realization, so you take it further in meditation, you take it further.
JW: I often tell people that the way I want to work artistically is a little bit like the yoga mat or the meditation cushion, in the sense that the meditation cushion isn't really about the meditation cushion. It's about what happens when you get off the meditation cushion. The cushion or mat is just a context for practice, to see what I’m up to, to confront myself. So, if I can make my rehearsal or performance just one of the ways I “practice”, then the theatre work becomes about helping me be a better human everywhere in my life.
GL: It's your karma yoga, to use the practice, to find out who you really are. I mean, that's one way of thinking about it.
JW: I love your description about how you like to direct by trusting the actor and looking for the truth. That was my experience when we worked together: I felt trusted. I felt supported. I felt what you're describing as a remarkable lack of ego. Some directors can lead by becoming a version of “the controller”. In my experience, control isn’t the best pathway to spiritual experience. Good spiritual practice tends to be more about surrendering the ego in service of some larger movement that's happening, so I think there's a real trap there for directors to get into ego: this sense of “I have to be in charge of this thing, and I have to run it to make sure it works out right, and if it doesn't go well, then it’s on me!” As opposed to, well, my experience of what you're saying now and what it was like working with you, which was, I felt you communicating, “Maybe I can point out some things, maybe take a few things away, but I can't actually do it for them, and I'm going to trust them.”
GL: My job is to know when they're right, and if they're not right, then you get into trouble. Then it's my job to try anything that I can to help them get right, depending on who they are, and everybody's different. So, my first job is if something goes wrong; I need to know what's wrong. Second, I need to try any way I possibly can to help them get it right. So, my job is to know when it's right, basically.
JW: Right, your capacity for being present and perceiving truth in some form, whatever that is, in each moment. That is your responsibility. Thinking about the job of a director, I heard somebody define the natural leader of any group as the one who is closest to Source: the one who can see and perceive truth, speak and act on it most effectively.
GL: So, you're talking about directing, and I'm also talking about doing individual shows; each show is different. Each show requires different kinds of skills. If you're working with bad material, it's harder to get to that place that you want to get, because you're not getting the right support from the text. That's one of the reasons so many of these groups in the late 60s didn't work with text; they improvised; they evolved. For example, Grotowski’s company, the Laboratory Theatre, produced one of the most amazing technical shows that I've ever seen: Akropolis. Every minute detail was so specific. I sat there and saw both incredible physical technique and Truth. He was evolving. He was working with a poem, or he was working with scripture, but he wasn't working with formal theatrical text.
Part 7: Transmission & the Future of the Form
JW: I have a dear friend named Antero Alli, up in Portland. We worked together in the Bay Area, and he came more from an American mime background, but he learned a technique called “paratheatre” at some point from somebody who had worked with Ryszard Cieślak, I think. Anyway, Antero ran with it basically over the next 40 years. He was doing what he calls paratheatrical ritual experiments in the Bay Area and now Portland, sometimes leading to performance. He’s dying of cancer right now, but it's been interesting to look at his work and think about what his contribution has been to this ongoing conversation, because he has been my most direct (though very indirect) exposure to Grotowski style work (at least Grotowski’s period of paratheatrical period during which they didn't perform and focused on revitalizing the ritual function of performance). Later, Grotowski did some radical stuff that I still… I feel like he's still way ahead of his time. I still think mainstream theatrical practices are a couple 100 years behind understanding what he was doing. Which is a good transition, because we’ve talked about the past and what’s happening now, to some degree, but I wonder, “where do you see this work going?” Do you have a vision or some sense of the frontiers of actor training and theatrical practice in the 21st century?
GL: I don't, I wish I did. I'll tell you a couple of things that I've noticed. First, most of the stuff that we've been talking about in the genesis of actor training and techniques and so forth, was before television and movies were nearly as big as they are now. So, let's just remember that. Most of the acting that actors see today is mostly on camera. So, if you're asking a question about what's going on in the future, it's going to have to include television and movies because actor training includes on camera training. What happens to Grotowski experiments and similar work, I don’t know; I have no idea. It's not there now. I just don't know. I don't know who's doing it. I mean, besides this guy in Portland that you mentioned, I have no idea where it's going. I will say this: I think acting has improved a lot. In the last 30 or 40 years, I think actors are better. I think they're better on stage, and they're certainly better on film. On television, I don't know because it's mostly about memorizing lines and getting to your point, but the acting is good. And the separation between British and American acting, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't exist anymore. So, if you ask me what's happening in the future, the best I can do is to say, the theater movement helped. I mean, heading back to mechanics now, the LORT theater movement, the proliferation of actor training and MFA programs (even though there are a whole bunch of bad ones) helped. They set standards. I mean, I don't have to give you examples of that, you know, what I'm talking about, you know, one Juilliard class, no matter how good or bad the training might have been, can give out four or five great working actors with long careers. The same is true of places like Yale, at least it was true. They helped create actors who were excellent. So, there you are, I don't know where it's going. I mean, 5-10 years ago, I would have said it's all going to be about artificial intelligence and computers. It's going to be about live theatre in front of computer-generated images, and that is already what’s happening in movies.
“I Ought to Be in Pictures” by Neil Simon, Directed by Gil Lazier, Moscow, 1987.
JW: Right, yeah.
GL: So, I wish I could tell you where it's going. I don't know, I'm old enough to say that’s somebody else’s problem now.
JW: Yeah, I guess we'll finish on this. I recall there was a coach at some point or a teacher that said something like, “the difference between a goal and a vision is that a vision is bigger than you; a vision is bigger than something you could complete on your own or finish in one lifetime.” I latched on to that; I like that I have some goals that may take more than one lifetime (or that requires a community or many generations) to complete.
Part 8: Actor, Know Thyself
GL: Yeah, I want to throw in one last thing, if I can.
JW: Sure.
GL: James, I believe that the theatre and acting and actor training, they are all avenues, to the self, they are all avenues to the Truth, because I believe that completely. That's the major thing in life, finding the capital S “Self”, and if I didn't believe I could do that, or at least get close to it, in my theatrical work, I'd be very sad.
JW: Yes, I think that actor training can aid the evolution of consciousness - for each of us individually. Further, I think the work that we put out in the world can be part of a collective evolution or awakening to a greater or lesser degree. I think collective rituals (live and in the flesh, in the same space, during which artists move the collective energy-body) aren’t going anywhere. I think we are energetic, embodied beings, so people who can serve the community in that way are going to be as necessary as ever, maybe especially as we continue to move into a world that is increasingly built to discourage the need for bodily presence.
GL: Yes, but we’ve previously talked about Swami Muktananda, about energetics and so forth. One of the root teachings in yoga and meditation, as far as I'm concerned, surrounds the experience of Shakti, which means energy. Shakti is what connects an actor with his audience. That's energy. Now, we're talking about energy across the “fourth wall”, Shakti that an actor generates and transmits to an audience, which creates a bond with that audience. And that, that's energy! Now, I don't know if anybody's teaching that. Grotowski did. He used to; he had exercises where you had to focus your energy on your elbow, that sort of thing.
JW: Yes, I’ve heard people describe Cieslak’s performances, saying he had light shooting out of his body…
GL: Let me give you an example. Cieslak was performing in “The Constant Prince.” I don't have time to set up the context of it, but the set was like a surgery operating room, and Cieslak is playing Christ, essentially. At the climax of the play, he's down on his knees. There are pictures of this; you can check it out. So, he’s on his knees, his arms are behind and his head is up. He lets out this sound. The sound for me was taking on the sins of humanity. He lets out this below - the closest I can come is to describe it like the sound of a water buffalo getting castrated or something. It was amazing. Then he stops, and he repeats it again exactly the same as he did the first time! Now that was Cieslak! I've never seen anything like that!
JW: Wow. Yeah. It reminds me of our conversation about duck soup: I could read about this or hear you tell it, but it’s probably nothing compared to what you experienced. I can read about what some great spiritual teacher did 2000 years ago, but it’s nothing compared to finding a genuinely awake teacher to experience directly today. However, I also think about the experience of that performance you saw: the cry of someone taking on the sins of the world… in some ways, having an experience like that, even if it is through a performer, I don't know that there really is ultimately any difference. There is a way in which the performer can embody, can bring that energetic, visceral, actual direct experience to an audience - performance is a direct experience. Live performance is not mediated. It’s direct, even though it's an actor or a group of artists telling a story. To watch them go through it on stage is a direct experience, and it can be direct transmission; it can change people.
GL: That Cieslak moment, you know, I'm elevating it, but it's the kind of moment that can change your life, when you see it.
JW: Yeah, it makes you understand something that you didn't know before. There's a kind of direct Gnosis that's possible.
GL: Yeah, so next time you're doing Neil Simon comedy…
JW: Ha! You know, that's probably not my thing, but God bless him. I love… I mean, we did scenes from Barefoot in the Park when I was in high school, and it was a lot of fun. Well, listen, it's been a joy and a pleasure to have a chance to connect with you and to share a little time and some stories.
GL: This has been a great interview; I really appreciate it. I don't get a chance to talk about these topics very often.
JW: I’m so glad to hear it. I really enjoyed it too. A big part of doing these interviews was because I wanted there to be a place where people could have conversations like this in a very explicit way. Because I know the deeper, spiritual, or mystical threads are already there, in the work. They were underneath with Stanislavski or with Chekhov, behind a few doors, but it was all there: the esoteric underpinnings are all there. So many performers are either longing for spiritual-creative experiences, seeking them, or stumbling upon them as we do our work. So, for years, I’ve thought, “Let's take these topics out of the closet, put them right on the table. Let's just talk about it right up front and see what happens.” So, I’m so glad you resonate and appreciate this kind of conversation; that’s exactly what I’m hoping will happen for readers or listeners too.
GL: You know, I hope you make a book out of this; you’ve got some good people.
JW: Actually, I plan to, yes.
GL: Great!
JW: Well, I wish I could see your face, but I love you. It's a joy to connect and I hope we get to do it again soon.
GL: I love you too, I hope so. And have a great time in New York!
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