An Open Lesson on Acting with Russia's Pre-Eminent Artistic Director

An Overview by Laurie James

"You have to say ‘my life in art" – not ‘my place in art.’ This profession has to be a way of life…it’s dedication. You must differentiate between living an art from performing an art."

These were the words of Mr. Lev Dodin, acclaimed as the greatest living Russian theatre director. Some of us had the unique privilege of listening to him as he moderated a lesson on acting with help from a translator while 16 of his students demonstrated their training based on the techniques of Stanislavsky and Meirhold. The young men and women had studied five years at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Theatrical Arts, also known as the Maly Drama Theatre, where Mr. Dodin is Artistic Director.

The 3-1/2 hour Open Lesson was repeated three nights, May 3, 4, and 5, 2007 at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York City, located in the newly developed 37 ARTS building, dedicated to international artistic experimentation and collaboration in dance, music, theater, film, design and visual arts. Sponsors were the Federal Agency of Russia for Culture and Cinematography and The Russian Century Foundation.

The evening opened with Mr. Mikhail Baryshnikov informing us that sentimental reasons prompted him to invite his mentor/friend/idol, the St. Petersburg Academy Artistic Director, Mr. Lev Dodin, to New York for the event. "I grew up in St. Petersburg," Mr. Baryshnikov added, "and I attended many great performances. I loved the Russian theatre and saw that it gave hope and value to the people."

He said that Mr. Dodin was a man of extraordinary talent, a visionary as a director, and a father figure for generations of young actors whom he had inspired to accept the stage as a life career. Mr. Baryshnikov said that Mr. Dodin’s idol was Stanislavsky but, since three generations have followed that brilliant teacher who paved a path for actors, Mr. Dodin’s approach is new and slightly different. Mr. Baryshnikov lauded Mr. Dodin as a citizen, a spiritualist, and an extraordinary human being. He compared being near him and his work as "being like a fly on a wall."

Though Mr. Dodin has staged and toured significant plays throughout the world, American audiences know him for his direction of the 8 hour epic, Brothers and Sisters, an adaptation of Fedor Abramov’s trilogy of novels about peasant life after World War II. After receiving world acclaim for the production, he brought the drama with an ensemble of 40 actors to the Lincoln Center Festival in 2000. Among Mr. Dodin’s many accolades are the USSR State Prize (1986) and the Russia State Prize (1993).

As Mr. Dodin began to moderate, a side door opened and six women and ten men entered dressed neatly in black leotards. "If anything goes wrong," Mr. Dodin joked through his translator, "we will stop – and the audience may leave if they wish!

"We’re used to working long hours," he continued. "This is not a performance – it is really a lesson for ourselves. At the Academy we try to educate actors. The only way to do this is to teach students to acquire something that can be shared. I understand Stanislavsky’s method as being a continuous awakening to nature, for life, for change because all things are subject to change. To help actors awaken feelings to their sharpest situations, we have developed a set of prudent A-B-C exercises that allow the artist to achieve excellence in form."

Mr. Dodin expanded with the story that in the Soviet Union there are houses of art in the country like a hotel where artists go to study. Once, when he and his wife went, they couldn’t sleep because they kept hearing two opera singers practicing. They got up and went to the balcony for some restful quiet, but when they looked down they saw ballet dancers energetically working out in the garden. He pointed out that before shows, musicians tune their instruments, but dramatic actors have to start and end the day at the beach. In other words, they have no specific way to train or to prepare for a show. "An actor has a smoke behind the curtain waiting for his cue and when it comes he rushes onto the stage without any preparation."

He advised that actors need to try to get nearer to their expression of feelings through the body; they need to acquire an inner knowledge of beauty, and they need especially to try out new actions. One way to do this, he said, is to learn to understand life through dance and culture.
Thereupon, the dance teacher, Mr. Yury Vasilkov, rose and guided the students in independent, slow, defined ballet movements, gradually increasing to rising tempo, which indeed generated visual bodily feelings such as explosions of stamping feet. Then, working in pairs they created response and give and take, and finished with each pair choosing different movements to climax the dance.

The voice teacher, Mr. Valery Galendeev, spoke of stage speech and how actors need to first find a comfortable voice, their own voice, and learn to use this voice to speak correctly, clearly, culturally, dramatically, and with understanding. Further, movement needs to be added as well as feelings. He said his task is to create different types of exercises so actors can create their own exercises and scores. He uses and encourages a variety of techniques that spring from literature, mechanical instruments, tones, harmony, choir singing, rhymes, animal sounds, tongue twisters, and invention, such as invented words and sounds. After the group demonstration some of the techniques, several actors shared exceptional scenes they had created, one using only sounds and movements that expressed the storyline of animals mating, the other, using sounds like those of a foreign language that visually involved the tensions of a ménage à trois.

The value of singing was next on the docket under the meticulous guidance of the teacher, Mr. Michail Alexandrov. The group, after "tuning up" by humming and other exercises, incredulously sang The Flight of the Bumble Bee followed by a piece by Bach. To illustrate the necessity of adding emotion to a song one student exemplified the control and sensitivity needed for the portrayal of a woman whose son was killed in war.

Mr. Dodin then compared the pinnacle of acting with the dangers of walking a tight tope. "To be on a Tight rope takes courage, there is danger of falling off. In order to do it, you have to dive head first, not knowing if you can do it. It is like diving into freezing water, not knowing if it’s warm or cold. But an actor has to be willing to try. There is need for precision. The discipline of the acrobat has many parallels with drama and art."

Thus, jazzy music started playing and the students entered this time with huge triangular newspaper cones on their heads and we knew at once that we were seeing clowning. Some walked on stilts waving banners and umbrellas; others took up the feat of juggling or balancing on boards placed on top of rolling cans. Someone wandered over to the piano and crouched down backwards to play it while a person on stilts leaned way over him in order to reach the keys and play a duet. The buffoonery was introduction to the skillful daredevil art of acrobatics, for their props were soon abandoned for floor mats and we were suddenly watching an amazing performance of somersaults, handstands, headstands, splits, backstands, formations of airplanes, and other breathtaking stunts such as a young man jumping over a line-up of five kneeling students. At the end, the teacher, Yury Hamutiansky, joined in the fun by performing a headstand.

None of the students had ever played a musical instrument before coming to the school, but Mr. Dodin emphasized that playing in an orchestra was a necessary accomplishment and experience. Actors not only need to be able to understand musical scores, he said, but they need to realize that every chord in a melody is important to the whole, that the entire piece will fall apart if even one person spoils it. The teacher, Eugeniy Davidov, led the group in playing pieces for an orchestra and we were treated to a saxophone solo.

Mr. Dodin reminded us that every human being is full of unrealized capabilities. He said people who enter the theatre carry something inside of them – it’s a biological need -- that has to be let out – and that the exercise process is only the first part of work Acting out, as he called pantomime and improvisation, is another exploration that should be done every day, with students always imagining the physical feeling of the situation. Ordinary, everyday experiences can be used because the situations can offer various real sensations that can be acted out.
He suggested that the students take a shower or bath – now that they were tired and sweaty. He told them that their imagination would tell them what and how to do it; so the students rose, took places on stage, and began taking off imaginary clothes, turning on imaginary shower faucets, and generally took imaginary showers.

Mr. Dodin eventually called out that the water was freezing and all exploded in response to the sudden icy temperature. He explained that cold water causes a change in blood pressure and heart beat rate and, as the actors kept actions moving, he pointed out that actors don’t ever really finish a scene; they want to keep on working the story because life is not about finishing, -- it is about continuing on. He said one of the most horrible things for an actor to do is to do two things, and then say to the director "So what do I do next?"

We were told that we were now to watch an improvisation – an image or vignette of a man and woman living during the holocaust who will never be able to see each other again because the man is arrested. It was indeed an emotional, highly intense scene that included a vivid fight and struggle as the arrest is made. About four actors took central roles, then the group joined in for a final coda. Exceptionally well done, it seemed not to be an improvisation in the American sense of the term, but a finely tuned directed scene of precise ensemble work.

Aferwards, Mr. Dodin described the research that had gone into the scene that included trips to Siberia and Auschwitz where they toured concentration camps and experienced the remnants of extermination created by the Nazis.

We can commend the commitment and dedication to the art, the deeply felt life experiences, and humanity of Mr. Dodin, and can affirm that the five year program at his school offers the precise, disciplined, inventive groundwork for the lifelong learning and growth process that it takes to develop fine actors. We can only wish that there were more schools like the Saint Petersburg Academy of Theatrical Arts.