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VIEWPOINTS - A ROAD TO CREATIVE FREEDOM IN THEATRE
Interview with Anne Bogart

Anne Bogart is one of the most innovative theatre directors today in America. A practitioner who, according to many critics, has revolutionized American contemporary theatre and a director whose productions, like recent take on Shakespeare ’s “Midsummer night’s dream” always provoke wide discussions in the diveres American theatre culture. As New Your Times critic Mel Gussow has pointed out ”depending on point of view Anne Bogart is ether an innovator or a provocateur assaulting a script.

This interview completed in the first few months of 2004 is done specially for Scena a Theatre Journal from Novi Sad.

Would you like to tell me something about your philosophy and aesthetics of Viewpoints? How do you define your work in theatre? What is the magic that is hidden in your theatre model?

Oh, that is a big question. First of all viewpoints is not mine. I learned the basics from choreographer Mary Overlie who was part of the post modern dance world and who created a system of improvisations, but essentially the philosophy of it is that it turns the creative work on the stage towards to the actor as opposed to the director, so the actors make all the decisions as opposed to the director saying “do this - do that”. It’s more that I respond to what they make. That is the influence of the viewpoints. So the actors create the staging they create the imagery and the moments, which I can then respond to it. So the central philosophy is the primary creative input of the actor into a making the forms, which means the rehearsal is actually a performance. So the central question is the supremacy of the actor.

Can we say then that viewpoints is on one level a means that enables actors to open up during the rehearsals and deal freely with their creativity, or it is method of educating an and helping actors master their art?

It is not the second. Simply the viewpoints improvisation is daily practice in training to create fiction using space and time. Which are two things that an actor works with.
So the viewpoints is a training that we do 15 min before every rehearsal or performance. We do also Suzuki training and it is a practice of making fiction, and when the rehearsal starts – go! and the actors begin making staging from listening to the text to each other, to the situation they created. So to go back to your initial question what is my philosophy of theatre, that is in a way to turn the creation back to the stage.

How then in practical terms you make this alive on the stage while you work? How do react to actors creativity? What do you do?

Mainly I react to actors choices and they make compositional choices as well. Basically if I can see and hear what they are doing I will support what they are doing. But if I don’t see or hear what they are doing than I can ask for an adjustment and then of course the composition changes.

It is kind of feedback process, isn’t it?
Yes, it is a kind of conversation.

What is the place of director in your model? Many think that director is excluded from the American Theatre and that the actors dominate the stage as in oposition to European theatre where director and his vision dominate the production?

Well it is difficult to generalize but I think there is a fear of the director and as well a cult of the director on the other hand. I think that the word ‘Want” is too dominant in the theatre. On one hand you have actors who come and ask the director ”what do you want me to do” while on the other directors say I want you to do this and this here without out having a sense of the actors’ responsibility for the creative act.

There are so many different opinions about your model of theatre: from cold, political and elitist to very intimate, personal and individual? How would you define it, is it rather intellectual or sensual? Is it Brechtian or Stanislavskian model of theratre?

I think is both sensual and intellectual. Definitely both. I like to joke that Brecht is my father and Gertrude Stein is my mother. But I actually have several fathers and mothers. Virginia wolf is my mother. Stanislavski is also my father. But it is not only sensual and intellectual, it is also imagistic, also political. I took a lot from the German theatre from the eighties. Which is when I saw the works of Shaubuhne in the eighties. I thought “wow. I actually have never seen before theatre that does all of those things. There, there is humor intelligence, politics, emotion, visual strength, while in the US I was seeing one artist very funny but everything else would be weak, or someone very intellectual but no humor, or something would be beautiful but there would be no intellect. So it was the first time that I ever saw it all together was in the work of the Shaubuhne. And so I went back to Brecht an Stan though them.

Your works is so complex and blends in a fine way so many beautiful elements but one element seems very important to me. I think that you have reintroduced Stanislavski to the U.S. theatre practitioners in a way that is close to American actors and American culture.

I think it is true. I think the reason why it is true is because I am working on the late Stanislavski. And what late Stanislavski is, is bringing it all together. I think the methods you mentioned Adler, Meisner etc. are limited understanding of his early work that he later rejected. I think the closest to what comes to late Stanislavski and comes directly from Stanislavski is Michael Chekhov with the chain of the physical action, psychological gesture, etc. But oddly enough where I got a lead to Stanislavski is the post modern dance world.

It is very interesting that you got there through something that is very stylized. How does your methodology of working with actors through source work, composition, viewpoints correlate to Stanislavski on the other hand and to Brecht to another?

A sense sensibility of the body in space and ACTION!

If Stanislavski was talking about the life of the souls, and if you have reintroduced and reintegrated Brecht’s theatre model in your work, and all that is done in a reason and mind oriented culture, as America is, at the same time stressing the political in your performance, why the critics have barely, if ever, mentioned that in their writings?

I don’t know why. Maybe the negative response to it, is a way of responding to the political side of it. Because there is often negative critically response to and may be in way that is a response to the political content.

What do you think these critics are looking for in your performances? For a historical truth that may be found in archives or for a engaged work of art that talks to its community in its own time and on it own artistic terms?

I really don’t know. The critics are a mystery to me.

What is the role of the theatre in America today?
What is it or what should it be?

Both.
I heard Peter Brook give a talk on NPR to press club in Washington, and he said that there was village in Africa where several times every season hunters would go out and go hunting and come after the hunt will come back in to the village and there will be a feast and at the end of the feast the young hunters would get up and perform, and what they preformed was the hubris of the older hunters. The young actors would make fun of the elders. People that have made idiots of themselves or fools of themselves. And Peter Brook said that this the function of theatre and must be subsidized by the government. I think he is on to something. In other words we talk about theatre as a mirror. A mirror to what? It’s mirror to what we can’t see. I do actually believe in the notion of catharsis in the theatre in Aristotelian sense. The catharsis means to shed light in dark places. So to me what I am doing in the theatre and what I think the theatre is about, is about seeing, it is a place of seeing, is about putting light in dark places. Dark part of the soul, dark parts of the government, dark parts of the social structure. Dark parts of love. Dark parts Commerce. Dark parts technology. But what ever you are looking at it… but if I am in the dark parts of technology, or love I am essentially taking a flash light and putting it in the dark corners of that subject. That is what I think theatre can be about. And if it is not then it is a waste of time.

I can’t agree more with you. But, if we believe that this is what theatre can be about how, then, in that context today’s, theatre practitioners - playwrights directors, actors - should put a flesh light on the darkness of nationalism, exclusion, intolerance, xenophobia and all those elements that separate us inserted of bringing us together?

Emphatically yes!

How possible is any change any step forward in a culture where the subscriber, as you have once said, is a king in theatre?

But that is not working any more. The subscriber as king is not working any more. The subscribers are not subscribing any more. Single ticket buyers are outnumbering the subscriber. I think theatres are looking now at why this is not working in regional theatres.

Do you think that very often the artistic leadership in the regional theatres is pleasing the audiences in order to financially survive, destroying that way both the very essence of non–for profit idea and the content of the plays?

I think that is why the regional theatres are not very interesting right now. I think the place where the theatre is interesting is the arts centers around the country and then the festivals around the world because the arts center are not subscriber dependant. The arts centers are much more cutting edge places and where very diverse audience is coming with a hunger, very different from the audiences in the regional theatre. I think that the regional theatre scene is completely dead right now.

Do you think that American theatre is self oriented and enclosed?

American theatre is very huge thing, but if you think that abut regional theater, then, yes it is closed.

What do you think the future of theatre is? The future as aesthetics, philosophy and as pedagogy? Preparing new generation for the time to come?

I hear many people say how come we are training so many actors we have so many theatre programs. I actually think theatre training is good for anybody no matter what they become lawyers, doctors. And for the future I hope the theatre continues to be taught more and more and gets more and more space and attention. Because people who have studied theatre will end up going to watch theatre and will understand the experience. I think the more theatre training the better. It is a good thing for anybody.

How do you see the professional theatre training programs specially in terms of educating that young people who have decided to spent their life professionally in theatre?

Well, I have ambivalent feelings because on one hand I think that people who end up being in the professional theatre should have more training and education in philosophy, anthropology and sociology. And then on the other side, the training they are getting is not rigorous enough. It is often weak and a waste of time. I think the most important think to do is – physically and vocally – to choose the most difficult training and to try to do it. I don’t think that most training is rigorous enough. It is too easy. And the reason why we have so many people signing for our training s because we ask actors to accomplish very difficult tasks. actors want to be asked to be challenged.

In many schools today on both graduate and undergraduate level they are teaching your method of viewpoints?

Do you think they are?

Well many say they do. What do you think about that? Do you think viewpoints is well understood and well thought?

Well, since I did not invent it, it is not really my work. But, see some years ago I was doing a workshop and I asked the participants if anybody had done viewpoints before. Somebody raised their hand and said. “That is that thing where there is no face and no emotion” I and I just wanted to slit my wrist. It is such a misunderstanding. Essentially the viewpoints – it is the same way you can look at the sun because you will burn your eyes you have look at the side, the viewpoint does not deal with the emotion because the emotion is the most beautiful thing you can experience, therefore you pay attention to formal things, but things that occur that are emotional can be quite beautiful. So the whole notion of no face no emotion is horrifying. It is in moments like that I just want o give up. It is complete misunderstanding of the freedom that the Viewpoints bring.

Do you plan to do something to change these stereotypes?

I will just keep taking one step at a time and hope for the best.