Last week during a discussion about Altman's Nashville, a professor said that the character Haven Hamilton looked at his audience as if he was putting them under surveillance. I liked how he used that word 'surveillance.' There is something really interesting to me about seeing someone intently watch a group of people that is watching them, I'm always dying to know what is going through their minds. Are they thinking about what it's like to be there at that moment performing, wondering if this performance is special while they are still in the middle of it? Are they trying to read the crowd's temperament and respond to it accordingly? Or maybe they feel totally present and aware of the moment and they just want to take it in.
No matter what is going on, there is something enticing about this kind of stage presence. I tried to think back to places that I've seen it before. I remember a few times in person, but most intensely I remembered this Rolling Stones footage...
And here is the Haven Hamilton number...in all it's glory. The song begins around the 1:20 mark of the clip, but if you haven't yet seen Nashville, I insist that you do so at your earliest convenience.
Oh yeah I know totally what you mean. I think it goes along way when the performer not only looks at us but is confident/natural enough up there to appear to be sizing us up, wondering if we're worthy of what we're about to get, perhaps even challenging us to step up and really meet. Lots of times the performer comments on how they can't see the audience. This is undoubtedly off-putting, but it is the best when the performer overcomes it and engages us, even puts us on the spot. Joel Plaskett has been great at this, every time I've seen him. And yet it isn't "surveillance" with him so much as, I don't know, invitation?
ReplyDeleteI got stared down by a singer on-stage one time, years ago. She picked me out of the crowd, stared right at me, and I just couldn't hold on. Even though all eyes were on her, it was I who felt -I dunno- overpowered. I kinda enjoyed that intensity, though I was embarassed to lose the staring contest.
ReplyDeleteAltman!!! I watched the full ten minute segment, and -man!- the camera zooms out so beautifully, tracks all over the place, and you can pick almost any actor on-screen at any time and there's a whole world to be found in what they are doing. SOOOO much to enjoy looking at. It's been several years since I sat down and watched Nashville all the way through. We should do it in Winnipeg.
-s$s
It's been too long since my last PLaskett show, I'm sure he will be rolling through again any day now.
ReplyDeleteWho stared you down? Seems like those kind of experiences are so direct that they are fearful in some way. I probably would have looked away too.
I often think about this question in reference to the theater. The actor is hired to play a certain role and (in most cases) to ignore the audience, or at least to interact with it in a certain prescribed way. But the actor is also entirely dependent on the audience, absorbing its energy and, ideally, its attentiveness. How could he/she not look at us, and feel the weight of being surveilled at the same time? But unlike musical acts, actors are generally trained not to register this awareness, so we are left to guess even more.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember the singer's name who stared me down. Someone opening for... I don't remember who. Umm... I think she was opening for Andy Stochansky (Andy Who? someone the roomate -Mike- was into). Maybe.
ReplyDeleteI was still a good Christian boy back then, and thus appropriately scared of girls. Especially girls on-stage staring at me.
I think I'm still scared of girls.
Boyda said, "the actor is also entirely dependent on the audience, absorbing its energy and, ideally, its attentiveness."
Yeah, the performer/audience relationship is interesting. I wonder about the kind of energy the actor would have from an audience they knew WASN'T paying attention. Like the band on-stage in the bar when everyone's pretty much gone home already, and nobody cares what they do anymore. Yet they're still on-stage and the only one watching is that old guy on his ninth whiskey in the booth near the back. Or like Marlon Brando walking around town all afternoon saying the same word over and over again, trying to see how many different ways he could say it. But nobody's watching.
I like to think that a lack of attention could be transformed by the performer into something magical -precisely because it is not being watched.
-s$s
I was once present at a very experimental production of the medieval morality play "Everyman." I walked into the dark room to encounter an almost nude man pacing on all fours around the stage area in the middle, heaving and sweating from the labor of it. At first I thought I was late, but that was just how the play 'started,' without actually starting, by creating an interminable notion of time. It was like the audience was completely unnecessary to the performance. Indeed, there were only about five of us in the theatre, and the play consisted mostly of inaudible whispers or bloodcurdling shrieks, with various actors ostensibly attempting to tear off their own skin.
ReplyDeleteLike I said, it was experimental. But I'd like to think that they would have done the same thing should there be no one in the theatre. Because they were trying (like the medieval play) to say something about mortality, about the cruelty of life in the face of the inevitability of death, and the prospect of damnation. And that, I think, is truly magical.
I really like what you all said, gives me a lot to think about.
ReplyDelete