I really liked this analysis of Ibsen. It continues to blow me away that there were those, at the beginning of the 20th century, who were so interested in Ibsen, so turned on by what he was doing – that they learned Norwegian just in order to read him in the original language. James Joyce did this. But he was not alone. That tells you Ibsen’s relevance, his importance. Just amazing.
And for those of you interested in the acting of these plays – I give to you a snippet from one of Stella Adler’s many lectures on Ibsen. Adler was (and still is) known for her genius in script analysis – people like DeNiro – still talk about taking that class. Recently – a book was published – Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov
Also: historically: where does Ibsen fit in? What was he doing that was so revolutionary? Why did people storm out of Hedda Gabler? Why were his plays so hated, reviled, feared, and yet admired? What was going on? Adler encouraged actors to have curiosity about all of that – the 360 degree experience of a play and a playwright – to (as Henry Miller said): “Forget yourself”. Don’t just focus on how YOU will play the part. “Forget yourself” and focus on Ibsen. And by doing that – you will get closer to the pulse of the playwright – and then – the playing of it will come much easier.
Here is one of my favorite excerpts from her Ibsen lecture.
Adler on Ibsen
The sense of place – nature, the scenery – had to be truthful in realism. Where you were had to be as truthful as the new dialogue.
Ibsen desired to replace stilted language by the unbeautiful, unemotional language of every day. To tone down the loudness of tragic, classical acting. To tone down the stage effects with the bourgeois fondness for the intimate and homey.
This is the end of the reign of complete illusion in the theatre. From now on, the effort is to conceal the fictitious nature of how a play is acted and presented. Classical acting portrayed a man with contact to the exterior world but never influenced by it. The bourgeois drama portrays him as a part and function of his environment and shows him not to be controlling reality, as in classical plays, but being controlled and absorbed by it.
From now on, the place where the action happens isn’t just background. It takes an active part in shaping him on stage. There is no more break between the inner and outer world; now all action and feeling contain powerful elements of the external world.
In most of Norway, there are only two real months of daylight. People live without the sun – seventeen hours of night. This affects their temperaments, how their houses are lit. How do you light your house when it’s dark outside all day? That is up to you to find out.
Ibsen says the lines should sound different depending on whether they are said in the morning or evening. You must know whether your scene is taking place in day or night. Otherwise you will just walk in, out of – and into – nowhere.
An actor who gets up to act without knowing when and where he is is insane. Everybody is somewhere. Except an actor, often. He’s the only one who can be somewhere and not know where.
Navigation in Norway is very dangerous. It is continually stormy. The nervousness of the weather affects the personality of the people, dating back to the Vikings. They are dominated by darkness and blackness. The plays are influenced by that. There are very few musical comedies that come out of Norway.
What does “twenty miles south of Oslo” mean? I could say, get fifteen books on Oslo, on the Vikings, on the history of the royalty there. I’ll give you this free of charge.
But for Christ’s sake, learn where you are going to do your acting.
Be interested in the fact that Norway has the largest ice fields in the world and that it’s very difficult to travel except by sleigh.
I like that. I like knowing that Nora comes home by sleigh. People pass each other on the narrow road. I know that a sleigh has bells and that sleigh bells have a kind of gaiety in them. If it is dark eight months of the year, they must give themselves something to make them happy. They recognize each other’s sleigh bells. Twilight is at noon. That affects you, if night lasts seventeen hours.
If you know this, it will affect your acting. It will make you understand certain things you need to understand.
They have hailstones of a size we can’t imagine. These hailstones will be used in the last act of Enemy of the People. People throw them at Dr. Stockmann’s house. You have to know such things. You must not be so much with you. Whatever is left of my me, you can have. I do not give a goddamn about my me, only what I can give you. That is what is important. That is why my life has been important.
I am interested in acting, not “being a professional”.
When you look out your stage window, you must see water – fjords and water running along the streets. It’s 1880, but it’s not an 1880 street. It’s a 1780 street with planks. The water runs along those planked streets. You can only cross them a certain way. It is not easygoing. You can go by horse or maybe by stagecoach. You come home late because you had to catch the coach. If you’re late just because the words say so, you are in trouble. But not if you know that it’s because there was too much baggage to put on the coach.
Don’t act from the words. Act from knowing whether you arrive by coach or whether you have money enough to hire a sleigh.
The fjords are very threatening. They are black and contain bodies that have been disintegrating very slowly for years because the water is so cold. It is a country with a great many psychological problems. Everybody is in trouble. The churches date from the twelfth century. The twelfth century in this crazy Scandinavia produced a very special kind of architecture. It’s a big thing about the churches there. Look them up. They have great gargoyles. Do not think of your own pretty little church in East Hampton. You have to see that church people go to with the gargoyles and the frightening things inside it.
Their unique landscape is unduplicated anywhere on earth.
What made Ibsen so great is that he used this unusual place to give him such great truths. So when you think of this space, think of it not as your space. Think of the mountains, the water. It must inspire awe in you, so when you get to a difficult scene you will have the help of the landscape.
So that if you get to a scene where someone has to flee, you will see the waterfalls, the difficulties.
All of a sudden now, I want to cry …
The landscape has to inspire you with awe!
The fingers of water reach seventy miles into the land from the sea. That makes quite an obstacle if you are thinking of leaving Norway. To cross the sea from the north and come south means that you have risked death to get there, and when you arrive you must arrive with death in you.
In Mrs. Linde’s entrance [in Doll’s House], when she says, “I have just arrived from the North,” and somebody says, “How did you do it?” — it does not mean by what conveyance. It means, “How did you survive?”
If the country has no railroads, what do you think a doctor has? He does not have anesthetics, he does not have machines and technology.
Always try to see the difference between you and him – beteween then and now. Try, all through the play, to see how this can open things up to you. You cannot do without it. If you do not know these things, you cannot act. You must know.
What does it mean to live in a small town in Norway 110 years ago?
What is it like in summer and winter there?
What does ‘Norway’ mean?
Norway is three quarters water, surrounded by dark sea. It is different from any concept you have. Look up pictures of its water and mountains. Get an idea for yourself where these people live. Understand that the landscape is always used by the author.
Before Ibsen, actors had never been told that – never knew it, never thought about it, never learned how to use it.
Chekhov and [Eugene] O’Neill always use the landscape. You cannot move without it. You must know how to behave inland – know what O’Neill means by inland when his captain in Anna Christie keeps saying, “I want to get to the sea!” You will have to understand Mr. O’Neill’s sense of inland like you have to understand Ibsen’s sense of rain and water.
From now on, the landscape always plays an important part.
Your responsibility is to find out how it is different from your own.
Brilliant.
I just want you to know that I’m copying this entire post and reading it to all 3 of my classes. This is brilliant, Sheila. BRILLIANT insight and so rich and eye opening. I love that you talk about Mrs. Lynde’s entrance. That’s SOOO Ibsen-like. To have a character arrive out of nowhere who has just been somewhere HUGE. Like, this momentous thing has just happened, and yet we are totaly unaware of it until we figure it out ourselves.
I also agree with Adler about an actor’s physical state In View Points terms: The Topography of where you are. Some actors refuse to believe that where they are has anything to do with how they feel. Like people who live in the Midwest are exactly the same kind of people who live in Europe.
It simply isn’t true, and those are dumb actors. Sorry…but they are.
This is magnificent.
Alex – you have to read this book!!
Moments I love in this one section:
— when she starts to cry. That shows you how alive her imagination was – and makes me wish I had gotten to see her act, or at least take her class
— “Everybody is somewhere. Except an actor, often. He’s the only one who can be somewhere and not know where.” Uhm – absolutely
— “I like knowing that Nora comes home by sleigh.”
— “They have hailstones of a size we can’t imagine.”
— “It’s a big thing about the churches there. Look them up. They have great gargoyles. Do not think of your own pretty little church in East Hampton. You have to see that church people go to with the gargoyles and the frightening things inside it.” GENIUS.
I love it – please let me know the students responses to this, Alex, hon – I’d love to hear.
And absolutely about the Mrs. Linde entrance … like: IMAGINE … this woman didn’t just get on the subway and come on over!!
Holy moly! That is INTENSE! Every line she wrote is a revelation, a learning experience.
Thank you SO much for posting that, Sheila. WOW.
….yes, Mrs. Linde’s entrance in “A Doll’s House.” Such a great character in a fantastic play. In fact, I often feel like Mrs. Linde at the end of a day. Makes me wonder, too, if the real question to ask here is: how many trolls accosted her as she made her way down south to deal with that macaroon-scarfing friend of hers?
Oh Sheila, I love your blog, you, your view of it all.
xo jon m.
Jon M!!!!! Oh my God – hello to you!!
Your comment made me smile from ear to ear. Yes, she comes from the North, in trouble, only to find her friend scarfing macaroons left and right. Naughty little bird.
In my estimation, Ibsen had one theme and one theme only:
LET THE CREAM RISE TO THE TOP!
:)
Hallelujah! Let the MOFO’in cream rise to the GODDAMN top!
(…and how fucking hilarious is it that you remember that? I’m howling…)
So, yeah, between Ibsen and Reds today…you’ve got my color!
(“color” to be pronounced “cuhluh”:…as in that Cole Porter-y voice from the old Revlon commercial narrating a sing-songy montage of a bunch of anorexic models dressed up as flapper-era women, engaged oh-so-insouciantly in activities ranging from playing tennis in cloche hats to driving a soundstage roadster towards an unseen wind machine, silk scarves blowing Gatsby-like over their bony shoulders, to swinging lazily in a sepia-toned hammock, smoking a Virginia Slim-type cig : “….from long nights, to sassy sights, Revlon’s got yo’ CUHLUH….from breezy blows to wedding bows, Revlon’s got yo’ CUHLUH…from tall blokes to skinny smokes, Revlon’s got yo’ CUHLUH!”….and so on and so on.)
(am I the only one who remembers this commercial? something tells me Mitchell has its entire storyboard etched somewhere on the underside of his brain.)
(and how the hell did I get here from Ibsen?)
(Oh Nora: we’ve got YO’ CUHLUH!)
Anyway, as I said, your blog is fabulous. As are you.
Two things.
Don’t ever … EVER … say the phrase “sepia-toned hammock” on my blog again. Otherwise I will have to kill you.
And B – I do not remember that commercial.
Oh shit! How much egg’s on my (sepia-toned) face now?
I still have that picture of you, Jon, at the steak house, with freakin’ sugar cubes stuck into your eyeballs. It makes me laugh just to think about it.
You, in a sort of dowdy English-lady accent, “I think that people are altogether too consumed by sweetness these days … everyone just wants to be sweet, sweet, sweet … Sweetness is all that matters …”
You went on like that for a good MINUTE before we all looked at you – only to find that you had freakin’ sugar cubes stuck in your eyeballs.
I am laughing out loud.
But to get back to Revlon – I am certain that Mitchell will remember. I’ll tell him to come “visit” this post and confirm. :)
Oh Lord! The memory book is coming out tonight! (and thanks be to the Lord that it is!)
Yes, I remember doing that with the sugar cubes and trying vaguely to sound like a warped version of Juila Child. But which steakhouse was it? For the life of me, I can’t remem….
Anyway, nothing beats cream rising to the top. That’s a Classic…along with — were you at that dinner party when I said, apropos of basically nothing, “Talent is always HOT!”? Because those two should go together: “Talent is always HOT! And let the cream RISE to the TOP!”
Yes, get that Mitchell out here pronto for confirmation! I’m feeling quite naked and vulnerable having now spent, oh, well, like five years worth of blog-post time writing out a script to a commercial that perhaps only me, myself and my imaginary friend I can recall…
It sounds actually like kind of a fabulous commercial and I am sorry I missed it.
I believe it was the Soho Steak House?? Down by Canal Street? There were 4 of us but I can’t remember who the 4th was. I DO know, however, that I brought the creepy high school portrait of my creepy pen pal. Member that? And we posed for a picture outside the steakhouse and I held up her creepy-ass face for all to see?
I do not remember “talent is always hot” although it makes me laugh – even without the surrounding context.
And I totally remember how I started shouting about letting the cream rise to the top and you and Kate were literally afraid for your lives. Like suddenly I had joined the Aryan Youth Movement or something. hahahahahahahaha You SO busted my chops. It was hysterical.
Oh Lordy Jesus Lordy! I used to think I had a good memory — and dining at the SoHo steakhouse and taking the photo of your creepy Bad Seed pen pal feels extraordinarily familiar. But in the way an intense repressed dream feels familiar: an eye here, a nose there, a snippet of dialogue in the background — all distinct but still somehow not completely part of a unified hole. But, yes…yes!…it’s coming back to me, slowy but surely. Perhaps if I saw the photo…
Anyway, I’m thinking that the 4th person dining with us was….J.P. Manoux? But, no, we had all gone to Blue Ribbon together. Maybe SoHo steakhouse too?
Oh, Masha, I can’t even remember the Italian word for window any more! (WAAAAA!)
An eye here … a sugar cube there …
Hmmm – maybe it was JP?? I am pretty sure it was another guy.
Hilarious! Yes, sugar in the eye… finger in the pie…daddy on the babysitter….
WHOA! What unified repressed dream hole did that come out of?
(probably the same one that had you declaiming loudly, Wehrmacht-style, about Cream Needing to RISE TO THE TOP, ZEIG HEIL!”)
Yes, Kate and I were quite alarmed and seriously considered getting some Thorazine for you.
Hahahahaha!
And the other other 4th guy at SoHo Steak: my friend Jeremy Haft, maybe?
I’m stumped…
But I’m tickled that even without knowing the full context for “Talent is ALWAYS hot!” you think it’s funny. It is funny…I think. Especially now, come to think of it, I said it in a voice that sounded like a mix between the Cole Porter dude from the Revlon commercial and your Aryan lilt in whipping up all that cream.
Under ‘special skills’ on my resume I have listed: Aryan lilt.
hahahahaha
By the way, I had posted something about ten days ago (?) on a comment thread relating to a bunch of overheard snippets you so wonderfully took down and transcribed here. But because I was shy about announcing myself then, I signed off as “Saul’s Dad” (Saul’s my dog; and I’m far less shy this week — obviously if I’m writing out in public entire Revlon commercials from the early eighties.) Anyway, there was one about someone’s cleavage getting out of control that I responded to…and that I think you’ll find amusing.
And, by the way, how funny is it that this all came out of Mrs. Linde, our elegant troll-hopper from Lillehammer?
Oy.
That was you??? I remember that comment – but for some reason I didn’t put together the email address with the name. Weird. Saul’s Dad, heh heh.
//obviously if I’m writing out in public entire Revlon commercials from the early eighties//
hahahaha Life is beautiful.
Yes, Life is especially Beautiful…if you have an Aryan lilt. And it’s even more beauteous if the lilt’s on your resume. That will get you work for years and years….
And I know better next time, Revlon sing-songs be damned, not to be so shy…
But here’s a memory that somehow just rose with the cream to the top: Lake Point Tower. Audition. I’ll Say No More.
(and to think that Kate’s incredible and lovely laate granmother was a mere floor or two below!)
Dybel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dybel the Skybelle, let’s ring her doorbell…and become a movie star (as though you had any choice in the matter!)
“All right, baby: when you see that little light come on, just do it like I showed you. And don’t be shy, baby: Dybel’s your friend….your dreamy, creamy, talent-is-always-so-hot-it-makes-the-cream-rise-to-the-tippy-tippy-top…FRIEND!”
YIKES!
hahahahahahahahaha
I guess every actress is allotted at least one (hopefully only one) “Coco from Fame” moment. That was mine.
I remember telling the Dybel story to my boyfriend at the time and he yelled at me. He had no sympathy. “Well, what did you EXPECT would happen? JESUS. WHAT WAS THE APARTMENT NUMBER? I’M GONNA GO KICK SOME ASS.” But mostly he just thought I was a dumbass for falling for it.
Sadly, though, Jon – and this is what scares me the most – there is a videotape out there of that audition. It exists.
Yes, I was about to say Irene Cara has nothing on you. And at least you’ve lived to tell. As for Ms. Cara, well, where she be now?
(and actually, given the so-called culture of so-called reality T.V. and the like, I get the feeling that a lot of kids wanting to be actors who also watch that stuff — and how can they not? — might not think twice about subjecting themselves — repeatedly — to little affairs like Dybel’s…all in the name of furthering their craft.)
But, as we know, cream will always rise TO the top.
Must sign off. Saul’s whimpering for a walk. More anon. Miss you much.
xo j.m.
hahahaha Every post can be boiled down to cream rising to the top. Seriously. SO good to talk with you, Jon. I’d love to see you. Keep in touch.
Last thought for now: I’m making it my mission for the immediate future to track down that tape and your ex-boyfriend and show him what a dumbass he was for thinking you a dumbass for going to Dybel’s. Why everyone knows that once you’ve got the Dybel touch, you’re as good as gold.
Solid gold!
(seriously: how unforgiving can a boyfriend be? didn’t he understand the concept of trance/brainwashing/soft-core audition phenomena?)
He was just being manly, in that helpless protective way. I was like, “No, but listen, listen to THIS funny part of the story” … and he was havng NONE of it.
“trance soft-core audition phenomena”. Some people think it is a myth. I KNOW that it is real. I experienced it. And i lived to tell the tale.
And tell the tale you shall, Trancey!
(and I wholeheartedly agree: it is a REAL phenomenon, that sudden leaking of all ego, id, and superego in one fell Dybel swoop…)
Would love to see you one of these days, too.
Next time I’m in NY we must reunite.
Will forward you my new contact info. soon as I just moved out of NY. Boo hoo!
Nighty night. Thanks for the great talk.
Oh, you moved? I didn’t know that – yes – please send me your contact info. you can email it to me here:
redhead2@sheilaomalley.com
Great to talk to you, sugarcubes.
oh crap..i missed it…..yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “we’ve got ur coluh!”….and Jon ..u said “Talent is always hot” in a vaguely bullshit nasal Britch accent at my b-day party that Rachel Hamilton threw for me!! …and even tho u were employing a fake voice..u meant it…altho i cant remember who the hell u were talking about!