Emotion in Performance

A riveting article in The Guardian about musicians, and emotion – Does emotion get in the way of performance? Is it inappropriate for musicians (singers, conductors, violinists, whatever) to try to experience emotion – or should they just step back – and let the music do all the work?

There is no right answer to this.

Mainly because there are exceptions to every rule.

The exceptions are the geniuses. Geniuses always screw it up for everybody else, don’t they?

The article opens with the following paragraph:

Last week a friend told me she was going to sing at a relative’s funeral and couldn’t imagine how she would do so without crying. She wondered if it is hard for professional musicians to play sad music in public. Do they have to feel sad too? Or do they have to shut themselves off from the emotion of the music in order to be able to perform?

I have heard it said, from my voice teachers, that you can’t cry and sing at the same time. You must maintain low and steady breathing – you can give the illusion of tears – through the sounds you make – but the second you get choked up – Well, even just saying “choked up” is a perfect description of what happens to the throat when one starts to cry.

All very good advice.

Unless you consider Judy Garland. I have seen Judy Garland cry and sing at the same time.

The week after JFK was assassinated (of course, I wasn’t born yet) – she (who was a good friend of Kennedy’s – and was doing her live television show at the time) sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as her tribute to this fallen man. My friend Mitchell has a tape of her doing this.

I can honestly say I have never seen anything so powerful and so wrenching in my life. It’s almost unwatchable.

The woman sang her guts out – she was on the edge of emotional collapse – and the sound was not cut off, she was not choked up.

Judy Garland was a genius. When emotion came up in her, her response was the opposite of what happens to the rest of us: The channel opened even WIDER. The throat opened even WIDER.

It is an astonishing display of emotion meeting the discipline of art.

Susan Tomes, author of the piece in The Guardian, discusses this issue.

I particularly loved the Andre Previn anecdote she relates:

Years ago I was struck by Andr� Previn’s description of a concert in which he conducted a romantic symphony immediately after hearing that a close friend had died. Distraught, he resolved to dedicate the performance to his friend’s memory. Throughout the piece he felt convinced that a sense of tragic power had elevated the whole performance.

However, when he watched a video of the concert afterwards, he was horrified to find that far from raising the level, his misery had got in the way. The way he directed the orchestra seemed haphazard and melodramatic, and his facial expressions distracting. His emotional identification with the music had actually prevented him from controlling it.

Actors are, pretty much universally, obsessed with “tears”. Can you cry? Can you produce real tears? The actors in grad school who could produce actual tears down their face were envied. (Their acting might have been shit, but dammit: they had real tears!!)

It has taken me a while to realize: Tears can be cheap. Not always. But sometimes. An actor who produces tears in too facile a way may be letting you know that their feelings are not all that deep. I don’t worry about “tears” anymore. It seems to be completely the wrong place to put my energy when I get down to work.

My favorite actress in the world, Gena Rowlands, has said point-blank, “I just don’t cry. It’s not one of the things I am able to do easily.”

It completely doesn’t matter.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned in acting – and it really has come about in the past year – as I have performed the piece I wrote in various venues:

My goal for the piece, which is meant to be quite funny, but which then ends on a tragic note, is that I, the performer, remain completely calm. Almost blank. Void of emotion. My role in the piece, which is called “74 Facts and One Lie” is that – I am stating the facts. Like a dispatch. Like a lecture. I am not trying to show you how I feel. I am not trying to display the depth of my pain. On the contrary. I am telling you: I am fine. I am fine. I am fine. I am fine.

But what is extraordinary about this approach (and here’s the lesson) – is that, by remaining void of emotion – by remaining dry-eyed – Somehow what ends up happening is: The AUDIENCE gets to feel the emotion. The AUDIENCE gets the catharsis. It’s not about ME having a catharsis.

I don’t shed a tear. But afterwards – I am bombarded by teary-eyed audience members. THEY get to feel MY pain.

To me – it has been a whole new level of my art.

It’s not selfish anymore. It’s moved into a more storytelling mode – one of the most ancient forms of theatre.

Tomes says:

We have all seen famous performers who emote violently when they play, performing the emotions of the music as well as the music itself. We hear a lot these days about “ownership of the material”, but with artists like Jacqueline du Pr� or Leonard Bernstein it almost seemed the other way round: they appeared possessed by the music. Undoubtedly they felt it deeply, and fans loved their involvement, but for me this type of performance is counterproductive. I feel I’m being invited to witness them having an emotional experience, and this prevents me from having one myself.

True. True.

I saw Philip Seymour Hoffman do The Seagull in Central Park, with Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. He played Konstantin – the son – who ends up killing himself in the last moment of the play.

But the way Chekhov has written it is:

Konstantin doesn’t walk around knowing he is going to kill himself. Yes, he is melancholy, yes, he is in love, yes, he wants to be a great artist – but he is filled with hope. Tragic yearning. He believes in art, he believes in what he is doing.

And then – at the end – he snaps.

Philip Seymour Hoffman (as much as I LOVE his film work) walked around from Minute One in a state of suicidal despair. He cried a RIVER of tears. He was in tears from beginning to end. (Obviously, he is one of those people who ‘can cry’.) I basically was EAGER for him to commit suicide, just so he would stop his whining. I watched him mope around, and thought, 2 hours into the show, “Jesus Christ, please just kill yourself and put yourself out of your misery. Put me out of my misery, please.” And this is SO not Chekhov’s intent with this character!

Emotion on stage is a tricky thing. You don’t want to fall into the trap of behaving like an ACTOR (who is, in general, eager to experience all kinds of negative emotions – we love to feel rage and embarrassment and grief – it’s part of being an actor to want to call those feelings up) – as opposed to behaving like a PERSON (who, usually, does whatever they can do to NOT feel negative emotions – who NEVER wants to telegraph to the world: “LOOK AT MY PAIN. LOOK AT MY PAIN.”)

You don’t want to look like an actor on stage. You want to look like a person. This, again, is where emotion meets discipline. Structure is freeing. The limitations of the stage are, actually, quite freeing.

I have fallen into the trap of wanting to SHOW all the emotion I’ve got going on – mainly because I have worked so hard to get it … and that is very bad acting.

My new goal is: I remain dry-eyed and the audience cries.

That is a much more powerful and satisfying exchange.

Tomes ends up with:

Students often ask whether it’s important to “put yourself into the music”. My answer is that it isn’t something you have to strive consciously to do. Other people can’t help noticing how you look and move, and your presence – physical and spiritual – is an integral part of your performance.

There may be value in learning to control distracting gestures and superfluous movement, but no player needs to strive to put themselves in to the music, because they are there anyway as the vessel through which the music passes.

The player will certainly make an impact on the audience. Much less sure is whether the music will come across. In every field of music, fans have a special love for those performers who give us the music as the primary experience, and themselves as the secondary. Audiences sense where the performer’s priorities lie, and for whose sake they are in the business of performance.

Audiences sense where the performer’s priorities lie, and for whose sake they are in the business of performance…

Truer words….