Формирование речевой компетенции старшеклассников на уроках английского языка в рамках изучения темы "Театр"
учебно-методический материал по английскому языку (11 класс)

WHAT IS THEATRE?^[1]

Before we follow the history of the Theatre through so many centuries, we ought to try to understand what the Theatre is all about, why it has lasted so long, what it means to us. We know that it offers amusement and pleasure, but then so do lots of other things. Is there something special in itself that it offers us? Clearly there is, otherwise the Theatre would not have gone so long in so many different places. But what is it that is special about the Theatre?

True, when we see a play we see it with a number of other people; we form part of an audience. This is important, because we behave differently when we are part of an audience. If the play is funny, we laugh a great deal more than we should if we were by ourselves. If it is pathetic, we are more deeply moved just because a lot of other people are being moved too. And notice this, we cannot enjoy the play at all unless it is having the same effect upon us as it is having upon all the other members of the audience around us.

We have to share the feelings of a great many other people to enjoy a play properly; and this in itself is a good thing, particularly these days, when too many people, usually living in large cities, feel cut off and separate and lonely. To enjoy the Theatre we have to join it; and we feel better after it in the same way (though to a less degree) that we feel better after attending some great public meeting.

Now all this business of being part of an audience, which is  essential to the Theatre, is very important. But it still leaves unexplained what the Theatre has to offer its spectators that other public gatherings and other forms of amusement cannot offer them. Is there some kind of experience that we enjoy at a play and nowhere else? And if there is – then what is it? This is a question easy to ask, but as we know from the work of dramatic critics and theorists at many different times who have asked themselves the same question, very difficult to answer adequately. Now we will try.

A theatrical production consists of a number of players acting imaginary characters. Here are two quite different elements – the real actors, the imaginary characters. We have to accept them both; and this is where theorists of dramatic art have gone wrong, for they have generally accepted one to the exclusion of the other. And this simply will not work as the following reasons show.

If we say we go to the play only to follow the fortunes of the imaginary characters, then we have to assume, what certainly is not true, that we do not know we are in a playhouse, looking at and listening to actors.

If we go to the other extreme, as some critics have done, and say we go to the play for the acting, then what becomes of the play itself, the imaginary life of its characters? Why should these unreal people and what happens to them have any interest for us, when we know it is all make-believe, just so many actors performing?

Nearly all theorists of the drama have been baffled by this dilemma, simply because they have assumed that the experience offered us by the Theatre must be based on either the imaginary life of the play or on the reality of the performance. And clearly it cannot be, both elements must contribute to the experience, which is complex, involving two different levels of mind. One level is accepting the imaginary life of the play and its characters. The other level is concerned with the actual presentation of the play, with theatre, stage, actors, scenery, lighting and effects.

A very young child generally cannot accept the experience, assumes that what is happening on the stage is real, and is either frightened or bored, wanting to run up and down the aisle to play. A year or two later, the same child may be enchanted, eagerly following the fortunes of the characters and yet at the same time being tremendously conscious of sitting snugly in the theatre with Mummy and Daddy. It is this eager responsiveness on both levels that makes children such a splendid audience. Adults who have completely forgotten their childhood, who have allowed all wonder and imagination to wither away, who are really incapable of making this double response, are never keen playgoers and usually dislike Theatre.

This, then, is dramatic experience, the result of an appeal to two different levels of the mind and of corresponding response on both levels. And as on one level we are fully conscious of being in a theatre, watching and listening to actors, it follows that on this level we accept whatever convention of theatrical writing, production and acting may be in vague; that all drama depends upon some convention – a generally accepted pretence that something is something else. There are many different kinds of convention as we shall see; but all of them have and always have had one central purpose – to offer audiences that unique type of experience which we can call dramatic experience. It is to provide this that the Theatre exists. What must be remembered is that acting, like everything belonging to the Theatre, has a double aspect: the actor must be the character he is playing and also himself.

Without some truth to life the costume comedy would not be engrossing: without some theatrical artificiality, the realistic play could not hold our attention. The Theatre must always be what we should never be – two-faced.

EXERCISES

1. Answer the following questions.

a) Why do you think the theatre is so important in the lives of people?

b) Do you share the author's opinion that “we behave differently when we are part of an audience”? Why?

c) Don’t you think the author's statement that “we have to share the feelings of a great many other people to enjoy a play properly” sounds convincing and is especially important these days? Why?

d) What is essential on the part of the audience to enjoy the theatre?

e) Do you agree that the theatre possesses a “dual nature”? Prove your point of view.

f) What does the author want to inform his readers of as far as truth of life and theatrical artificiality are concerned? What does he try to caution them against?

2. Point out the main ideas of the text. Say what you consider to be the central problem of the theatre as the author sees it.

3. Find in the text the arguments the author gives to illustrate the following statements. Try and preserve the wording of the original. Add your own arguments as well.

a) The theatre is a special kind of pleasure and amusement.

b) To enjoy the theatre we have to join it.

c) The theatre is a two-levelled phenomenon based on the imaginary life of the play and on the reality of the performance.

d) Children are a splendid theatre audience.

e) Careful rehearsing is necessary to produce any serious work in the theatre.

f) Special training is necessary for actors.

g) Acting possesses a double aspect.

V. Actors and Acting

1. Read this extract from the novel “Theatre” by W. S. Maugham. Find in the dialogue words and expressions that can be used in appraising an actor. Use them to describe a good actor.

Jimmie Langton, a theatre director, is talking to Julia, a young actress.

'I never slept a wink all night for thinking of you,' he said.

'This is very sudden. Is your proposal honourable or dishonourable?'

He took no notice of the flippant rejoinder.

'I've been at this game for twenty-five years. I've been a call-boy, a stage-hand, a stage-manager, an actor, a publicity man, damn it, I’ve even been a critic. I've lived in the theatre since I was a kid just out of a board school, and what I don't know about acting isn't worth knowing. I think you're a genius.'

'It's sweet of you to say so.'

'Shut up. Leave me to do the talking. You've got everything. You're the right height, you've got a good figure, you've got an indiarubber face.’

'Flattering, aren't you?'

'That's just what I am. That's the face an actress wants. The face that can look anything, even beautiful, the face that can show every thought that passes through the mind. That's the face Duse's got. Last night even though you weren't really thinking about what you were doing every now and then the words you were saying wrote themselves on your face.'

'It's such a rotten part. How could I give it my attention? Did you hear the things I had to say?'

'Actors are rotten, not parts. You've got a wonderful voice, the voice that can wring an audience's heart, I don't know about your comedy, I'm prepared to risk that.'

'What d'you mean by that?'

“Your timing is almost perfect. That couldn't have been taught, you must have that by nature. That's the far, far better way. Now let's come down to brass tacks. I've been making inquiries about you. It appears you speak French like a Frenchwoman and so they give you broken English parts. That's not going to lead you anywhere, you know.'

'That's all I can get.'

'Are you satisfied to go on playing those sort of parts for ever? You'll get stuck in them and the public won't take you in anything else. Seconds, that's all you'll play. Twenty pounds a week at the outside and a great talent wasted.'

'I've always thought that some day or other I should get a chance of a straight part.'

'When? You may have to wait ten years. How old are you now?'

'Twenty.'

'What are you getting?'

'Fifteen pounds a week.'

'That's a lie. You're getting twelve, and it's a damned sight more than you're worth. You've got everything to learn. Your gestures are commonplace. You don't know that every gesture must mean something. You don't know how to get an audience to look at you before you speak. You make up too much. With your sort of face the less make-up the better. Wouldn't you like to be a star?'

'Who wouldn't?'

'Come to me and I'll make you the greatest actress in England. Are you a quick study? You ought to be at your age.'

'I think I can be word-perfect in any part in forty-eight hours.'

'It's experience you want and me to produce you. Come to me and I’ll let you play twenty parts a year. Ibsen, Shaw, Barker, Sudermann, Hankin, Galsworthy. You've got magnetism and you don't seem to have an idea how to use it.' He chuckled. 'By God, if you had, that old hag would have had you out of the play you're in now before you could say knife. You've got to take an audience by the throat and say, now, you dogs, you pay attention to me. You've got to dominate them. If you haven't got the gift no one can give it you, but if you have you can be taught how to use it. I tell you, you've got the makings of a great actress. I've never been so sure of anything in my life.'

'I know I want experience. I'd have to think it over of course. I wouldn’t mind coming to you for a season.'

'Go to hell. Do you think I can make an actress of you in a season? Do you think I'm going to work my guts out to make you give a few decent performances and then have you go away to play some twopenny-halfpenny part in a commercial play in London? What sort of a bloody fool do you take me for? I'll give you a three years' contract, I'll give you eight pounds a week and you'll have to work like a horse.'

Do you agree with everything Jimmie Langton said?

2. Group Discussion.

Give your own views on the problem and speak against your opponent.

Topic 1. Is the ability to perform an inborn gift or is it an acquired skill?

TALKING POINTS:

1. The artistic potential of a person, his timing.

2. Skilful directors, modern techniques, the possibilities of the camera to accentuate.

3. The value of experience, necessity to acquire technique.

Topic 2. Should the actor live the part or should he just perform?

Note: The first would mean that the actor tries to sympathize with his character, to fully understand and share his feelings - despairing with him, loving and hating with him, shedding real tears. The second implies just going through the motions of the role with a cool head. The first school (e.g. K. S. Stanislavsky's method) relies on both feeling and technique, the second, entirely on technique.

TALKING POINTS:

1. Necessity to look at the character from a distance, to sympathize and critisize, to understand him.

2. Practice in reproduction of the character before the audience.

3. Effect achieved: the less actors feel, the firmer their hold upon their facial and bodily expression.

4. A possibility of reaching such a state of mechanical perfection that one's body is absolutely the slave of one's mind.

5. Necessity for actors to work with their own tools. (Each actor should choose the method he feels is best for him.)

Read Sir Laurence Olivier's answers given by him in a newspaper interview:

- Is there a particular hobby-horse that you ride in your work as actor and director?

- I rely greatly on rhythm. I think that is one thing I understand - the exploitation of rhythm, change of speed of speech, change of time, change of expression, change of pace in crossing the stage. Keep the audience surprised, shout when they're not expecting it, keep them on their toes - change from minute to minute.

- What is the main problem of the actor?

- It is to keep the audience awake.

- How true is it that an actor should identify with a role?

- I don't know. I can only speak for myself. And in my case it's not 'should'  but 'must'. I just do. I can't help it. In my case I feel who I am playing. And I think, though I speak only from my own experience, that the actor must identify to some extent with his part.

Consider this actor's opinion while speaking on Topic 2.

3. Discuss the following:

1) In which sphere of performing art is it easier for the actor to play, in the film or on the theatre stage? Some believe it is in the cinema, some say at the theatre. The latter prove it by at least two things: firstly, the actor on the stage has a permanent contact with the audience which helps a great deal. Secondly, the feelings that the actor is to display on the stage are not so difficult to evoke because of the natural development of action which takes place in the course of the play. In the cinema, on the contrary, short episodes are shot separately.

What is your point of view?

2) Can you make out what Jimmie Langton meant telling his company: “Don't be natural. The stage isn't the place for that. The stage is make-believe. But seem natural.”

4. Interview an actor or an actress.

VI. Theatre and Reality

Julia Lambert, a famous actress, is talking with her son Roger.

'What is it you want?'

'Reality.'

'What do you mean?'

'You see, I've lived all my life in an atmosphere of make-believe. I want to get down to brass tacks. You and father are all right breathing this air, it's the only air you know and you think it's the air of heaven. It stifles me.'

Julia listened to him attentively, trying to understand what he meant.

'We’re actors, and successful ones. That's why we've been able to surround you with every luxury since you were born. You could count on the fingers of one hand the actors who've sent their son to Eton.'

'I'm very grateful for all you've done for me.'

'Then what are you reproaching us for?'

'I'm not reproaching you. You've done everything you could for me. Unfortunately for me you've taken away my belief in everything.'

'We've never interfered with your beliefs. I know we're not religious people, we're actors, and after eight performances a week one wants one's Sundays to oneself. I naturally expected they'd see to all that at school.'

He hesitated a little before he spoke again. One might have thought that he had to make a slight effort over himself to continue.

'When I was just a kid, I was fourteen. I was standing one night in the wings watching you act. it must have been a pretty good scene, you said the things you had to say so sincerely, and what you were saying was so moving, I couldn't help crying. I was all worked up. I don't know how to say it quite, I was uplifted; I felt terribly sorry for you, I felt a bloody little hero; I felt I'd never do anything again that was beastly or underhand. And then you had to come to the back of the stage, near where I was standing, the tears were streaming down your face; you stood with your back to the audience and in your ordinary voice you said to the stage manager: what the bloody hell is that electrician doing with the lights? I told him to leave out the blue. And then in the same breath you turned round and faced the audience with a great cry of anguish and went on with the scene.'

'But, darling, that was acting. If an actress felt the emotions she represented she'd tear herself to pieces. I remember the scene well. It used to bring down the house. I've never heard such applause in my life.'

'I suppose I was a fool to be taken in by it. I believed you meant what you said. When I saw that it was all pretence it smashed something. I've never believed in you since. I'd been made a fool of once; I made up my mind that I wouldn't ever be made a fool of again.'

She gave him her delightful and disarming smile.

'Darling, I think you're talking nonsense.'

'Of course you do. You don't know the difference between truth and make-believe. You never stop acting. It's second nature to you. You act when there's a party here. You act to the servants, you act to father, you act to me. To me you act the part of the fond, indulgent, celebrated mother. You don't exist, you're only the innumerable parts you've played. I've often wondered if there was ever a you or if you were never anything more than a vehicle for all these other people that you've pretended to be. When I've seen you go into an empty room I've sometimes wanted to open the door suddenly. but I've been afraid to in case I found nobody there.'

She looked up at him quickly. She shivered, for what he said gave her an eerie sensation. She listened to him attentively, with a certain anxiety, for he was so serious that she felt he was expressing something that had burdened him for years. She had never in his whole life heard him talk so much.

'D'you think I'm only sham?'

'Not quite. Because sham is all you are. Sham is your truth. Just as margarine is butter to people who don't know  what butter is.'

'You're hard,' she said plaintively. 'Don't you love me?'

'I might if I could find you. But where are you? If one stripped you of your exhibitionism, if one took your technique away from you, if one peeled you as one peels an onion of skin after skin of pretence and insincerity, of tags of old parts and shreds of faked emotions, would one come upon  a soul at last?' He looked at her with his grave sad eyes and then he smiled a little. 'I like you all right.'

'Do you believe I love you?'

'In your way.'

Julia's face was suddenly discomposed.

'If you only knew the agony I suffered when you were ill! I don't know what I should have done if you'd died!'

'You would have given a beautiful performance of a bereaved mother at the bier of her only child.'

'Not nearly such a good performance as if I'd had the opportunity of rehearsing it a few times,' Julia answered tartly. 'You see, what you don't understand is that acting isn't nature; it's art, and art is something you create. Real grief is ugly; the business of the actor is to represent it not only with truth but with beauty. If I were really dying as I've died in half a dozen plays, d'you think I'd care whether my gestures were graceful and my faltering words distinct enough to carry to the last row of the gallery? If it's a sham it's no more a sham than a sonata of Beethoven's, and I'm no more of a sham than the pianist who plays it.

Speak on the problems raised in the conversation. Consider the following arguments:

SUPPLEMENT

Do you know that ...

Shakespeare lived and worked in London for 25 years? His life was not always easy and pleasant. He had to go to the theatre in the morning to rehearse, then again in the afternoon to act. In the evening and on his days off, he had to make changes in old plays, and write new ones for the company. All in all, he wrote 37 plays.

At that time playwrights wrote for a definite theatrical company and the theatre became the owner of the play. Theatres did not want their plays to be published – they did not want other theatres to produce them. They wanted the public to come to the playhouse and not to read the script at home.

Shakespeare's plays were very popular and dishonest publishers tried to steal them. They sent stenographers  to performances of the plays, to write down the lines as they heard them from the stage. Sometimes, publishers sent several men to see a play again and again, to try to memorize the lines of the different actors and write them down.

ABOUT LONDON THEATRES

DRURY LANE THEATRE

This is London's most famous theatre, and the oldest still in use. The first theatre on this site was built in 1662. Known as “the theatre Royal in Bridges Street”, it opened on 7 May 1663. The whole theatre was about the same size as the stage of the present Drury Lane; the pit benches were covered in green cloth, and the floor was steeply raked so that people at the back could converse with the occupants of the boxes behind. For ten years the theatre prospered, in spite of having to be closed on account of. plague from June 1665 to Nov. 1666.

On the night of 25 June 1672 the theatre was partly destroyed by fire, with the loss of the entire wardrobe and stock of scenery.

The new theatre, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, was larger than the first theatre. It opened (as the theatre Royal in Drury Lane) on 26 March 1674. On 5 May 1733 a riot took place. It was caused by the abolition of the custom of allowing free admission to the gallery for footmen attending their masters.

In 1742 Garrick made his first appearance at Drury Lane Theatre.

Drury Lane has its ghost, an eighteenth-century gentleman in a long grey riding cloak, riding boots, sword, three cornered hat, and powdered hair, who walks in at one wall of the upper circle and out at the other, but only at a matinee, and when the house is full. He may have some connection with the skeleton found bricked up in one of the walls, with a dagger in its ribs – the murderer or the murdered?

HAYMARKET THEATRE

The first theatre on this site was built in 1720 by a carpenter named John Potter who erected a small theatre on the site of an inn called “The King's Head”.

The present Haymarket, designed by Nash, was built in 1820 and opened on 4 July 1821. The Haymarket was the last theatre in London to give up candles and to install gas lightning.

COVENT GARDEN THEATRE

There has been a theatre on this site since 1732 when the first Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, was built on a piece of land which had formerly been part of a convent garden (hence the name).

In 1784 and 1792 the theatre was so extensively altered that it may be said to have been virtually rebuilt.

On 30 September 1808 the theatre was burnt down, twenty-three firemen losing their lives. In this fire perished Hendel's organ and the manuscript scores of some of his operas, which had been produced at Covent Garden in 1730s and 1750s. A new theatre, designed by Robert Smirke and modelled on the Temple of Minerva on the Acropolis, arose on the site and opened on 18 September 1809.

Between 1809 and 1821 most of the famous actors of the day, and many singers appeared at Covent Garden as did famous pantomimists.

In 1842 the theatre fell on hard times, and was finally closed to reopen in 1847, after expensive alterations, as the Royal Italian Opera House. From this time the story of Covent Garden is the story of opera in London, and it ceased to be a home of “legitimite” drama. On 5 March 1856 it again burnt down, and the present theatre, designed by Sir Edward M. Barry, was built in six months.

SADLER'S WELLS THEATRE

The discovery of a medicinal spring in the grounds of a Mr Sadler in the year 1683 – 84 led to the establishment of a popular pleasure-garden there, which became known as Sadler's Wells. Entertainments of a varied nature were given, and Sadler, in partnership with a dancing-master named Forcer, erected a wooden “Music House” with a platform to serve as a stage. Saddler's Wells then stood in open country, and though it seems to have been a well-conducted place as a rule, a murder was committed there in 1712, when a naval lieutenant was killed by a lawyer “near the organ loft”.

In 1855 the Rural Calender refers to it saying: “This theatre – for such it now is – is now so well regulated, under the present manager, that a better company is not anywhere to be met with.”

In 1705 the old wooden building was demolished and a stone theatre was raised, the whole thing being completed in seven weeks.

In 1801 a small boy named Master Carey appeared at the theatre. He afterwards became the great Edmund Kean.

In 1804 a large tank was installed on the stage filled with water and Sadler's Wells became the home of Aquatic Drama. The first of these was the siege of Gibraltar, complete with naval Bombardment. The vogue for these spectacles continued for some years, during which time the house was known as the Aquatic Theatre.

In 1807 a false alarm of fire caused a panic in the theatre; twenty-three people were killed and many injured.

In 1893 it became a music-hall and later it was used as a cinema. A project to reopen it in 1921 came to nothing. A new theatre rose on the site in 1931.

OLD VIC THEATRE

Old Vic Theatre (in the Waterloo Road) is famous for its Shakespeare productions. The theatre opened in 1818; It was originally the Royal Cobury. Owning to the state of the roads the rank and fashion of town were unwilling to risk the journey across the river, and the Cobury became a local house for melodrama of the most sensational kind, but the plays were apparently well-staged. The interior was handsomely decorated, one of the most interesting features being the famous curtain installed in 1820 – 21, which consisted of sixty-three pieces of looking-glass and reflected the whole house. Its weight put too great a strain on the roof, and it had to be removed. In 1871, after a period as a music-hall the theatre was sold by auction and became the New Victoria Palace. It closed in 1880. Then it was reopened on Boxing Day  in 1880 as a temperance amusement-hall. It was named the Royal Victoria Hall and Coffee Tavern. It was intended as a cheap and decent place for family entertainment at reasonable prices, and in spite of considerable misgivings, it prospered. In 1900 the first opera was produced there and scenes from Shakespeare supplemented the usual vocal and orchestral concerts. In 1914 the first regular Shakespeare season was given.

A succession of excellent actors and directors assured the success of the Old Vic far beyond the confines of its own territory.

In 1963 on 15 June the Old Vic closed and was reopened after extensive alterations as the temporary home of the National Theatre company under the direction of Laurence Olivier.

ALDWYCH THEATRE

This was opened on 23 December 1905. In 1900 The Aldwych became the London home of the Royal Shakespeare company, and extensive alterations were in the interior.

(From The Oxford Companion to the Theatre London, 1967)

NATIONAL THEATRE

The National Theatre is a whole complex consisting of three theatres of varying size an design, situated on the South Bank of the Thames beside Waterloo Bridge. The theatres are:

The Olivier Theatre, the largest (1160 seats), named after Laurence Olivier, famous actor and first director of the National Theatre.

The Lyttleton Theatre, a medium-sized theatre (890 seats), named after Oliver Lyttleton, first president of the National Theatre Council.

The Cottesloe Theatre, a very small theatre with movable seats for experimental productions, named after the president of the South Bank Council, which was in charge of the whole project.

The National Theatre was opened in March 1976, although at first performances took place only in the Lyttleton Theatre. Now all three theatres are in use.