A problem I have when listening to a wonderfully told story like "Helen's Troy" is that I get so caught up in the story and the emotions I feel watching it in my mind cinema (what a great expression!) that I forget to watch the technique/methods used to engage the audience so effectively. It did not help that I barely remembered the story itself, but I immediately recognized that Megan Wells was not telling the story I had read, for it had not been Helen's story, told from her perspective. I was captivated by how Ms. Wells humanized figures that time and repetition have rendered into symbols rather than flesh and blood people, particularly the mother-daughter talk about Helen's conception, and how Leda enjoyed the encounter.
Here comes my question: I was struck by the relative economy of how Ms. Wells portrayed Helen's tumultuous life and the Trojan War. The war raged for 10 years, filled with the screams of dying men, the battle cries of charging soldiers, chariots crashing, swords swinging and clanging, yet she spread it all out before us without doing it. No huge gestures, screams, running feet, yet I "saw" and "heard" the war. This ability is connected to a statement she made towards the end of our discussion, about the storyteller's job: it is not to show the emotion, but to guide an audience to it.
How do you guide your audience to an emotion? Can anyone explain how this is done? I have been picturing how it isn't done, and recalling a Monty Python skit about a School for Overacting in which a group of acting students beat ".... my kingdom for a horse!" to death, but I wish I had a clearer idea of how to guide rather than demonstrate.
I have down a wonderful quote from Ms. Wells--"It's the audience's job to feel---our job is to guide them" I believe that one of her methods was just to touch on emotion---but not experience it fully---rather "gift" it to the listener to experience fully. I believe that when she expressed an emotion in slow motion, she was using one of her techniques for transmitting emotion.
ReplyDeleteOne way Doc, an acting coach from years ago, shared is rather than crying, your character is trying not to cry...rather than getting mad, you're trying not to get mad or to remain calm, your audience then gives in to the emotion. What were some other thoughts? that was what I connected to when she said that.
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ReplyDeleteIn acting we talk about "telephoning the audience" as an act of broadcasting an emotion rather than simply inhabiting it. Megan certainly suggests that you need to feel the moment in order that the listener can feel it BUT that we do not want to broadcast the emotion - which would be more presentation than involvement.
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