Week 7: "Actor vs Pictorial Communication in Composition"
Helping Each Actor Intensify
Gesture and Improvisation with Properties
Gesture and improvisation with properties are rightfully the province of each individual actor, but the director can use them as tools in helping actors discover the subtleties of dramatic action as well as learn to build character illustration with imagination and sensitivity. The two previous chapters have shown how the groundplan and composition can lead actors to discoveries about given circumstances and relationships in dramatic action, and thus to basic image-making. This chapter will show how you can lead actors into making highly detailed and refined visual illustrations.
Gesture
As noted in the preceding chapter, preserving body neutrality in an exercise is absolutely necessary to see composition as a powerful force in itself. In this chapter, you will see neutrality abandoned and the body fully animated through gesture. Here are two dictionary meanings of gesture:
1. The use of motions of the limbs or body as a means of expression
2. A movement, usually of the body or limbs, that expresses or emphasizes an idea, sentiment, or attitude
Note that these definitions suggest three things: (1) that the body is set in one location— in other words, that gesture is not a movement, an activity that takes the body from one point to another on the stage; (2) that gesture is the animation of all the movable parts of the body; and (3) that gesture is capable of expressing ideas, sentiments, or attitudes. Now go one step beyond these definitions by thinking of this activity as taking place in the body’s sphere—the sphere that stretches from tiptoe to the fullest extension of the arms in all directions. Figure 41 illustrates this concept.
Think of gesture as extending outward from the center of the body’s sphere and occupying whatever space an actor’s imagination wishes to give it. Only as much of this spherical space is used as is appropriate for the verisimilitude of the moment. Gestures can be as large or as small, as free or as restricted, as an actor desires in expressing character.
Again, in contrast to composition, which as the relationship between essentially neutral figures is always expressed in terms of the neutral body, gesture is the living quality of the body—the body’s animation. Shakespeare’s line “the hand is instrument to the mouth” expresses the essence of gesture, for we always use the hand in the hope of amplifying the meanings of the language we use or, in the words of one of the definitions quoted earlier, “to emphasize an idea, sentiment, or attitude.” Words are one kind of symbolic expression and gestures are another, with each having specific uses in conveying ideas.
Gesture, then, is a prime means of actor communication. The suppression or the controlling of gestures is part of what we usually designate as poise, the body behavior we usually associate with refinement and cultivation. We tend to designate levels of cultivation by the number of gestures employed, with the inference that the more a person suppresses gestures, the closer he or she is to being dominated by the mind. Thus, in plays and movies, we are apt to see lower-class characters illustrated with more gestures, and upper-class characters with relatively few; that is, there are few until the characters lose control of themselves and revert to the animalism that hovers in all human beings.
Gestures can convey ideas simply and clearly, as is illustrated by people who are deaf who “talk” in sign language with their hands and fingers as well as indicate attitudes with their whole bodies. Watch them closely and you will see how really animated they are in their own type of conversation—much more so than people with normal hearing. As an animated tool of illustration, gesture can thus rephrase and intensify the crude meanings of composition into highly refined and subtle ones. But the actor must learn some very important lessons early in her training, principally that indiscriminate use of gestures will convey very little meaning, that she must be highly selective, and that she must, above all, start from the neutral position of basic composition.
Gesture in Director-Actor Communication
So subjective is gesture that it is primarily an actor’s, more than a director’s, tool for communication. Yet, the director who is unaware of its force does not know how to reduce or increase its use. It is very important to note that an actor who does not stand still or hold his head still cannot be heard by an audience or is heard poorly. Repeat that over and over to yourself, as well as the saying, “The eye is quicker than the ear.” The director must also know how to strip an actor of extraneous or inappropriate gestures and how to help her develop the gestures that will reveal the character she is playing, not just herself as an actor (what we call actor mannerisms) or the gestures belonging to another character. Certain gestures, as well as their size or the state of their control, can also be suggested by the director and thus can become subtle ways of communicating dramatic action from the director to the actor. An actor, when learning to characterize, will discover that the appropriate use of gesture— always within the range of her character and always done economically—provides subtle visual clues to a character’s states and feelings.
Decorum
As was just suggested, an actor can communicate some aspects of a character by the gestures she uses—gestures that can indicate not only a character’s inner feelings but also her position in society. Decorum means the outward show of a character—an appropriate reflection of the given circumstances in a play. A king moves like a king because he leads a life of ceremony and is as much a symbol as a person. Similarly, a ditch-digger moves like a person who uses his body continuously in physical labor. Decorum is a simple symbology for what we expect from these occupations, which are nevertheless prototypes. In real life, we notice this relationship often enough to expect it, but the rules of decorum do not always hold, a fact that encourages actors to look for the exceptions that can be carried over to the stage as fresh observations.
Because decorum is the outward show of a character, a director and an actor must search for the appropriate decorum for a character. Without this, the outward show will lie about the character’s given circumstances, and the audience will be left in confusion about what to expect. Occasionally, directors exploit this confusion with the full intention of misleading an audience into fresh thinking about a character.
In actor training, so much pressure is placed on developing the inside core of character— that is, on ensuring full comprehension of the dramatic action—that actors, at least in the United States where the internal work of actor training was for many years privileged above all else, sometimes give little attention to the force of the exterior look of a character. In contrast, good professional actors always look for the appropriate decorum of a character in order to convey given circumstances quickly to an audience, just as a designer does with stage scenery. By imaginative suggestions to an actor about a character’s decorum, a director can arouse fresh ideas about interior action because the actor can see more clearly the contrast and conflict between the outer and inner selves of a character. The director can also encourage an actor’s sense of physical illustration and thus be able to convey many more specific and appropriate images to an audience.
Tasks Assignment
1. Demonstrate the “sphere concept” of gesture by assuming different positions that will occupy the full sphere. Try them. Make a picture. Get the feeling of the sphere. Can you see a sphere? Compare and contrast formal dance (full use of the sphere) with acting by illustrating the use of gestures in both forms and showing how they differ.
2. Do a series of huddled gestures to show how the head, arms, and legs can also be drawn inward toward the body.
3. Have one person sit on a chair in front of the class. At the instructor’s signal, he changes his gestures to convey different inner feelings (dramatic action). Identify the meaning of each. How do the gestures help his face? Repeat with three actors, unrelated to each other.
4. Place two people in a composition on a groundplan and encourage them to add gestures after telling them, out of the class’s hearing, of their relationship to each other (dramatic action). Have the class describe the gestures and their meanings.
5. Have two people illustrate decorum by sitting or standing in their spheres after they are secretly told different occupations to convey. Do not let them move from one place to another on the floor, but encourage them to take within their spheres any positions that they like. Have the class identify the occupations they suggest. Can other aspects of decorum be recognized?
6. Do Exercise 5 in the opposite direction by suggesting a decorum to an actor and letting him improvise dramatic action through that decorum. Repeat extensively with other actors.
After each exercise above or at the end of the full sequence if they are done all together, take some time right away to reflect on your discoveries. This is very important to consolidate the learning and discovery of the active process so that it can be carried into the next stages. If you must rush off to another class or appointment, then do this as soon as possible, before the impressions fade from memory.
Optional Assignment:
7. In his play Pygmalion (1913) George Bernard Shaw created the immortal character of Eliza Doolittle, a role (and even a story) that depends on the idea of decorum as appropriate behavior for a set of given circumstances and character. In terms of manners and behavior, expressed in physicality as well as in speech and the sound of her speech, an actor cannot play this great role effectively without mastery of decorum. Watch the 1938 film of Pygmalion and/or the 1964 film of the musical version, My Fair Lady, and write a short paper of one or two pages on how the actors who played Eliza in the two films (Wendy Hiller and Audrey Hepburn) used decorum to bring the role to life and make us understand Eliza’s journey.
8. View the 1994 film Blue Sky with Jessica Lange and Tommy Lee Jones in the leading roles. As you will see, decorum is again very important in the story. Have a discussion in which you make the key points about how each of those two talented actors uses decorum to create the characterization.
9. In two acclaimed performances, actor Heath Ledger used decorum as a key element in his creation of two utterly contrasting roles. View the films Brokeback Mountain (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008) and either write a short paper or have a discussion focusing on Ledger’s use of gesture in the two roles as well as his incorporation of decorum into his creation of each of the two characterizations he created.
10. Now that you’ve got the hang of it, choose a film performance (because it can be shared with others) by an actor where you believe gesture and decorum are memorable in the actor’s characterization of the role. Some that come to mind are Marlon Brando in The Godfather, Part I, Katharine Hepburn in Long Day’s Journey into Night, Al Pacino in Angels in America—you are sure to have your own, but these suggestions may help you get started. Look at several sequences of the performance and speak to how you think the actor has incorporated the key elements of gesture and decorum into the performance of the role.
Studying Materials
Handbook: "Experiencing Stanislavsky Today" (attention to Chapter 14)
Deadline: Feb. 5, 2026
