Dis/play

Showing versus Doing

There’s an apocryphal story about the rivalry between the great actresses Eleanor Duse and Sarah Bernhardt. In comparing the two in the same role, a critic was to have said that while Bernhardt would rouse an audience to their feet to cheer, Duse moved the audience to tears. (see George Bernard Shaw’s essay on Duse and Bernhardt, for example).

Willa Cather noted about Bernhardt that watching her perform was

“…like red lava torn up from the bowels of the earth where the primeval fires of creation are still smoldering.”

This rivalry is well documented in the book, Playing to the Gods, by Peter Rader. My point is that this rivalry can be viewed from an evolutionary perspective in terms of display and play. It boils down to this—play is a suite of behaviors involving engagement with the external world of things and beings. Display is a suite of behaviors that involve expression of the inner world of the being. Play says “look at that!” Display says, “look at me!”

I want to immediately say that I have no judgment about either of these behaviors. Both have their time and place, both have value, both are very interesting to explore. But both can be confused for the other and, in fact, can sometimes overlap or even exist concurrently. And this leads to problems in the classroom, rehearsal hall, and in stage performances. It can also lead to more serious issues involving agency, identity, and relations of power. So, it is important to understand the distinctions between the two and then carefully articulate how, when, and whether to critique either kinds of behaviors in service of the dramatic material.

Look at That!

Play can be done alone, in groups, virtually (as in the mind) or in the physical world. But all play involves an engagement with some thing or other. An infant may play with their toes or with a ball, but the act of playing makes an object out of the toes or ball. The play thing is outside the self, and the energy of playing is directed toward the thing. The toe becomes a thing and the play is what can be done with that thing. This is true for a toe, a ball, or a playmate. The attention in playing is outer-directed, seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling what can be done with the thing.

Look at Me!

A performance is an act or a suite of actions designed for perception. When a child shouts to a parent at the playground, “look at me!” while hanging upside down on the monkey bars, the playing becomes (also) a performance. All displays are performances—suites of behavior to attract, repel, sustain or free. Some displays demonstrate dominance. Some display demonstrates sexual prowess. Some display submission. Some demonstrate alignment (with a task, such as just prior to when hyenas hunt in a pack, the pack lines up in the direction of the scent of prey, for example, or when a cast gathers before a show to get in sync). There are many varieties of display behavior, although the most famous, of course, as the sexual displays. But ALL displays are an expression of power—demonstrating the ability to do something.

In the example of the child on the monkey bars, the initial action is to gain the attention of the parent, but the goal of task is to draw that attention to one’s self. Once the attention is gained, the child’s energy is then directed at demonstrating their prowess in hanging upside down. “Amazing!” the dad will say. “Good job!” often followed by rapt applause, not to mention masked anxiety and the readiness to dash over should the child plummet from the bars.

Hopefully, this clarifies the difference between play and display. Now, I turn to how this plays out in theatrical performances of any kind. In every case, however, just as the laws of physics require, you can’t do both at the same time, only one after the other. If you’re playing, you cannot display, and if you are displaying, you can’t play. A good illustration of this can be found in sport.

Sport is definitely playing, and certainly a game. The game is defined by rules—boundaries and conditions. Football is a very elaborate game and provides a vivid example of play and display. If you’ve watched any football, even only highlights, you’ll likely have seen some tremendous physical feats. A regular feature in post-game highlights is the spectacular catch. Usually, the quarterback throws some ridiculously long pass, threading the needle between defenders, while the receiver leaps into the air, grabbing the ball with a single hand, dances along the sideline and races toward the end zone for a touchdown. What a play! Amazing!

Often, the instant the player cross the touchdown line, a celebration ensues-gestures of strength, dominance, roaring and sometimes elaborate rituals to shame the opposing team. (Go to YouTube to find a plethora of examples.) This is a display. But sometimes, the celebration/display starts too early (also many examples on YouTube). This demonstrates the difference between play and display—and it’s a matter of attention. When attention turns from the thing to the self, the game is muddled. And the audience cannot be sure where to place its attention—on the display or the play. In the case of the too-early celebration in football, the fans can react with rage or mockery (depending on which team you’re rooting for). In the case of theatrical performances, however, when display and play are involved, the audience reaction can vary widely, depending on many factors but all around what you bring in with you to the experience. A good example to illustrate this point is entrance applause.

Anybody who has attended a show (any kind) with a big star gets very excited when the star appears. When the conductor appears at an orchestra concert, the ritual is for everyone to applaud the maestro. When the maestro is famous, the applause can be thunderous and it might take a minute or two before the music actually begins. In a play, however, the star may not make an appearance at curtain rise, but when they do in the first or later scenes, the stars entrance will be met by applause. Most stars will “hold,” staying “in character,” while the applause lasts. It’s a very interesting moment because the play essentially stops while the star’s mere presence is acknowledged. The display is subtle. The star rarely acknowledges the applause, but the “hold” itself is a kind of acknowledgment—a recognition that the show can’t go on until we turn our attention from display to (the) play. There is a tacit agreement among the audience that we now should place our admiration to the side to allow the imaginary world to re-establish itself. Sometimes, this agreement is shattered when someone calls out, “Love you, Barbra!” or something like that, which is also a display (of alignment, I think) and typically very unwelcome. In a vocal concert, this is acceptable behavior because the set of songs allows for moments when the play stops naturally and our attention can return to the display.

As I’ve said before, theatre is a game, a kind of play. The “thing” in theatre is performing actions, determined by theatrical circumstances, to accomplish a task. The attention is toward following the composition of actions, which are revealed in resistance to change (often conflict) and is about a kind of change. When the progress of that composition is interrupted by display, the play stops. Where it gets really interesting and challenging (whether as an audience member, a director, acting teacher, or actor) is when the two co-exist or are nested within one or the other.

Shaw said about Bernhardt

“The dress, the title of the play, the order of the words may vary; but the woman is always the same. She does not enter into the leading character; she substitutes herself for it.”

This strikes me as the epitome of the issue. Is the performance about the play or the person? And this plays out in class, rehearsal, and during the run of a show. In the classroom, this manifests often in emotional display. I remember being in class as a student and seeing an actor dissolve into tears while doing scene work. Initially, we all (that is, the cohort of students) were impressed. But after the fifth or sixth time that actor conjured these tears, we were much less so. What we didn’t know, and what was not explained to us, was that the initial behavior existed in and of itself and was not withIN the world of the scene (even if it was consonant with the mise en scene). The crying wasn’t “organic¹.” But in order for us to perceive that this was a display, not part of the play, we had to experience it several times. This is what Shaw was able to discern, having seen Bernhardt perform many times. But an audience that has never seen Bernhardt understandably would confuse the display for play. This same confusion appears in the classroom, rehearsal hall, and in production. Only through experience can you tell the difference. So, it is very challenging to convince students and audiences that they’re not really experiencing what they think they are experiencing. This is partly due to how we function as animals. As I’ve stated elsewhere, we have evolved a willingness to believe. The default is on trust—it cannot be otherwise. As the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. But there’s no shame when you really want to believe. We see this every day not only in the performances on stage, but in the political arena and in our everyday lives.

There are instances when both play and display come together in beautiful collaboration, when the art and artist become one. For me, that most memorably occurred in the original production of Dreamgirls, and the song, “And I am Telling You,” performed by Jennifer Holiday. (Here’s a link to a YouTube video of her performing at the 1982 Tony Awards.) The song is well within the world of the play, the action being a “hold to” with the task being “to sustain the relationship.” Holiday embellishes the musical material with flourishes and expressive vocalizations, demonstrating both the power of her character’s desire AND her power as a performer. It is a tremendous marriage of actor and role and material—play and display—and utterly unforgettable.

In my time as a teacher and director, I’ve had occasion to work with some very powerful performers. During early development of the actor, it is easy for the student actor to confuse emotional expressiveness with effective acting, whether in themselves or their fellow students. Critiquing emotional expressiveness has to be done with care and compassion, and perhaps even forgoing the critique until more experience is gained. Expressiveness in general is also tied to agency and identity. Agency must be respected and identity must be recognized. It may be that, for the first time, an actor experiences a full breath, a full expression of long-suppressed feelings, or a realization of their true self. These are all displays, which don’t always serve the purpose of playing. But play itself is an exploration and the teacher and director must allow and even encourage that exploration, even to the detriment of the imaginary world. We must “hold” for applause, as it were. And trust that the actor will, eventually find their way into the imaginary world and let go of any need to display. Or not. There are many Sarah Bernhardts in the performing arts, and just as many Eleanor Duse. The world is big enough for all of them. Finding the balance between dis/play is challenging, but if we all share an abiding love of the work and are singularly devoted to serve the material and the audience, we can usually find that balance.

1. This word gets tossed around a lot, but I wonder if it is fully defined or universally understood (by those who should know). Organic means, in this context, life-LIKE. As Susanne Langer pointed out, what gives art its vital form is the ILLUSION of life, of organic processes—movement, energy, what she called “the act form.” (There are numerous citations for this, but its description can best be found in Feeling and Form [MacMillan 1948] and Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling [Johns Hopkins Press, 1982].)