Rehearsal as Critical Method: Pinter's Old Times

Rehearsal as Critical Method: Pinter's Old Times LAWRENCE I. ElLENBERG • IF THE PERFORMANCE OF A PLAY may be considered an act of criticism,I then rehearsal is analogous to critical method. We talk about play productions as "interpretations" of texts; we become animated over a director 's "approach" to a play; we admire an actor's "analysis" of his role. Implicit in the vocabulary of such responses is the recognition that performance is "interpretive," that it does articulate an "approach," and is thus the same sort of activity as criticism. If criticism is centrally an analytical process rather than a descriptive or an evaluative one,2 then Peter Brook's production ofA Midsummer Night's Dream is as viable a piece of criticism of that comedy as any essay in a scholarly journal. The production is simply less easily published, which is to say less easily recovered or disseminated. Yet if a production or a performance may be appreciated , in one sense, as criticism of a play, then the rehearsals for that production encompass the critical methods by which the interpreters (actor , director, designer) arrive at their conclusion (the production itself). I propose to examine some recent rehearsals for a production of Harold Pinter's Old Times3 in an effort to illustrate the value of such theatrical , rather than literary, methods of arriving at a critical understanding of a difficult and eminently theatrical play.4 Pinter's plays have been notoriously troublesome to critics and just as notoriously appealing to actors . Part of the explanation for this state of affairs, I suspect, lies in the differing methodologies of these two sorts of interpreters. Rehearsals for this production of Old Times began each night in the following manner. The three actors were blindfolded with muslin strips 385 386 LAWRENCE I. ElLENBERG over their eyes and were handed weapons in the form of tightly rolled copies of The New York Times. These were the rules of the game: I) The actor actor speaking his tines is "safe": he may not be hit. 2) Those who are silent are fair game; they may be freely attacked and pounded by the speaker or any other non~speaker. Under these rather special conditions, the actors delivered their lines in the specific scenes being rehearsed each night. It is important to realize that the general model of the game was not invented for the rehearsal of Pinter's Old Times.' Indeed, the game has been employed in quite different contexts, with a cast of fifteen, for example , preparing an Aeschylean tragedy. It is a general sort of theatre game, designed to explore and intensify certain energies which are present in a wide variety of plays, as they are performed. And the logic underlying the game, as with all the best games, is transparent. The player' who is speaking, while he is speaking, is both safe and in great danger. In terms of the game itself, he is safe in that he may not be hit while speaking his lines. At the same time, however, he is in great danger because he may easily be located by the others, who will be ready to attack him as soon as he is silent. The player whose lines follow the speaker's, for example , may stealthily approach the speaker, prepared to strike at the end of his speech, and then strike without fear of retaliation by virtue of having the next lines. Of course, as soon as the speaker is finished with his lines, he may try to flee from such punishment as he has been attempting to hand out. There are advantages and disadvantages inherent in having lines to say, both in the game and on the stage. He who has lines to say almost automatically has the attention of the audience and of his fellow players, but as the center of attention, he is also most vulnerable to their disapproval or attack. Strategy and tactics for the game may vary. The goals are quite simpie : to hit as much as possible and be hit as little as possible. The speaker, for instance, may choose to deliver his lines as slowly as he can, thus stretching out...