Culture Is the Body!

Culture Is The Body! Tadashi Suzuki ON ACTOR TRAINING The main purpose of my method is to uncover and bring to the surface the physically perceptive sensibility which actors had originally, before the theatre acquired its various codified performing styles, and to heighten their innate expressive abilities. I first began to think of the method when I was trying to search for ways to examine the differences in physical perception among different peoples, such as are found while the actors on stage just stand still,or have an impulse, take some action. I wished to integrate these differences into something we humans could share as a common property , beyond all differences in race and nationality. First of all, I felt the necessity of inspecting our human orientation, in sensibility or feeling, toward the ground or floor-the attraction for the ground which the lower half of the body feels. I extracted some basic ways of using the body as perceiving various nuances of feeling, and then arranged them to formulate my method. Technically speaking, my method consists of training to learn to speak powerfully and with clear articulation, and also to learn to make the whole body speak, even when one keeps silent. It is thus that actors can learn the best way to exist on the stage. By applying this method, I want to make it possible for actors to develop their ability of physical expression and also to nourish a tenacity of concentration. In short, this training is, so to speak, a grammar necessary to materialize the theatre that is in my mind. However, it is desirable that this "grammar" should be assimilated into the body as a second instinct,just as you cannot 28 enjoy a lively conversation as long as you are always conscious of grammar in speaking. These techniques should be mastered, studied, until they serve as an "operational hypothesis," so that the actors may truly feel themselves "fictional" on stage. For actors to realize the images they themselves pursue, they will have to develop at least this basic physical sensibility. In my opinion, a "cultured" society is one where the perceptive and expressive abilities of the human body are used to the full; where they provide the basic means of communication. A civilized country is not always a "cultured" society. It is true that civilization originated in connection with the functions of the human body; it may be interpreted as the expansion of basic functions of the human body or the extension of the physical faculties-of the eyes, ears, tongue, the hands and feet. For example, the invention of such devices as the telescope and microscope is a result of human aspiration and endeavor to see more, radicalizing the faculty of sight. The accumulated effect of such endeavors is civilization-the product of the expansion and extension of physical faculties. What we have to consider, then, is the kind of energy required to materialize such aspirations. That leads us to think about modernization. A criterion some sociologists in the United States apply to distinguish betwen modernized and pre-modernized societies is the ratio of animal-energy to nonanimal -energy used in production processes. Animal-energy here refers to the physical energy supplied by human beings, horses or cattle, etc.; while non-animal-energy refers to electric power, nuclear power and the like. One way of showing whether a country is modernized is to calculate how much non-animal-energy is used. Roughly speaking, in African and Near Eastern countries, for example, the ratio of animal-energy used is very high, compared with such countries as the United States or Japan, where energy derived from oil, electricity, nuclear power is used in all processes of production . If we apply this thinking to the theatre, we notice that most contemporary theatre is "modernized"; non-animal-energy is fully utilized. Lighting is done through electricity. Elevators and revolving stages are operated by electrical energy. The building of the theatre itself is the end-product of a variety of industrial activities from the concrete foundation to the props and scenery. 29 On the contrary, the Japanese Noh theatre is a surviving example of premodern theatre in which...