The Four Fundamental Verbs: An Approach to Playing Actions

When I began teaching acting, I emphasized the playing of actions, as did all my teachers. I helped students generate objectives using active and outer-directed verbs—that is, verbs that did something to someone. Such is the standard practice within the Stanislavsky-based actor training system found in most theatre departments. However, most programs have an eclectic production calendar that leaps from musical comedy to Shakespeare to non-Western forms of theatre. Many of these are forms that Stanislavsky-based training does not appear to serve. Acknowledging the problem, many of us in liberal arts programs squeeze nontraditional training techniques into an already crowded syllabus, offer special courses, or simply hope that the cast of a given production will master the specific requirements of a piece in rehearsal.

Given these limitations, is there a way to train actors for the demands of the wide variety of theatrical forms normally included within the curricula and production seasons of theatre departments? I believe that we can discern what might be fundamental to these many forms of acting and adapt these fundamentals into a pedagogy that serves most productions. Such an action-based pedagogy, grounded in these fundamentals, can effectively serve a wide range of forms.

At its most basic, acting is the application of physical or psychological energy to a task. Since this energy cannot be measured until something has been done, it is easy for students to doubt its existence. Yet when we speak of “sparks flying” in a confrontation, the “electricity” of a moment, or the “chemistry” between individuals, we are, in fact, referring to this energy. In such interactions, we may sense the jolt without actually seeing the current. This current of energy provides a common denominator to all forms of theatre—what Eugenio Barba has called “pre-expressivity” (186–204). Though I prefer to use the concept of “ki” in teaching, the terms “dynamisphere” and “personal space” are similar expressions that convey the same idea. ¹

Acting, then, is doing. In modern realistic theatre, the doing/action is psychologically motivated by the character, but, even in nonrealistic dramatic forms, the actor must do something. The question is: do what? All performed actions can be viewed as transitive verbs invoking something done toward a direct object. This premise precludes such actions as thinking or reflecting because no one can directly perceive performers’ thoughts, only their behavior. In other words, actors must be able to play verbs. Most theatre practitioners are familiar with this notion but, because modern realistic theatre so dominates their training, they tend automatically to link the playing of actions to the playing of a character’s actions. When faced with an experimental or non-Western script that shows little linear development, recognizable characters, or psychological motivation, what is an actor to do? Actors who simply do what the director tells them face the same problem as those who are the most independent-minded: how to jump from one style of playing to another, one form of theatre to another, one medium to another, without feeling completely disempowered, frustrated, and ineffective.

If action-based training is an answer, the question remains: what should the nature of those actions be? Is there an approach to playing actions that is not tied to subjectivity (character) or cause and effect, which the actor may then apply to almost any style, genre, or form of theatre? As I sought a clearer, simpler way to teach the playing of actions, I noticed certain patterns in my own students’ practices. On one hand, when students tried to play vague verbs such as “to threaten” or “to seduce,” they tended toward generalized, stereotypical behavior. On the other hand, when they played more physical, visceral verbs, such as “to gouge” or “to disembowel,” they struggled, once they had found the actions in their bodies, to achieve a believable middle ground in representing it. I realized that I needed a way to start their training with simple, physical verbs that were grounded in the body and were neither too vague nor too fantastic. I needed verbs that were simple enough...