AN INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE MORRISON

by Ronald Rand

WHO HAS BEEN MOST INFLUENTIAL ON THE WAY YOU TEACH?

It’s been a long and winding road -- so stay with me -- beginning as a child in Evanston, Illinois, where I learned  to act under the tutelage of Winifred Ward, a pioneering professor of Children’s Theater at Northwestern University.    I graduated from high school into three years of summer stock under the benign and charismatic guidance of Alvina Krause, another N.U. professor, whom Lee Strasberg called the best acting teacher in America.  By 17, as unlikely as it now seems, I was playing Orlando in As You Like It, by 18 Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.  After two years at the University of Chicago where I met my two partners in The New Actors Workshop, Mike Nichols and Paul Sills, and three years at The Yale School of Drama as a director, I studied for two years in Lee Strasberg’s private class and then for an extended period at The Actors Studio.  Both Mike Nichols and I were influenced by Lee’s brilliant ability to analyze the acting problems in a scene. His work still informs the technical base of my teaching.  Beginning in 1965 I studied the improvisational Theater Games developed by Viola Spolin and then taught them to many hundreds of students over the next ten years.  This unique approach to performing is still a featured component of my school.  I inherited a powerful curiosity from my father, and, I have, over the years, continued to study, gradually integrating into my teaching bits and pieces of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, psychological theory, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow, Wesley Balk’s Performance Power, and a number of physical and vocal disciplines.  And towering over my patchwork of influences stands the heroic figure of Stanislavski and his placement of “experiencing" at the center of acting training.  Most heroes are eventually revealed as having feet of clay.  I have yet to discover his.

HAVE YOU CHANGED THE WAY IN WHICH YOU TEACH ACTING?

The only constant in my teaching is change. I have never been fully satisfied with what I do. I am constantly reassessing my procedures and seeking out and studying what is new in fields related to creative functioning. My on-going project of reflecting on my own personal experience in the classroom is a crucial part of my evolution as a teacher, even at 78.

WHY SHOULD AN ACTOR STUDY THE CRAFT OF ACTING?

Stanislavski called his System “Notes for the moment of difficulty”.  If all goes well in rehearsal –- if the actor’s intuition stimulates the imagination, and the imagination leads to experiencing, and the experiencing expresses itself outwardly so that it can be seen and heard by the audience, and the whole process is repeatable -- then there is no need for craft.  But if the imagination falters, if it fails to lead to experiencing and expression, or it is not repeatable then there is a need for a conscious process.  Craft is developed through the practice of repeatable technical procedures accompanied by the working through of resistances to the flow of imagination, experiencing and expressiveness (Grotowski’s via negativa).  In training, this project must be contained by a context in which the student feels safe to explore, and has access to accurate, non-judgmental feedback. This is the essential process of mastering any art.  The great educator A. N. Whitehead wrote, “The canons of art are merely the expression in specialized forms of the requirements for depth of experience”. That says it very well, I think.

HOW DID YOU DECIDE ON THE WAY YOU TEACH, THE EXERCISES YOU USE?

By paying attention to the results of a trial and error process over a period of 50 years.  I am open to whatever works.  “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”  Samuel Beckett

HOW NECESSARY IS TALENT FOR AN ACTOR TO BECOME A CREATIVE ACTOR?

There is no significant achievement without talent, and, obviously, a teacher cannot create talent.  The central attribute of a gifted actor is responsiveness to internal and external stimuli –- imaginative, emotional, sensory, physical responsiveness -- plus an openness to embracing surprise.  In some cases an extraordinary inventiveness, a lively sense of humor, a unique and expressive voice, or a captivating vitality and beauty is enough to produce a successful performer (if not a great actor).

HOW MUCH OF AN EMPHASIS DO YOU PLACE ON THE IMPORTANCE OF VOICE/SPEECH AND BODY WORK?

In my school we require extensive work on voice and speech and three modes of body training: Feldenkrais, Alexander and Improvisational Group Movement (unique to us).  In addition we teach, again uniquely, a class in differentiating voice from body from face, a technique based on the work of Wesley Balk, an opera coach, as adapted by me to acting.

HOW SHOULD AN ACTOR BEGIN TO WORK ON A ROLE?

 Not by analyzing, not by excessive interpretation, not by discussing the script with the partner.  The rehearsal process should strive to keep the door open for intuition and spontaneity as long as possible.  Premature closure is the death of creativity, and the student must learn to tolerate the anxiety of “not knowing” for as long as possible.  While in school, the best place to begin is to sit down with the partner, lift the words off the page, and talk and listen without deciding in advance what anything “means”.  More easily said than done, but this is a technique which can be learned.

DO YOU PLACE AN EMPHASIS ON THE ACTOR UNDERSTANDING THE PLAYWRIGHT, HIS OR HER REASONS FOR WRITING THE PLAY, AND THE WORLD OF THE PLAY?

Such an understanding is finally essential for an effective performance, but it’s not the beginning place for a dynamic rehearsal process. In professional work, interpretation is largely left to the director, and most actors are content with that division of labor,  Rehearsing scenes for a class, the student must play both the role of actor and director and learn to alternate between them.  In The Workshop Mike Nichols, in his class, addresses the whole artistic, social, literary, and historical matrix out of which the play is created, whereas in my class I emphasize the question of what you do technically about your knowledge.  We describe ourselves to the students as “Mr. What” (how do you make choices) and “Mr. How” (how do you carry them out). We make a good team.

HOW MUCH OF A ROLE DOES IMAGINATION PLAY IN THE ACTOR’S WORK?

Imagination is the soul of the process.  The enormous challenge is to body forth one’s imagination.  At its highest reaches it’s only, as Laurence Olivier said, the most difficult job in the world.

YOU’VE DEVOTED YOUR LIFE TO THE THEATRE: TEACHING, DIRECTING.  DO YOU BELIEVE IT’S CONTRIBUTED TO THE THEATRE’S HEALTH, ITS CONTINUITY, AND ITS VALUE TO OUR CULTURE?

I teach because it’s in my bones. In addition to my enthrallment with the theater, I have always been fascinated by education, specifically with the challenge of teaching a rigorous discipline without inducing compliance. My gratification comes not from any contribution to theatre or culture, but from my influence on individual students. Witnessing their awakening, as they shake off their culturally-induced numbness and begin to appreciate their own complexity, is a daily reward for me.  And there is no better medium through which to teach these lessons than actor training.

HOW IMPORTANT AND VALUABLE IS YOUR UNIQUE PRESENCE TO THE WORK IN THE CLASSROOM?

Perhaps the most vital contribution my presence makes to students is that they witness me struggling with the difficulties of teaching acting, difficulties I do not hide from them.  They see me evolving in front of them, and consequently I serve as a role model for their own artistic development.  Actually, over the two years I strive to reduce the importance of my presence by teaching them to give feedback to their classmates.  It takes time and effort for them to learn to distinguish evaluation (good-bad, “truthful”-“indicated”, and so on) from feedback, which requires the audience member to articulate the subjective rather than the judgmental experience of witnessing a performance, including the thoughts, feelings, fantasies, identifications, and sensations of the witness.  By the end of the two years they could almost do the class without me.  Almost.