The Structure of Language, The Structure of Thought, Joseph Papp and How to Act.

There's an interesting article in Backstage about Charles Durning's well deserved Actors Guild's 44th annual Life Achievement Award.

After WWII, in the early 50's, Durning started reading Shakespeare and Ibsen and Chekhov with other actors in Joseph Papp's home (Joseph Papp of The New York Public Theatre fame).

Recalling his early days with Papp, Durning says that Papp was "brutally honest but always right," and he also reveals Papp's insight into how to handle Shakespeare's heightened poetic language:

Durning spent most of the 1960s under the tutelage of Papp, whom he remembers as "brutally honest but always right." Durning notes, "He never did it maliciously. If you didn't know him, you might think he was being harsh." The actor recalls one incident in which he wanted to play Hamlet and Papp told him he wasn't good with the poetry of Shakespeare. Says Durning, "I said, 'What do you mean? I'm in all the Shakespeare plays.' And he said, 'Yeah, but you're doing all the prose stuff. You're not doing any of the poetry.' He had me pick up a Shakespeare play and read it, and I asked what he thought. He said, 'More to the point, what did you think?' " Durning pauses before admitting, "I'm still trying to figure that one out."

. . . more to the point, what did you think?

I think I definiately get what Papp was trying to say: Monologues and Soliloquies are Insight & Discovery, i.e., the "character" is figuring it out, thinking it all though as they go along, and the actor must to the same.

Lately, this has been my challenge in my own monologues -- I'm saying what I mean, riding the inherent rhythms in the text that supports the meaning, but . . . I don't think I've got a good handle on the thoughts -- and this is tricky because it's deeper than just simply summarizing what the character is saying. I've got a pretty good idea now about how to tackle this, but for the moment, suffice to say that if I don't really "grasp" and "own" the thoughts, my read is broken up line by line, sometimes phase by phase throughout most of the piece. It doesn't all hang together somehow.

I think this may have been Durning's problem back in those heady New York days of the early 50's, and I'm having the same problem now . . . but I think I know how to start fixing it . . . stay tuned!