Offscript - Method man

The eulogies for Marlon Brando spoke as one. “The Wild One” did more than create some legendary screen characters. He provided arguably the most influential piece of acting in the 20th century with his Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. And since the 1951 film recorded Brando’s Stanley for posterity, his acting reached more audiences than any performer in previous centuries ever could.

Mumbling and scratching yet sensuous and vivid, Brando’s early work became a showcase of the possibilities of so-called Method acting, which emphasized using personal emotions and memories to build a character from the “inside out,” rather than physical and vocal techniques to invent behavior. Method acting now provides a cornerstone of the art form — PushPush Theatre’s Tim Habeger calls it as much a part of modern acting as the Judeo-Christian heritage is part of American culture. Yet it’s hard to uncover examples of “pure” Method acting in Atlanta theater, or even to define a distinctive Atlanta acting style.

Method acting today tends to be defined by its weirdest extremes, like Brando reading lines off cue cards, blackboards and shirt cuffs to create the appearance of spontaneous speech, or Daniel Day-Lewis insisting on behaving as Bill the Butcher even off-camera for Gangs of New York. Actors approach their roles so differently that generalizing about them becomes nearly impossible, but I feel safe in asserting that Atlanta performers do indeed memorize their lines, and prefer not to be addressed as, say, Cyrano de Bergerac or Mr. Four Wheel Drive during their off-hours.

The Method proved more influential on film than live performance. Movie actors, by virtue of close-ups and microphones, can mumble and use little tics more comfortably than stage actors, who by definition must be more theatrical to be heard and seen in the cheap seats. For performers in scripted plays, improvisation provides a way to get into character, not something you do in the middle of a scene before an audience.

Every director and actor I’ve talked to treats Method acting as merely one resource in the toolbox, emphasizing that knowing a diversity of acting styles remains far more important. Barbara Cole, who played Stella in Soul-stice Repertory’s Streetcar, gets annoyed with peers who call themselves Method actors. “Good actors are good thinkers, good readers, good questioners, good explorers. Why would you want to put yourself in that tiny little corner?”

Atlanta doesn’t have a characteristic performance style, but individual theaters frequently cultivate their own. Improv-oriented playhouses like Dad’s Garage emphasize speed and physical flamboyance, which can be lively at best, shallow at worst. Habeger’s PushPush Theatre and Jasson Minadakis’ Actor’s Express frequently stress live-wire emotional intensity.

And most Atlanta theaters, when they program comedies set in Dixie, from Georgia Ensemble Theatre to Peachtree Playhouse, trot out plummy accents and broad gestures. Non-Atlantans asked to point to a local acting style might imagine something like that, the theatrical equivalent of “Southern hospitality.” That approach can please crowds in the short term, but actors will have to dig deeper to prove memorable or significant. We could have class. We could be contenders.

On stage

If Onstage Atlanta’s Alana seems juvenile when it debuts in October, the locally developed production has a good excuse: It’s being written and developed by children. Onstage Atlanta revives the Abracadabra Children’s Theatre with “theater for kids created by kids” as its mission.

Atlanta writer Jeff Graham and director Ken Hornbeck, who shared the stage in Onstage Atlanta’s Love! Valour! Compassion! last spring, came up with the idea for an ensemble-driven show featuring up to 20 children and teenagers. The story is about a young girl who imagines herself a dolphin, and it will be developed primarily by youngsters under the supervision of adult participants. (Of course, if the kids insist that Alana become a show about boogers, the adults may change their minds.)

Onstage Atlanta recently opened its new 70-seat “O2” space with Blues for an Alabama Sky, Atlanta writer Pearl Cleage’s Harlem Renaissance play, which runs through July 31. The smaller theater space will feature Onstage’s edgier fare, none more so than April’s Corpus Christi, Terrence McNally’s controversial play about a gay Jesus.

curt.holman@creativeloafing.com
Off-Script is a biweekly column on the Atlanta theater scene.??