Today I am going to write my blog, which has been late because I’ve been so concentrated on the rehearsals of Saari – production and meeting my actors every morning, that I have not had a second to think about any other people but my company now.

But now it’s the time, my heart is full. And my topic is: Limits. Boarders. The edge.
Going to the edge, or edges. To the edges of human powers, of endurance, of thinking.

A director cannot think loose. The art of a director is that s/he mustn’t let anything that has been thought loose, through his/her hands to the stage.

The central material for director’s thinking is the actor. And actor’s courage to reach for one’s limits, go beyond them, go to the edges.

To what edges, when the material for the actor’s imagination and art is his/her own body?
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A visual artist studies the line. The sculptor studies clay or metal. S/he studies how to treat the material, what to shape from it. And what to take out from it, to crystallize something. It is said, after all, that art is in the end just taking out the unnecessary, digging out the necessary.
So what is it that the actor is digging out? What is it that s/he shapes, with which does s/he operate and what does s/he crystallize?
There is no other material but the actor’s body. The body in the space. And the body, alone, as it is, talking or silent, still or moving, down, up, or somewhere in between in the space. That’s the material.
And this is what the actor does all the time. With this s/he creates, with this does s/he show, makes us believe and live more. With this does s/he create everything s/he does. Of all the artists, the actor has the most incredible material, for the human body resonates in humans always strongers than the most impressive painting.
Or, it is better to say, that the human body has that ability to get the room and the experincer of the performance to vibrate.
The actor has incredible power and strength in the fact, that his/her material is s/he him/herself, and his/her own bodily existence.
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We live in the period of time where nothing physically theatens us. My generation is said to be “cinneman roll –generation.” And it is true that we are accustomed to comfortability. We reach to the air and to the sea to get extreme experiences, we get a video shooter and a comfortable couch. We are a generation which has finally learned to enjoy life, to take ourselves ‘quality time’, even treat ourselves. It is allowed and it is possible for our generation.

In our generation it is also noticeable that we are everywhere simultaneously. We have the knowhow to use the Internet, the digi-everything and all that. This wonderful possibility to be everywhere at the same time, which on the other hand is a must; this incredible variety of possibilities and the reality of busyness [and busines] is out threat and challenge. It causes another kind of dullness and tiredness than the tiredness that comes from physical battle for one’s life.
We live in the world in which we necessarily don’t have to get tired physically, or in which we would experience physical pain, or in which we would really have to exert and so forth get in contact with our physical edges.
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I think about ancient actors. Those who performed in amfi theatres and on market squares of towns, without any amplifiers, making the art of theatre with their bodies only. They had to know how to shape their bodily material so that in those circumstances it did it.
Nowadays actors nearly always have microphones when they perform on big stages, otherwise their speak is not heared. On small stages it is often difficult to hear the actor’s speaking.
In my opinion it is the same thing than an artist, a painter, would paint his/her line only half way. Or like a sculptor would leave his/her work unfinished and put it in an exhibition.
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When I was studying those intensive weeks in Tadashi Suzuki’s theatre center in Japan, my teacher asked me: “Actors and directors should be specialists of the body. Well. Are you?”
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One cannot be a specialist of the body if one lacks the physical experience of going to the edges in those very deeds s/he does on stage: standing, sitting, moving, being still; speakin, being silent. In all these deeds the actor should have gone to the edges, in order to know what it is like. To boarden the limits, to study one’s material as truly as an artist in her/his atelje. In order to use one’s body the way one wishes, to express the inside.

And – this going to the edges is not easy, for us. It causes an unpleasant feeling, it can be even painful, physically. And yet. I think we must to that. An artist for theatre must be willing to go through pain. I do not mean breaking one’s body, by any means, purposefully. I simply want to make a note that the ones before us have been able to speak and move so that cameras and amplifiers are not needed to get close to the audience. Theatre is theatre because its tool is the human body.

If we are not willing to go the the limits of our body and imagination, we might as well stop making theatre and freely let the folks go to see those ice hockey matches – there the players give all of themselves. They speed, they stop, they fly and they shout. They do so for the sake of that black plastic thing.

Theatre is much wider. But I’m after the same human energy. I want it in the stillness of the actor. In the sitting of the actor; in standing; in speaking. As director I cannot go to these limits for the actor. S/he has to do it for. What I can do, is to be thursty for it. Think so that its worth of doing for him/her, and create safe surrounding to do that. But I am not there on the stage as director; the actor is. I am thursty to see her/him there: the human being. I want that someone does the deed for me, to go to the edges, and shows what it is like there. For if we don’t know it (in the meaning of ‘feel’ it), we are indeed the cineman roll generation. Or at least we are not any specialists of the body.
Tomorrow we continue in our rehearsals.

October 30th, 2009