I want to work with you on an exercise that is a little more advanced. Acting is based on a trinity; ‘who am I?’, ‘who are you?’, and ‘what do I want?’ This is character work. ‘Who am I,’ that’s the character. ‘Who are you,’ tha’ts the relationship. ‘What do I want’ that’s the objective. Objective is a very big word for acting.
I am going to ask you to look at this portrait that we’re going to put up on the screen. IIt’s of Madame X by John Singer Sargent painted in about 1880. He was in Paris and was a darling in the Parisian art circle when he painted this-which is seven feet high and now stands in the MET. He became ostracized because this painting was a huge scandal. At the time this was considered very erotic painting. Now we have Lady Gaga and we have Madonna and we have all sorts of kinds of sexual imagery in our society. But for Paris, in the 1880s, this was enormous. You can see, she is quite beautiful in a very strange kind of way. She has a very strange little nose that is pointed. Her gown is very flattering and very low cut. When it was originally painted, one strap on her shoulder was down which was considered very risque. She’s looking to the side. She has one hand on a table. She has a wedding ring, she has a fan and she’s got chubby fingers. I think her fingers are very sensual. They’re a little different to me than the rest of her body. Her skin is very, very white. Some used to think it was powdered, that she would powder herself. It’s very erotic, very sensual.
Now, if this were a character in our film or our story or just a character that we were going to investigate, who would she be? Let’s think about that. I’m going to tell you my version but in the comments below please tell me what you think.
To me, well, she clearly has some money. To put on such a dress and have a little pin in her hair that looks like it’s a jewel, quite beautiful. She’s rich. Is she waiting for her husband? Where is she? Just by looking at her, what do you think about her? I think she looks very indolent, languid. Waiting for something. Does she look lazy? What can you tell about her? Nothing. It’s very abstracted really, there’s nothing in the background except this sienna color and the gold-like color on her table.
What do we know about this woman? I think we can make up a story about who she might be, just by looking at her. Is she looking at a lover? Is she looking over to her husband? Does she have children? Is she educated? I think she’s educated. I think she might be over educated. I think she might be a bit bored. I’m wondering where she just came from that led her right to this pose. If we were to follow her the fifteen minutes before she got in this pose, where was she. I think that she has been tying to spice up her life. I think she’s kind of bored with her life. This is the character I’m creating. I think she’s at one more dinner party that is extremely boring, but maybe this time with this dinner party she brought in some of her friends from the left bank. From the art bank in Paris. Maybe they were not very well received. Maybe she had to leave with them and come back. Maybe they were thrown out. Maybe she had to go back to her dressing room and had a drink and is very tired. How is she looking over at what she’s looking at? She is looking over at something. Who is she looking at? She looks a bit defended, the way her body structure is. What do you think she is looking for? What time of night is it? When is it? See you can construct a whole story about who this woman is. Let’s figure more out about her. Is she very, very tired? Is she having fights with her husband? Had she brought anything of that other life to her fancy dinner parties before she came tonight? Were they all very surprised with her husband? Had she just had a fight with him? Is she making up with him and she is sort of arched? Do you noticed how arched she looks? And that fan? She holding the fan? She’s not concealing herself. She feels to me like she wants to be seen, she’s ready to be seen. Now, if we were to construct those fifteen minutes before, actually minute by minute by minute, that’s a lot of time of film, on stage. Fifteen minutes before, what would be happening. Let’s say we stay with my scenario and she in-fact had to leave. She left with her friends. She left with her friends and she came back. She came back and went into her dressing area and she changed gowns. She had to get her ‘mojo’ back, her power, because she might have been humiliated when this happened. She was gonna break up everything at this dinner table and she was gonna bring in her arty friends and it didn’t go very well. She leaves with them and she comes back. This is in her house not somebody else’s house and she changes her dress. She drinks a bit. If we were actually on stage with this we would have to have her change her dress behind a screen. We would set out a dressing table for her make-up and her jewelry. She might have somethings in her room from er children. One of her children might in fact wander in, in the middle of the night, late at night wanting water, wanting mommy, wanting somebody to help him go back to sleep. What could be interrupting her? She’s quite upset because she didn’t expect that this life would happen this way, she thought that these arty people might be interesting to everyone, but they were very wild. They were not behaving themselves socially. So how is going to get this back? She puts on this new beautiful black dress no one has seen before. She is going to look gorgeous. She is going to find a way to make herself seen and bring back to the party her power, her beauty. She is in control. She makes a new entrance. She paints her body white; that certainly would dazzle people. But it would also acknowledge to them that she is not kidding. She is quite serious about this art life she is starting to look at. She paints her body white, like an artist would paint her. And she puts on more make up. It’s very heightened, very beautiful. Takes off all the jewelry she had on, maybe she used to wear a lot of expensive jewelry and now she has this one little piece in her hair. And then we find her standing next to this table, waiting for the proper moment to enter and go back to the dinner. She is looking over, wondering, listening. Listening is a very important part of acting. What should I be doing? Do I go to my best friend? Do I go to my husband? How do I come in? She is planning, she is plotting. What do I do? What do I do to make a new entrance and to gain back the respect that was lost? Powerful moment for this woman. A moment of inner conflict. Inner conflict is a very important aspect of acting. The emotional life. Not just walking and talking. During your day to day you need to fill your life up. And this woman has a very big secret, which is also a part of what she is filling up. Because she was very, very wreckless and she brought her lover, one of these artists, into this dinner. Maybe that artist, her lover, though he was told and they spoke about it, became a bit wild by drinking too much and let the cat out of the bag. She has got a lot to gather back. What moment is she going to walk into that dinner party and take her power back. I’m riffing here on the possibility of what a story could be about this beautiful woman.
