South Africa: Theatre

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Business Day (Johannesburg)

2 September 2008
Posted to the web 2 September 2008

Mary Jordan
Johannesburg

The brainchild of Dorothy Ann Gould, THE ACTORS' CENTRE in the Johannesburg Civic was initially conceived as something of a cross between the US's Actors' Studio and England's The Studio, at both of which Gould has studied.

Elia Kazan founded a workshop in New York where professional actors could research their roles with imagination and intuition, and experiment, using Stanislavsky's introspective approach to create their characters from within. London's National Theatre Studio provides a great team of people - from specialists in how to speak the rhythms of blank verse, to classes in the Alexander Technique and how to relax - to help professional actors constantly hone their skills.

Gould has always believed everybody needs continuous maintenance and monitoring. "Get your instruments, voice, body and mind, in tiptop shape," is her mantra. She is proud of the staff she trained to be alert to small breathing dysfunctions, to be on standby for vocal coaching, or to release emotional and psychological blocks in movement classes, workshops and through individual tuition. Her aim has always been to give a sense of mental freshness and new energy not only to actors, but to those professional men and women who sought her help in planning major business presentations and in public speaking.

Despite the continuous assistance of Bernard Jay, CEO of The Civic, funding was always going to be a problem. Gould has had to resort to calling in favours from friends, stars such as Antony Sher, Janet Suzman and Ian McKellan, who have responded generously over the years. Then box-office theft caused a major hiccup in budgeting; and now, for lack of money, the centre is to close.

This is bitter news for Gould, yet she is not opting for silence, sulking or grousing. Instead, for the month of September, she will be performing Athol Fugard's HELLO AND GOODBYE, in the Tesson Theatre with her husband, Michael Maxwell. Together, they make a formidable team.

In a play about sibling rivalry and greed, here are two unforgettable, finely calibrated concertos of grief. A curious chivalry between the characters disguises their rawboned pain and fear. As Johnny, Maxwell is both directionless and mentally battered, a cornered human soul whose heart is cracking. There is a fastidious distinction in the way he commands repose and makes silence garrulous. Gould's Hester inhabits a desperate impetuousness; her emotional upheaval runs disturbingly deep. While there is a trace of the obsessive in her determined search for her father's disability compensation, she is intrinsically vulnerable, often dismayingly coarse, digging deeply into Fugard's script to show a woman wounded by messy, everyday emotions.

This is real life brought into art, rejecting illusion in a dynamic compound of intelligence and intense feeling.

Then, in a final and farewell production at The Actors' Centre, Nick Boraine takes the part first performed in 1590 by Edward Alleyn with the Admiral's Men in THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DR FAUSTUS, the greatest but most controversial of Christopher Marlowe's works. Marlowe (1564- 93) was the first great English dramatist, unlike Shakespeare university-educated (at Cambridge), who used blank verse as his standard line. His play tells how Faustus sells his soul to the devil in the form of Mephistopheles in return for 24 years of indulging every whim. His most famous fancy is to have Helen of Troy as his paramour, greeting her apparition with "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?", a line soon followed by: "Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss."

Here is an opportunity to treat yourself and your impressionable young to two classic works, one of which shows that the struggle against dirt and poverty was once a real terror for white people living out of cardboard boxes in sub-economic housing; while the other questions whether the soul is the essence of the human spirit, or merely a possession, on a par with other possessions, to be bartered for personal gain.

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