In this edition Robert discusses the deep roots of the British Drama School in the French avant garde and wonders does the modern drama school start under the dome of His Majesty's Theatre or on the left bank of Paris in the Theatre du Vieux Colombier ?
In this edition Robert discusses the deep roots of the British Drama School in the French avant garde and wonders does the modern drama school start under the dome of His Majesty's Theatre or on the left bank of Paris in the Theatre du Vieux Colombier ?
Robert Price 0:00
Hello, and welcome to the history of actor training. In the British drama school, this is the first edition of the new year, I've got a few interviews in the in the oven. Soon a recording I'm going to make of an interview with with Stephen Macht, who wrote a very interesting and important PhD about the history of Lamda towards the end of the 1960s. So those will be coming out soon, today's going to be a solo podcast. And I'd like to look at the middle of the 20th century. So we've spoken a little bit about Fanny Kelly and her drama school of 1840. And hoping to talk to Phil Edgeley about a school in Brighton, which is being set up right now. So this is a it's an ongoing history that the history of the drama school and the history of its tradition. And the way that tradition is in a dynamic relationship with innovation is, of course, the story. That's The Story. So today, I'd like to spend some time looking at the two drama schools that were set up either side of the Second World War. So it's that time when we need to talk about Michel Saint Denis. I suppose to set off I should say that when I started researching the drama school a few years ago, and I was working in places that had pictures of the Queen up in there up in there sort of corridors or the entrance to Rada, the drama school office at Lamda, both of them have pictures of the Queen and a few other Royals up. So one thinks of the British drama school as being very much an establishment institution. And it is that there's something to that, of course, if you stick royal in something in front of something, then then that's fair enough. So imagine my surprise as I started to understand quite how profoundly the British drama school is French and I still wonder how many people quite realise that that the major influence or one of the few major influences on the British Drama School was a man called Michel Saint Denis, and Michel Saint Denis was the nephew of a man called Jacque Copeau. And Jacque Copeau was a collaborator of a woman called Susanne Bing. So when in a British drama school, you're doing improvisation or when you're doing animal studies. Or when you're doing mask work. The reason why you're doing that work, at least in a in a traceable simple line of transmission is to do with the collaboration between Jacque Copeau and the actress and teacher and and innovator, Susanne Bing there working in France and America and then back in France, bits of the early part of the 20th century, and up until sort of moving towards Second World War. And the fact that their nephew, Michel Saint Denis, brought those innovations to Britain. So, how to tell the story? Well, I guess to begin with, I'm going to read you something which has a certain poetic poignancy. It's a document that I found at Lamda in a cupboard I was in one morning going to do my Alexander Technique and I was looking for books and they're often sort of books laying around in the cupboards at lamda. And I found this copy of a play called Noah by Andre Obey I'm not sure how to pronounce name with its obey or obey or Obi. Anyway, Andre Obey. And this play script was an addition from the 1930s. And it contained in it an introduction by Michel Saint Denis, because this production of Noah was the key production that cemented Saint Denis' reputation in London. And in the introduction, there's a description of the work that Michel Saint Denis had been doing with his actors in the French countryside that led to this incredibly successful production which is an equivalent, I suppose, of the trip of the Moscow arts theatres in New York in the 1920s. So, so Saint Denis' Productions at the beginning of the 1930s, the early 1930s sort of are an equivalent earthquake in the British theatre to Stanislavski his productions which go to New York in the 1920s and kickoff the whole method acting system methodology, myth, mythology with Also eventually comes back to or comes to Britain after the Second World War with the setting up of the drama centre.
So so actually before we before I tell you about what was going on in the French countryside with Saint Denis, because the description will be really helpful for us to understand something of how curious it was this, this person with this practice became one of the most important figures in the establishment of the British drama school. But before that, I'd actually like to tell you something a little bit more about Jacque Copeau. And I thought I might read for you something from a conversation with George Hall. George Hall is still teaching, I think, or certainly was until very recently at the Guild Hall, and occasionally used to come into Rada when I taught there. So I met George Hall, I've seen him teach and he must have been well into his 80s when I saw him teach, and now I believe he's into his 90s. But he was a student at Michel Saint Denis' Old Vic School, which I'm going to tell you about in a little while, just after the Second World War. So to George Hall had a very direct line into this tradition. And in a series - in a conversation he had with in a book called an untidy career - I think an untidy career actually was something that Saint Denis said to him...anyway, and untidy career conversations with George Hall, written by lolly Susie, George Hall, who's sort of telling his story gives this really good description of Copeau and what he was up to. So I'm going to read you this description of Jaque Copeau, a man who, in a way, is one of the sources for the modern British drama school and I am talking about things that were all over a timetable a year ago. So if we go back to March the 13th, the day before COVID, sort of broke up teaching at Lamda, you would still have been doing things that that that are completely related to this story. So George Hall explains 'Copeau was very much a force in the French theatre during the early part of the 20th century, he had been disillusioned by what was on offer in Paris, mostly either empty Boulevard comedies done with great passion and skill, but saying nothing'. This passion and skill, I think is what Copeau - This is me - what Copeau would call capital Cabitonage. Cabitonage are sort of what equivalent to what Stanislavski might call stock in trade, what we might call tricks, or we might call in a way ham. But saying nothing, or plays down in the very dead tradition of the Comedie Francaise, where if you took over a part that someone else had paid for 20 years, your excellence was measured by how indistinguishable it was from the previous performer. So in 1913, this is a key date for us in 1913 Copeau opened his own Theatre on the left bank that Theatre du Vieux Columbier, and he worked as an actor, playwright and translator, that Theatre du Vieux Columbier is still still exists. And I believe I'm right in saying is now a part of the Comedie Francaise so after lockdown, we could all go to Paris and we could sit in the Teatre du Vieux Columbier and watch a show and we would be sitting in a building which is as crucial a part of the of the story of the British drama school as Elsie Fogarty's Royal Albert Hall or Fanny Kelly's house on Dean Street, or Sarah Thorne's theatre at Margate or indeed, the dome of His Majesty's where Beerbohm Tree started the Academy of Dramatic Art or indeed, Rada's premises on Gower streets which have been there for a long time. But the Theatre Du Vieux Columbier is as significant and maybe even more significant in terms of how teaching actually takes place. Back to George Hall. Then for the duration of World War Copeau close the theatre and went to New York, doing loads of plays quite a curious part of the story. And George Hill doesn't talk about this but Susanne Bing who we're going to talk about more in further podcasts, went with Copeau and did huge amounts of work. She was an actor and a teacher. And I know there's a connection into into schools working with children and even the Montessori system in New York, but I'm going to we're going to find a way to tell the story of Susanne being soon because it's really important. Susanne Bing I think it's fair to say was written out of the history, and now she's being written back. Anyway, so remember that name Susanne Bing.
Back to George Hall. When he returned in 1920. His nephew Michel joined the company as a Stage Manager and assistant in 1924 with a company of 30 actors. The Copieus, Copeau went to Burgundy to establish an acting school. He really set out to train actors for a new kind of theatre. He focused on physical work, music and mime and he devised exercises for actors to study and recreate the movements of animals. So I hope this is making some kind of a sense. So the theatre that...oh and Copeau had been a critic he wasn't he wasn't an actor. He wasn't a director, he wasn't a writer, he was a public intellectual and theatre critic who had a very particular formed a very particular project and then carried it out with huge success. And Copeau is a major major figure in in world theatre. He started off doing productions of classical plays. So the first things they did in an innovative way, were productions of plays by Shakespeare and Moliere - famously a 12th night which I think was was really important in the history of Copeau's theatre, with Susanne Bing as as Viola and then he decided he had to do something else. So this is where the work becomes very physical and very rooted in in commedia dell'arte, but but Copeau was not part of a folk tradition. He was making it up. In fact, they were all making it up. There were there were traditions in France, there was a tradition of the Comedie Francaise. There was this traditional Boulevard theatre, but what they're looking for is a new and innovative kind of theatre. And so this is again this is the it within the DNA of the British drama school is a search for something radical is the avant garde, not not the establishment or not just the establishment.
Five years later Copeau disbanded the Copiaus, and returned to Paris, oddly enough to run the Comedie Francaise. And with part of the remaining group, Michel founded a successor company, the Compagnie des Quinze, the company of 15, I think because they had three kind of old pros and 12 young people at the beginning. They worked on voice and continued work on movements, mime masks, and animal study. They had always developed their own scripts, but Copeau introduced Michel to the playwright, Andre obey, who joined the company and helped to shape productions into a more dramatic form. It was this collaboration that created Noe or Noah when Noah and the other player in the repertoire, La Viol de Lucrece came to the arts Theatre Club in 1931. They were a sensation. So this is the arts theatre that's still in the West End. George Hall says I once asked Peggy Ashcroft about the reaction to the first night of Noah, and she told me they were overcome by the physicality and by the singing by the wonderful diction and use of language and by the totally original staging. Michel cast a spell with that play. Olivier and Gielgud went mad over the company de Quinze because also people like Charles Laughton and Tyrone Guthrie. Peggy Ashcroft has mentioned major players in British theatre were blown away by this production. The actor Marius Goring had worked with Michel in burgundy so introduced him to a group of people who used to meet at The Motley studio, and Michel became very friendly with them all. And then he goes on to talk about Motley. So Motley are going to be a really important part of this story. The Motley were a group of three designers to two sisters, and a third person. And their work continues to have an effect on the British, well, British theatre up until I think about 2010 when their design course finally closed, I had a friend in Ireland, Johanna Connor, who was an artist and became interested in design, who went and studied on the on the Motley design course. Anyway, this is George Hall : well Motley were as a three person design team, two sisters, Margaret Harris, who was always called Percy and Sophie Harris, who married George Devine - George Devine who's going to really be set up to the Royal Court is George Devine, and their art school friend, Elizabeth Montgomery. They first made themselves known to john Gielgud in the 1930s by standing at the stage door and shyly giving him sketches of himself. Isnt that a brilliant story. From that Gielgud, who had an extremely keen visual sense started to use them as designers, Percy and Elizabeth went to Hollywood during the war, and Elizabeth stayed there, but anything that any of the three of them did was always credited as by Motley. That's what Motley means there's those three women design theatre designers, set designers costume, the whole thing.
The Motleys also teach at the London theatre studio that Michel Saint Denis is going to is going to set up the first course of its kind, but we'll we'll find out about that in a second. studio in the 1930s was in a small lane in the West End opposite the Coward theatre. It had been the workshop of the 18th century cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale. And they learned that Chippendale had liked actors dropping in for a drink or cup a drink or a cup of chocolate. So they began to serve afternoon teas on a big scale. actors, directors, designers, artists of all types would drop in and it became a great social centre, a gathering place for the theatrical establishment that was unhappy with the West End, and particularly not happy with the well meant but hideous looking productions that have been going on at the Old Vic in the 1930s, where if a director spent 15 shillings on a production the theatre owner Lilian Baylis had a heart attack. I think Lilian Baylis eventually did have a heart attack over Saint Denis' production of Macbeth But anyway, they thought theatre had to become more tempting. These afternoon teas you could find people like Peggy Ashcroft, Edith Evans, imagine john Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, Percy Harris once told me that in 1930, whatever, they spent five pounds a week on tea and cakes in those days, amazing hospitality. So when the company de Quinze was such a success, Michel was called into that ambience, Michel was called into that ambience. Anyway, so maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves, but that's the relationship between Jaque Copeau and Suzanne Bing and MSD and this this key production of Noah, which arrives at the arts Theatre in the 1930s to a theatre community which is full of brilliant men and women hungry for some kind of an Art Theatre, which is an equivalent of what's going on in Russia going on in, in France they're profoundly dissatisfied. It's worth realising that when MSD sets up the London theatre studio in 1935. That's only 30 years after the foundation of Rada, which feels like - it is - a very Edwardian almost Victorian kind of an event. That's only 30 years. So if we go back now that's 1990 that's when I was working as a as an actor in in Ireland, it doesn't feel that long ago. To me when I was busking on Grafton Street that that feels well within within now. I mean, I guess that's just because I'm getting old. But anyway, so. So the the theatre culture that they're rebelling against is a sort of a developed Edwardian one, and then they're not happy. So they're looking for innovators. various people had had tried and Gielgud and Olivier all that crowd. We're also associated with the Russian Theodore Komisarjevski but for some reason, Komis suggests getting even Michael Chekhov, of course, it comes to England or comes around this time, never has the effect that MSD has and has why that is, I think is complicated. But anyway, so let me just read you this, I think rather rather gorgeous introduction to Noah. So this is a book written in the 1930s. When the company did well, when when MSD had attempted to mount a production of Noah, starring john Gielgud with people like Alec Guinness in the cast in the West End, but working quickly in a way that was generally deemed to be a failure. So they put on a sort of a standard production of a play, which came from this deep experimentation and process. But I'd like to read you MSD description. This I think was written before he'd actually set up the schools. So this is when he's very much a newcomer in London. I'm not sure I finished the story that I found this book, in a cupboard in LAMDA. And when I opened up the front, it said, Lamda library: discard. So this was chucked out of the Lamda library by somebody who didn't realise that within it was this sort of seed - this kernel of the story that would become schools like Lamda because Lamda was was avowedly set up to be in a relationship with the schools of MSD, which are in a relationship with the story I'm about to tell you, which was in a direct relationship with the innovative work of Jacque Copeau and Suzanne Bing so anyway, just to try and understand where we come from. So he talks about in the introduction NOah, something he talks about the kind of company that Obey found.
Obey was working for a definite company of actors with whom whom he had seen playing in Lyon, and who would become the company de Quinze. This company was composed of three experienced actors and a dozen or so young people who have Nine years have been working together before performing in the villages of Burgundy. And in large towns, both in France and abroad. What kind of training had these young people received, what kind of plays formed their repertoire? They had served, so to speak as subjects for an experiment by that great producer, who, since 1913, had been bringing fresh ideas to the French theatre, Jacque Copeau. It was he who would endued them with a thirst for inventing new things, and with a sincerity which found itself ill at ease in the French theatre at that time. Turning his back on the theatre of the rationalists of the psychologists who would made the stage either into a platform for discussing political, social, and even medical problems or into a laboratory for the study of special cases. Copeau had begun by putting a company of professional actors through the classical school, laying particular stress on Moliere and Shakespeare. But he soon discovered that classical discipline alone was not enough to break experienced actors of their conventional habits. So he tried out new methods on a group of young people, which he's specially picked out for the purpose. It was not now a question of instruction, but rather of a search for the truth. In which master and pupils shared, in which the pupils away from the influence of their master, were one day to pursue even farther than he had - I can't help reading that thinking about the conversation I had with Edward. He was talking about his his hopes for the Oxford School of Drama, which sounds remarkably like this. In fact, this sounds like what what sometimes called constructivist pedagogy. Now, of course, what Copeau says and what MSD says and what it was like being with them may be very different things. I don't I don't know. But certainly this idea of of experimenting and creating meaning and collaboration with students is very much what we think is of a as a modern approach to teaching. Although, as I say, that may or may not have been the way that it happened, it is important, I think, just to register at this point, that Copeau always wanted to teach. So right at the heart of his practice, and MSD's, of course, was this idea that in order to create a new theatre, a radical theatre, an important theatre, you need to train you need to train people, you need to train people for it. So they were teachers from the very beginning, along with Suzanne Bing who actually had the skills and the ideas and the knowledge I think. Back to the book: the most important thing was to find out what attitude what imaginative and physical training were needed to enable a group of actors to invent a simple dramatic sequence and to bring it into life on the stage. Without having a text set down for them. The stage must be given back to the actors and to their guides the producer, so that together, they can find ways of portraying life by actions, the force and significance of gesture and a voice must be realised by the actors. While the dramatic action must get back its rhythm, its musical and choreographic quality. The author would be barred from this experimental stage until such time when the research team having forged the methods to bring their ideas to reality had given shows who style would perhaps incite some writer to join the group and to work in strict collaboration with it. Right in the country. In a tiny village of Burgundy, the Chosen Company retired to put their dangerous ideas into practice. After four years of preparatory work in Paris. We're about to go and and spend some time then with with these experimenters, deep in the countryside trying to invent a new theatre. This is fantastic stuff. Every morning, beginning at nine o'clock in a big open shed which have been used for making wine, one could see a dozen young people busy at gym fencing and acrobatics. An hour later, rehearsals began under the direction of one of the group, the actors prepared a mime on a given theme for example, inspired by memories of 1914 they would show a French village quiet and prosperous, where the daily round of activities would be going on. suddenly comes a noise followed by an alarm bell, the beating of drums declaration of war, men at the front,
the ups and downs with the battle women doing men's work, the war nearly lost the final effort and victory. The joys of the armistice, then the return of the survivors to their families. It sounds great. This sounds a bit like the stuff that that Alan Stanford said he was doing at the Guildhall in the 1960s no surprise because the influence of Saint Denis was was huge at that At that point, so, so yes, so so MSD explains: This young company which I was a member was trying to find the means of representing dramatically a vast theme of this kind, relying entirely on mime rhythm, noises and music. At first the country people regarded as with suspicion. But as we accompanied our experimenting with regular visits to the villages, giving performances of the players of La Fontaine and Moliere and some of the old farces. We were soon known throughout the district, and accepted by everybody. One day in 1927, just a few years really before he comes to to Britain, we were asked by the authorities of Nuit Saint George, to organise a show to celebrate the end of the wine harvest, and the safe gathering end of the crops. We decided to put our experiments to the test in front of an audience, we would act by mime dancing and singing by monologue and dialogue, the life of the men of the vineyard: the vingeron from the beginning of spring to the first approach of winter. In particular, we mimed their work, for we had studied it in minute detail. At times, our mime would be accompanied by a song, or it would take on such a strong rhythm, that we could only express it with a dance. We had one very strict rule, never to resort to gestures or movements of which the meaning was not absolutely clear. Neither the action nor the words ever became abstract. From time to time, to break the monotony of the general effects, we would introduce a love scene or perhaps a character would talk directly to the audience, vigneron would tell it the crop or the joys and tribulations of his trade. We gave this show to 2000 vignerons, both owners and labourers for two hours, we felt completely at one with the spectators who told us that they would never have believed that their daily toil could be so enjoyable to watch. And yet, they kept repeating. But that's exactly as it is. That's just what does happen! This may give you some idea of the company, which Obey was to meet two years later, he found 15 actors whose four years training and five years practical experience had moulded to that type of acting, which did not lend itself easily to complex psychology, but which was able to animate a broadly treated general theme, we were actors capable of showing life rather than explaining it, relying more on sound and physical movement than on talking, used to singing and dancing, able to build up from choral work to the invention of simple, clearly defined characters. Admittedly, we had two or three experienced actors with us - including Suzanne Bing but our principal virtue lay and our concerted strength. We were a team whose members were used to acting together as they were used to living together, we were in fact a chorus wonderfully united and trained.
So that's MSD experience that the final stages of, of the French tradition of Copeau directly passed on to his nephew, and that's the the MSD, that brings it this show to the Art theatre in 1931. And then through to 1934. They keep coming back they're hugely successful and then again, I think the history is complicated but but MSD he essentially can't can't fund things that they're not successful in the same way in France. They're loved in England. And so partly because of those conversations with with Motley with with Gielgud, with Charles Laughton with Tyrone Guthrie, etc, etc. MSD is persuaded to move to England. He sets up this school, the London theatre studio in Islington. I'm going to do a whole podcast about the LTS at some point. And then agonisingly in the middle of a production of the Cherry Orchard. The second world war breaks out and Saint Denis immediately goes back to France to fight. He's evacuated at Dunkirk he comes back to London he works as a broadcaster under a
different name. I haven't got my fingertips on - Jacque something and does that all the way during the Second World War. And then on the other side of the second world war after the war has been won. He sets up the Old Vic school with Glen Byam Shaw and George Devine amongst other people. And the Old Vic school is this a second attempt to form a drama school in London. The Old Vic school is is is successful in many many important teachers, Liz Pisk, Norman Ayrton, who becomes to be part of the Lamda story and eventually BADA as well. John Blatchley, who's going to be a big part of the drama centre story, and lots of other people Yanni Strassa a singing teacher lots and lots of people work at the Old Vic school and eventually go - oh George Hall of course is there as a student - go off and become part of the post war generation of acting teachers, drama school administrators, and people like George Devine end up being hugely important in terms of the theatre itself. So that's the story of of MSD In the British drama school. The Old Vic school closes, there's a sort of a coup or a conspiracy perhaps because the school doesn't continue for very long. And after that, Michel SD sets up a school in Strasburg, another one in Canada. And eventually towards the end of his life, he is asked to talk to Juilliard. So he ends up being the person that that starts to set up the drama division at Juilliard. That's where we're going to go now. So I'm going to read you mostly this podcast, I'm going to read you a fairly long lecture that Michel SD gave in 1958. So, as he puts it, in the preface to this book, so this book is called Theatre the Rediscovery of Style by MSD. It's the only book that was published about Theatre in his lifetime. There is a later book a really fascinating big book published by his widow, Suria Magito I'm not sure how to pronounce her name. But Suria publishes a collection of writings posthumously, but this book was published within his life. This idea of style, by the way, as I'm sure many of you will know, is a is a kind of key idea of MSD. And it's not easy to pin down exactly what he means by it, there are some useful clues in this this fifth lecture. But anyway, so MSD says: I gave the five informal lectures which comprise this book soon after my arrival in the United States. In March 1958. It was my first visit. I have been invited to America as consultants to the Juilliard School of Music following upon the completion of an inquiry about theatre training conducted in Europe and the United States by the Rockefeller Foundation. The Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts was being planned and the Juilliard School of Music had agreed to establish a progressive institution for advanced training in theatre arts. So that's going to become Juilliard. So it's maybe just worth mentioning that this curious line from Jacque Copeau in the Teatre du Vieux Colombier into schools like Lamda and the Bristol Old Vic and Central and the Drama Centre also extends into the American Academy through the influence on Juilliard, which I don't know much about American drama, but I would imagine Juilliard had an effect on on other schools, too. So this is also the story in a way of American Theatre training. I think the essay is, is important, and I think it's illuminating. And I'd like to read the whole essay to you with little steps to the side. I think I'll do it in two parts, because it is quite substantial. So this then is part one of SD. Part One of Saint Denis' essay, 'Training for the theatre'. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this essay for me is how much within it, I recognise things that are going on at Rada and Lamda and East 15. and Arts Ed when I began working in those schools, in the beginning of the 21st century, and I always wondered where they came from, I think I assumed they came out of some kind of Victorian tradition. I think that's the impression that those schools give and of course, Lamda, for instance, likes to talk about how it's founded in 1862. But actually, I think this is where they they come from, it's French. The English drama school is basically French, or a sort of love child, which somebody else said, between Elsie Fogarty and Michel Saint Denis. Theatre schools. This is MSD :
Theatre schools seems to provoke many people, particularly theatre people to hostility, nothing...that's still true... They do... They say that schools are dangerous, either because they are conventional and academic, perpetuating lifeless traditions, or because they are aggressively non conforming, and so become narrow, sectarian and theoretical, if not hysterical. And I will readily agree the geniuses and various romantic artists are better off without training in any school at all. So his definition is between conventional or non conforming, I suppose, between what we might think of as being The Rada of the 1960s and what we might think of as the drama centre of the 1960s. Anyway, it is my hope, however, that schools of the kind I have promoted may contribute to solving some of the problems which the theatre of our time has got to face having no definite style of its own. It wavers continually between a powerful classical tradition and the remarkable achievement of modern realism, which is still in the process of full evolution. Like Louis Jouvet, and Charles Dullin, I belong to the school of Copeau I have seen the work of Dullin's school where Jean Louis Barrault and Jean Villar were trained. These two schools, Copeaus' and Dullin's were both of the non conforming kind. I have established and directed three non conforming schools myself, the London theatre Studio 1935 to 1939. The Old Vic school 1946 to 1952, Prunella Scales went to the Old Vic school, by the way, Peter Ustinov went to the London theatre studio. So if you watch Ustinov or Prunella Scales, pretty good actors, you may have some idea about what was going on. And L'ecole superior arts dramatic in Strasburg, which I opened in 1954, I think that one's still going actually I think it is. The two English schools were closed down. But at present there are three schools in England which claim to follow more or less closely the basic principles of our teaching. I think that's probably the Lamda of Michael MacOwen. The Central School, perhaps, and then the Bristol Old Vic, so I suspect that's what he means. Maybe the Guildhall I'm not sure. He doesn't say the Strasburg school which was directed by my wife Suria Magito goes on. it suffers from fewer pressures than the other two did. Strasburg may be the capital of Europe, but it is all the same, a little out of the way. He doesn't say much more than that. There's something a little bit ironic there isn't there. He's suggesting that the problems were not to do with the schools themselves, but to do with London. I think that's what he's saying, or the establishment. I have chosen to speak to you about the Old Vic school because it bears a glorious name, which has always had great popular appeal. It was also the most complete, it included, among its staff, some of the best people I had met in the English theatre. I had the exclusive service of men like my old friends, George Devine, and Glen Byam Shaw. We used to teach in the school, all three of us. These three schools did not exist for their own sake, they had a common purpose. By training people in all branches of the theatre, they sought to further the evolution of Dramatic Art, concerning ourselves with all the means of expression, which are characteristic of our time, we based our teaching on classical disciplines. Our aim, however, was always to enrich the modern theatre.
And there you go. That's the curious thing about the drama school tradition. It was rooted in classical texts and classical training, but its aim is to enrich the modern theatre. And that's complicated. I'm not sure that's how these things that were seen. Anyway, the practical purpose of the three schools was emphasised by the fact that the first one, which was called the London theatre studio, attempted to establish a new company of actors. Its members took part in the principal productions I did before the war, both of the Old Vic and in the West End, its most recent outcome has been the foundation under George Devine of the English Stage Company, which is modern, both in repertory and attitude. That's the that's the Royal Court. Really, it is also significant that Glen Byam Shaw, directed the Stratford Memorial theatre for four years. Okay, so that those are that's the gang. What were the main features of those three schools. An ensemblier, according to the dictionary is an artist who aims at Unity of general effect. We were ensembliers, we set out to develop initiative, freedom and a sense of responsibility in the individual, as long as he or she was ready and able to merge their personal qualities into the ensemble.
Ensemble, by the way, is an interesting term. I think it's used a lot misunderstood. Perhaps there was a very... Lamda has always gone on about its ensemble ethos, that's a big part of its idea of itself. And that I think, may even come from this this time or this route. But in recent years, there was an interesting evolution of the term which started to blend into something like health and safety and something like a safe space policy, both of which are important things, but aren't quite the same thing as an ensemble...idea, although I understand that that without a safe space perhaps ensemble becomes impossible. Anyway, there we go. So ensemble: our students were as limited as possible in numbers we never worked from or towards a system. Looking at the classics from a modern point of view, we realise that artistic development is a very complex process. No kidding. Every summer we revised and corrected our ways of working in close consultation with the staff, and the more talented of the students who were leaving the school. In order to create by degrees and alive and complete theatrical organisation, we found a way of making our staff and students realise the need to keep a creative attitude towards their work. First of all, we encouraged invention and imagination. The school was always partly experimental, but to avoid conceit and extravagance, we maintain that our chief practical purpose was wholly, and above all, to serve interpretation. And that in dealing with an important play, it was healthy to consider the author as the only completely creative person, director, designer and actor had to understand the author's intention and submit to it. This, again is is is something to do with this idea of, of style. Actually, this idea that it comes from the author that all that and it's complicated, isn't it, because although the way that these actors, the way these schools work, via experimentation, via improvisation, via the use of masks, all of that work is nonetheless leading to this idea that you interpret an author's text an idea that that, of course, is also a part of, say, some Russian traditions. I remember hearing the great Russian theatre director,Anatoli Vassiliev saying very similar things about his discipline that he'd been taught to treat the the author as the primary creator, I remember him on saying, Look at what I'm looking at, and Russian directors often have the text in front of them directly in front of them. so fascinating stuff. And our courses were divided between acting and technical courses. The technical courses of course, run by Motley, run by those those three women. To this young group, we try to add another one open to young actors already trained and in the profession. In the technical courses, the age limit was much higher so that that other group that's going to become the sort of the the MA course the one year or the two year training. We chose the modest description technical, so as to emphasise that we wanted concrete and even manual experience to come before the discussion of theoretical or aesthetic ideas. We applied certain other basic principles in order that technique should never be allowed to dominate and supersede invention and interfere with what is called truth. But we impressed on everybody that there was no possibility of expressing truth, especially truth to a theatrical style, without a strongly developed technique. It has always been my experience that I do my best work in the theatre with stars working within a permanent company. In the school, however, it was not our purpose to obtain quick results, and to create stars at the expense of the students normal development, we will content to leave the cultivation of stars to hard work, good luck and time. Another of our main preoccupations was to provide the outgoing students with good professional opportunities, while at the same time refusing to consider ourselves as a machine through which students were obliged to pass if they wanted to emerge with the security of a job. mmm interesting balance. So yeah. For the students' interpretive work, we like to use whole plays or acts rather than isolated scenes. So they would learn to consider their relationship with the other actors, and the relative values of the different parts of the play. For detailed work on language, and textual style, we used scenes from plays only in exceptional circumstances. Again, ideas that are still familiar to me, I hear people making these arguments to this day, maybe from their own initiative, maybe because they're related. We are all related to this. This moment.
The students worked mostly in groups, each group being like a small company composed of boys and girls in equal numbers. That's kind of interesting to me, because I know when I went to lamda, for instance, it was about two thirds men and one third women, partly because of the demands of the classical repertoire was what was always said - that was changed quite recently, maybe within the past seven years, something like that. Each group preserved his identity from year to year. How long was the course? In England the beginners acting course lasted for two years only. In Strasbourg, I succeeded in organising the acting course on a three year basis, the grants given to the Strasburg course by the state and the local authority was much more considerable than in England. experience has shown me that three years is the minimum time for a successful course in acting. This is really interesting, mainly because of the lengthy nature of the work that has to be done on the voice and on the practice of language in various styles. May I mentioned that in Russia, the length of the acting course is four years. So this question of voice and body and acting technique is something that something he talks about a lot in other places, and they find it hard to get right. It's the most tricky thing. So by the time he arrives in England, that they're pretty good at training and training physicality training bodies, but the the the synthesis of that with the voices is difficult, and it is difficult. So again, I find that really fascinating that the reason why you need to three years according to Saint Denis, and in 1958, is because of the difficulty of working with the voice, and language. The technical courses were arranged on a one year basis, the necessary time to train a good assistant stage manager. And to select from the course the few students to be admitted into an advanced course were would be directors and designers worked in couples for one or two years more. They could then pursue their apprenticeship by becoming assistant instructors in the school or stage managers and stage directors with the small companies which were formed from the best students after they had left the school. In Russia the length of study for direction or design is five years. We planned continual contact between the various courses which proved to be of great advantage to the development and unity of the school as a whole... Still, something that comes up often in student feedback for drama schools, is the is the complaint that the different parts of the courses are too separate or that's that's a thing that happens sometimes. Anyway: every year, the training culminated in public performances. In London, we used to give two completely different shows so that we could include as great a variety of styles as possible and give plenty of opportunities to the actors. We gave one act plays or an act out of a full length play. At the end of the second show, we always gave an experimental work often composed by a writer on our staff. We experimented a great deal with the relationship between music, the spoken word and choral expression. Just Just because we're getting deep into this is the Old Vic school. So this is the the second incarnation of Saint Denis' school. I think the LTS was was quite different. In this way we gave works as varied as Offenbach's, La Vie Parisienne and Fortunio, Kurt Wiel's Down in the Valley and an adaptation of The Great Finnish legend Kalevala which tells you the creation of the world as it related in Finnish folklore. I remember once doing a creation myth project, rather funny, isn't it? These things. In London we gave these end of course shows for fortnight's to paying audiences. The shows were run entirely by the students from the box office to the switchboard. They were directed by the instructors with the help of their assistants, costumes and scenery were designed and made by the students of the advanced technical course. Students in the first year acting course took part in the manual preparation of the show. We thought it would not be beneath their dignity as artists to spend a short part of their course doing something with their hands, a little bit of edginess there from MSD. MSD by the way, had a reputation for being pretty bleeding edgy. So.
So a character who I would still hear people talk about when I started working in theatre, as somebody who a lot of people didn't like - so I'm not suggesting he was some kind of a Saint, just that he was a very important figure. In Strasburg, we gave a single performance of a single show in our theatre, and then took it on tour for three weeks contact with different audiences and a nightly change of location. To familiarise young actors with theatrical conditions of the hardest kind better than any other way I had devised. In fact, the students had already begun to make contact with the public at the beginning of their second year, when they were called upon to transfer their feelings for truth and concentration from private work in the classroom to public performances with or without the fourth wall. So we're about to go a bit more deeply into the training. I'll read you the first part of this and then we'll take a break for a week. I'm afraid that I still have not reached the essential part of this talk, the very nature of the training. If I'm spending a lot of time in the monotonous enumeration of the basic conditions on which our work was established, it's because these very conditions are essential to bring about the happy freedom and the strong discipline which are necessary for creative work in the theatre. Happy freedom and strong discipline. The day's work began at nine o'clock and ended at five or six. On Saturdays it ended at one o'clock. During hectic rehearsal periods, it continued into the evening. Until the end of the first term, both sides were on trial, we and the students were trying each other out. After three months, we were free to part from each other. From then on, we were contracted to each other for the remainder of the course, though we reserved the opportunity of eliminating people at the end of each year for bad work, or lack of discipline. Work outside the school was forbidden, except with the authorization of the director - still a thing with drama schools, often, many of them, you're not allowed to work outside of the school. I remember one actor, actress who's really quite successful now, getting into real trouble at a school I worked at, for doing a gig outside of the school. Also really interesting, this idea of throwing people out something that doesn't happen anymore, it's very hard to get rid of students. Even if they did, they've been very ill disciplined or lack of work. Students when I started teaching in the drama school are often quite nervous that they would be and I think that was a hangover from a time fairly close to that when, when they were. So the drama centre notoriously also East 15 would quite often get rid of students at the end of the year at drama centre, but it sounds like at East 15 it was a more...It was a more sort of spontaneous thing. Margaret Walker, would occasionally throw people out. There's a story I've heard that she once got rid of most of a cohort, and then had to make lots of staff...well fire them...suspend their work because there weren't enough students to justify their teaching or indeed pay their wages: a different world. At the Old Vic school, we received between four and 500 applications a year - now it's three or 4000 for the big schools - We took 35 students in the acting course and 20 in the technical course, it's quite close to the numbers now. I know in the early days of Rada, for instance, and into the 50s and 60s and 70s even - the drama schools had way more students. So this is interesting: 35. Admission to the acting course depended upon two auditions and an interview. Often that way now although Rada has four. Admission to the technical courses depended for would be Directors on the written production of a single act from a classical play. For designers on the designing of a limited number of sets and costumes for a play of the same kind. Designers are also obliged to show all their past work in painting, drawing, sculpture, etc. Scholarships. In France tuition at the official schools is free - still is I was talking to somebody just a few weeks ago. That is the rule. If necessary, maintenance grants are awarded by the state or the local authority. In England, everybody pays a fee, at the Old Vic school however, two thirds of our students were on scholarships. The tuition fees were paid by the educational authorities directly to the school so that our budget, even if it did not break even could be kept under control, maintenance scholarships, the amount of which depended on the needs of the students family were paid directly to the students. It is important to point out that this excellent system was brought about in England by what has been called the 'silent revolution'. Talking about the welfare state the labour government... I'm not sure what he means there. Anyway.
It changed completely the kind of students we received and consequently the spirit of the school - owing to the popular appeal of the Old Vic, we had young people coming to our school from all over the country, the Commonwealth and the United States, very often with local accents, full of flavour, which we welcomed, when they were not too strong. The school of the kind we were trying to build cannot be a money making proposition. It should be in a position to limit entry into an overcrowded profession to talented people. The Old Vic school received a grant of 4500 pounds a year, though generous this was inadequate. I have reached the heart of my subject, the nature of the training itself, its purpose, its content, its ways and means. Our purpose was twofold. One: to bring reality to the interpretation of all theatrical styles, particularly the classical and to achieve the greatest possible freedom in their practice. Two: to enlarge the actor's field of expression, and to equip him in such a way that he could mime, sing, dance, perform acrobatic tricks without specialising beyond the normal requirements of an acto. In explaining how we try to carry out this program I shall limit myself to the acting courses omitting the technical courses, however important I consider them to be. In the same way, I shall have time to describe only the main aspects of the training omitting many details of the curriculum. On the very first day...so we're about to get into the very first day of training / teaching at the Old Vic school. I think I'll make that the second part of this podcast so So that's some sort of an introduction to Michel Saint Denis. Jacque Copeau, Suzanne Bing and the work of the London theatre studio. And the Old Vic school either side of the Second World War, which are going to have such a huge impact on on the British drama school. So much so that their presence is still there, inside the curriculum itself.
So I hope that was useful or something along those lines. If you're enjoying the podcast, by all means, drop me a line, I'd love to hear from people: robertprice1869@gmail.com. If you really like the podcast, you may consider supporting it. There's a support button on the buzzsprout site and on the bottom of the apple thing. So that would be wonderful. I'd appreciate any any support you might feel like offering. Finally, it's the beginning of New Year. We're going into clearly into another lockdown. It's it's not going well. But I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure the 2021 is going to get there. So I hope you're safe and I hope you stay safe. And I hope I'll see some of you maybe even for a pint somewhere in the summer or in the spring. Yeah. Well thank you very much for listening to this podcast. Take care. Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai