The program for spouses at last December's meeting allowed participants to delve into the creative processes of the theater. The primary speaker was Lucina Taquet, a professional actor, director, and professor of dramatic arts. She set the tone for the program by stressing the collaborative aspects of theater. Citing the three Steppenwolf productions of the stage adaptation of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Taquet described the integration of the roles of writer, director, actors, and technicians that issues in a successful production. Deftly combining her observations of other actors with her own experience acting in the three productions, she took the audience through each step of the process.
That, of course, begins with the playwright, who works alone. But plays are not written; they are rewritten. As the play goes into production, the playwright must rework the script, at times sacrificing elements — occasionally entire scenes — to which their creator is deeply attached. The director blends the work of all the participants, while the technicians work for the most part in the background. Their shining hour arrives in the week before the play opens, when the production “works” owing to their expert coordination of lighting, props, sound effects, and set and wardrobe changes with the work of the actors.
Taquet demonstrated in great detail how cast and crew contribute to the whole by focusing on their individual roles while always placing the needs of the production before personal needs. This was best elaborated when Taquet described the play's acting ensemble. Without standing out from the group, each actor was to stay in character while contributing to the overall effect. This approach, the philosophy of the director, happened to coincide with one of the main themes of The Grapes of Wrath — that we are each part of a greater whole. When a video version of the play was made, cameras focused on the actors from four different angles, at times catching an actor unawares, yet no one was caught by the camera out of character, and the overall ensemble effect was never lost.
The theme of collaboration in theater was continued by the two psychoanalytic discussants on the panel, Glen Gabbard (Lucina Taquet's son) and Eric Nuetzel. Each of the discussants has been involved in theater. Gabbard described the creative process of the play as occurring between actors and audience, while Nuetzel examined the interactions between actor and director that move the creative process.
Citing instances in which an actor's inadvertent act is interpreted meaningfully by the audience, which is thereby brought to a strong affective moment, Gabbard pointed out that the audience projects its own expectations onto the actor. The final product is a joint production. The actor, for his part, must be aware of the audience. Quoting Stanislavsky, the famous acting teacher, as having said that an actor must live the part but must also express it in artistic form for the audience, Gabbard invoked the notion of transference reaction and Winnicott's concept of transitional space to illuminate this dual imperative. The creative product, according to Gabbard, arises both from the autistic, idiosyncratic inner world of the actor and from the outer world of the audience.
Nuetzel has combined his acting experience with psychoanalytically informed observations of the process (see TAP 30/1). He described what he called critical enactments between actor and director. Some of these enactments have a positive effect. He felt that the director of The Grapes of Wrath had deliberately created such an enactment by encouraging the ensemble in various ways to work in a spirit of collaboration. He did not think it coincidental that this collaboration mirrored the overarching theme of the play.
Often enactments contain the possibility of derailing the creative process, as director and actor confront each other in ways that are painful and open to very different possibilities. These situations must be resolved if the creative process is to proceed successfully. Nuetzel described an incident in the production of a play in which his director's confrontation about his acting style forced him to deal with very personal, formerly unconscious feelings about the part he was playing. It was the resolution of this enactment, analogous to transference enactment in analysis, that allowed the play to develop. Nuetzel believes that every production goes through such enactments, major and minor, and that it is the task of the production company as a whole to resolve individual resistances in order to be successful.
Following the formal presentations, the program for spouses itself became a collaborative experience between panel and audience. In the general discussion, the difference between play as text and play as production was elaborated; it is the latter that incorporates the unconscious fantasies of participants and audience.