The ‘spiritual’ work of the actor from an Ignatian perspective.
Ignatius of Loyola, co-founder of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, lived through life-changing experiences affecting his life and subsequently the life of generations after him. He is the author of the Spiritual Exercises, his legacy to the Jesuits and to us all. The Lenten eżerċizzji are a mere diluted echo of these original Exercises and have little to do with them.
Having lived through the month-long experience of the Spiritual Exercises, and having built numerous characters for the performing stage, I am in a position to see resonances between the Exercises and the work of the actor. The lessons learnt and the spiritual skills acquired during the experience have influenced many aspects of my life, including the process I lived in building every single character for the stage.
The Exercises are spread approximately over 50 days and the work is exclusively spiritual. As these reflections show, I am very skeptic of and contrary to the limiting Cartesian duality contra posing seen with unseen — body to spirit! The work of the spirit, the soul and the body affect each other with equal importance. Ignatius asks the person doing the exercises to use their faculties of the soul and also to apply the senses to the contemplations. The faculties of the soul according to him are three: memory, understanding and will. The senses obviously recall the five senses of the body: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. What always impressed me was the request to use bodily senses extended into prayer — placing the faculties of the body and the soul on equal grounds.
The contemplation prayer starts with a text from the Scripture and the Gospels. The actor also starts from the written word, the script of the play. As the script is read, the words engage the actor with their imagination to compose the space where the character is living, moving and acting.
Ignatius then guides the person in prayer to start with a composition of the place where the scene is set, like Jesus in the Gethsemane. The contemplator then tries to imagine the garden, the trees, Jesus, the three disciples sleeping some distance away and other details of the scene. The actor uses the imagination to depict the character, the scenery and possible props and items to be used. The character extends its fiber of being into the world around it.
Once in this ‘location’, the contemplator is guided further to present the intention of the prayer: to understand the pain of Jesus, to feel the terror and confusion in the disciples. Likewise the actor asks important questions about the inner forum of the character and tries to fill in gaps in the script narrative and the history leading up to that particular moment as described in the script of the play.
Ignatius then crosses a boundary and guides the person in prayer to apply the bodily senses. To smell the air, to feel the soil, to hear any sounds, noises, spoken words, whispers until all the senses are participating in transporting the individual into the scene being contemplated. The work of the actor requires the application of the senses too. The actor, having understood the intentions and the internal forum of the character must build the physicality of the character. To give the character a body, the senses must be employed. I often found that meditating, and contemplating the script following the Ignatian way has helped me understand the character as it moves from scene to scene, from place to place if there’s a change in the scenery. It helped me see the character and how it moves, physical features I must note, ticks, cadence, speed in movement, extending the senses outwardly whilst still exploring the play and the character internally. In building the character, the actor must relate the physicality of the character to the space and the other characters around them.
Ignatian contemplation has helped me understand characters. The character speaks volumes as parts of the memory of the actor are accessed and activated. This helped me as an actor to colour the character with something that is uniquely mine. Two different actors never portray the same character identically and this is not only due to the technique differences but also due to the personal history and baggage of each actor. In my experience, the deeper the connection between understanding and memory, the stronger the connection with the character. As a consequence the more unique and memorable will the character on stage be to the audience.
Ignatian prayer ends with a dialogue, typically with Jesus. Using the same example, this means talking to Jesus in Gethsemane and relating to him in that particular moment in time. These exercises help the person in prayer to mold thoughts and character in a closer likeness to Jesus’. Similarly the actor holds internal conversations with the character, trying to fill gaps in the narrative and develop the history and possibly carving a future for the character. These conversations give full life to the character.
It is evident that character building starts with an internal forum. The rehearsal process then helps externalize this work. The rehearsal process is based on repetition and multiple takes of the same instance. Ignatius also asks the person living through the exercises to repeat and contemplate the same scene multiple times during the week, sometimes multiple times during the same day. In my eyes this is equivalent to the rehearsal process. With every repetition, the person in contemplation and the actor find new truths in the reality they are trying to pursue, to taste, to live!
The Exercises are lived so that the person somehow embodies Christ more in their lives. The work of the actor is also aimed at embodying the character in their life, at least the life on stage. Living like Christ or with choices inspired by Jesus, have an effect on others around us, and the end goal of an actor is to portray the character in such a vivid way that it touches the audience as it speaks to their hearts and memory. Ignatius devised the Exercises so that people embody Christ. The work of the actor is to give a body with a baggage of feelings to the character. Such characters may even compel members of the audience to review thoughts, positions and sometimes life choices. This is the transformative power of Theatre and the resonance I see with the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius.
These notes and observations stem from my personal experience and analysis, and are by no means an exhaustive, academic approach to the Exercises. I leave academic analysis to the experts in the field. Anyone interested in a deeper understanding of these Exercises is encouraged to approach the Jesuits at Mount St Joseph Retreat House in Mosta.
This blog is a reflection by Roderick Vassallo in reaction to the research project ‘Simone Weil: Performance as Nothingness’ conducted by Tyrone Grima, Senior Lecturer at the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology.