Suzuki Method Acting

In light of Charles Olson’s love for dance and theatre, I was reminded of my time studying as an actor. As most of you are artist yourselves, more notably poets, you may understand the depth of practice that seems to be lost on the masses in your art because “well, as long as you can rhyme, you can write a poem, right?”. I guess. The is same notion is also held of acting and theatre ( no thanks to many, many terrible renditions of Grease at community theatres). There is a strict art and methodology behind the performance as an actor and as an ensemble.

During my time studying acting in my undergraduate years, I was enrolled in a Body Movement class. The purpose of this class was to help connect the actor to their body and break the actor’s notion of self so that the voice and body of the character could come through. Easy, yes? No. In fact, this may be one of the hardest and most trying (emotionally and physically) practices I have yet encountered in my life. In this class, I was introduced to the art of Suzuki method acting. I will attach a video that shows this taking place in practice, but I will also attempt to explain it.

First you have an instructor who uses a rod to strike the ground, making a large jolting noise. Each time this is done, the actors involved must change their body and throw their energies in a different direction. After a series of movements, the instructor determines whether the actors are ready to recite a memorized monologue. The purpose is to let go of your idea of self, let your character emerge, and throw your energy to either the audience or the actors you are working with. Mind you, this all happens at once, instantaneously.

The reason I mention this, is because it reminds me of Olson’s ideas of how energy is transferred from the author to the reader. In “Projective Verse”, Olson determines how this energy is to flow between the author and the reader. Keeping this in mind, what I think is also remnant of the teaching found in Suzuki is echoed in Projective verse when Olson talks about Objectivism. He says:

“Objectivism is getting rid of the lyrical interference of the individual as ego, of the “subject” and his soul, that particular presumption by which western man has interposed himself between what he is as a creature of nature (with certain instructions to carry out) and those other creations of nature which we may, with no derogation, call objects. For man is himself an object, whatever he may take to be his advantages, more likely to recognize himself as greater than his advantages, particularly at that moment that he achieves an humilias sufficient to make him of use”(Olson 247).

I am struck by this idea of achieving “humilias” and that his will finally make the author/person useful. I find this notion echoed in Suzuki method and think that this is exactly what this method hopes to achieve; A means to break down the ego of the individual so that they can return to a more natural state and therefore project other notions of humanity that are not interjected by their own ideas of accomplishment.