Exploring the Dramatic Imagination : Seminar

Yesterday the SOU Department of Performing Arts hosted a ‘Seminar/Discussion Exploring the Dramatic Imagination’. The presentation was given by Rachmael Ben-Avram, the founder of the Company of the Golden Hind in San Francisco. The company opened in 1951 for
a ten year span of seasons before closing in 1961. Eric Levin, professor of
Theatre Literature at SOU, provided an introduction to a man that, as it turned
out, was his God Father.

Dramatic Imagination, using an example from the seminar, is what one needs when they take a cup, any cup, and give it new meaning. When an actor delves into that ‘permitted lie’ (at least, Thornton Wilder thinks so) that
all actors engage in when they are playing a part. The cup can be transformed
by simply lying, taking it from something everyone recognizes every day to the
individual, important cup that Gertrude drinks from at the end of Hamlet, and
dies from poison placed there in by the, albeit accidentally in that target,
murderous Claudius. That is the dramatic action at work. Actors at work.

Dramatic Imagination is an interesting and expansive concept. It encompasses an actors process to approaching a character or performance. It can encompass a full play, a directorial approach, a foundation of a theatre.
It can seem completely natural, an integral part of the theatre, or abstract
and complicated. In any case, this talk focused on theatre as more than life. Ben-Avram’s
approach is to treat plays as plays, and let the stage be a stage. His sets
are, then, things that look like sets. He does not advocate the use of a forth
wall, and makes note that he enjoys endings of Shakespeare plays that include
the actors actually talking to the audience. He uses the Dramatic Imagination
to support this ideal, and each one of the plays he put on at the Company of
the Golden Hind held true to it.

Ben-Avram started his discussion by walking the small gathering of audience members, many of whom were actors, through a history of a few big names in the development of the Dramatic Imagination concept, or who
had an impact on his own development: Gordon Craig, Hallie Flanagan, Robert
Edmund Jones, Francis Fergusson, Thronton Wilder, and Lee Strasberg. He talked
about the plays and actors he has seen, and the experiences in the theatre he’s
had, including meeting his wife.

“If you meet someone who is a genius in some part of the theatre,” he says with teasing sagaciousness, knowing his audience is comprised of actors and other theatre people who would appreciate this bit of advice, “do
what you can to marry them.”

The event was held in a classroom around the back of the Music Building. There were practice rooms nearby for Music majors, and through his speech there was a soft background piano going on, which somehow felt perfectly in place and
rather apt for his character and the passion and love with which he spoke of
and regarded the theatre.

One of the many points he made was that theatre today is not producing the same kind of script writers that had graced the past. He says that “poetry is the real problem with modern plays. It’s the actors we go to
see, not the play.”

He spoke about the caliber of actors these days, and the names that were getting famous and winning Oscars. One Oscar season left him particularly bitter and, in his own words, he still ‘bitches’ about Halle Barry
beating out Dame Judi Dench for the coveted award. Halle Barry won the award in
2002 for Monster’s Ball. Judi Dench was nominated for Iris. In Ben-Avran’s
opinion, delivered jovially and with an obvious grain of salt, Halle Barry
couldn’t “act her way out of a paper bag”.

After the a five minute break, the host shared a slide show of pictures of some plays put on by the Company of the Golden Hind. He spoke about the use of metaphor in all his plays, a theme on which each was set and
performed around. William Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, for example, was
comprised of clowns, the twins (there are two sets of twins in the play)
denoted by the color of their outfits and make up rather than two actors that
actually looked alike. Shakespeare’s King Lear was based on the statues, with
all the actors wearing costumes that made them look like statues themselves. Likewise,
Measure for Measure, another Shakespeare play, reflected the set and costume style
of religious paintings.

He ended his presentation by reading a review for his theatre, one that said the production they had done had brought great justice to the play itself, and that was one of the greatest compliments he had received.