True confidence, surely, is the ability to dismiss half of
your own career as “parasitic” and “imposing”
– only an actor, director and playwright such as Steven
Berkoff could do such a thing without raising any eyebrows, and
this did indeed seem to be his agenda when he spoke at the
English faculty on 20 May. Berkoff laments the “castration
of the actor” by theatre directors, proclaiming the latter
to be expensive and excessive; have we met a professional theatre
practitioner with genuine humility, or is this a brilliantly
sophisticated placing of his own work above and outside of even
his own profession? Steven Berkoff studied drama in London and Paris and performed
modest roles with repertory companies before forming the London
Theatre Group in 1968. His first original play, East, was staged
in 1975 at the Edinburgh festival, followed by an array of varied
works including West, Decadence, Greek, Kvetch, Acapulco and
Brighton Beach Scumbags, all written in his indulgent,
aggressive, yet cerebral style . As a director, Berkoff has
toured tens of productions such as Kafka’s Metamorphosis,
The Trial, Agamemnon, Hamlet, Macbeth, Wilde’s Salome,
Richard II and Coriolanus. Several of these were international
tours, to Japan, Los Angeles and Germany to name but a few. As an
actor, his one-man show has toured Britain, the USA, South
Africa, Finland, Italy, Singapore and Australia. He has made
several dubious film appearances, including A Clockwork Orange,
Octopussy and Rambo, and he directed and costarred in a film
version of his play, Decadence. He has published a variety of
books such as, modestly, I Am Hamlet, Meditations on
Metamorphosis and his autobiography, Free Association. But despite an extensive biography, Berkoff’s popularity
is questionable. He has made several un-politically- correct
moves in his career including death threats towards critics and
breaking an actors’ union strike by working on a McDonalds
commercial. On the whole his ego seems to dominate his press; he
doesn’t seem able to keep it in check. This fact was evident
when he lectured, especially in his assaults on directors, set
designers and critics. Having said this, his skills as an actor
cannot be denied. His recent visit to the Oxford Playhouse with
his touring show, “Shakespeare’s Villains” was a
real treat, perhaps becauseof his unrestrained ego – there
is something riveting about watching a stage actor without a
shred of modesty deliver classic Shakespeare monologues
juxtaposed with his own character interpretations and method,
academically presented. Berkoff spoke extensively about acting in
his Fourth Week lecture too, heralding it as a “great
sacrifice;” as far as I could discern, a sacrifice of
one’s own self-consciousness. Deeply ironic, I thought,
coming from the most utterly self-indulgent of all thespians.
Nonetheless he continued on to propose some reasonable, and
rather beautiful, musings on acting, as “exposure to the
acid of audience observation” and “maintaining
childhood and playfulness” seemingly justifying his
participation in this aspect of theatre. On he ploughed, however, to paint a darker picture of the
director; an invention of the twentieth century, apparently,
which has cost the theatre the loss of the
“actor-manager” tradition of the Olivier era. According
to Berkoff, actors of the 1800s were “masters of the
theatre,” able to return to roles time and again and
“flower” into great artists. Today they are at the
mercy of the “caveman of theatre;” the director, who
paints a replica of reality onto the stage like primitive rock
art – his obsession with naturalism is deep-rooted and
constraining. Berkoff himself has not, it must be noted, been
directed for thirty years, through sheer obstinacy I believe. His
objection to directors as a category stems from their
youthfulness, since he claims that directing is a natural
progression from acting, and thus the great actors of his time
should now be becoming directors in a process resembling
evolution. Instead, he laments, the profession is overrun with young
directors, too weak to act themselves, yet preventing the rites
of passage of their seniors. The reasons for young people’s
interest in directing seem logical and unsurprising to me –
better wages, your n a m e stamped upon a p r o – d u c – tion in
the manner formerly enjoyed by actors, and very little
responsibility for negative criticism (which is invariably
targeted towards actors or playwrights). It is no surprise that
the profession is popular. As a director myself, I am very interested in Berkoff’s
writing. Despite hearing him slate the profession of directing, I
am preparing a production of his as we speak – Messiah :
Scenes from a Crucifixion (Old Fire Station Theatre, Eighth
Week). How can I defend the process, in the face of such ironic
egomaniacal insult? Firstly, it is no coincidence that Steven
Berkoff has been touring one-man shows for many years and has not
worked with a director for equally as long; he neglects to
mention the essential function of equalizationand balance which
only a directorial “outsideeye” can perform. Rehearsals
are periods of “mixing,” rather like the musicp r o d u
c t i o n sense of the term; actors need pushing and p u l l i n
g i n t o l i n e with each othersince they have, after all,
competing egos just like Berkoff’s. Whether this is
conscious or not differs from actor to actor. Once performance
level is reached, the discrepancies in experience and skill in
the company should be invisible. Secondly, it takes guts to use the level of poetic symbolism
Berkoff calls for in directing. Trusting the audience to
understand and appreciate the suggestive, the abstract, the
minimal, is a sacrifice just as significant as that of the actor,
for we are sacrificing the safety of offering our audience
something easy, something real. A director who sticks to
naturalism does so with good reason – it is expected of him,
in a dire self-fulfilling prophecy which is only aggravated by
the lamentations from famous names such as Berkoff. My production of Messiah is not, incidentally, one such
naturalistic production; it proposes an alternative hypothesis
for the story of Jesus, told with the premise that he is not a
superhero but an ordinary Jew with charisma, brains and a
penchant for spin-doctoring. His last days and his crucifixion
are distinctly non-naturalistic; I am attempting to make that
sacrifice of safety, and prove Berkoff wrong. I do not think I
am, as the director, “parasitic”, “imposing”
or “unnecessary” – my process is a consultative,
team-building and communally creative one. A director who abhors directing is rather like a chef who
refuses to use the electric oven; is it the ultimate
self-challenge, or rather an utterly unashamed superiority
complex? (“All other directors are parasitic / ineffectual /
dull – but I’m the example of how it should be
done”) – in Steven Berkoff’s case, the answer is
written all over his unfathomable (yet somehow endearing) ego.ARCHIVE: 5th week TT 2004
The Ego has Landed
