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Date Posted: March 19, 02:01:pm GMT-5
Author: Cat
Subject:

The Flying Dutch Witch
In reply to: Lars Fungus 's message, "Miss Cackle (ReeeeeeeePrinted)" on March 19, 01:58:pm GMT-5

Uh well - I couldn't speak Dutch if you promised me the world - but I sort of can understand it when I see it written down.
So I did translate the interview - please be as kind as to excuse any incoherent warbling of mine as 1)I don't have a Dutch dictionary and 2) I really cannot speak Dutch at all and 3) Clare Coulter talks about some philosophical and deep thought stuff- and she does switch topics sometimes in a rather abrupt way(I think there might have been more questions asked by the interviewer than those which have actually been printed.)
"The Fever"
"All my life I have been an actress, but am I also a person?"

"Those were the most uncomfortable 90 minutes I ever spent in a theatre", - that was the compliment a critic paid to Clare Coulter's performance in "The Fever".
Wednesday and Thursday, the 5th and 6th May, the celebrated Canadian actress performs this monologue by Wallace Shaw on stage.
It is the performance of a character, not a play full of action - The painful and dramatic portraying of a middle aged woman from New York, stranded in a mad world...
The message is that the world is devided into poor and rich, South and North, privileged and underprivileged.
Coulter passes on her despair and selfhatred in a monotone, yet intense way.

Veto (I guess that's the newspaper or TV magazine interviewing Ms Coulter): As you repeat the monologue over and over again, which of its many meanings would you choose as being most important?
Clare Coulter: (thinks deeply) One of them: I see myself along with the things I do. Another one: The meaning of this life is that life is corrupt and greedy. This drama tries to lead you to behold that side of yourself. Usually defending mechanisms try to prevent that sight on yourself. One of the reasons why I play this drama so often, is to see how it refers to myself. That is another part of the defending mechanisms. It seems to be typical for an actor to create an image of a person without being this person. They can use this image by connecting it to themselves and thus creating a link to the person they are playing. An actor might be thinking quite different about things than the words he utters may suggest.
Many actors (try to avoid) to see how their roles are referring directly to themselves. I think that is possible. Especially as it prevents unpleasant connections with the actor himself.

Reactions
Many actors and I among them have relished in the aspect that public reactions offered them. If you have got a drama that offers this aspect, try to find the touch for it. One could say that this play does reduce a person to someone who offers no joy. With Wallace Stevens, this offering of reaction is part of the strategy which offers reaction at first and on the other hand takes it away from you.
When it is taken away, it's so drastic, that it took me years to allow that other side of myself to grow and prosper. There are ways to prevent that from happening.
(Ummm - yes, I know that sounds rather cryptic. What I think she might be saying here is that an actor gets feedback from the public even while playing - but at the same time, this feedback has also its nasty sides. If it changes or subsides, then the actor feels deprived.
at least that's what I made of it - but maybe I got it wrong.)
Veto: You say that there is a distance between one person and her words. Is it possible that an actor sort of makes himself home with a character while at the same time another actor while playing his role transforms to the character in an abstract way?
Coulter: It's hard to understand. I don't want to act as if I understood how other actors work. I know how I work. It is somehow like wishing that something should be like you want it to be. To understand why something did not go well means to understand that you did not really wish for it. One sometimes says: That did not go well.
In my mind, I feel that (in that case) I haven't been as good - insight.
It is interesting that this drama is about insight, that drama can deal with that topic. It is the first drama that forced me to read, as it is so good. I cannot but tell those people who read "The Fever" about that.
I can play the "Seagull" and see that there are two different worlds and reflecting what goes on in this world, I can live in the world of the "Seagull". My feeling about what is genuine is that it is "Tsjechow" in the "Seagull". You cannot behold that in "The Fever".
Veto: As you were living in London as a child, on your way to school there were the remains of a house destroyed in the war - a house which you didn't want to see. How can you combine this flight from reality on one hand and the approach to it on the other hand?
Coulter: I cannot just put things off my mind and go on with my life. Friends could come and ask me: "How's it going?" and then I tell them that the war in Kosovo is depressing me. Most people just know that they are lucky - that someone else was hurt and not themselves. But I can't do that. I cannot think about anything else. In this meaning, it's the art of my performing that means a break then. Not that I am not ashamed about ongoings in the world, but there is no other way to overcome depressions about how much evil there is in world (than to act).
This (depressed mood) can lead to me not being able to speak. Then I think: Come on, take the script and read. However, I'm still nervous.
(Now she says something about animals, especially dogs getting nervous by changing their habits... but I couldn't translate that literally, as it's sort of vague what I can make of it)
I think that I cannot achieve anything by dreading and mourning.
Veto: As you say that theatre is a break from everyday life, why did you choose a drama which does not offer that break from reality?
Coulter: This is rather complicated. I think it's a feeling of being ashamed. I don't say that I'm not ashamed for trying to escape from reality. In fact, I think I have to do better than that. I don't want to die as a person who was not able to face rality.
Veto: Do current affairs - for example the war in Kosovo - have any effect on the way how you perform?
Coulter: They have effects on how I speak the role and how I feel about the drama. This drama is important, but if a political crisis emerges, the drama means even more. It gives me an even stronger feeling of dread.

Conducting
As I have to do so many (10 - 12) performances in a row, I've grown used to myself not being able to do anything else in my life. I act and then I try to return to a normal situation and afterwards act again.
Then I think: Am I just lucky?
Is that my fate or just another way of living?
(One may ask) Whether I can perform in the evenings and during days see the sights or lunch with a friend etc?? I don't know.
Stravinski traveled for conducting an orchestra. The trip alone must have left him exhausted. He arrived, met the orchestra, then had some lunch with some important people from the city and did some sightseeing before conducting the orchestra.I can't do that.
Veto: Monologues seem to have become very popular. There is a theory about parallels between that fact and developements in psychology. In former times, conflicts (on stage) took place between different countries, later between single persons and since Freud developed his theories, they take place within the human mind. What do you think?
Coulter: That's interesting and true. There are so many feelings that can be expressed much better when there's but one person speaking than by a dialogue.
Considering the relation between reality and fiction, I sometimes think: "I have been an actress all my life, but am I also a person?"
In fact, I've been an actress for two thirds of my life. Sometimes I think I should stop.
But you could say the same thing about a doctor. He spends his whole life being a doctor, too.

(Hmmm - the next headline "Steen" -
I think the first paragraph is about some story about a stone. Miss Coulter refers to her having met people in Vancouver who were hmmmm.... doing some studies of some sort... hehe
and they had a discussion with Clare Coulter - for whatever reason...
In fact I'm totally tired at the moment and I'm not sure what she is talking about. At least it seems to be something about a stone they found...is it a stone? and about some sort of name... Right, on we go..)

The following I did learn: They, too, are real (Who are they? Dunno yet. I'll read it again when I'm not so tired and if I can work out what she's talking about, I'll tell you. It might have got something to do with the stone - if it is a stone, that is=). Whatever they do, they are real.
In the same way, all the characters I've been playing are not myself, in fact, but yet they are "me", too.

Take for example how I spend my days. One part of me says, that it's not good to sleep all day before a performance. Another part says that sleepingall day is exactly what one has to do to make the performance go well.
The question remains. Do I have to force myself to eat before the performance if i think that it might make lead to a worse performance? I think this aspect of acting is what makes me feel depressive. I pretend to like that sort of life, but it's not really like that...
I don't know how to describe the strength that keeps me upright.
Samuel Becket wrote a drama "Happiness" about a woman embedded in earth from her waist downwards, but discovering that she leads a happy life. Each day she ends with a song.
In the second part of the play, she is embeddedin earthfrom
her hip downwards and she spends the day with pointing out what a lucky day it is.
it is a message about "keeping going".
(The last two sentences are another thought about Stravinski, but at the moment I don't know what they mean...

Pheeeeeeew!
That was a long one...
and it seems that Ms Coulter is rather a warmhearted, hardworking and often insecure and sensitive woman..
hehe - does she remind you of someone??
Cat

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Replies:

Re: The Flying Dutch Witch -- Nel, March 19, 02:03:pm GMT-5
- Re: Deep Thoughts -- Cat, March 19, 02:05:pm GMT-5