FOR ACTORS
Good morning, actors – participants of the Summer Academy!
We’ll be starting shortly.
You know the topic. Energy is a complex subject, but a fundamental one for actors.
At our first session, I’d like you all to explain to me in just a few words what an actor’s energy is: simply, without any esoteric jargon.
We need to find a common language.
When people talk about an ‘energy field’ or ‘an actor’s energy’, many think of it as something mysterious – an inner magic, charisma or even mysticism. But in reality, the energy field, an actor’s energy and an actor’s energetic engagement are entirely concrete things, and they can be understood, developed and utilised. Without any esotericism or magic. Simply – as a skill.
So let’s try to translate this into the language of the acting world — clear, physical and practical.
So we’ll start with the basics: what is ‘an actor’s energy’?
You’ll get a sense of what I think about this from my lessons, but I’ll say straight away that energy isn’t about fuss, a loud voice or jumping around the stage.
Over the course of these two weeks, each of you will need to answer this question for yourselves. I understand energy in one way; you understand it differently. Of course, there are general laws of energy that we learnt back in school – that is, the laws of physics – but there are also laws of energy that apply in the theatre. And there are the laws of each individual actor’s energy. And that is what you need to define for yourselves.
In this short letter, I shall focus on just one issue: the energy of presence. What is it?
An actor’s energy is the degree of their presence and their ability to be in contact with their partner, the audience, the text, the theme, with themselves, and so on.
Energy lies in the awareness of every action—in how vividly, precisely, intensely and meaningfully one exists ‘here and now’, in the body, in the situation, in the space and in relation to one’s partner. Let me reveal one of the principles of my school straight away—when people say that an actor must be ‘here and now’, a misunderstanding often arises: as if the actor were obliged to be grounded, fully in reality, right here in this hall, in this room, in the present moment. This is not quite the case. In fact, an actor’s energy is not about physical or mundane ‘presence’, but about intense focus and engagement. And it is by no means necessary to be directed towards the surrounding real world. What matters is not ‘where you are’, but ‘how much you are there’. You can read more about this in the separate booklet ‘Not Here and Now, but Always and Everywhere’, which you’ll receive as a gift after our summer academy.
An actor’s energy is the degree of their engagement and presence. When an actor is on stage, they are not merely physically present; they direct their attention, regardless of what it is focused on: a scene partner, the text, a character, an inner state or an abstract idea, and this is concentration, an inner impulse and a sense of presence in that particular moment in time and space.
An actor’s engagement is felt as an inner fullness, a readiness for action. Test this in practice. During your daily training sessions, your teacher Christine will work with you on this. At the performances, I will be keeping a close eye on this.
Here’s what you need to remember:
Energy = focus of attention + energetic engagement.
And this is not an abstract formula, but a concrete force with which an actor lives on stage.
What is energetic engagement? It is neither a metaphor nor an abstract term.
It is a physical and mental state that can be felt, developed and practised. It is when you are fully present: your body, attention, breath and intuition are directed outwards, yet you do not lose your inner anchor; you are in a flow of exchange with the space, with your partner, with the silence – as if you are radiating not tension, not emotion, but intention and attention, establishing a direction. This is the alignment of the field.
It does not require superhuman effort — on the contrary, it requires freeing oneself from the hustle and bustle, entering a state of stillness from which everything begins. This engaged state of an actor’s being is often felt during successful moments in rehearsal, when your whole being — your body, your feelings, your thoughts — lives in the space, yet outwardly almost nothing is happening.
Important!!!! This is different from emotional expressiveness or concentration — it is deeper, quieter, and far more powerful. An actor’s energetic engagement is an internal transmission of a signal into the space and listening to it; a particular openness, a resonance, when the actor tunes into the frequencies in which events are born, and they are not merely in the scene, but within the scene as if in a field.
No matter how much I write to you about energy, an actor must train their mind on the concept of energy, on the question of energy, until the sense of it becomes as real as the sense of any earthly object.
Energy must be felt, not discussed with a pretentious air. I am speaking of sensation, for knowledge alone cannot come close to understanding energy. Search for and recall examples from your own practice: how do you feel energy? What does it smell like? How do you hear it? What does it taste like?
An actor’s craft lies in their ability to sense and locate sources of energy, to draw out that energy, to redirect it, and to transform it from one form into another. This is what makes an actor ‘visible’ and ‘tangible’ to the audience.
An actor without energy is like a light bulb without electricity.
They may be handsome, technically skilled, even ‘precise’ — but the role and the scene are lifeless.
Here’s another task for you. An actor’s job isn’t just about reciting lines, feeling emotions and pulling all sorts of faces; it’s the art of managing energy, which can take many forms: active, restrained, destructive, focused, creative, scattered, concentrated, dissolved, and so on. – Carry on with this sheet!
I’ve written a letter to directors about the basic concepts of energy as they’re usually explained in schools.
Read this letter; you’ll find it useful too.
And start thinking straight away about how to answer the question: what is energy, as I understand it?
Start getting ready. We’ll be starting soon. See you soon.
J.A.
FOR DIRECTORS
Dear Academy participants – directors, we will soon beginn our discussions and practical exercises on the subject of energy – the energy of words, the energy of text, the energy of the stage, the energy of mise-en-scène, the energy of a performance, and so on.
It’s an interesting but complex topic, which is why I’ve decided to send you my brief notes on energy. You might say, ‘That’s school stuff. It’s the basics. We all know this already.’ Let me reassure you – we won’t be discussing this at the Academy. I’m not particularly interested in it myself. The aim of our meeting in July is to move on to the next level. But to do that, you absolutely must know the basics. Judging by your application forms, I’ve realised that the group is at very different levels. We need a common professional vocabulary. Otherwise, we simply won’t understand one another. That’s the foundation.
The School.
In traditional theatre school and in classical physics, energy cannot be created from nothing; as you know, there is the law of conservation of energy, and it shapes the perspectives of classical physics and classical theatre.
Energy is all around us; it is in everything. And this energy can be released and channelled.
Can energy be created? No. But tension can be created, from which energy arises.
Whilst in physics the law of conservation of energy is absolute, in theatre tension actually CREATES energy.
Energy can arise from silence, from the empty space of the stage, simply through the clash of two opposing meanings; even the positions of the director and the actor create a living, tangible energy that moves hundreds of people in the auditorium to tears and laughter.
Tension is not ‘energy’ itself, but rather a generator of accessible energy.
When there are opposites (plus/minus, love/hate, leave/stay), potential arises. Tension transforms passive, dormant energy into an active form, into action, into feelings.
In traditional theatre, tension is the main generator of stage energy, which Stanislavski called ‘radiation’ and Peter Brook called ‘living theatre’. You, too, can call it whatever you like. We’re not studying physics here, just theatre
In other words, a director’s primary task is to create tension wherever possible. In fact, everywhere.
That, in a nutshell, is what I remember from school…
- Tension within a character: Internal monologue and the ‘essence’ of a role
What in physics is called a potential difference is, in theatre, known as a character’s internal conflict.
- When an actor plays a character for whom ‘everything is fine’, there is no energy on stage, and the audience gets bored.
- The energy of a role arises precisely from the tension between ‘I want to’ and ‘I can’t’ (or ‘I must’). Take Hamlet, for example: the tension between the desire for revenge and the fear of committing a sin.
- This internal dichotomy (‘to leave or to stay’) creates immense psychological tension for the actor, which is transmitted to the audience as pure energy. The audience feels this high-frequency ‘current’.
- Tension in a scene: Conflict between partners (‘Love / Don’t love’)
A scene between two actors is a closed electrical circuit.
- If there are two ‘positives’ on stage (both agree, both love the same thing), the circuit does not work; there is no current.
- The energy of the scene arises from this clash. One character is in love, the other is cold. One wants to conceal the truth, the other to extract it. This is the tension in the staging and dialogue. The stronger this opposition, the higher the ‘voltage’ of the scene. The director deliberately brings these polar opposites into conflict to strike a spark – theatrical energy.
- Scene composition: The montage of tensions
. In directing, this is known as the tempo and rhythm of the production.
- The director creates the energy of the entire production through the contrast (tension) between scenes or parts of a scene. A turbulent, noisy, aggressive scene (high tension) is abruptly followed by a quiet, intimate scene of whispers.
- This shift itself (the rise and fall in ‘pressure’) creates a huge surge of energy in the audience’s perception. This is a law of composition: energy is born at the intersection of opposites.
- Macro-level: Beginning and End (The Play as a Dynamic Whole)
You are, of course, aware that in traditional theatre there are concepts such as ‘overarching plot’ and ‘overarching objective’. Here, tension is created by the distance between the starting point and the final point. At the start of a role, a character is one thing; by the end, they are completely different (think of the arc of Macbeth or King Lear). The difference between who the character was and who they have become is a vast field of tension. And the greater this rupture, the more powerful the release of energy in the finale.
The same applies to a play: at the start, the director establishes a certain order to the world, and by the end, that world is either destroyed or reborn.
I repeat, what you have just read is a classic, it is the foundation. Check your knowledge!
This is how 20th-century theatre worked. It cannot be said that this is unfair; it works. But the 21st century has opened up a new perspective on energy, and we will be discussing it.
To work on the scene you have chosen, you need to address the fundamental questions: where is the source of energy in this scene?
And where are the sources of energy in the text? Which you will also identify, and where is the source of energy for your scene????
In short – where’s the petrol station?
These are the first questions, but not the last. More questions will arise as you explore the topic further.
I’d like to send you some extracts from my diary, in which I describe how this question first came up in my theatre practice.
From the diary…
‘I was a very young director back then. A meeting with Peter Brook had been organised in Moscow. For our generation, Brook wasn’t just a director — he was a veritable theatre god.
After his masterclass, it was time for questions. An awkward silence hung over the room. Everyone was terribly self-conscious. Firstly, asking a silly question in the presence of a living genius seemed like a disaster. Secondly, there was the language barrier: we were all terribly self-conscious about our broken English. A few years later, we had a brief chat with him in Hamburg and I apologised for my poor English. He said, ‘Mine is far from Oxford-level either.’
And yet I plucked up the courage and, overcoming my nerves, put into words what was really on my mind:
‘Tell me, where does a director draw the energy for a scene from?’
Brook looked at me very intently. The fact was that the day before he’d seen the play I was in, and after the performance he’d come up to me himself to congratulate me. So he already recognised me.
He smiled — that trademark, mischievous Brook-style twinkle appeared in his eyes. He always spoke very effortlessly, and you could never quite tell from his tone whether he was joking or talking about the most serious matters in life.
‘In principle,’ he replied, ‘you can draw energy from anywhere,’ and added, ‘if you know how.’
A soft chuckle rippled through the room,
Many felt that the master had simply made an elegant joke, sidestepping a direct answer. But I sensed that it was no joke.
The forty years of my subsequent work in the theatre confirmed the truth of Peter Brook’s words. The main secret of the director’s craft lies precisely in this: everything around you truly does become a source of strength and inspiration. ‘You can draw energy from anywhere.’
I’ve told you this so that you might recall for yourselves when you first truly became aware of the question of energy, and share your own example with us.
How do you perceive the energy of the stage, a role, or a production? Not in words, but through an example. I have my own example; I’ll tell you about it, and you can share yours.
This is what you need to know as the ABCs of directing.
In our academy classes, we’ll discuss how these laws can be broken and what new laws you can create.
But, I’ll say it again, you must have the foundations in place, otherwise we’ll have nothing to talk about. You need to know the laws in order to create new ones.
Energy: this is a rather complex topic that remains largely unexplored in theatre, although many people use the term. Over these two weeks, you need to develop your own understanding of what energy on stage is and how it can be used. It doesn’t matter if someone else has a different view on energy. You need to develop your own understanding of what energy on stage is. This is your professional task.
So, what is energy, in your view?
Come along, let’s get to work. It’ll be interesting.
J.A