In The Actor and the Text (1987,1992 2nd edition) Berry is passionate and concerned about
the care and responsibility actors have (or should have) about being articulate in conveying the thoughts of a specific play. This is her third book and she continues to put forward her belief or “mission”, as Trevor Nunn states in the foreword “to expand the awareness of language, its roots, its possibilities of meaning, its physical seat and vibration, its associations, its weight and texture and colour” (Berry 1992:7). She feels strongly that actors should not only work on the physical aspects of voice production such as breathing, resonance and articulation but that exercises should also be done on sensitising performers to how language is used for and by a character, or the speaker in a particular text like a poem (Berry 1992:15). Language is “part of the essence of that person” (Berry 1992:15) and the actor must try and find a way to communicate that through his own sense of self; “this asks for a continual blending of our own truth with the truth of the character” (Berry 1992:15). The actor needs to make a commitment to work through the text thoroughly on many levels and to allow the language to have a deep effect on her.
In order to allow this process of being open to the ideas, images and sounds that language can offer us the actor has to be aware of his own personal, emotional and physical states and to let go of limiting habits that could influence their creative, vocal responses. As Berry (1992:16) says, even experienced actors “tend to hold onto the sound which feels familiar,
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and in which we have confidence”. The actor needs security and wants to make his voice “‘behave ….to be in control of it, and to some extent plan it” (Berry 1992:17). This could prevent further, creative exploration on a text.
Berry (1992:22) has clear thoughts on our often “over-educated response to words” and that we, in many professions (e.g. in education generally, literature studies, the legal and medical professions and many more), not just the theatrical or entertainment world, tend to be rather cerebral in our dealings with words. Even in the theatre, she says, more effort can be made to convey the pleasure/enjoyment of language to audiences. She finds it regrettable that our present culture seems to be more interested in visual stimuli rather than enjoying the aural stimuli of verbal communication (Berry 1992:285). She reminds us that views and perceptions about understanding language and making relevant interpretation, change every decade or so and that each generation will leave its own vocal stamp on aspects such as pronunciation and style. She believes in the music that “cultural diversity” brings to the individual’s sound (Berry 1992:285). She recognises that there is also the fear of being wrong or sounding ‘wrong’ that leads to inhibited speaking and devoicing (Berry 1992:22). She feels we are both inhibited and often unaware of the physical effect that words can have on us and suggests that sometimes we lose the primitive connection to language by not feeling it in the body, “language, as well as being highly sophisticated, is also primitive in essence” (Berry 1992:19).
The essential purpose of words initially for humans was to communicate needs which often can be painful depending on the situation. Their intentions can change the way we feel or think and respond to others. Words are potentially “instruments of change within us” (Berry 1992:20) and she believes in the political power of words used and spoken in the theatre. Berry (1992:21) states that words are an “active force”:
If we are truly to make words active, it asks for a commitment to the work beyond a personal commitment, which is to do with seeing theatre as a serious political force in the context of the society we live in…We must be ready for their shifts. (Berry 1992:21)
Therefore, Berry holds the view that the literary value of a text and the speaking of it to communicate the logical sense, is not to be rated above the instinctual response and the desire of the actor to connect to a more imaginative speaking of the ideas and feelings in the dialogue (Berry 1992:22).
Berry (1992) does however, recognise that although she fully supports the importance of the word and the idea of language being a central medium for the actor, words can sometimes be limiting to an actor if she cannot express them directly and clearly enough. Then language
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can be seen as a constraint. This limitation for the actor can perhaps be felt more so when working on a classical text, but often contemporary text is also densely structured and difficult for an actor to ‘unlock’ vocally. These days the contemporary actor/performer, especially at a professional level, has to engage with many varied texts, some of demanding complexity. The expected level of vocal expertise is high from both the audience and the director. The actor must be able to convey the inner life of the character and the style of the performance through the words (either very few, or stylistically, seemingly unstructured in terms of punctuation and form); to enable the audience to make both intellectual and emotional connections to what the performer is saying. I experienced this awareness of a text demanding a great deal of aural attention from its audience, director and cast, while attending a performance of a new Afrikaans play Samsa Masjien, written by Willem Anker at the Baxter Theatre in January 2015. An indistinct, continuous soundscape of noises, mutterings and broken fragments of words formed a backdrop to the elderly characters’ dialogue. This contributed to conveying the turbulent, disturbed emotional world of these characters in a disintegrating family situation. As an audience member I was required to listen with more concentration than usual.
Mere clarity in speaking the text is not enough to create the world of a play and the relationships of the characters who reside in it. This holds true for all spoken performances, one would think. Berry (1992:9) states: “whatever the style of writing, the actor has to find the right energy for that particular text’” and although the actor must be clear and controlled about the character’s intentions, “the speaking should be free to the moment” (Berry 1992:19).
Most of Berry’s ideas and creative efforts on making language vivid, expressive and meaningful via the actor’s communication have centred on using Shakespearean text. For her Shakespeare’s words are still the most “rich and extraordinary” (Berry 1992:9) and demand from the actor to dig deeply into his imaginative and analytical resources to find “more possibilities…than we are aware of” (Berry 1992:9). These insights were gained mostly from Berry’s first two decades of working within the Royal Shakespeare Company (hereafter again referred to as the RSC), assisting actors and directors to discover the potential meanings of their parts and lines and how to communicate this understanding within the larger vision of the play.