The Emotional Memory of Directing

Abstract

Stanislavsky's ‘emotion memory’, basic to Method acting, is a pretext, if not subtext, for reflections on the vicissitudes of directing, most particularly as it confronts the one inescapable emotion, stage fright, which may be seen, rather, as an existential condition – without which, actually, there would be no theatre. Or at least, without a sense of psychic or physical risk, no theatre of any consequence. If susceptibility to such risk is expected of the actor, whose technique is a way of dealing with stage fright, much of what is done in directing is an equivocal cover up, because the credibility of performance draws upon that fright, hiding it and exploiting it, all the more as we approach the limits of performance. As for the emotion memories of the essay, and the emotions about memory too, these are drawn from a long career in theatre, marked by experiment and controversy, and an insistence that, for all the stress on emotions, the mandate of performance is to bring it into thought, or what – neurally, analytically, bodies, minds, psyche, senses, every form of intelligence activated – is referred to as blooded thought.