We're all familiar with animal characterizations, no? As a classroom exercise or rehearsal tool, they're useful in exploring the inner sensations and outward physicality of a role. But what about using elements of nature—storms, volcanoes, wind, the ocean—for the same purpose? I came across this idea in Richard Brestoff's fine book The Actor's Wheel of Connection: How to Integrate Your Skills and Refine Your Performance (Smith & Kraus, 2005). The University of California, Irvine, drama professor writes, "Imagine a character whose outer movements and inner life are those of a cloud. It can bring to mind someone rather dreamy or airheaded. Or, depending on the nature of the cloud, something menacing."
I tracked the idea of using nature to build characters back to Juilliard drama professor Moni Yakim, who describes it in his book Creating a Character: A Physical Approach to Acting (Applause Books, 2000). The chapter "Elements of Nature" precedes his chapter on animal characterizations; he writes that studying elements of nature "is the first step toward transforming yourself as an actor into a character. [It] enables you not to show the character but to be, to exist as the character." Which is what we all aspire to, right?
"Moni opened up man-made objects and elements of nature for us to explore," Brestoff tells me in a phone chat.
"What does nature offer the actorly imagination that animals don't?" I ask him.
"I think of it as an extension," he replies. Brestoff points out the ways that elements of nature creep into our language: "We'll say someone's a spitfire…or the Rock of Gibraltar, or like a black hole. You can't play 'to be depressed,' but you can take the idea of a black hole as something suggestive; you can think, 'I won't let the light escape from my eyes.' So there you have the kind of help that an animal character can't give you.
"Elements of nature are always more powerful than we are," he continues. "George C. Scott is like a hurricane. Alan Rickman as Snape in the Harry Potter films seems to spread darkness. [Nature] doesn't just help you with the character's thoughts; it helps you physicalize. And you can adjust its levels." In other words, a fire can be dying embers—or a towering inferno. You can embody a tornado or a dust devil (think of Téa Leoni in Spanglish for the latter, suggests Brestoff). You can also mix images in unpredictable, revelatory ways. You can, for instance, internalize the sensation of being a rock but choose an external, languid posture. Elements of nature provide all kinds of fuel for specific behavioral choices.
Brestoff also observes how useful elements of nature can be in translating a vague, result-oriented directorial comment into something playable. For example, if a director says, "Give me more," you can experiment with being a volcano just before it erupts.
So how do you internalize images of natural phenomena and then bring them to character work? In his book, Yakim introduces a series of exercises by saying it's important to "abandon that sense of self which keeps you firmly in your individuality and apart from the elements." He also recommends choosing elements that are active (like the wind), not static (like a mountain). His examples: cloud, fire, darkness, thunder, ocean, volcano. Brestoff thinks darkness is one of the most evocative choices.
Yakim advises warming up physically first, then "surrendering your mind and your senses" to the chosen image. "Don't act a cloud," he warns. "Become the cloud." Remember Edmund's monologue in Long Day's Journey Into Night about his seafaring ecstasy? "I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself—actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high star-dimmed sky!" I think Edmund's singular experience is what Yakim hopes actors can approach in these exercises. "Let its rhythms be yours," he says. "Concentrate to where your personal consciousness almost vanishes." He notes that this isn't about sense memory; it's about "direct mindless contact." Wait until you're fully submerged in the image, then allow your impulses to propel you into action: vocalization, movement.
When doing these exercises in class, each of Yakim's Juilliard students has an experience that is intensely personal and unpredictable. For example, one student's fire prompted hissing and spitting—she said afterward she felt hateful—while another's was light and bouncy, like "a happy little fire in a fireplace."
In the next stage of the exercise, Yakim's students allow character traits to evolve from the thoughts, emotions (which are often very intense—his book describes one student's slowly but inexorably building rage), and physicality they experienced as forces of nature. Then they create scenes that suit the character's mood and sensibility, with the goal of maintaining character consistency throughout a variety of improvised situations. From there it's presumably a hop, skip, and jump to grafting appropriate qualities onto a scripted character through experimentation in rehearsal.
Of course, this is only a summary of Yakim's much more detailed description of his exercises. Brestoff writes additional comments that help bridge the gap between classroom workout and preparing for a performance: You may discover "a particular movement or sound that can be useful for your human character. Richard III might [move] with darkness's stealthy menace." Thunder might be useful for playing Lear. "Some characters blow through life with the power and unstoppable one-way force of the jet stream," he adds, "others kick up small fusses like...a squall." If you have in your tool kit a collection of sensations you found by experimenting with nature's offerings, you'll be well equipped for making interesting choices.
I ask Brestoff how to avoid playing general emotion, since working with natural elements apparently taps into sources of giant-sized feeling. "You don't jump to characterizations first, but rather last," he says. "First you want to personalize, find your own personal responses, not the character's." After that, you start adding other elements. If you start out by, say, being dreamy like a cloud, then being dreamy "doesn't make a point, and everything's colored with a broad brush." That type of generalizing is a danger when using other acting tools as well, observes Brestoff—for example, Michael Chekhov's popular concept of body centers.
When working with elements of nature, as Yakim stresses, you're not meant to play at being a cloud; it's about incorporating aspects of your cloud experience into the human being. And when using the technique in preparing a role, the traits you incorporate have got to be specific to the role. "You might find something simple," Brestoff says, "like the way you bend your body in a critical moment, or the way you twist your head when surprised." But don't place the trait in the foreground; integrate it into the complete person.
Brestoff remarks that paying attention to this type of exploration of the imagination is especially useful for American actors. "We're usually accused of not characterizing," he says. "Most American actors, trained in personalization, stop there. They don't structure a part particularly, and they don't think too much about character because they fear they'll lose personalization." He notes that exploring nature is valuable not only for playing larger-than-life characters in Greek tragedy but for naturalistic plays as well, because embodying nonhuman elements can help you think the character's thoughts. Not that human-made objects can't work too: a pressure cooker, perhaps, or—think Blanche DuBois—a filmy scarf.
"Used incorrectly," Brestoff concludes, "elements of nature will turn you into a caricature or cliché. Used correctly, they help you stay believable."