Madame Sergava Told the Truth

7/28/2019 Madame Sergava Told the Truth

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/madame-sergava-told-the-truth 1/15

Page 1 of 15

Martyn Green and Katharine Sergava in Misalliance

MADAME SERGAVA TOLD THE TRUTH

BYDAVID ARTHUR WALTERS



Page 2 of 15

"I have had great teachers. I love them because they told me the truth.” Katharine Sergava

I recall very well my evening classes with master drama teacher KatharineSergava in the basement of HB Studio on shady Bank Street in WestGreenwich Village. Hers was an “open” or mixed-level class designed for

beginners but more experienced students including her regular followersattended as well much to the benefit of the newcomers

"You all have great potentials, but you have not worked all your life on your potentials. We come to class to be vulnerable, not to be protected. So don'ttake yourself seriously. Take your work seriously. It will teach you aboutlife. We have to actually DO it in order to act. And we have to be organized in our everyday life in order to be ready to work. If you have a system, you

don't leave things to chance! Even if you are not inspired, if you use thesystem you will have a performance. This is the difference between knowingwhat you are doing and not knowing. I would be scared to get on the stagenot knowing what I'm doing. I'm showing you the way. The rest is in your hands. Do you want to do it or not?”

Thanks to her, I soon recognized the difference between good and bad acting, the difference between truth and falsehood in the representation of life. At the very least, a professional actor should act intelligently, knowingwhat he is doing.

"Bringing your own stupidity and carelessness on the stage is unforgivable,”she declared. “In film you can do something over and over, but in theater, if you lay an egg, there it is. You must pick it up and eat it. And be thankful for what goes right, for there is a glimmer of hope. Then find out why it wentright. Remember that one truth gives birth to many truths. If a moment isawkward, work on the moment. Chances are that then the other momentswill fall into place.”

Many beginning students decided to represent stupid or villainous behavior during improvisation exercises, with pathetic results.

"You have to get inside the essence of stupidity, et cetera, to play it. To getinto it you have to know it. You have to be intelligent to play stupidity. To

be clumsy like a clown, you have to be dexterous. Once you comprehend



Page 3 of 15

villainy, and we have all done some evil, then in life these evils you havefaced will fade away.”

I learned that natural behavior or the semblance thereto called realism is not present in false acting although an audience may be deceived. We mayimagine we are witnessing the real thing, but bad acting is false to nature and will likely to be detected by discerning critics if not by an audience unawareof the deception until the critics point it out.

"Do not use the expression 'to show,' Madame Sergava said. “What is your purpose on the stage? The truth! The actor is instrument and player at thesame time. Our assignment is 'to be a human being'. That is most difficult.You're making a story of it. You have to believe in it instead. We want aslice of life to believe in. Strive for that goal. But that is not to say that what

happens on stage should duplicate life. We have to be truthful, but not tocopy life. Life is life. Stage is art.”

An actor familiar with the Stanislavski system and its methodicdevelopments cannot simply go through the motions and recite lines: he hasa tremendous interpretative responsibility to his audience.

“Theater is like a church. It is not just words. It is something that moves you.You can read a play at home. That's not why people go to the theater. Theygo to feel the hidden substances, what the actors are going to give to the

play, to the story line. That's why subtext, what's being said underneath it all,is so important. The indirect is more than the direct where everything isrevealed. Above all, it must be depth that we're after.”

Sergava opened my eyes to the unpleasant truth that we are too easily fooled because we need to believe in others. Sometimes were are blind to the factthat bad actors are insincere, talk at their counterparts as if they wereinanimate objects instead of converse with them, and that they are woefullyinattentive to physical details when handling things, such as the way they

hoist their beverage containers to their mouths in a such a way that thecontents, if there were any, would spill all over their chests, or the way theyhandle telephones as if there were no one at the other end. Therefore it isimportant for an actor to known what he is doing, and why, and toconcentrate on his task. We were given exercises to that end.



Page 4 of 15

“You can sit on a chair, stand on it, or use it to prop open a door. Choose anarticle, and use it in three different ways. Concentrate on using an object inaccordance with the qualities you endowed it with. Then use it again, butthis time your mind is not on what you're doing, but on some problem youmust solve. Develop an inner dialogue, look at the problem from differentangles, pose several solutions. Don't treat inanimate objects carelessly, for they have their own sense of drama. Concentration is the same whether it'son animate or inanimate objects Hold on to your objective like a dog holdingon to a bone. If you are not like a dog holding a bone, you don't have thescene. Concentrating on an object gives us sincerity. You may not have thestyle or the language or Shakespeare, but you will be sincere. You mustunderstand what a relationship is, what it means. Like an object, it has manydifferent aspects. Figure it out, and come back with meaning. Meaningfulrelationships are the result of what qualities you endow an object with.”

Unrealistic actors may suddenly jump out of bed fully awake from a deepsleep, or, when leaving a place forever, hasten away without taking a fewmoments to look around, and so on.

"Changes are not all of a sudden. Play the process, not the result. For example, falling asleep and waking up occur in stages. So we must takesteps to change. A scene must develop organically, from seed to flower—not

bang! or instantly. If you are to exit, then build up your exit. Like magic, useaccents, climaxes, et cetera.

So we learned to wake up normally, in stages, and, in an exercise called “Leaving the Room Forever,” to look around the room, remembering and feeling some of the salient experiences had there. And, among others, therewas the ‘Action Inner State’; for example, wash dishes while thinking of something else, and then focus on exactly what you are doing while washingthe dishes again, really geting into the action, the Zen of washing dishes.

"You don't want to wash the dishes. You wash so you can watch TV, et

cetera, to get it over with. But if you really wash because you want to wash,you will do so much!

Whatever the exercise might be, it had to be done, not just thought about.

"You are so busy in your thoughts. But they must be directed to your work.



Page 5 of 15

You must DO the exercises. You must play the scales so you can play thesong. Silent language is more eloquent than words. It's what you DO on thestage that is very eloquent.”

Students soon learned that Sergava was a veritable font of practical advice:

"We have to want to be disturbed about the extraordinary problems in thisworld. We are scientists of life. Actors belong to no culture. Art should not

be nationalistic. Nothing is going to work in class unless you work in life.Einstein said, 'Artists make order out of chaos.' Don't laugh! This is thestatement of a great scientist! This is marvelous! This is not funny! If youare chaotic you cannot be an artist! You don't just memorize lines. You must

be like scientists. You must dig in and take everything apart. Bring me more profound ideas. I am hungry for them. I am waiting for them.

“You have to be bold and cautious at the same time. You are bold butcontrolled. You don't run amok. Channel your energy, and then you will bethe master of yourself. Haste makes waste. The slower you go, the farther you'll get. Not that you are patient. Patience is a duty. But you are constant.You want to do it.”

“Once you introduce something for instance, 'I am hot,' you must continuewith that until, if ever, you are cooled off. Not just, 'I am hot,' then forgetabout it.”

“When a bomb is thrown, you react. You don't come back later and say 'a bomb is thrown.' If an immediate reaction is not called for, look and see.Then you can respond.”

“Best acting comes if we listen. He listened to his wife on the phone. He believed he heard her and he reacted appropriately. What is important iswhat your partner is saying, not what your reaction is going to be. Reallistening is being at one with the person who's speaking, without personal

prejudice. And before you speak, SEE what you are talking about.”

Of course that is all common sense, yet all good drama teachers find itnecessary to constantly remind students to be true to life. Maria Callas, for example, who herself did not employ a large vocabulary of gestures during

performances but put most of the drama into her voice, observed that manyopera singers did not know the language they were singing nor were they





Page 7 of 15

an emotion is not only what someone feels but is also a judgment as to itsvalue, just as perception requires judgments on sensations.

"Don't play experience with passion!” said Madame Sergava. “Just be thatexperience. Relive the experience and we will believe. You can't forceemotions. You must COAX them through truthful activity. No, don’t playemotions. That's phony. Play actions. Out of action comes emotion. Don't

play end results. If emotions come out for the action, fine.”

On the other hand, "Have more in the heart, my darling, and not so much inthe head. When you have the heart, the face will change. You don't have tomake faces. Go home and ask yourself why, and answer yourself truthfully.Why aren't you sharing your feelings? Maybe you are afraid to be soft, but

being pliable is strength. I love sentiment, but not sentimentality.

Sentimentality is cheap! You were so playing self-pity that there wasnothing left for us. We don't feel sorry for you. I want real feelings. Don't beafraid—an adventure is exciting. If you really ENDOW, then we will see it.But don't control it too much. Give it to us.”

What is meet is an appropriate balance, whatever corresponds to thesentiments of both the audience and the actor, and that depends on taste.Adam Smith elaborated on the “sense of propriety” in The Theory of Moral

Sentiments, wherein he opined that we judge emotions of others to be proper or improper according to their correspondence or disagreement with our ownsentiments in two ways, according to whether we are or are not directlyrelated to the person and objects exciting the sentiments.

“With regard to those objects,” Smith explained unemotionally, “whichaffect in a particular manner either ourselves or the person whose sentimentswe judge of, it is at once more difficult to preserve this harmony and correspondence, and, at the same time, vastly more important. Mycompanion does not naturally look upon the misfortune that has befallen me,from the same point of view in which I consider them. They affect me much

more nearly. We do not view them from the same station, as we do a picture,or poem, or a system of philosophy; and are apt to be very differentlyaffected by them. But I can much more easily overlook the want of thiscorrespondence of sentiments with regard to such indifferent objects asconcern neither me nor my companion.”



Page 8 of 15

A spectator who endeavors to place himself in the situation of an affected person may sympathize more dispassionately than someone who actuallyknows that person or who has experienced the same feelings about an object.The person directly affect knows that, yet he passionately desires completesympathy. “He longs for that relief which nothing can afford him but theentire concord of the affections of the spectators with his own. To see theemotions of their hearts in every respect beat time to his own in the violentand disagreeable passions constitutes his sole consolation. But he can onlyhope to obtain this by lowering his passions to that pitch, in which thespectators are capable of going along with him. What they feel will, indeed,always be in some respects different from what he feels, and compassion cannever be exactly the same with original sorrow; because the secretconsciousness that the change of situations from which the sympatheticsentiment arises is but imaginary, not only lowers it in some degree, but in

some measure varies it in kind, and gives it quite a different modification.These two sentiments, however, may, it is evident, have such acorrespondence with one another, as is sufficient for the harmony of thesociety. Though they will never be unisons, they may be concords, and thisis all that is wanted or required.”

According to Smith’s theory of correspondence, an actor who behavesappropriately would consider what he would feel if subject to the sameexperience while also considering how he would feel if he was just another member of the audience. Of course a group of friends would be moresympathetic than strangers: “We expect less sympathy from an assembly of strangers, and we assume, therefore, still more tranquility before them, and always endeavor to bring down our passion to that pitch, which the

particular company we are in may expected to go along with.”

One might ask what would be appropriate for an audience gone mad, for asick society, or when representing a madman to a sane audience, and so on.Experience is the greatest teacher, and until one has enough of it, wisedirectors, teachers, coaches and critics are prepared to answer those

questions least the novice lose his balance and make a fool of himself and the author and director, perhaps even lose his mind.

I experimented with Emotion Memory during an improvisation exercise,doing my best to recall how I felt a few weeks before when I awoke in themidst of a hotel blaze uptown on Broadway. A woman had fallen asleepwhile her baby’s formula was warming up on an illegal hotplate in her room



Page 9 of 15

next to mine. The hotplate and the chest of drawers caught fire. She awoke,grabbed her baby, threw a pillow on the flames and ran. I stumbled down thehall and outside into the winter night scantily clad, and in a horrible shiver Iwatched a man in the room directly above mine at the rear of the hotel jumpout of his window to be impaled by an iron bar jutting up from the ground.My room was miraculously untouched by the fire. The woman with the babydemanded she be given another room in the hotel. Of course it was closed for awhile, so I went to my favorite local pub, where I began to recount myexperience to two old friends, one of whom said, “Hey, can it. Who do youthink you are? Do you think YOU are the only one with problems?”

I did not actually feel much of anything when I re-enacted the scene for theclass. I just play-acted. Perhaps I should have remembered how I felt duringanother hotel fire I experienced a few blocks away the previous year. A man

fell asleep while smoking and died in the ensuing blaze. The flames spread to the adjoining rooms near mine. Again I was out in the cold, this timewithout the fine overcoat my grandmother gave me during my visit toArizona. The coat had belonged to my deceased uncle after he returned fromthe war, in which he was one of the famous Bombay Bombers. Someone

jimmied the lock on the door while I was sleeping and stole that coat.Perhaps I would have died trying to save the coat if it had not been stolen.

I confess that I was not a good little student. I loved the improvisation because it provided a setting to let the cat out of the bag. My improvisation partner was a lovely Danish gal who modeled nude for artists. During our little skits I liked to pull out a silly poem from my pocket and recite it ever so pompously. One poem was about a kid bouncing a ball off the BerlinWall: ‘FALL WALL FALL.’ And I liked to mock the objective exercises,which I called “thingercises,” the obsessive fussing and fiddling withobjects, relating the exercises to the “thingerism” of our “stupefied” society.Madame Sergava, however, seemed amused; she did not slap me down. Ithink she was a rebel at heart.

But what would the world without things be? Nothing is good enough, so perhaps it would be perfect, which is to equivocally say that Nothing is perfect. The world is what it is, and we are how we are: she was just doingher job, teaching an acting class, therefore the importance of things and objective or goal-oriented behavior were stressed; for example:



Page 10 of 15

"Concentration can be only one thing at a time. We are nervous because weare concentrated on the WRONG thing. Visualize first. Visualize the

problem. Is it to put on the dress? Carry out a physical activity with aspecific objective, attending to the activity with the five senses. What do youexperience? For instance, are you tense? Then relax. I want a justification of the objective on the stage. Why are you sewing? Just waiting for someone toarrive is a passive idea. I want to see some action, some relations withobjects, some use of the five senses. Always bring some props, some realobject, so you can have something to believe in. Make yourself comfortable

by being SPECIFIC, having something in particular to do, by believing inyour circumstances. Simple things are difficult. Complex things are easier

because, well, they're so hard to figure out that nobody knows.” Et cetera.

Yes, I was a bad student: I am naturally unruly and to this very day cannot

seem to help letting my bad habits get in the way of everything I do,including this account of her class. Welcome to me, me, and me, a romantic“I” around whom the world turns.

I was not the only one with bad habits. I remember to this day thedevastation of a fellow student during an exercise when Madame Sergavaabruptly corrected her:

“Stop shuffling your feet, fiddling with your hair, picking your nose and chewing gum!” As the girl fled the class, she turned to lecture the class onthe example:

"Why are you smiling? It's time we reveal how we really feel and give it toothers. If you want to be free, get away from your habits. Habit is not natural! For example, there is often too much self-indulgence, too muchgrooming by the woman. It is all too decorative. We all have characteristics,

but eventually we must work for neutrality; to have purity, to be the ideal of purity, so then the characteristics can be imposed on that clay.”

Sergava had a reputation among students who could not stand discipline for being too tough and even mean, but that simply was not so. She simply told the truth no matter how inconvenient or tough it might seem. She had beenaround the block countless times with hundreds of students. She refused towaste everyone’s time beating around the bush, and was determined to

provide what students had signed up for.



Page 11 of 15

Still, she had a fine sense of humor, betrayed by a faint smile when someoneacted up intelligently. And she was generous and kind. Consider, for example, the testimony of Grace Kiley, award-winning actress and

playwright, esteemed private acting coach and drama teacher at some of New York City’s most prestigious schools.

“Ms. Sergava was my first real teacher. I was in her class in 1968 or 69. Wedid monologues from Spoon River Anthology. My work on my piece wentvery deep. We passed around cloth roses in class, smelling them as if real. Iwas unbelievably shy and she picked up on my loneliness. I was very strongwilled although I had no self esteem. I was young and green from NorthernVermont and she was trying to take me under her wing. If I had accepted that, it would have changed my career for the better. On her own volition shesecured me an apartment at Westbeth. That would be a dream come true, but

I was too petrified to take it. After a year with her, I became passionate whenreading Uta Hagen’s Respect For Acting, so I secretly worked on an auditionfor Uta Hagen even though Ms. Sergava told me I wasn't ready. I auditioned and was accepted.”

As for me, which I still have difficulty getting over, I took Sergava’s classnot to become a professional actor but to learn how to better express myself.Ironically, that meant getting rid of myself. To wit, I was a “bad actor,”trained in juvenile delinquency, drifting from one thing to another withoutreally giving a damn about any one of them. Ideas are my things, so whocares if someone broke into a football star’s home last night and stole$190,000 in luxury articles? I could only sympathize with the person whowas aggrieved over the theft of a treasured gift, for it is the thought and notthe thing that counts.

"We just don't know what we're doing in life. This is why we have problemson the stage. We're going to perish if we don't pick and do something.Everybody who is an artist must be responsible. We must care. We must beserious. We must have a different approach to life.”

Many years before I signed up for her class, I had decided that I did not wantto be a professional actor. I had attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in the Sixties. I had a terrible time learning lines because Iwas used to saying whatever I wanted to say whether people liked it or not.Indeed, I was rebellious by nature and nurture. I did not like the discipline atall. And I could not stand criticism, period.



Page 12 of 15

“To thine own self be true,” I had read somewhere. I wanted to be my ownself instead of pretending to be someone else’s self. An actor, I supposed, isof little use to anyone except for entertainment; he is someone so

preoccupied with characterizing others that he has no character of his own. Irespected great actors for their courageous and artful performances, but Icertainly did not consider any of them as role models in their personal lives,and concluded from their behavior that acting is not therapeutic or revelatory. I believed there was a true self inside of me somewhere instead of a congeries of tendencies, but how could I be true to that, not knowingwhat it was? Actors are just fakers, are they not? Are they not lost tothemselves?

Maybe not: of course there is a difference between the theatre and the world,

but maybe all the world is a stage, metaphorically speaking, and maybeactors know themselves better by being true to other players by pretendingto be them, and therefore become acquainted with the world of persons allthe better. No matter how empty or vain a person may be, she need not fear for losing her own self by playing others. Her underlying self will alwaysremain true to its unique history; it remains the dearest of all selves to her even when her love for another seems to abnegate it, for she celebrates it asthe greatest gift she can give. However that may be, if life is as vain as the

pessimists say, if our world is nothing but a transient fancy and our headshome to worms, at least we can use our heads to compose ourselves and besincere in our selected roles before the skull is forever vacated.

“We need sincerity and innocence,” Sergava insisted time and again. “Likechildren, play for real. Be childlike, not childish. Be honest.” And it was her sincerity, honesty and wisdom that made a profound impression on me.

I appreciated Sergava’s discipline because I came to her as a dancer. I had transformed somewhat since my undisciplined days. I was not the natural

born rebel I imagined I was back in the day when I was really a frightened,

forlorn and angry boy who ran away from home at thirteen and had nothingto cling to. I liked great literature, thanks to my father, so I found somesolace in literary art and fancied myself as a writer. I also liked to watch

people dance, and it would be dance that helped me survive a history of mistakes. The great Luigi was my favorite dance teacher because he loved everyone that loved dance, even me, and he liked to say such things as, “If you do wrong long enough, wrong seems right.”



Page 13 of 15

The worst thing that can happen to a dancer is when his teacher provides no“corrections” at all, for that does not mean he is perfect among

perfectionists, but that he is not worth correcting. My ballet teacher at thetime was Elena Kunikova, who was literally born in a Russian ballet studio.The best compliment she provided was “that’s not bad.” I was crushed, surethat I was all washed up when she ignored me. As a matter of fact, I was allwashed up before I began, at a late age, and was taking class with youngsterswho would soon have jobs with ballet companies all over the country.

“You have first to have the foundation,” Madame Sergava said. “Without astrong foundation, you can't play anything.”

Fortunately, I had found my foundation in dance before I met her. Dance is

the foundation of the arts, as far as I was concerned, the only altar on whichI found myself willing to sacrifice myself. I was willing to face my mistakes,without becoming angry with myself and the world, and to struggle to makethe necessary corrections no matter how difficult that might be.

"Our goal is the truth,” she often said. “To be truthful, we must have thecourage to face ourselves. Be aware of your mistakes, of what has taken

place, but don't be angry or critical of yourself. To live is to struggle. If youdon't want to struggle, you are only half alive. If you don't want to struggle,you don't want to act. You're half asleep. So you must make a goal and be ahero, be courageous and struggle. Be serious, have meaningful goals, do not

pick something frivolous to do. Do what is hard, not what is easy. Being likeeveryone else, being run-of-the-mill, is less trouble, is boring, boring,

boring! Do something special! You must be an eagle in my class, or I don'twant you.”

Katharine’s artistic foundation was in dance; indeed, she was a prima ballerina at the nucleus of the classical dance movement in the United States,and she wowed the dramatic musical theatre world as Dream Laurey in

Oklahoma! In a booklet and two LP records published by Ottenheimer in1959, entitled ‘An Introduction to Ballet,’ she described ballet as anadvanced form of the games people play as children with friends to expressthe variety of feelings they have. The ballet package, intended for use athome and school, included illustrations of the five basic ballet positions, acomplete ballet class, and a narration of an imaginary performance of ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ all for $4.95 ($39.95 in today’s dollars).



Page 14 of 15

Katharine Sergava in Oklahoma!

As a dancer I frequently marveled at the amazing technique of virtuosodancers who were just doing technique, not dancing, but technique in itself is meaningless and at its best is not meant to be seen. Actors or others whoare “just acting” or “going through the motions” in order to deceive peopleas to their sincerity appear to be phonies no matter how well mannered theyappear to be. Does the performer really mean what he is doing in his role? Ishe being true to character? Is he being real? We may be deceived by fivesenses, but what about the sixth sense?

How are we to represent reality, if not to get real ourselves? Sergavaassigned us reality-homework; go out into the world and intently observehuman behavior for a change instead of being wrapped up in our ownthoughts and quotidian activities. That is what scientists of human behavior including the practitioners of various arts learn to do well. I certainly did notgo out of my way, but wherever I went I devoted some time to paying closeattention to behavior in different settings, noticing, for example, thedifference between how people acted on the subway and in a bar. I listened to many conversations at once in crowded bars, and learned a great dealabout people and myself to boot.

As must be evident to the reader by now, I took plenty of notes duringMadame Sergava’s class. There is a legend about an actress in one of Stanislavski’s plays who came to Stanislavski years later to say that she had taken many notes about his technique during the rehearsals, and wanted to



Page 15 of 15

know what she should do with them. “Burn them all,” he said. I submitted my notes to Sergava several years after taking her class. She was impressed that I had bothered to take them, and was polite enough not to tell me to burnthem all. The essence of her teaching was to search out and tell the truthwhatever we did.

"I hope you will remember these things when I am gone. The audience maynot know about them, but these things will make your life on the stagefuller."

Katharine Sergava as Dream Laurey in Oklahoma!

Documents

Madame Sergava Told the Truth