Partial Narratives

 

As indicated earlier not only may a speaker be partially unaware of what is being transmitted through pre-linguistic reflective communication, but listeners may be also partially unaware. Susan Goldin-Meadow (1999) explores the concomitant possibility that of speakers mutually influencing each other’s communication through their gesturing. She indicates that when gestures and speech convey the same message gesturing facilitates communication. However gestures can impede communication when there is a mismatch between what is spoken and the accompanying gestures Goldin-Meadow 1999, 426). The gestures are supplying their own partial narrative to the communicated thought-stream.  They have the potential to throw a light on the unspoken thoughts of the speaker, or to increase the complexity of the communication. As an actor trainer I regard this research as underscoring a vital component contributing to the liveness of any performance.

 

Pedagogically, through Malmgren’s acting technique trainee actors develop an awareness of the gestural transactions as well as the intentional and language-based transactions occurring in any face-to-face encounter. However the placement of character becomes a determinant in deciding how sensitive any text-based character is to the embodied gestural information that is flowing.

 

Specific characters may be resistant to responding to any communication apart from verbal information. Other characters may assist communication, intervening with smiles, nods, reflective gestures in harmony with the embodied gestural communication that they are receiving. Characters may be baffled by the discrepancies between what is being spoken and what they understand through gesture. Any on-stage character requires these kinds of considerations as to how gestural communication is dealt with. Gestural theorist Janet Bavelas (2007, 128) explores face-to-face dialogue, both the audible acts as well as the visible acts. She includes in her definition of gesturing facial displays and adds gazing as a gestural component. Bavelas (p. 128) shows how when high levels of reciprocity are occurring in a communicative act then gestures can momentarily replace words and still be understood and responded to by the listener. There can be simultaneous feedback where speaker and listener are interrupting or completing each other’s dialogue based on their gestural exchanges. In particular Bavelas mentions that facial displays can alter the direction of the communication. She terms these highly reciprocal gestural interactions where mutual influence is occurring as ‘micro-social interaction’ (Bavelas, 2007, 128)

 

A participant’s contribution does not originate autonomously in his or her mind (or from “language” as an abstraction) and does not evaporate into a social vacuum (Bavelas, 2007, 128).

 

Playscripts, especially contemporary texts can indicate where this form of dialogue is occurring, placing dashes where the interruption by the listener is to happen. However without an understanding of gesture and how it contributes to the dialogue these performed interruptions can remain as static and meaningless in the trainee actor’s performance. The trainee needs to consider how invested in ‘the other’, or how intertwined in ‘the other’ the speaker is in relation to the communication. Trainee actors are often seen to speak in performance as if the listener can immediately comprehend what the speaker is saying. However the effort of the communication is embodied in the animation of the gestural patterns, especially when expressing new ideas or ideas that matter to the speaker. Again it is necessary for trainee actors to comprehend how each character imagines their reception by other characters.

 

Carrie Noland (2007, 8) in her examination of the new media art of Bill Viola calls the specific and often minute gestural movements that Viola captures on film when his performers are in action, ‘protentive’ movements. Noland (p. 2) is interested in the ways in which specific motor sequences convey unscripted yet social meanings for an audience. The movements that Viola captures in his slow motion films are not functionally performed by his actors, but rather emerge as small adjustments of each actor’s body in a larger context of functional action. The actors may be unaware of these muscular gesticulations, many of which are facial. Viola’s camera work brings these to life in profoundly moving ways. Noland’s research suggests that when actors are on the way towards new and meaningful actions these socially inscripted moves will emerge through the ‘prepersonal’ body (p. 8). However this can only come from actors allowing rather than censoring their own personal reactions to environments and others to exist as they move; the actors’ already established ‘I cans’ are set in neural pathways but need to be constantly adjusting to new contexts if the vitality of their gestures are to be witnessed. This ‘moving towards’ is the important thing; images propelling movement will then create a myriad of ‘protentive’ shapes along the way towards the next set of sedimented spoken words.