Where Stanislavski Meets Fanon.
Kangalee Arts Ensemble, Inc.
The Actor As Liberator
The Actor is the primary concern and element of the Kangalee Arts Ensemble. Before the director or writer, the Actor must be an integral participant and creator of the work being honed and expressed on the stage.
“…If there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our lifetime, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake signaling through the flames.”
— Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and its Double (translated by MC Richards)
Lead actresses Tessa Martin (L) and Justine Stock’s (R) work in “The Life & Death of Art” is an example of the process of which the company posits: finding yourself in the character and then “freefalling” into the character’s point-of-view and finding a freedom within it, going to extremes before finding a middle ground in which to express the character’s motivations, desires, politics and feelings. Both artists took their own route, but welcomed the idea of attaining freedom in their roles, where they both were not subordinate to the director or author but, in fact, an artistic equal – ( if not above!)
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We are at a point in history where we can no longer separate aesthetic from meaning, process from politics and craft or art — from the moral crisis we experience daily.
The actor should be more than an entertainer, aspire to deeper depths than the artist, and achieve something greater than a job, paycheck or applause.
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Act as if we are saving a life. Start with your own. But by God, have fun at it—and no matter what always act the way you do when you are alone in your bedroom, and no one is watching. That freedom is what you must put on stage.
ACTING AS POLITICAL EXPRESSION
Inspired by director/filmmaker Jack Garfein’s notion of acting as a method of survival, the Living Theater and the Black Arts Movement’s emphasis on the conscientiousness of an actor — the Kangalee Method is a way of reclaiming individual power from system’s that seek to oppress. This vision of acting combines the psychological realism and emotional truth of Stanislavsky with the radical decolonialist politics of Frantz Fanon: liberation at all costs. The actor should be as aggressive in their pursuit of catharsis as an oppressed people are in their rebellion against enslavement. This passion is not hysterical, it is a focused obsession, a force of nature transmitted. It is like the intensity between two dueling musicians, singers harmonizing or dancers helping each other twirl in the air. It is the honesty, sanctity and gravity of the downbeat of a drum.
This marriage of ideas and methods is to make the actor aware of themselves as social beings, politically viable as avatars of revolutionary change and liberation; appreciate their involvement in public works (the minute you perform for a spectator you are providing community service), aware of their responsibility to society and their pact that they have made to illuminate the human condition in all its forms.
In an age when colonization, imperialism and genocide are alive and well, it behooves the actor to engage with the world around them, wrestling the inner and outer demons of our political systems, the internal and external conflicts of a given character. (This was demonstrated in the recent The Life & Death of Art.)
“…Acting has become too manicured…how can it return to a contagious joyful feeling like that of punk rock or bebop jazz? Music that’s free?”
— Dennis Leroy Kangalee, The Kangalee Method
NOTES ON ACTING.
(from the KAE Notebook, October 2023 - February 2024)
How to bring one’s artistic values into actual life? And vice-versa? And not suffer as much as they might be fated to?
Self-creation, more expression, more questions- and less destruction, less torture and less explanations.
Proof of the power is in the work itself; artists should stand by their work but not have to petition members and gatekeepers of pop culture to be supported. They should support themselves, communally.
Principally, the actor must see himself as liberator. Entertainment- mass entertainment- no longer has any gravity the way it once may have because it all seems tied into the demands, taste and collusion of the market: the men and women of capitalism who ordain taste and value.
Criterion is independent.
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Acting as Radical Self Possession in the 21st Century - an art whose form is against oppression and totalitarianism.
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Acting has become TOO manicured. How can it return to a contagious joyful feeling of punk and bebop; great music?
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There is something clinical and now sterile that has taken over a lot of mainstream and underground rendering of “acting.”
There’s no sweat. What’s wrong with actually seeing someone work onstage?
The excitement of the seventies Method actors or the heyday of the 1950s gently imbued some blood sweat and tears into the command of a movie frame. But…what happened?
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Method acting on screen ended up ghettoizing the actor into Psychology; separating him from his body.
Screen acting became fashionably Freudian with no regard for the corporeal...
STAGE acting has to have both.
In fact, Stanislavski eventually conceded that actions speak louder than words...emotion comes from action, not the reverse. If we take him at his word — a gesture, a gait, an action - on stage, particularly, is as eloquent and poetic as any well-written poem. If acting is poetry in motion why are we trying to cage and tame it to become what we see on most screens: just someone getting a paycheck.
Theater definitely broke all kinds of ground between 1950-1980 and when Acting Schools and conservatory programs replaced the cultural contribution with MFAs and capitalist considerations of acting, it began to become something…else.
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The sheer excitement of a great acting class, Black Box performance or scene study.
Scene study was like a band playing in a nightclub.
If you are an actor - some of the above may make sense to you. If so…you are probably someone we want to work with. And hopefully we are a group you can learn from, collaborate with, contribute to and grow with.
INQUIRE ABOUT THE KANGALEE ARTS ACTING CLASSES/SUMMER WORKSHOP BEGINNING RIGHT AFTER JULY 4TH, 2024!
STAY TUNED FOR MORE INFORMATION
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All members of the ensemble are committed participants, no one receives a salary yet and we depend on the zealousness of each participant, our audience...and the kindness of strangers. We do not exist without you and appreciate both your support and your financial contributions. Consider making a tax-deductible donation today!