REFRESH!

Inspirational worlds. Cuisine, architecture and photography

Happy New Year!

Over the Holiday season and the New Year I have continued to work with actors around the world to create characters for film and TV. I’m thrilled to have been a part of the journey for a 2022 Golden Globe winner and for SAG and BAFTA nominations.

Some of this work has been on developing intense characterisations, where the actors have had to make journeys far away from themselves to find a new identities through behaviour, body and voice. All have been journeys to reveal a secret inner essence in collaboration with the camera.

It has all been very focussed work. And so every now and again in the process we have used a “palate cleanser” to refresh the mind, body and spirit in order to achieve clarity and to go further.

PALATE CLEANSER

In the world of Haute Cuisine, a palate cleanser is a neutral flavour that removes food residue from the tongue, allowing us to assess a new flavour. Palate cleansers are often used between tasting wine or cheese or other strong flavours. Tart, citrus flavors are often used as a cleanser, such as braised pineapple or grapefruit. Widely used palate cleansers are bread, apple slices, banana, pickles or sorbet.

So, what does braised pineapple or grapefruit have to do with acting, writing and directing?

It is important to value the deep work your brain is doing for you as a creative. Maybe you are learning lines, crafting dialogue, developing a physical characterisation or choreographing an intimate scene. In all these situations, your focus and achievement will be improved if you allow your brain and body to play in a very different space for a while. Just as in yoga you would follow an intense asana with Child’s Pose.

It is not only about resting, it is about refreshing.

To refresh my own brain, I have been visiting the inspirationally different worlds of architecture and photography...

ARCHITECTURE

My recent architectural voyage has been through the portal of the Masterclass app. On Masterclass of course there are classes in acting (Natalie Portman, Samuel L Jackson) and directing (Spike Lee, Jodie Foster, Martin Scorcese). But I wanted to take my brain in a very different direction, to truly give my brain a palate cleanser or zingy citrus-tasting sorbet.

So for me, the most inspiring classes and lectures have been on creative topics which, on the face of it have nothing to do with acting.

It is summer here in Aotearoa, New Zealand and on the beach the other day I sat in the sun and listened to iconic architect Frank Gehry talk about the design and bulding of the Disney Concert Hall in LA.

Acoustically it is one of the finest concert halls of its size in the world and an iconic building, drawing tourists internationally. I experienced this myself on a recent trip to LA when my husband and I went to hear the LA Philharmonic Orchestra playing Berlioz’ SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE. It wasn’t just the music that was inspirational, the building itself lifted us up.

I realised in listening to Gehry’s. Masterclass that the process of building this beautiful and challenging structure and the stumbles along the way, mirrors the journey of building a story or a character.

Architecture is about creating a built environment for people to live in, work in, sleep in, die in, study in, eat in...

Working with a complicated process of engineering, building codes, economics... how to manage all of that and put it together and at the end produce something that would transfer feelings for me. That’s the mission...

— Frank Gehry

And as actors and directors, that is our mission too... creating something that transfers feelings.

Of course, it was not all smooth sailing for Gehry. He had to make compromises and find creative solutions to sticky problems. Originally, he wanted to build the Disney Hall out of stone, “Because stone takes ambient light, street-light. It’s very subtle and it glows”. But the commissioners of the Hall had seen Gehry’s award-winning Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, with its titanium skin. They wanted the same “performance” from the Disney Hall. So just as actors sometimes find, Gehry was limited by his own previous brilliant creation. In the end however, titanium proved too expensive and so the structure was clad in stainless steel. In turn, that cladding had to be lightly sanded after the building’s completion as it was reflecting blinding light and heat into neighbouring apartments. The Disney Hall is now celebrated for its burnished and iconic countenance. The creative process is one of ongoing edits, changes and tweaks.  

PHOTOGRAPHY

I have favourite photographers whose work I return to again and again — Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, Larry Clark.

For Christmas Stuart gave me a book of essays on photography: SEE/SAW: LOOKING AT PHOTOGRAPHS, by Geoff Dyer. This has sustained my spirit and inspired me through the start of this year. I have been introduced to new ways of seeing through photographers I had never met before, like Robert Fusco, who rode on Senator Robert Kennedy’s funeral train. His images of the mourning American people by the side of the tracks, snatched as the train rolled by, are startlingly candid and moving (see below).

Or like the street snaps of American photographers Helen Levitt and Vivian Meier. Through their eyes we can see a humanity that reaches through the years, even if the buildings, the clothes and culture are different.

A photograph is a single, seized instant which does not trace a journey through space and time, like a movie does. But in photographs we see captured small, perfect moments in a flash of time, like a splash of cold water.

Emerging out of these new worlds, I had new ideas and insights into the possibilities and options facing the actors I work with. It’s the value of taking a break and seeing things from a different perspective, a different angle.

In my work as a coach I always invite people to open themselves to other artforms. Sometimes I have found actors can be a little bit closed towards other forms of expression.

I once took some young actors to view an exhibition tracing the history of art through the 20th century, beginning on the ground floor with Picasso and Braque and ending upstairs with Jeff Koons’ amazing sculptural work Ushering In Banality.

One young actor could not believe that this Jeff Koons work was worth so much money! It was bullshit! It was just an enlargement of some mantelpiece trinket! But I said, “Maybe that is the point? Just like a film maker, is Koons trying to alert us to the value of those tiny cheap trinkets or experiences that otherwise we might disregard?”

Let other artforms open and develop your mind, inspire you about the meanings of your own work.

It doesn’t have to be art. It could be sport, music, a zoo, a garden! Open yourself! Live in the world so that you can reflect the world.

Refresh!

Robert Fusco

Helen Levitt