Research & Aesthetics: Part 5

            I recently closed a production of Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel where I played the character of Michael. This character acts as a sort of narrator as he reflects on two weeks in August of 1936. The entire play acts as the memory we all have as we grow older; where we recall something that happened to us as children and suddenly see with a newfound sense of moral identity. My process to find the character of Michael took me through a lot of soul searching; as I established the moral identity of Michael, my own moral identity was refined. This process is referred to in Michael Stauffer’s essay Building Character while Developing a Character: An Investigation of the Integration of Faith and Theater. Stauffer states:

“Theater allows both the depth of understanding and involvement of the characters in the situation, and the distance to observe the action that can lead the student through the journey and subsequently contribute to his moral clarity (49).”

            This journey toward self-knowledge is what I will elaborate on here (Stauffer 48), first by exploring the moral identification factors Stauffer gives us with my exploration in Lughnasa. Secondly, I will look at the factors I connected with as an actor, describing things from my own life that allowed me to better relate and truthfully portrait them. Lastly, I will look at the factors I could not connect with and think of “as-ifs” according to Constantine Stanislavski’s acting system.

            Stauffer uses the eleven moral identification factors of Arthur Holmes and his book Shaping Character as “a basis for the questions posed by any actor as [he or] she attempts to understand and identify with [his or] her character (49).”  I will go through each of these in exploration of the character Michael and according to the text of Dancing at Lughnasa:

1. Consciousness Raising[1]: This is a time of life when one becomes aware of the importance of a significant life event. In the case of Michael, the event was the return of his Uncle Jack from Africa and the purchase of his family’s first wireless radio when he was seven (Friel 9-10).
2. Consciousness Sensitizing: After one becomes aware of the significance of a life event, the response of the world around them sensitizes it for that person, or places a sense of value on the event. For example, Michael’s mother and aunt’s response to Father Jack coming home clearly defined his value in Michael’s life (17). Kate in particular, and the degree to which she was upset about Jack’s new polytheistic faith, showed Michael how important religious belief can be (60).
3. Values Analysis: Michael receives a letter in his twenties from a half brother he never knew existed. He learns through this letter that his father—who was not a significant part of his life outside of the random yearly visits—was actually married and had three children in the south of Whales. The receiving of this letter causes Michael to evaluate his values. His perception of his father has completely changed, thus he takes stock of his value of commitment in relationships (73).
4. Values Clarification: Upon receiving the letter Michael thinks back to that particular summer in 1936 when Gerry Evans, Michael’s father, visits twice within two weeks. During Gerry’s second visit he dances with Agnes, Michael’s aunt, and kisses her (77). This remembrance clarifies his value of commitment in relationships. Michael now sees commitment as something to fear because of the hurt it causes, or doesn’t cause as long there is no communication.
5. Values Criticism: After we clarify a value it is put against society as a whole and is then scrutinized and tested. This puts one’s values in a cycle because often this scrutiny causes values to be analyzed and clarified all over again. Throughout the duration of the play, Michael remembers the proper Aunt Kate’s perception of his father. Michael’s values are scrutinized by the love he knew his mother, Christina, had for Gerry, and the contempt Kate had for him (44).
6. Moral Imagination: Michael idolized his Uncle Jack (17). At the age of seven, hearing Jack’s wild stories of the rituals and ceremonies of the Ryangan people in Uganda caused Michael’s mind to soar (59). He longed to experience this dark cultish world that had so changed the priest everyone in the Mundy family had once known. The kites that boy Michael works on throughout the play are examples of this moral imagination.  It is revealed that the kites have devilish African faces painted on them (82). Michael’s morals up to this point had been strictly set in place by Aunt Kate, the devout Catholic (10). Given the idyllic place Jack had in Michaels head, the talk of Africa causes Michael to rethink his morals.
7. Moral Reasoning: After one tries on new morals, they either fit, or they don’t. It can be assumed that Michael never went to Africa, as he spent most of his younger adult life looking for the two runaway Mundy sisters, Agnes and Rose (72). No moral decision is made at this point, but rather it is a time of searching or perhaps experimentation.
8. Moral Decision Making: Making the character decision that Michael never went to Africa, causes him to reason that he shouldn’t settle on one religion though it is important to believe in something.
9. Responsible Agents: These are the people, places or things that were direct inhibitors of the development of Michael’s moral identity. Michael had five mothers and no real father, essentially. Each Mundy sister had their impact on him as Michael makes connections as an adult as to why each of them behaved the way they did all those years ago. Ireland and the pagan holiday of La Lughnasa was another responsible agent feeding his criticism of Catholic reasoning. And of course, Father Jack had his impact on him as well.
10. Virtue Development: This stage of moral identification is the lump sum of everything that has been acquired in the steps above. It is the development of the positive qualities one has. Michael, because of his past, is a lover of art and beauty despite his bitterness. He is incredibly cultured and accepting of different kinds of people. He’s not afraid to sit down with strangers (like the audience) and talk about his life, hoping they will share as well.
11. Moral Identity: This is the goal, the endgame, the definition of all that has happened in one’s life. This goes beyond just the development of good qualities but the bad ones as well. Michael cannot commit to anything, especially relationships. He took on the wanderer aspect of his father, traveling for place to place and never settling down for fear of becoming stagnant like his mother and his aunts.

As an actor playing the role of Michael, it was my job to take all of the above moral identification factors and concluding moral identity, immerse myself in them, and live there for the duration of the play. Some factors were easy for me to play and others were not. I will first look at three that I connected with the most.

My consciousness raising was very similar to Michael’s in that I also received a very significant form of technology at a young age that changed my life. When I was in seventh grade my family bought our first computer. I fell in love with it, learned everything there was to know about it, and it gave me a window to the outside world. I too grew up in the country, miles from civilization and a computer gave me eyes to some dark and some wonderful things, much like the wireless would have done in 1936.

Michael’s values criticism was also very similar to that of my own.  My mother was the never ending voice of reason in our house.  As we watched television or movies with questionable content, we always had my mother’s narration over it, telling us what was bad and what was good. This is comparable to the way Kate narrated Gerry’s actions when he visited, talking inside the house about Gerry where he couldn’t hear her.

The third connection I made easily with Michael was his moral decision making. I was raised in a Christian home and was incredibly influenced in that regard. But when I went college I was faced with my own decisions. I, like Michael, didn’t entirely let go of the religion or morals that were ingrained in me as a child, but I did reevaluate them and make decisions on my own. I had to choose all over again to believe in God and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

There were just as many connections I could not make with the character of Michael. This happens all the time to actors as they play characters who are drastically different than themselves. How does one relate to a murderer or a man who was deeply wounded by his father? The “As-if” concept, “developed by Stanislavski as a stimulus for character development, gives the [actor] an opportunity to explore a character and [their] situation based on the [actor’s] own experience (Stauffer 47).”

My life differs from Michael in that I had a loving father who lived with me while I was growing up. He didn’t have a family that lived in a different country, nor did he pursue romantic relationships with any of my mother’s sisters. I had to treat this aspect of Michael’s life onstage (his values clarification factor) “as if” it were my relationship with my older brothers. I have never had a good relationship with my older brothers until recently. Growing up, my eldest was off at college and would only come home once a year. When he would come home he would promise things and never follow through, very similar to Gerry’s actions toward Michael.

I also did not relate to Michael’s moral imagination factor of moral identity. Michael thought of other gods in the universe and decided that he couldn’t settle on just one.  Instead, I have always believed in one true God. I tend to see people who can’t settle and believe in one God as lost. So I play these emotions “as if” I were in my car in Los Angeles, completely lost and stopping and asking directions, but no one seems to be able to speak good enough English to get me where I need to go.

The last moral identification factor I did not relate to was Michael’s consciousness sensitizing. Michael had an uncle come home after twenty five years of being in Africa, and came home a completely different person. I have always kept in touch with my family, so I had to play this particular moment as if Uncle Jack was my brother coming home from Hawaii after not being home for three years. John came home and announced to our family he had chosen a homosexual lifestyle.  It was a moment in my life where I became aware of something and was immediately sensitized by my family’s reaction to the issue.

In conclusion, playing Michael was a very rewarding experience for me in more ways than one. It was not until I read Stauffer’s essay that I realized I was doing so much soul searching and building on my own character. I feel as though I have yet another reason to commit all that I am to my craft because as Stauffer has pointed out it helps us to find our own moral identity.

Works Cited

Friel, Brian. Dancing at Lughnasa. New York, NY: Dramatist Play Service, 1991.

Stauffer, Michael. "Building Character while Developing a Character: An Investigation of the Integration of Faith and Theater." Journal of Religion and Theatre 3.1 (2004): 37-60. Web. 10 Nov 2009. .

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[1] For a broader definition of each of the “moral identification factors,” please see Arthur Holmes’ Shaping Character, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company). The definitions used in this paper are my own in reference to how they are used in Michael Stauffer’s essay.