# Status

**1 The See-saw**

When I began teaching at the Royal Court Theatre Studio (1963), I
noticed that the actors couldn't reproduce 'ordinary' conversation.
They said 'Talky scenes are dull',
but the conversations they acted out were nothing like those I overheard
in life. For some weeks I experimented with
scenes in which two 'strangers' met and interacted, and I tried saying
'No jokes', and 'Don't try to be clever', but the work remained
unconvincing. They had no way to mark time and
allow situations to develop, they were forever striving to latch on to
'interesting' ideas. If casual conversations really
were motiveless, and operated by chance, why was it impossible to
reproduce them at the studio?

I was preoccupied with this problem when I saw the Moscow Art's
production of _The Cherry
Orchard_. Everyone on stage seemed
to have chosen the _strongest_ possible motives for
each action---no doubt the production had been 'improved' in the decades
since Stainslavsky directed it. The effect was 'theatrical' but
not like life as I knew it. I asked myself for the first time
what were the _weakest_ possible motives, the
motives that the characters I was watching might really have had.
When I returned to the studio I
set the first of my status exercises.

'Try to get your status just a little above or below your partner's,' I
said, and I insisted that the gap should be minimal.
The actors seemed to know exactly
what I meant and the work was transformed. The scenes became
'authentic', and actors seemed marvellously observant.
Suddenly we understood that every
inflection and movement implies a status, and that no action is due to
chance, or really 'motiveless'. It was hysterically funny, but at
the same time very alarming. All our secret manoeuvrings were
exposed. If someone asked a question we
didn't bother to answer it, we concentrated on why it had been asked.
No one could make an 'innocuous'
remark without everyone instantly grasping what lay behind it.
Normally we are 'forbidden' to see
status transactions except when there's a conflict.
In reality status transactions
continue all the time. In the park we'll notice the ducks
squabbling, but not how carefully they keep their distances when they
are not.

[Here's a
conversation quoted by W. R. Bion
(]_Experience in
Groups_, Tavistock Publications, 1968)
which he gives as an example of a group not getting anywhere while
apparently being friendly. The remarks on the status
interactions are mine.

MRS X{.small}: I had a nasty turn last
week. I was standing in a queue waiting
for my turn to go into the cinema when I felt ever so queer.
Really, I thought I should faint
or something.

\[_Mrs X is attempting to raise her
status by having an interesting medical problem.
Mrs Y immediately outdoes
her_.\]

MRS Y{.small}: You're lucky to have
been going to a cinema. If I thought I could go to a
cinema I should think I had nothing to complain of at
all.

\[_Mrs Z now blocks Mrs
Y_.\]

MRS Z{.small}: I know what Mrs X
means. I feel just like that myself, only
I should have had to leave the queue.

\[_Mrs Z is very talented in that
she supports Mrs X against Mrs Y while at the same time claiming to be
more worthy of interest, her condition more severe.
Mr A now intervenes to lower them
all by making their condition seem very
ordinary_.\]

MR A{.small}: Have you tried stooping
down? That makes the blood come back to
your head. I expect you were feeling
faint.

\[_Mrs X defends
herself_.\]

MRS X{.small}: It's not really
faint.

MRS Y{.small}: I always find it does a
lot of good to try exercises. I don't know if that's what Mr A
means.

\[_She seems to be joining forces
with Mr A, but implies that he was unable to say what he meant.
She doesn't say 'Is that what you
mean?' but protects herself by her
typically high-status circumlocution. Mrs Z now lowers
everybody, and immediately lowers herself to avoid
counter-attack_.\]

MRS Z{.small}: I think you have to use
your will-power. That's what worries me---I haven't
got any.

\[_Mr B then intervenes, I suspect
in a low-status way, or rather trying to be high-status but failing.
It's impossible to be sure from
just the words_.\]

MR B{.small}: I had something similar
happen to me last week, only I wasn't standing in a queue.
I was sitting at home quietly when
. . .

\[_Mr C demolishes
him_.\]

[[MR
C]]{.small}: You were lucky to be
sitting at home quietly. If I was able to do that I
shouldn't think I had anything to grumble about.
If you can't sit at home why don't
you go to the cinema or something?

Bion says that the prevailing atmosphere was of good temper and
helpfulness. He adds that 'A suspicion grows in
my mind, that there is no hope whatever of expecting co-operation from
this group.' Fair enough.
What he had is a group where
everyone attacks the status of everyone else while pretending to be
friendly. If he taught them to play status
transactions as _games_ then the feeling
within the group would improve. A lot of laughter would have been
released, and the group might have flipped over from acting as a
competitive group into acting as a co-operative one.
It's worth noting how much talent
is locked away inside these apparently banal
people.

We've all observed different kinds of teachers, so if I describe three
types of status players commonly found in the teaching profession you
may find that you already know exactly what I
mean.

I remember one teacher, whom we liked but who couldn't keep discipline.
The Headmaster made it obvious
that he wanted to fire him, and we decided we'd better behave.
Next lesson we sat in a spooky
silence for about five minutes, and then one by one we began to fool
about---boys jumping from table to table, acetylene-gas exploding in the
sink, and so on. Finally, our teacher was given an
excellent reference just to get rid of him, and he landed a
headmastership at the other end of the county.
We were left with the paradox that
our behaviour had nothing to do with our conscious
intention.

Another teacher, who was generally disliked, never punished and yet
exerted a ruthless discipline. In the street he walked with
fixity of purpose, striding along and stabbing people with his eyes.
Without punishing, or making
threats, he filled us with terror. We discussed with awe
how terrible life must be for his own
children.

A third teacher, who was much loved, never punished but kept excellent
discipline, while remaining very human. He would joke with us,
and then impose a mysterious stillness. In the street he looked
upright, but relaxed, and he smiled easily.

I thought about these teachers a lot, but I couldn't understand the
forces operating on us. I would now say that the
incompetent teacher was a low-status player: he twitched, he made many
unnecessary movements, he went red at the slightest annoyance, and he
always seemed like an intruder in the classroom.
The one who filled us with terror
was a compulsive high-status player. The third was a status
[expert,
raising and lowering his status with great skill.
The pleasure attached to
misbehaving comes partly from the status changes you make in your
teacher. All those jokes on teacher are to
make him drop in status. The third teacher could cope
easily with any situation by changing his status
first.]

Status is a confusing term unless it's understood as something one
_does_.
You may be low in social status,
but play high, and vice versa.

For example:

TRAMP{.small}: 'Ere!
Where are you
going?

DUCHESS{.small}: I'm sorry, I didn't
quite catch . . .

TRAMP{.small}: Are you deaf as well as
blind?

Audiences enjoy a contrast between the status played and the social
status. We always like it when a tramp is
mistaken for the boss, or the boss for a tramp.
Hence plays like
_The Inspector
General_. Chaplin liked to play
the person at the bottom of the hierarchy and then lower
everyone.

I should really talk about dominance and submission, but I'd create a
resistance. Students who will agree readily to
raising or lowering their status may object if asked to 'dominate' or
'submit'.

Status seems to me to be a useful term, providing the difference
between the status you are and the status you play is
understood.

As soon as I introduced the status work at the Studio, we found that
people will play one status while convinced that they are playing the
opposite. This obviously makes for very bad
social 'meshing'---as in Bion's therapy group---and many of us had to
revise our whole idea of ourselves. In my own case I was
astounded to find that when I thought I was being friendly, I was
actually being hostile! If someone had said 'I like your
play', I would have said 'Oh, it's not up to much', perceiving myself as
'charmingly modest'. In reality I would have been
implying that my admirer had bad taste. I experience the
opposite situation when people come up, looking friendly and supportive,
and say, 'We did enjoy the end of Act One', leaving me to wonder what
was wrong with the rest.

I ask a student to lower his status during a scene, and he enters and
says:

A: What are you reading?

B: _War and
Peace_.

A: Ah! That's my favourite
book!

The class laugh and A stops in amazement. I had told him to lower
his status during the scene, and he doesn't see what's gone
wrong.

I ask him to try it again and suggest a different line of
dialogue.

[A: What
are you reading?]

B: _War and
Peace_.

A: I've always wanted to read that.

A now experiences the difference, and realises that he was originally
claiming 'cultural superiority' by implying that he had read this
immense work many times. If he'd understood this he could
have corrected the error.

A: Ah! That's my favourite
book.

B: Really?

A: Oh yes. Of course I only look at the
pictures . . .

A further early discovery was that there was no way to be neutral.
The 'Good morning' that might be
experienced as lowering by the Manager, might be experienced as raising
by the bank clerk. The messages are modified by the
receivers.

You can see people trying to be neutral in group photographs.
They pose with arms folded or
close to their sides as if to say 'Look! I'm not claiming any
more space than I'm entitled to', and they hold themselves very straight
as if saying 'But I'm not submissive either!'
If someone points a camera at you
you're in danger of having your status exposed, so you either clown
about, or become deliberately unexpressive.
In formal group photographs it's
normal to see people guarding their status.
You get quite different effects
when people don't know they're being
photographed.

If status can't even be got rid of, then what happens between friends?
Many people will maintain that we
don't play status transactions with our friends, and yet every movement,
every inflection of the voice implies a status.
My answer is that acquaintances
become friends when they _agree_ to play status games
together. If I take an acquaintance an early
morning cup of tea I might say 'Did you have a good night?'
or something equally 'neutral',
the status being established by voice and posture and eye contact and so
on. If I take a cup of tea to a friend
then I may say 'Get up, you old cow', or 'Your Highness's tea',
pretending to raise or lower status. Once students understand
that they already play status games with their friends, then they
realise that they already know most of the status games I'm trying to
teach them.

We soon discovered the 'see-saw' principle: 'I go up and you go down'.
Walk into a dressing-room and say
'I got the part' and everyone will congratulate you, but will feel
lowered. Say 'They said I was too old' and
people commiserate, but cheer up perceptibly.
Kings and great lords used to
surround themselves with dwarfs and cripples so that they could rise by
the contrast. Some modern celebrities do the
[same. The
exception to this see-saw principle comes when you identify with the
person being raised or lowered, when you sit on his end of the see-saw,
so to speak. If you claim status because you
know some famous person, then you'll feel raised when they are:
similarly, an ardent royalist won't want to see the Queen fall off her
horse. When we tell people nice things
about ourselves this is usually a little like kicking them.
People really want to be told
things to our discredit in such a way that they don't have to feel
sympathy. Low-status players save up little
tit-bits involving their own discomfiture with which to amuse and
placate other people.]

If I'm trying to lower my end of the see-saw, and my mind blocks, I can
always switch to raising the other end. That is, I can achieve a
similar effect by saying 'I smell beautiful' as 'You stink'.
I therefore teach actors to switch
between raising themselves and lowering their partners in alternate
sentences; and vice versa. Good playwrights also add variety
in this way. For example, look at the opening
of Molière's _A Doctor in Spite of
Himself_. The remarks on status
are mine.

---

SGANARELLE{.small}: \[_Raises himself_.\ No, I tell you I'll have nothing to do]
with it and it's for me to say, I'm the master.
MARTINE{.small}: \[_Lowers Sganarelle, raises herself_.\ And I'm telling you]
that I'll have you do as I want. I didn't marry you to
put up with your nonsensical goings-on.
SGANARELLE{.small}: \[_Lowers Martine_.\ Oh! The misery of married life!]
How right Aristotle was when he said wives were the
very devil!
MARTINE{.small}: \[_Lowers Sganarelle and Aristotle_.\ Just listen to the]
clever fellow---him and his blockhead of an
Aristotle!
SGANARELLE{.small}: \[_Raises himself_.\ Yes, I'm a clever fellow all right!]
Produce me a woodcutter who can argue and hold
forth like me, a man who has served six years with a
famous physician and had his Latin grammar off by
heart since infancy!
MARTINE{.small}: \[_Lowers Sganarelle_.\ A plague on the idiot!]
SGANARELLE{.small}: \[_Lowers Martine_.\ A plague on you, you worthless]
hussy!
MARTINE{.small}: \[_Lowers her wedding day_.\ A curse on the day and]
hour when I took it into my head to go and say
'I will'!
SGANARELLE{.small}: \[_Lowers notary_.\ And a curse on the cuckold of a]
notary who made me sign my name to my own ruin.
MARTINE{.small}: \[_Raises herself_.\ A lot of reason you have to complain,]
I must say! You ought to thank Heaven every
minute of your life that you have me for your wife.
Do you think you deserved to marry a woman like
me? \[_And so on_.\]
(_The Misanthrope and other plays,_ translated by John
Wood, Penguin, 1959.)

---

Most comedy works on the see-saw principle.
A comedian is someone paid to
lower his own or other people's status. I remember some of Ken
Dodd's patter which went something like this: 'I got up this morning and
had my bath . . .
standing up in the sink .
. .'
(Laugh from audience.) '.
. .
and then I lay down to dry
off---on the draining-board . . .'
(Laughter.) '.
. .
and then my father came in and
said "Who skinned this rabbit?".' (Laughter.) While he describes himself
in this pathetic way he leaps about, and expresses manic happiness, thus
absolving the audience of the need to pity him.
We want people to be very
low-status, but we don't want to feel sympathy for them---slaves are
always supposed to sing at their work.

One way to understand status transactions is to examine the comic
strips, the 'funnies'. Most are based on very simple
status transactions, and it's interesting to observe the postures of the
characters, and the changes in status between the first and last
frames.

Another way is to examine jokes, and analyse their status transactions.
For
example:

CUSTOMER{.small}: 'Ere, there's a
cockroach in the loo!

BARMAID{.small}: Well you'll have to
wait till he's finished, won't you? Or
again:

A: Who's that fat noisy old bag?

B: That's my wife.

B: Oh, I'm sorry . . .

A: You're sorry! How do you think I
feel?

**2 Comedy and Tragedy**

In his essay on laughter Bergson maintained that the
man-falling-on-a-banana-skin joke was funny because the victim had
suddenly been forced into acting like an automaton.
He wrote: 'Through lack of
elasticity, through absent-mindedness, and a kind of physical obstinacy:
_as a result, in fact, of rigidity
or of momentum_, the muscles continued to
perform the same movement when the circumstances of the case called for
something else. This is the reason
[for the
man's fall, and also of the people's laughter.'
Later in the same essay he says:
'What is essentially laughable is what is done
automatically.']

In my view the man who falls on the banana skin is funny only if he
loses status, and if we don't have sympathy with him.
If my poor old blind grandfather
falls over I'll rush up and help him to his feet.
If he's really hurt I may be
appalled. If Nixon had slipped up on the
White House steps many people would have found it hysterical.
If Bergson had been right then we
would laugh at a drowning man, and grand military parades would have the
crowds rocking with merriment. A Japanese regiment is said to
have masturbated by numbers in a football stadium as an insult to the
population of Nanking, but I don't suppose it was funny at the time.
Chaplin being sucked into the
machine is funny because his style absolves us of the need for
sympathy.

Tragedy also works on the see-saw principle: its subject is the ousting
of a high-status animal from the pack. Super-intelligent wolves
might have invented this form of theatre, and the lupine Oedipus would
play high status at all times. Even when he was being led into
the wilderness he wouldn't whine, and he'd keep his tail up.
If he crumbled into low-status
posture and voice the audience wouldn't get the necessary catharsis.
The effect wouldn't be tragic, but
pathetic. Even criminals about to be
executed were supposed to make a 'good end', i.e.
to play high status.
When the executioner asked Raleigh
if he wouldn't rather face the light of the dawn he said something like
'What matter how the head lie, if the heart be right', which is still
remembered.

When a very high-status person is wiped out, everyone feels pleasure as
they experience the feeling of moving up a step.
This is why tragedy has always
been concerned with kings and princes, and why we have a special
high-status style for playing tragedy. I've seen a misguided
Faustus writhing on the floor at the end of the play, which is bad for
the verse, and pretty ineffective. Terrible things can
happen to the high-status animal, he can poke his eyes out with his
wife's brooch, but he must never look as if he could accept a position
lower in the pecking order. He has to be
_ejected_ from
it.

Tragedy is obviously related to sacrifice.
Two things strike me about reports
of sacrifices: one is that the crowd get more and more tense, and then
are relaxed and happy at the moment of death; the other is that the
victim is _raised_ in status before being
sacrificed. The best goat is chosen, and it's
groomed, and magnificently decorated. A human
[sacrifice might
be pampered for months, and then dressed in fine clothes, and rehearsed
in his role at the centre of the great ceremony.
Elements of this can be seen in
the Christ story (the robe, the crown of thorns, and even the eating of
the 'body'). A sacrifice has to be endowed with
high status or the magic doesn't work.]

**3 Teaching Status**

Social animals have inbuilt rules which prevent them killing each other
for food, mates, and so on. Such animals confront each other,
and sometimes fight, until a hierarchy is established, after which there
is no fighting unless an attempt is being made to change the 'pecking
order'. This system is found in animals as
diverse as human beings, chickens, and woodlice.
I've known about this ever since I
was given a book about social dominance in kittiwake colonies, yet I
hadn't immediately thought of applying this information to actor
training. This is because normal people are
inhibited from seeing that no action, sound, or movement is innocent of
purpose. Many psychologists have noted how
uncannily perceptive some schizophrenics are.
I think that their madness must
have opened their eyes to things that 'normal' people are trained to
ignore.

In animals the pattern of eye contacts often establishes dominance.
A stare is often interpreted as an
aggressive act---hence the dangers of looking at gorillas through
binoculars. Visitors to zoos feel dominant
when they can outstare the animals. I suggest you try the
opposite with zoo animals: break eye contact and then glance back for a
moment. Polar bears may suddenly see you
as 'food'. Owls cheer up
perceptibly.

Some people dispute that the held eye contact between 'strangers' is
dominant. Kenneth Strongman wrote in the
March 1970 issues of _Science
Journal_: 'At the time we thought
ourselves justified in concluding that a dominance structure of
submission from eye contact exists and that this tends to approach
hierarchy, particularly when the focus is on initial eye contact.
Our reason for considering it to
be concerned with dominance was based on a statement made by Argyle and
Dean, who suggested that if A wants to dominate B he stares at him
appropriately; B can accept this with a submissive expression or by
looking away, or can challenge and outstare.
However, S.
E. Poppleton, a research
student at Exeter, has since shown that the relationship between
eye-glance submission hierarchies and an independent measure of
dominance (provided by Catell's 16PF personality
[inventory) is an
inverse one. Thus he who looks away first is
the more dominant.']

One might contrast this with other reports, like that of an experiment
at Stanford University where it was found that drivers who had been
stared at left traffic lights appreciably faster.
Such disagreements indicate the
difficulty of actually perceiving status transactions.
In my view, breaking eye contact
can be high status so long as you don't immediately glance back for a
fraction of a second. If you ignore someone your status
rises, if you feel impelled to look back then it falls.
It's as if the proper state of
human beings is high, but that we modify ourselves to avoid conflicts.
Posture experts (like Mathias
Alexander) teach high-status postures as 'correct'.
It's only to be expected that
status is established not by staring, but by the reaction to staring.
Thus dark glasses raise status
because we can't see the submission of the
eyes.

I minimise 'status resistance' from my students by getting them to
experience various status sensations _before_ I discuss the
implications, or even introduce the term. I might ask them to say
something nice to the person beside them, and then to say something
nasty. This releases a lot of laughter,
and they are surprised to find that they often achieve the wrong effect.
(Some people never really say
anything nice, and others never say anything really nasty, but they
won't realise this.)

I ask a group to mill about and say 'hallo' to each other.
They feel very awkward, because
the situation isn't _real_.
They don't know what status they
should be playing. I then get some of the group to
hold all eye contacts for a couple of seconds, while the others try to
make and then break eye contacts and then immediately glance back for a
moment. The group suddenly looks more like
a 'real' group, in that some people become dominant, and others
submissive. Those who hold eye contacts report
that they feel powerful---and actually look powerful.
Those who break eye contact and
glance back 'feel' feeble, and look it. The students
_like_ doing this, and are
interested, and puzzled by the strength of the
sensations.

I might then begin to insert a tentative 'er' at the beginning of each
of my sentences, and ask the group if they detect any change in me.
They say that I look 'helpless'
and 'weak' but they can't, interestingly enough, say what I'm doing
that's different. I don't normally begin every
sentence with 'er', so it should be very obvious.
Then I move the 'er' into the
middle of sentences, and they say that they perceive me as becoming a
little stronger. If I make the 'er' longer, and
move it back [to the
beginning of sentences, then they say I look more important, more
confident. When I explain what I am doing,
and let them experiment, they're amazed at the different feelings the
length and displacement of the 'ers' give them.
They are also surprised that it's
difficult to get some people to use a short 'er'.
There wouldn't seem to be any
problem in putting an 'er' lasting a fraction of a second at the
beginning of each sentence, but many people unconsciously resist.
They say 'um', or they elongate
the sound. These are people who cling to
their self-importance. The short 'er' is an invitation
for people to interrupt you; the long 'er' says 'Don't interrupt me,
even though I haven't thought what to say
yet.']

Again I change my behaviour and become authoritative.
I ask them what I've done to
create this change in my relation with them, and whatever they guess to
be the reason---'You're holding eye contact', 'You're sitting
straighter'---I stop doing, yet the effect continues.
Finally I explain that I'm keeping
my head still whenever I speak, and that this produces great change in
the way I perceive myself and am perceived by others.
I suggest you try it now with
anyone you're with. Some people find it impossible to
speak with a still head, and more curiously, some students maintain that
it's still while they're actually jerking it about.
I let such students practise in
front of a mirror, or I use videotape. Actors needing
authority---tragic heroes and so on---have to learn this still head
trick. You can talk and waggle your head
about if you play the gravedigger, but not if you play Hamlet.
Officers are trained not to move
the head while issuing commands.

My belief (at this moment) is that people have a preferred status; that
they like to be low, or high, and that they try to manoeuvre themselves
into the preferred positions. A person who plays high status is
saying 'Don't come near me, I bite.' Someone who plays low
status is saying 'Don't bite me, I'm not worth the trouble.'
In either case the status played
is a defence, and it'll usually work. It's very likely that
you will increasingly be conditioned into playing the status that you've
found an effective defence. You become a status
_specialist_, very good at playing
one status, but not very happy or competent at playing the other.
Asked to play the 'wrong' status,
you'll feel 'undefended'.

I reassure my students, and encourage them, and let them have
conversations together, trying out different ways of changing their
status. One student might try moving very
smoothly (high status) while his partner moves jerkily (low
status).^1(#10_SPONTANEITY.xhtml_id_28)^
One might keep putting his hands near his face while he speaks, and the
other might try keeping his [hands away
from his face. One might try holding his toes
pointing inwards (low status), while one sits back and spreads himself
(high status).]

These are just tricks in order to get the students to experience status
changes. If I speak with a still head, then
I'll do many other high-status things quite automatically.
I'll speak in complete sentences,
I'll hold eye contact. I'll move more smoothly, and
occupy more 'space'. If I talk with my toes pointing
inwards I'm more likely to give a hesitant little 'er' before each
sentence, and I'll smile with my teeth covering my bottom lip, and I'll
sound a little breathless, and so on. We were amazed to find
that apparently unrelated things could so strongly influence each other;
it didn't seem reasonable that the position of the feet could influence
sentence structure and eye contact, but it is
so.

Once students have understood the concepts, and have been coaxed into
experiencing the two states, then I get them to play scenes in which:
(I) both lower status; (2) both raise status; (3) one raises while the
other lowers; (4) the status is reversed during the
scene.

I insist that they have to get their status just a
_little_ above or below their
partner's. This ensures that they really
'see' their partner, as they have exactly to relate their behaviour to
his. The automatic status skills then
'lock on to' the other actor, and the students are transformed into
observant, and apparently very experienced improvisers.
Of course, they will have been
playing status whenever they improvised, but it would be usually a
personal status, not the status of a character.
They would be relating to the
problem of succeeding in the eyes of the _audience_.
These status exercises reproduce
on the stage exactly the effects of real life, in which moment by moment
each person adjusts his status up or down a
fraction.

When actors are reversing status during a scene it's good to make them
grade the transitions as smoothly as possible.
I tell them that if I took a
photograph every five seconds, I'd like to be able to arrange the prints
in order just by the status shown. It's easy to reverse
status in one jump. Learning to grade it delicately
from moment to moment increases the control of the actor.
The audience will always be held
when a status is being modified.

It isn't necessary for an actor to achieve the status he's trying to
play in order to interest an audience. To see someone trying to
be high, and failing, is just as delightful as watching him
succeed.

Here are some notes made by students who had just been introduced to
status work.

[' The
using of different types of "er" found me swinging unavoidably from
feeling now inferior, now superior, then inferior again.
I found myself crossing my arms,
fidgeting, walking with my hands in my pockets---all movements unnatural
to me. I find myself suddenly freezing my
body in order to check up on my status.']

'Nothing has been done in class that I didn't believe or "know".
But I couldn't have stated
it.'

'During that scene with Judith in which she at first touched her head
all the time, and then gradually stopped doing it, I couldn't define the
change in her movements, and yet for some reason my attitude changed
towards her. When she touched her head I tried
to be more helpful, reassuring, whereas once she stopped, I felt more
distant and businesslike---also a bit more challenged---whereas
previously I'd felt nothing but sympathy.'

'I've often been told that an actor should be aware of his body but I
didn't understand this until I tried talking with my head
still.'

'The most interesting revelation to me was that every time I spoke to
someone I could tell if I felt submissive or the opposite.
I then tried to play status games
in secret with people I knew. Some people I thought I knew very
well I wouldn't dare try it with. Other relatively new
friends were easy to play status games
with.'

'Sense of domination when I hold eye contact.
Almost a pride in being able to
look at someone else and have them look away.
Looking away and back---felt
persecuted. As if everyone was trying to crush
me underfoot.'

'Status---clothes not important. I was walking to the
shower with only a towel over my shoulder when I met a fully dressed
student who took on a very low-status look and allowed me to pass on my
way.'

'Every time I speak to someone I can now tell if I'm submissive or
not.'

'I've always thought that the man I should like to marry should be
smarter than me; someone I could look up to and respect.
Well, my boyfriend is now smarter
than me, and I usually respect his knowledge, but often I find his high
status a nuisance. Perhaps I should seek someone I
consider I'm on the same level with?'

'I felt the dominant figure in the conversation and proceeded to try
and subjugate myself to her whims. I did this by the "touch
the head and face" method. What happened here is that, while
prior to this move I had done most of the talking and directed the
conversation, after this . . .
I was hard put to get a word in
edgeways.'

'I find that when I slow my movements down I go up in
status.'

[' I felt
as if all the world had suddenly been revealed to me.
I realise that when I talk to
people, my attitude of inner feeling is of almost talking down to
them.']

It's a good idea to introduce a bystander into a status scene with
instructions to 'try not to get involved'. If you are a 'customer'
in a 'restaurant', and someone at the same table quarrels with the
'waiter', then your very subtle status manoeuvrings are a delight to
watch.

I increase the confidence of the actors by getting them to play
sequences of status exercises. For example, a breakfast scene in
which a husband plays low and a wife lays high, might be followed by an
office scene in which the husband plays high to a secretary who plays
low, leading on to a supper scene in which both wife and husband play
low---and so on. Once the status becomes automatic,
as it is in life, it's possible to improvise complex scenes with no
preparation at all. The status exercises are really
crutches to support the actor so that instinctual systems can operate.
The actor then feels that
everything is _easy_, and he doesn't
experience himself as '_acting_' any more than he does
in life, even though the actual status he's playing may be one very
unfamiliar to him.

Without the status work my improvisation group, the Theatre Machine,
could never have toured successfully in Europe; not without preparing
the scenes first. If someone starts a scene by
saying 'Ah, another sinner! What's it to be, the lake of fire
or the river of excrement?' then you can't 'think' fast enough
to know how to react. You have to understand that the
scene is in Hell, and that the other person is some sort of devil, and
that you're dead all in a split second. If you know what status
you're playing the answers come
automatically.

'Well?'

'Excrement', you say, playing high status, without doing anything you
experience as 'thinking' at all, but you speak in a cold voice, and you
look around as if Hell was less impressive than you'd been led to
believe. If you're playing low status you
say 'Which ever you think best, Sir', or whatever.
Again with no hesitation, and with
eyes full of terror, or wonder.

All this isn't so far away from Stanislavsky as some people might
suppose, even though in _Creating a
Role_ Stanislavsky wrote:
'_Play the external
plot_ in terms of physical actions.
For example: enter a room.
But since you cannot enter unless
you know where you came from, where you are going and why, seek out the
external facts of the plot to give you a basis for physical actions.'
(From Appendix A.) Some
[' method'
actors take this to mean that they have to know all the 'given
circumstances' before they can improvise. If I ask them to do
something spontaneous they react as if they've been asked to do
something indecent. This is the result of bad
teaching. In order to enter a room all you
need is what status you are playing. The actor who
understands this is free to improvise in front of an audience with no
given circumstances at all! Interestingly enough Stanislavsky
himself would almost certainly agree. In Chapter Eight of
]_Creating a
Role_ he makes the director, Tortsov,
tell the narrator:

' "Go up on the stage and play for us Khlestakov's entrance in the
second act."

' "How can I play it since I don't know what I have to do?"
said I with surprise and objection
in my tone.

' "You do not know everything but you do know some things.
So play the little that you know.
In others words, execute out of
the life of the part those small physical objectives which you can do
sincerely, truthfully, and in your own
person."

' "I can't do anything because I don't know
anything!"

' "What do you mean?" objected Tortsov.
"The play says,
'_Enter
Khlestakov_.' Don't you know how to go
into a room in an inn?"

' "I do." '

What I think he 'knows' is that he must play a particular
status.

One way to teach transitions of status is to get students to leave the
class, and then come in through the real door and act 'entering the
wrong room'. It's then quite normal to see
students entering with head down, or walking backwards, or in some other
way that will prevent them from seeing that it is the wrong room.
They want time to really enter
before they start 'acting'. They will advance a couple of
paces, act seeing the audience, and leave in a completely phoney
way.

I remind students that entering the wrong room is an experience we all
have, and that we always know what to do, since we do 'something'.
I explain that I'm not asking the
students to 'act', but just to do what they do in life.
We have a radar which scans every
new space for dangers, an early-warning system programmed-in millions of
years ago as a protection against sabre-tooth tigers, or bigger amoebas
or whatever. It's therefore very unusual to
refuse to look into the space you are
entering.

As soon as the 'wrong room' exercise becomes 'real' they understand
that a change of status is involved. You prepare a status for
one situation, and have to alter it when suddenly confronted by the
unexpected one. I then set the students to
predetermine the direction [of the
status change, and of course errors are often made.
Someone trying to play low status
may have to be told to smile, and if he smiles with both sets of teeth
(an aggressive smile) he may have to be asked to show the top teeth
only. People who want to rise in status
may have to be told to turn their backs to us when they leave.
Neither smiling nor turning your
back is essential but it may help the student get the feeling.
In difficult cases it helps to use
videotape.]

A more complex version of this exercise is really a little play.
I invented it at RADA when I was
asked if I could push the students into more emotional experiences.
It's for one character---let's say
he's a teacher, although he could be any profession.
He arrives late carrying the
register and a pair of glasses. He says something like 'All right,
quiet there, now then', treating us as the class.
As he is about to read the
register he puts the glasses on, and sees not his class, but a meeting
of the School Governors. He apologises, dropping in status
frantically, and struggles to the door, which sticks.
He wrestles with it and after
about ten seconds it comes free. The actor feels a very great drop
in status when the door jams. It takes him back to feelings he
may not have experienced since childhood: feelings of impotence, and of
the hostility of objects.

Once outside, the actor either stops the exercise, or if he feels
brave, re-enters, and plays the scene again and again.
This exercise can turn people into
crumbling wrecks in a very short time, and for actors who like to
'pretend' without actually feeling anything, it can be a revelation.
One Scandinavian actor who
apparently had never really achieved anything because of his
self-consciousness, suddenly 'understood' and became marvellous.
It was for him a moment of
_satori_.
The terrifying thing is that
there's no limit. For
example:

'Why didn't anyone tell me that the room had been changed?
I just made a complete fool of
myself in front of the Governors.'

_(Puts on glasses. Sees
Governors_.)

'Augh! I . .
. I .
. .
what can I say.
Mr Headmaster .
. .
please .
. .
I . .
. oh .
. .
do excuse me .
. .
The door.
I'm afraid .
. .
it sticks .
. .
the damp weather, you .
. .
ah .
. .
so .
. .
so
sorry.'

(_Grovels out.
Re-enters_.)

'Oh God, it's nice to find someone in the staff-room.
Is there any tea on?
The most embarrassing thing just
happened to me . . .
I . .
.'

(_Puts on glasses.
Sees
Governors_.)

'Oh . . .
I . .
. what must you think of
me . . .
I . .
. I seem to be having some
sort of breakdown . . .
haven't been well lately.
So sorry to interrupt .
. .
The .
. .
the door .
. .
THE DOOR!
Augh!
. .
. I'm sorry
[. .
. outrageous conduct .
. .
please understand .
. .
er . .
. er .
. .']

(_Exit.
Re-enters_.)

'It's nice of you to see me at such short notice.
I know that psychiatrists are very
busy . . .
I . .
.'

(_Puts on glasses.
See
Governors_.)

'. . .
I know it was wrong to commit
suicide, God, but . . .'
(_Puts on glasses.
See
Governors_.)

I wouldn't push anyone into playing this game, and it must be
understood by the class that people are allowed to get upset, and are
not to be punished by being considered exhibitionistic or
cissy.

I repeat all status exercises in gibberish, just to make it quite clear
that the things _said_ are not as important
as the status _played_.
If I ask two actors to meet, with
one playing high, and one playing low, and to reverse the status while
talking an imaginary language, the audience laugh amazingly.
We don't know what's being said,
and neither do the actors, but the status reversal is enough to enthral
us. If you've seen great comedians
working in a language you don't understand you'll know what I
mean.

I get the actors to learn short fragments of text and play every
possible status on them. For example, A is late, and B has
been waiting for him.

A: Hallo.

B: Hallo.

A: Been waiting long?

B: Ages.

The implication is that B lowers A, but any status can be played.
If both play high then A might
stroll on with 'all the time in the world' and say 'Hallo' as if he
wasn't late at all. B might hold eye contact and say
'Hallo' with emphasis. A might look away airily and say
'been waiting long?' with a sigh as if B were being
'difficult'. 'Ages,' says B, staring at him, or
walking off as if expecting A to follow. If both are to play low,
then A might arrive running; B might stand up, bend the head forwards
and give a low-status smile. 'Hallo,' says A breathlessly,
showing embarrassment that B has stood. 'Hallo,' replies B, also
a little breathless. 'Been waiting long?'
asks A with anxiety.
'Ages,' says B with a weak laugh
as if making a feeble joke.

Here's a dialogue taking place in 'Sir's'
office.

---

SIR{.small}: Come in. Ah, sit down Smith. I suppose you know
why I sent for you?
SMITH{.small}: No, Sir.
(_Sir pushes a newspaper across the desk_.)

---

---

SMITH{.small}: I was hoping you wouldn't see that.
SIR{.small}: You know we can't employ anyone with a criminal
record.
SMITH{.small}: Won't you reconsider?
SIR{.small}: Good-bye, Smith.
SMITH{.small}: I never wanted your bloody job anyway.
_(Exit Smith.)_

---

If Smith plays high, then saying 'Won't you reconsider' gives him an
enormous resistance to work against. When Sir says 'Good-bye,
Smith' low status it produces a gripping scene.
For Smith to say 'I didn't want
your bloody job anyway' low status, it may be necessary for him to burst
into tears.

One interesting complication in such a scene is that Smith will have to
play low status to the space, even when playing high status to Sir, or
it'll look like his office. Conversely, Sir must play high
status to the space, even when playing low status to Smith.
If he doesn't he'll look like an
intruder. 'Move about,' I say.
'Answer the telephone.
Walk over to the
window.'

Status is played to anything, objects as well as people.
If you enter an empty waiting-room
you can play high or low status to the furniture.
A king may play low status to a
subject, but not to his palace.

An actor is waiting on stage for someone to enter and play a scene with
him. 'What status are you playing?'
I ask.
He says, 'I haven't started yet.'
'Play low status to the bench,' I
say.

He looks around him as if he was in a park that he suspects may be
private. Then he 'sees' a pigeon, and mimes
feeding it, rather unconvincingly. 'Play low status to the
pigeon,' I say, and immediately his mime improves, and the scene is
believable. More 'pigeons' arrive, and one
lands on the bench and starts pecking at the bread he's holding.
Another lands on his arm, and then
shits on him. He wipes the mess off
surreptitiously. And so on.
He doesn't need another actor to
play status scenes with. He can do it with anything in the
environment.

I give students a very strong feeling of 'status' by making them use
only the way they look and sound to ward off attacks.
I call it 'non-defence', but
really it's one of the best of all defences.
Imagine two siblings, one of whom
(A) lives in the flat of the other (B). B enters and asks if any
letters have arrived for him. A says that there is one on the
sideboard. B picks it up and sees it's been
opened. A is always opening B's letters
which causes conflict between them. The scene will probably
develop something like this:

[B: Why
did you open my letter?]

A: Is it open?

B: You always open my letters.

A: I don't know who did it.

B: No one else has been here!

B will probably start to push A about, and I'll have to stop the scene
for fear that they might hurt each other.

I start the scene again, but tell A that he is to admit everything,
while playing low status.

B: Did you open my letter?

A: Yes.

B stops the attack. He
pauses.

B: Yes?

A: Yes.

B: Well, what did you do it for?

A: I wanted to see what was inside.

B is checked again. He may step backwards.
He may even retreat to the
furthest wall and lean against it. I encourage him to be
angry, and to close in on A.

B: How dare you open my letters?

A: You're right to be angry. I'm a
shit.

B: I told you never to open my letters.

A: I always do it.

B: You do?

B finds it increasingly difficult to press home his attack.
If he starts to shake A, then A
must cry and keep nodding his head, and saying 'You're right, you're
right.' B can of course override his
instincts--- human beings do unfortunately have this ability---but the
more he attacks, the more strongly a mysterious wind seems to be trying
to blow him away. If A makes an error, and rises in
status, then B closes in, but if the low status is maintained then B has
to consciously 'force' his anger.

B: Well, don't open them again.

A: I poke my nose into everything.

I've seen the low-status player leap about with joy and roll over and
over on the floor after playing such a scene.
It's exhilarating to be
controlling the movements of the other person as if he were a puppet.
When I explained that the more A
accepted B's dominance the more powerfully B was deflected, B said,
'That's right. I thought, "Mother put him up to
it." '

Non-defence is exploited by the wolf who exposes his neck and
[underbelly to a
dominant wolf as a way of ending a losing battle.
The top Wolf wants to bite, but
can't. Some Congolese soldiers dragged
two white journalists out of a jeep, shot one and were about to shoot
the other when he burst into tears. They laughed and kicked
him back to the jeep and let him drive away, while they waved and
cheered. It was more satisfying to see the
white man cry than to shoot him.]

Once non-defence has been mastered together with a low-status attitude,
I teach it as a high-status exercise. The same kind of
dialogue occurs:

B: Did you open my letter?

A: Yes. (Quite calmly, and sipping his
coffee as if no attack was being made on
him.)

B: Yes? (Momentarily
nonplussed.)

A: I always open your letters. (Dismissively.) (And so
on.)

At first hardly anyone can carry off such a scene.
They pretend to be high status,
but you can see that they're actually crumbling.
I explain that they are making
concealed low-status movements. An arm climbs up to the back of
the chair as if wanting to flee from the aggressor, or to hold on for
support. A foot starts to tap as if it
wanted to go.

The best solution I've found is to weight the situation heavily in
favour of A. For example, I might set the scene
in A's house, with B a guest who arrived late the night before, and now
meets his host for the first time at breakfast.
I make B's position worse by
setting him the problem asking A for his daughter's hand in marriage.
Once A's position is reinforced in
this way he should be able to maintain his high status while making no
verbal defence at all.

A: You must be John . . .

B: Er . . .
yes.

A: Cynthia tells me you want to marry her .
. .

B: That's right.

A: Oh, by the way, a letter came for you this
morning.

B: It's been opened.

A: I open everyone's letters.

B: But it was addressed to me.

A: It's from your mother. Some of it I thought most
unsuitable. You'll see I crossed some
paragraphs out . . .
(And so
on.)

**[4
Insults]**

If you can get the students to insult each other playfully, then the
status work will become easier. Playing scenes with custard pies
might be equally liberating, but I've never had the opportunity.
Once you can accept being insulted
(the insult is the verbal equivalent of the custard pie), then you
experience a great elation. The most rigid, self-conscious,
and defensive people suddenly unbend.

It's no good just asking the students to insult each other.
It's too personal.
If you've just called someone
'kipper feet' it's disconcerting to suddenly notice that he's
flat-footed. If your ears stick out then it's
upsetting to be called 'cloth ears'. On the other hand it is
important for an actor to accept being insulted.
The stage becomes an even more
'dangerous' area if you can't admit your disabilities.
The young George Devine cried once
because the audience laughed when the character he was playing was
referred to as thin. I remember a flat-chested actress
being destroyed on stage because an adolescent shouted out that she was
a man. The actor or improviser must
accept his disabilities, and allow himself to be insulted, or he'll
never really feel _safe_.

My solution is to remove all responsibility for the choice of insult
from the person doing the insulting. I divide the class into
two halves, and get each group to write out a list of names that would
insult people: fool, slut, pig, arsehole, jerk, meatface, dumbhead,
flatfoot, pigeyes, skinny twat, bugeyes, buckteeth, cowflop, monkeyface,
swine, rathead, shitnose, bullshitter, faggot.
Only half the class know who
suggested a particular insult, and each suggestion has already been
stamped with half the class's approval.

I put the lists aside and get the students to play
'shop'.

'Can I help you?'

'Yes, I'd like a pair of shoes.'

'Would these do?'

'I'd like another colour.'

'I'm afraid this is the only colour we have,
Sir.'

'Ah. Well, perhaps a
hat.'

'I'm afraid that's my hat, Sir.'

And so on---very boringly, with both actors 'blocking' the transaction
in order to make the scene more 'interesting' (which it
doesn't).

I explain that I don't want them to make the scene 'interesting', that
they are just to buy and sell something. They start
again.

[' Can I
help you?']

'Just browsing.'

'No you're not,' I say. 'Buy
something.'

'I want a hat.'

'How about this one, Sir?'

'Buy it,' I say.

'I'll buy it.'

'Two pounds ninety, Sir.'

'Here.'

'I'm afraid I don't have any change, Sir.'

'Yes you do,' I insist.

I have to struggle with the actors before they will agree just to buy
something and sell something. Then I get them to play the scene
again, but adding the insults. I give them a list each, and get
them to add an insult to the end of each sentence.
This idea delights everyone, but
it's very boring.

'Can I help you, fool?'

'Yes, bugeyes!'

'Do you want a hat, slut?' (And so
on.)

I explain that insulting is of no interest.
What we really want to see is
someone being insulted. The interest we have in custard
pies is in seeing them hit people. I tell them to repeat
every insult in disbelief and outrage. As soon as they do this
the performers get deeply involved and are often impossible to stop.
People who are bound physically
relax into a greater physical freedom. Gestures flow instead of
being suddenly jerked to a stop.

'Can I help you, pig?'

'Pig! Why I .
. .
Flat-footed pig
yourself!'

'Me! Flat-footed pig!
You call me a flat-footed pig, you
. . .
you
arsehole!'

'Arsehole!'

'Buy something!' I
shout.

'I want a hat, buckteeth!'

'Buckteeth! Try this for size,
jerk!'

'Jerk! Jerk!
You call
_me_ jerk!
I'll take
it---Cowflop!'

'Cowflop!' (And so
on.)

The insults must remain an ornamentation on the scene, they mustn't
become the scene itself. Once this is understood they can
be applied to any situation. If you keep changing the lists
then the most terrible things will have been said to everybody.
I then give one actor a list, and
let the other actor make up his own, and I set up scenes with
[several
people. For example master-servant teams
can meet, and insult in this way. But there must be some
purpose they're trying to achieve as well as 'being insulted'.
In my experience this game is very
'releasing'. The status lowering is so drastic,
and at the same time so pleasurable, that ordinary status scenes hold
fewer terrors.]

In the average school the teachers are supposed to inhibit their
pupils, and the kind of healing openness typical of therapy groups
simply isn't possible, but the game is useful even with censored lists,
or even in gibberish. Gibberish imposes an acceptance of
the insult, or no one can understand what's happening.
The technique is to repeat the
last sound of any gibberish sentence.

'Gort intok horntow lipnol.'

'Lipnol! Lipnol!
Grant hork lop sonto
inkutu!'

'Inkutu! Die gorno inkutu!
Krankon!'

'Krankon!' (And so
on.)

This insult game can be played between two groups who slowly approach
each other, but the teacher must ensure that every insult is received.
Enormous energy is released, with
individuals running forwards to hurl their insults, and then being
dragged back by their friends. The target of the insults should
be the opposing group, not individual members.
The game usually ends with actors
standing face to face and screaming each other, and everyone having a
very good time. If they've got 'high' on the game,
you can make them repeat it in mime. It makes a good 'aside'
exercise if actors who are insulted repeat the word to the
audience.

**5 Status Specialists**

If you wish to teach status interactions, it's necessary to understand
that however willing the student is consciously, there may be very
strong subconscious resistances. Making the student safe, and
getting him to have confidence in you, are essential.
You then have to work together
with the student, as if you were both trying to alter the behaviour of
some _third_ person.
It's also important that the
student who succeeds at playing a status he feels to be alien should be
instantly rewarded, praised and admired. It's no use just giving
the exercises and _expecting_ them to work.
You have to understand where the
resistance is, and devise ways of getting it to crumble.
Many teachers don't recognise that
there's a problem because they only exploit the 'preferred' status.
In a bad drama school it's
possible to play your 'preferred' status all the time, since they cast
you to type, exploiting what you can do, instead of
[widening your
range. In the professional theatre actors
divide up roughly into high-status and low-status specialists.
The actors' directory
]_Spotlight_ used to have the
high-status specialists at the front (called 'straight'), followed by
the low-status specialists (called 'character actors'), followed by
children, and then dogs. This isn't as bad as it sounds,
but it's symptomatic of the tendency for actors to overspecialise.
A proper training for actors would
teach all types of transaction.

Some problems: there are students who will report no change of
sensation when they alter their eye-contact patterns.
If you observe them closely you'll
see that the ones who always play low status in life won't ever hold eye
contact long enough to feel dominant. When high-status
specialists break eye contact and glance back, they'll be holding the
glance back for at least a second, which is too long.
You may have to precisely control
the length of time that they look before they experience the change of
sensation. Then they'll say, 'But it feels
wrong.' This feeling of wrongness is the
one they have to learn as being correct.

I remember a girl who always played high status in improvisations, and
who had never experienced safety and warmth as a performer.
When I asked her to put a short
'er' in front of each sentence she used the long 'eeeerrrrr' but denied
she was doing it. When I asked her to move her head
as she talked she moved it in an abstract way, as if watching a fly
circling in front of her. I asked her to play low status
with an expert low-status improviser, but she held on to herself tightly
with her arms and crossed her legs as if refusing to let her partner
'invade' her. I asked her to unfold and then to
tilt her head and suddenly she was transformed---we wouldn't have
recognised her. She became soft and yielding and
really seemed to enjoy the feelings that flooded into her, and she acted
with feeling and rapport for the first time.
Now that she's learned to play low
status with a low-status partner she can learn to play it with a
high-status partner.

Another student refused to play high status in anything but a wooden
manner. He said that he lived in a
working-class area and that he didn't want to be stuck-up.
I explained that I wasn't trying
to remove his present skills, which were very necessary, but only to add
a few new ones. He believed that it was necessary
to play low status within his working-class community, not realising
that you can play high or low in any situation.
His problem is that he plays low
status _well_ and he won't
experiment with other skills.

I asked him to play a scene in which he was to tell his father he had
VD. I chose the scene in order to stir
him up, and involve his real [feelings. All
young men have anxieties in that area. He acted out a scene
with no conviction at all, and tried to think up 'clever things' to
say.]

'I'll give you the dialogue,' I said. 'Enter.
Go to the window.
Look out, then turn and say you've
got VD.'

He did this. He looked out of the window and
immediately made trivial movements, and dropped down in
status.

I stopped him. I explained that if he turned from
the window, looked at his father and didn't move his head, then he'd
experience exactly the sensations he was trying to avoid.
I said that he mustn't try to
suppress the head movements but that he must be aware when he does them,
and then somehow feel so dominant that he no longer needs to make them.
When he repeats the scene it's his
father who breaks eye contact and starts to crumble.
From this beginning the student
can learn to play characters of any social class, and make them high or
low.

**6 Space**

I can't avoid talking about 'space' any longer, since status is
basically territorial. Space is very difficult to talk
about, but easy to demonstrate.

When I was commissioned to write my first play I'd hardly been inside a
theatre, so I watched rehearsals to get the feel of it.
I was struck by the way space
flowed around the actors like a fluid. As the actors moved I
could feel imaginary iron filings marking out the force fields.
This feeling of space was
strongest when the stage was uncluttered, and during coffee breaks, or
when they were discussing some difficulty. When they
_weren't_ acting, the bodies of
the actors continually adjusted. As one changed position so all the
others altered their postures. Something seemed to flow between
them. When they were 'acting' each actor
would pretend to relate to the others, but his movements would stem from
himself. They seemed 'encapsulated'.
In my view it's only when the
actor's movements are related to the space he's in, and to the other
actors, that the audience feel 'at one' with the play.
The very best actors pump space
out and suck it in, or at least that's what it feels like.
When the movements are not
spontaneous but 'intellectual' the production may be admired, but you
don't see the whole audience responding in empathy with the movements of
the actors.

Here's Stanislavsky describing a performance by Salvini, an actor who
obviously used space in the way I mean:

[' Salvini
approached the platform of the Doges, thought a little while,
concentrated himself and, unnoticed by any of us, took the entire
audience of the great theatre into his hands.
It seemed that he did this with a
single gesture---that he stretched his hand without looking into the
public, grasped all of us in his palm, and held us there as if we were
ants or flies. He closed his fist, and we felt
the breath of death; he opened it, and we felt the warmth of bliss.
We were in his power, and we will
remain in it all our lives. . .']

The movement teacher Yat Malmgren told me that as a child he'd
discovered that he didn't end at the surface of his body, but was
actually an oval 'Swiss cheese' shape. To me, this is
'closed-eye' space, and you experience it when you shut your eyes and
let your body feel outwards into the surrounding darkness.
Yat also talked about people who
were cut off from sensing areas of themselves.
'He has no arms,' he would say, or
'She has no legs', and you could see what he meant.
When I investigated myself I found
many areas that I wasn't experiencing, and my feelings are still
defective. What I did find was another shape
besides the 'Swiss cheese' shape: a parabola sweeping ahead of me like a
comet's tail. When I panic, this parabola
crushes in. In stage fright space contracts
into a narrow tunnel down which you can just about walk without bumping
into things. In cases of extreme stage fright
the space is like a plastic skin pressing on to you and making your body
rigid and bound. The opposite of this is seen when
a great actor makes a gesture, and it's as if his arm has swept right
over the heads of the people sitting at the back of the
audience.

Many acting teachers have spoken of 'radiations', and they often sound
like mystics. Here's Jean-Louis
Barrault:

'Just as the earth is surrounded by an atmosphere, the living human
being is surrounded by a magnetic aura which makes contact with the
external objects without any concrete contact with the human body.
This aura, or atmosphere, varies
in depth according to the vitality of human beings.
. .

'The mime must first of all be aware of this boundless contact with
things. There is no insulating layer of
air between the man and the outside world. Any man who moves about
causes ripples in the ambient world in the same way a fish does when it
moves in the water.' (_The Theatre of
Jean-Louis Barrault_, Barrie and Rockcliff,
1961.)

This isn't very scientific, but like all magical language it does
communicate a way an actor can 'feel'. If I stand two students
face to face and about a foot apart they're likely to feel a strong
desire to change their body position. If they don't move
they'll begin to feel love [or hate
as their 'space' streams into each other. To prevent these
feelings they'll modify their positions until their space flows out
relatively unhindered, or they'll move back so that the force isn't so
powerful. High-status players (like
high-status seagulls) will allow their space to flow
]_into_ other people.
Low-status players will avoid
letting their space flow into other people.
Kneeling, bowing and prostrating
oneself are all ritualised low-status ways of shutting off your space.
If we wish to humiliate and
degrade a low-status person we attack him while refusing to let him
switch off. A sergeant-major will stand a
recruit to attention and then scream at his face about an inch away.
Crucifixion exploits this effect,
which is why it's such a powerful symbol as compared to, say, boiling
someone in oil.

Imagine a man sitting neutrally and symmetrically on a bench.
If he crosses his left leg over
his right then you'll see his space flowing over to the right as if his
leg was an aerofoil. If he rests his right arm along
the back of the bench you'll see his space flowing out more strongly.
If he turns his head to the right,
practically all his space will be flowing in the same direction.
Someone who is sitting neutrally
in the 'beam' will seem lower-status. Every movement of the
body modifies its space. If a man who is sitting neutrally
crosses his left wrist over his right the space flows to his right, and
vice versa. It's very obvious that the top
hand gives the direction, but the class are amazed.
The difference seems so trivial,
yet they can see it's a quite strong
effect.

The body has reflexes that protect it from attack.
We have a 'fear-crouch' position
in which the shoulders lift to protect the jugular and the body curls
forward to protect the underbelly. It's more effective
against carnivores than against policemen jabbing at your kidneys, but
it evolved a long time ago. The opposite to this fear crouch
is the 'cherub posture', which opens all the planes of the body: the
head turns and tilts to offer the neck, the shoulders turn the other way
to expose the chest, the spine arches slightly backwards and twists so
that the pelvis is in opposition to the shoulders exposing the
under-belly---and so on. This is the position I usually see
cherubs carved in, and the opening of the body planes is a sign of
vulnerability and tenderness, and has a powerful effect on the onlooker.
High-status people often adopt
versions of the cherub posture. If they feel under attack they'll
abandon it and straighten, but they won't adopt the fear crouch.
Challenge a low-status player and
he'll show some tendency to slide into postures related to the fear
crouch.

When the highest-status person feels most secure he will be the most
relaxed person, as for example in the opening scenes of Kozintsev's film
[of] _King
Lear_. A solemn ceremony is
arranged, the daughters take their places, an atmosphere of expectancy
is built up, and then Lear (Juri Jarvet) enters as if he owns the place,
warms his hands at the fire, and 'makes himself at home'.
The effect is to enormously
_elevate_ Lear in status.
Lears who strain to look powerful
and threatening in this opening scene miss the point, which is that Lear
is so confident, and trustful, that he willingly divides his kingdom and
sets in motion his own destruction.

Status can also be affected by the shape of the space you are in.
The corners of couches are usually
high-status, and high-status 'winners' are allowed to take them.
If you leave a car in the middle
of a great wilderness there is a moment when you 'move out of the space
of the car'. In the wilderness the effect is
very strong, for people always like to be beside objects.
Thrones are usually set against
walls and often have a canopy set high up below the ceiling---possibly a
relic of the need to swing up into trees in
emergencies.

Imagine an empty beach. The first family to arrive can sit
anywhere, but they'll either take up position against some rocks, or sit
a third of the way in---supposing it's all equally sandy.
In my part of England, where there
are many small beaches, the next family to appear might well move on to
the next beach, regarding the first one as 'claimed'.
If they do move in they'll stake
out 'their part of the beach', _away_ from the first group.
If they sat close to the first
group then they'd have to make friends, which could be difficult.
If they sat close without making
friends, then the first group would react with alarm.
'Close' is a concept related to
the amount of space available. Once the beach fills up with
people you can sit very close to the original family.
The space people demand around
them contracts as more people are added. Finally as the beach
reaches saturation people stare at the sky, or roll in to face their
friends, or cover their faces with newspaper or
whatever.

People will travel a long way to visit a 'view'.
The essential element of a good
view is distance, and preferably with nothing human in the immediate
foreground. When we stand on a hill and look
across fifty miles of emptiness at the mountains, we are experiencing
the pleasure of having our space flow out unhindered.
As people come in sight of a view,
it's normal for their posture to improve and for them to breathe better.
You can see people remarking on
the freshness of the air, and taking deep breaths, although it's the
same air as it was just below the brow of the hill.
Trips to the sea, and our
admiration of mountains are probably symptoms of
overcrowding.

[Approach
distances are related to space. If I approach someone on open
moorland I have to raise an arm and shout 'excuse me' as soon as I'm
within shouting distance. In a crowded street I can actually
brush against people without having to
interact.]

Imagine that two strangers are approaching each other along an empty
street. It's straight, hundreds of yards
long and with wide pavements. Both strangers are walking at an
even pace, and at some point one of them will have to move aside in
order to pass. You can see this decision being
made a hundred yards or more before it actually 'needs' to be.
In my view the two people scan
each other for signs of status, and then the lower one moves aside.
If they think they're equal, both
move aside, but the position nearest the wall is actually the strongest.
If each person believes himself to
be dominant a very curious thing happens. They approach until they
stop face to face, and do a sideways dance, while muttering confused
apologies. If a little half-blind lady
wanders into your path this 'mirror' dance doesn't happen.
You move out of her way.
It's only when you think the other
person is challenging that the dance occurs, and such incidents are
likely to stick in the mind. I remember doing it in a shop
doorway with a man who took me by my upper arms and moved me gently out
of his path. It still rankles.
Old people who don't want to give
way, and who cling to the status they used to have, will walk along the
street hugging the wall, and 'not noticing' anyone who approaches them.
If, as an experiment, you also hug
the wall very funny scenes occur when you stop face to face--- but the
sideways dance doesn't happen because you're conscious of what you're
doing. Old people in, say, Hamburg, often
collide with young Britishers in the street, because they expect the
young to step aside for them. Similarly, a high-status stripper
will walk stark naked into a stagehand who stands in her way.
In the Russian
_Hamlet_ film there's a moment
where Hamlet finds his way momentarily obstructed by a servant and he
smashes him down. When you watch a bustling crowd
from above it's amazing that they don't all bump into each other.
I think it's because we're all
giving status signals, and exchanging subliminal status challenges all
the time. The more submissive person steps
aside.

This means that when two improvisers pass on a bare stage it may be
possible to say where they are, even though they may not have decided on
a location. The class will agree that the
actors look as if they're in a hospital corridor, or in a crowded
street, or passing on a narrow pavement. We judge this from the
distance at which they make the first eye contact, and from the moment
that they 'switch off' from each [other before
passing. The class may not know why they
imagine the actors in a particular environment, but there is often a
general agreement. When actors and directors misjudge
social distances, or distort them for 'dramatic effect' the audience
will, at some level, know that the work is not
truthful.]

One way to teach a student an appreciation of social distance is to get
him to hand out leaflets in the street. You can't just thrust
your hand out at people, you have to establish that you're giving out
leaflets, and then present one at the right moment.
When you get it wrong people
either ignore you, or show alarm. Another way is to get
the students, working in pairs, to identify strangers in the street as
if they knew them. I get one student to do the
recognising 'Hi! How are you?
How's the family?
Same old job then', and so on,
while the other student acts bored, and says 'Come on, we'll be late',
and generally expresses impatience. Most people find this
approach very convincing, and sometimes extremely interesting scenes
take place, but if the students are nervous, they will probably mistime
the initial approach. Then it looks as if they are
invisible. You can see them greeting people
who sweep past as if they didn't exist. The great advantage in
working in the street is that you can't dismiss real people's reactions
as 'untruthful'.

Another way of opening people's eyes to the way the body positions
assert dominance or submission by controlling space is to ask two people
who have established a spatial relationship between themselves to
freeze, and let the other students study them.
Many students still won't
understand, but if you take the two 'statues', lift them, together with
their chairs, and place them on the opposite sides of each other, the
change is dramatic. Their 'space' which seemed so
'natural' looks weird, and everyone can see how carefully they had
adjusted their movements to fit in with each
other.

I ask students (for homework!) to watch groups of people in coffee
bars, and to notice how everyone's attitude changes when someone leaves
or joins a group. If you watch two people talking,
and then wait for one to leave, you can see how the person remaining has
to alter his posture. He had arranged his movements to
relate to his partner's, and now that he's alone he
_has_ to change his position
in order to express a relationship to the people around
him.

**7 Master-Servant**

One status relationship that gives immense pleasure to audiences is the
master-servant scene. A dramatist who adapts a story
[for the
stage will often add a servant, especially if it's a comedy; Sophocles
gave Silenus as a slave to the Cyclops, Molière gave Don Juan a servant,
and so on. The master-servant scene seems to
be funny and entertaining in all cultures---even people who have never
seen a manservant have no difficulty in appreciating the
nuances.]

The relationship is not necessarily one in which the servant plays low
and the master plays high. Literature is full of scenes in
which the servant refuses to obey the master, or even beats him and
chases him out of the house. The whole point of the
master-servant scene is that both partners should keep see-sawing.
Dramatists go to ludicrous lengths
to devise situations in which the servant actually has to pretend to be
the master, and the master to pretend to be the
servant!

If I ask two students to play a master-servant scene they will almost
always look like a parent helping a child, or one friend helping another
friend, or at best, as if some incompetent person is standing in for the
real servant who's off sick. Once they've been trained the
servant can throttle the master while remaining visibly the servant.
This is very pleasing to the
audience, even though they may have no idea of the forces
operating.

I teach that a master-servant scene is one in which both parties act as
if all the space belonged to the master. (Johnstone's law!) An
extreme example would be the eighteenth-century scientist Henry
Cavendish, who is reported to have fired any servant he caught sight of!
(Imagine the hysterical
situations: servants scuttling like rabbits, hiding in grandfather
clocks and ticking, getting stuck in huge vases.) People who are not
literally masters and servants may act out the roles, henpecked husbands
and dominant wives for example. The contrasts between the status
played between the characters and the status played to the space
fascinates the audience.

When the masters are not present, then the servants can take full
possession of the space, sprawl on the furniture, drink the brandy, and
so on. You may have noticed how 'shifty'
chauffeurs look when their masters are away.
They can smoke, chat together and
treat the cars as their 'own', but being in the street they feel
'exposed'. They have to keep a 'weather eye
out'. When the master is present, the
servant must take care at all times not to dominate the space.
One might imagine that since the
servants have work to do, everything possible should be done to see that
they're kept 'fresh' and at ease, but a servant is not a worker in this
sense. You can work for someone without
being 'their servant'. A servant's primary function is to
elevate the status of the master. Footmen can't lean
against the wall, because it's the master's wall.
[Servants must
make no unnecessary noise or movement, because it's the master's air
they're intruding on.]

The preferred position for a servant is usually at the edge of the
master's 'parabola of space'. This is so that at any moment the
master can confront him and dominate him. The exact distance the
servant stands from the master depends on his duties, his position in
the hierarchy, and the size of the room.

When the servant's duties take him into close proximity with the master
he must show that he invades the master's space 'unwillingly'.
If you have to confront the master
in order to adjust his tie you stand back as far as possible, and you
may incline your head. If you're helping with his
trousers you probably do it from the side. Crossing in front of the
master the servant may 'shrink' a little, and he'll try to keep a
distance. Working behind the master,
brushing his coat, he can be as close as he likes, and visibly higher,
but he mustn't stay out of sight of the master unless his duties require
it (or unless he is _very_ low
status).

The servant has to be quiet, to move neatly, and not to let his arms or
legs intrude into the space around him. Servants' costumes are
usually rather tight so that their bodies take up a minimum of space.
Other things being equal, the
servant should be near a door so that he can be instantly dismissed
without having to walk round the master. You can see servants
edging surreptitiously into this position.

It's always interesting for the audience when the master tries to coax
the servant out of his role.

'Ah, Perkins, sit down, will you.'

'In . . .
in your chair,
Sir?'

'Certainly certainly, what will you have?'

'Er . . .
er . .
.'

'Whisky? Soda?'

'Anything you wish, Sir.'

'Oh come on, man, you must have some preference.
Don't sit on the edge of the
chair, Perkins, relax, make yourself comfortable.
I'd like your advice,
actually.'

And so on. It's interesting because the
audience knows that if the servant does step out of his role, there'll
be trouble.

'How dare you take a cigar, Perkins!'

'But Sir, you told me to make myself at home,
Sir!'

If the master and the servant agree to step out of their roles everyone
else will be furious---as when Queen Victoria made friends with John
Brown.

[I get my
students to mime dressing and undressing each other as masters and
servants. It's very easy to see when the
space is wrong, and they suddenly 'catch on'.
I also play scenes with nice
masters and horrible servants, and nasty masters with flustered
servants. You can improvise quite long plays
by putting together a structure of such scenes (this is how the Commedia
dell' Arte scenarios worked). For example: (1) nice master,
nasty servant; (2) nasty master, nice
servant;]

(3) both teams interrelate and quarrel; (4) Team One prepares for
duel;

(5) Team Two prepares for duel; (6) the
duel.

On a good night the Theatre Machine could improvise a half-hour comedy
based on this structure. Sometimes the servants have to
fight the actual duel, sometimes the duel is fought on piggyback with
the servants as horses, and so on.

It's very easy to invent master-servant games, but there are some that
are particularly important for public improvisers.
One is 'keeping the servant on the
hop'. In this game the master objects to
everything the servant is, or say, or does.
The servant accepts the master's
statement, and then deflects it.

'Smith! Why are you wearing that
ridiculous uniform?'

'It's your birthday, Sir.'

This is a correct answer. 'I'm not wearing a uniform, Sir'
rejects the master's statement, and is therefore incorrect.
'You told me to, Sir' is also
wrong because it's implying that the challenge shouldn't have been
made.

You can always recognise a correct reply, because the master 'boggles'
for a moment, as his mind readjusts.

'Your coffee, Sir.'

'Where's the sugar?'

'It's in, Sir.'

A correct answer, since the servant has accepted that the master takes
sugar, and that there isn't any visible. To say 'What about your
diet, Sir?' or 'You don't take sugar, Sir'
would be less correct, and feebler.

Another game involves the servant getting himself into
trouble.

'Why are you wearing that uniform, Smith?'

'I burned the other one, Sir.'

Or:

'Where's the sugar?'

'I've eaten the last lump, Sir.'

This game also generates its own content.

'Good morning, Jenkins.'

'I'm afraid it's not morning, Sir. I forgot to wake
you.'

[' Augh!
Four o'clock in the afternoon.
Don't you know what day it
is?']

'Your coronation, Sir.'

There is a _lazzi_ that I use in teaching
this game. It's a particular pattern of
master-servant dialogue in which the servant is so guilty that he
'overconfesses'. I got it from
Molière.

'Ah Perkins! I have a bone to pick with
you!'

'Not the rhubarb patch, Sir.'

'What about the rhubarb patch?'

'I let the goat in by mistake, Sir.'

'You let my goat eat my rhubarb! You know I have a
passion for rhubarb! What will we do with all the
custard we ordered?'

'I'm planting some more, Sir.'

'So I should hope. No! It's much worse than
mere rhubarb!'

'Oh, Sir! The
dog!'

'My dog!'

'Yes, Sir. I couldn't stand it following me
around and sniffing me and messing everywhere, and, and it wetting me
when you made me stand to attention at parties, and them all laughing.
That's why I did it,
Sir!'

'Did what?'

'Why, nothing, Sir.'

'Did what? What did you do to poor
Towser?'

'I . . .
I . .
.'

'Go on!'

'Poisoned it, Sir.'

'You poisoned my dog!'

'Don't hit me, Sir.'

'Hit you! Hanging would be too good for you.
Why it's worse than the thing I
wanted you for in the first place. You'd better make a
clean breast of it.'

'But what have I done?'

'You've been found out, Perkins.'

'Oh no, Sir.'

'Oh yes!'

'Oh, Sir.'

'Scoundrel!'

'She shouldn't have told you, Sir.'

'What?'

'She got me in the bathroom, Sir. She swore she'd scream
and tell you that I'd attacked her, Sir. She tore her clothes
off, Sir.'

'What! What!'

[The
literary value may not be high, but audiences laugh a
lot.]

Getting an actor to play both parts in a master-servant scene can
accelerate the skills. When the actor is wearing a hat
he's the master, then he removes it and leaps into the position in which
he's been imagining the servant, and plays the servant role.
The moment he can't think what to
say he changes roles. He can throttle himself, and beat
himself up, or praise himself, and he 'blocks' the action far less.
It's actually
_easier_ to play master-servant
scenes as solos. The mind has an ability to split
itself readily into several people---Frederick Perls got people to play
'top-dog' and 'underdog' in a similar way.

An excellent way to play master-servant scenes is to let one actor do
both voices, the other mouthing the words that are supposed to be his.
This sounds very difficult, but
it's actually easier to sustain long scenes in this way.
At first the actor who's mouthing
the words will play a passive role. It's necessary to prod
him into developing the action. If he picks up a chair and
threatens the master with it, then the master will have to say something
appropriate, like 'Where's the money you owe me, Sir?'
Perhaps the master will beat the
servant up and do all the screams and pleas for mercy
himself.

If you experiment with master-servant scenes you eventually realise
that the servant could have a servant, and the master could have a
master, and that actors could be instantly assembled into pecking orders
by just numbering them. You can then improvise very
complicated group scenes on the spur of the
moment.

I introduce pecking orders as clown games, oversimplifying the
procedures, and creating complex absurdities which 'cartoon' real life.
Orders and blame are passed one
way along the hierarchy, excuses and problems are passed the other way.
So far as possible each person is
to interact with the one next to him in rank.
Audiences never seem to tire of
dialogue like this:

1: Chair!

2: Chair!

3: Get a chair!

4: Yes, Sir.

1: What's happening?

2: I'll just check, Sir. Where's the
chair?

3: Number Four's getting it, Sir.

4: Beg pardon, but I can't find one, Sir.

3: He can't find one!

2: 'Sir!' How dare you address me without
calling me 'Sir'?

[3 : Yes,
Sir! Number Four reports that there is
no chair, Sir!]

1: What's going on here, Number Two?

2: There's no chair, Sir.

1: No chair! This is monstrous!
Have someone crouch so that I can
sit on them!

2: Number Three, have Number Four crouch so that Number One can sit on
him.

4: Permission to speak, Sir! (And so
on.)

The patterns become even clearer if you give each actor a long balloon
with which to hit people. If Number One hits Number Two,
Number Two apologies to him, and hits Number Three, and so on.
Number Four, who can't hit anyone,
ducks, or cries, or bites his lip, or dies, or whatever.
Each person can also try to make
faces at anyone 'above' him, without getting caught (if possible).
If Number One sees Number Three
make a face at Number Two, he informs Number Two, and so on.
This may look very tedious on the
page, but these simple rules produce amazing
permutations.

One of the craziest 'clown games' is a version of 'taking the hat'.
I've seen spectators collapsing
with laughter. I start the game by taking four
students and numbering them one to four. Each wears a soft trilby
hat. First, Number One takes Number
Two's hat and throws it at his feet. Number Two reacts with
horror and embarrassment and shrieks for Number Three to pick the hat up
and replace it. Number Two then takes Number
Three's hat---and so on, except that Number Four will have to put his
own hat on.

I then tell Number One that although he prefers to take Number Two's
hat, he can in fact take anybody's. Number Two similarly
prefers to take Number Three's, but he can also take Number
Four's.

Once this pattern is almost learnt, I let people weave about and try
not to get their hats taken. And I
_insist_ that the hats must be
thrown at the feet. People have a strong impulse to
throw or kick the hats right away, which breaks up the group and spoils
the crazy patterns. If you can keep the actors 'high'
on the game they will now be using their bodies like excellent physical
comedians, they will have a marvellous 'rapport' with each other, and
absolutely no trace of self-consciousness. I make them play a scene
while continuing this insane activity. I sent them outside and
get them to enter as if burgling a house in which people are asleep
upstairs. Or I get them to pack for the
holidays, or interact with another pecking order who are also 'taking
hats'. Number one will probably have to
throw insane fits of [rage to get
anything done, but it's more important that the scene is played than the
hat game 'demonstrated'. You can't even
]_teach_ this game unless you
yourself are 'high' and expressing great drive and
energy.

Actors should become expert at each stage of a pecking order.
There will be actors who can at
first only play one role really well. Videotape is useful in
explaining to them where their behaviour is
inappropriate.

Number One in a pecking order has to make sure that everything is
functioning properly. Anything that irritates him must
be suppressed. At all times everything must be
organised for his personal contentment. He can also add his own
rules, insisting that absolute silence should be maintained at all
times, or that the word 'is' should be abolished from the language, or
whatever. Desmond Morris, in
_The Human
Zoo_ (Cape, 1969; Corgi, 1971) gives
'ten golden rules' for people who are Number Ones.
He says, 'They apply to all
leaders, from baboons to modern presidents and prime ministers.'
They
are:

1. You must clearly display the
   trappings, postures and gestures of
   dominance.

2. In moments of active rivalry you
   must threaten you subordinates
   aggressively.

3. In moments of physical challenge
   you (or your delegates) must be able forcibly to overpower your
   subordinates.

4. If a challenge involves brain
   rather than brawn you must be able to outwit your
   subordinates.

5. You must suppress squabbles that
   break out between your subordinates.

6. You must reward your immediate
   subordinates by permitting them to enjoy the benefits of their high
   ranks.

7. You must protect the weaker
   members of the group from undue
   persecution.

8. You must make decisions concerning
   the social activities of your group.

9. You must reassure your extreme
   subordinates from time to time.

10. You must take the initiative in
    repelling threats or attacks arising from outside your
    group.

Number Four has to keep Number Three happy while avoiding the attention
of One or Two. If addressed by One or Two he must
avoid any appearance of wanting to usurp Three's position.
If the general speaks to a private
we should expect the private to keep glancing at the sergeant.
If the general lowers the sergeant
the private may be secretly [delighted but
he'll have to hide it, and at the time he might be expected to find it
embarrassing. Number Four has to be an expert at
making excuses, and in evading responsibility.
He must also be inventing problems
to pass up the pecking order.]

Basically, One imposes aims and tries to get them fulfilled, while Four
discovers that the house is on fire, or the enemy approaching, or that
there's only three minutes' oxygen left, and so on.
Two and Three are mostly concerned
with maintaining their respective positions, and with the communication
of information up and down the line.

More naturalistic pecking-order work can be introduced as 'status
towers'. Someone begins with some
low-status activity, and each person who enters the scene plays a step
higher. Or you can start at the top and
add each person one step down.

It is the lack of pecking-order that makes most crowd scenes look
unconvincing. The 'extras' mill about trying to
look 'real', and the spaces between them are quite phoney.
In films where Mafia bandits wait
on a hillside while their leader confers with someone, you can see that
the director has spaced them out 'artistically', or has just said
'spread yourself out'. By just numbering people in
hierarchies so that they knew what status they were, such errors could
be avoided.

**8 Maximum Status Gaps**

In life, status gaps are often exaggerated to such an extent that they
become comical. Heinrich Harrer met a Tibetan
whose servant stood holding a spitoon in case the master wanted to spit.
Queen Victoria would take her
position and sit, and there _had_ to be a chair.
George the Sixth used to wear
electrically heated underclothes when deerstalking, which meant a gillie
had to follow him around holding the
battery.

I train actors to use minimum status gaps, because then they have to
assess the status of their partners accurately, but I also teach them to
play maximum status-gap scenes. For example, I ask the actors to
play a scene in which a master is as high in status as possible, and the
servant as low as possible. At first they'll play ineptly.
The master looks uncomfortable,
and the servant intrudes on the master's
space.

I start the scene again and say that the moment the master feels the
slightest irritation he's to snap his fingers---the servant will then
commit suicide. I'll have to prod the master into
action because he'll be reluctant to exercise his power.
The moment the master looks
irritated I say 'Kill him!' and send in more servants until
the stage is [littered with
bodies. Everyone laughs a lot, but often
the servants have no idea why they're being killed.
I ask the master to explain the
reasons, but I stress that he doesn't need to be fair.
The servants usually think the
master is being harsh, but the audience are amazed that servants survive
so long, since everything they do is inept.
Servants are killed because they
wave their arms about, because they clump about, because they're
disrespectful, or because they misunderstand the master's
requirements.]

Now I give the servants _three_ lives, so they die at
the third snap of the fingers. Amazingly you'll see them doing
exactly the same thing after a finger snap as before it.
'Do something different,' I shout,
'he's about to kill you again.' The servants seem amazingly
unadaptable---this is because they're demonstrating their role as
servants rather than attending to the needs of the master.
At first they survive for just a
few seconds, but soon they're surviving for minutes, and the masters
begin to feel amazingly pampered as they're thrust up in status by their
servants.

Once a maximum-gap master-servant scene is established, I send in a
third person who has to placate the master, and cope with servants as
well.

In one form of this game you reverse the expected status.
If an executioner is trying to
play as low as possible, then he'll be too nervous to roll the last
cigarette, he'll apologise for the untidiness, he'll ask for an
autograph, or he'll accidentally shoot himself in the foot.
The suicide on the ledge who plays
high status may argue the rescuer into jumping off.
It's very easy to create scenes
this way.

'Excuse me, Miss . . .'

'Next cashier please. I'm just going off
duty.'

'Er . . .
no, no .
. .
I'm not a
customer.'

'If you'll just join the queue over there, Sir .
. .'

'I've got a note. Here.'

'Four shirts, two pants, six socks?'

'No, no . . .
er . .
. here, this
one.'

'Hand over the money? This is a
stick-up!'

'Not so loud.'

'Well, how much did you want?'

'All of it!'

'Don't be absurd!'

'Yeah, well, just a few quid then, to tide us
over.'

'I shall have to refer this to Mr
Carbuncle.'

'50p, then!'

[Maximum- status-gap
exercises produce 'absurd' improvisations. (I don't like the term
'theatre of the absurd', because the best 'absurd' plays present
'equivalents' for reality, and aren't nonsensical, and many conventional
writers have written 'existential' plays. 'Absurd' plays are based
on maximum-status-gap transactions.)]

**9 Text**

Although this short essay is no more than an introduction, by now it
will be clear to you that status transactions aren't only of interest to
the improviser. Once you understand that every
sound and posture implies a status, then you perceive the world quite
differently, and the change is probably permanent.
In my view, really accomplished
actors, directors, and playwrights are people with an intuitive
understanding of the status transactions that govern human
relationships. This ability to perceive the
underlying motives of casual behaviour can also be
taught.

In conclusion, but as a coda, rather than a summing-up, I'd suggest
that a good play is one which ingeniously displays and reverses the
status between the characters. Many writers of great talent have
failed to write successful plays (Blake, Keats, Tennyson, among others)
because of a failure to understand that drama is not primarily a
literary art. Shakespeare is a great writer even
in translation; a great production is great even if you don't speak the
language. A great play is a virtuoso display
of status transactions---_Waiting for
Godot,_ for example.
The 'tramps' play friendship
status, but there's a continual friction because Vladimir believes
himself higher than Estragon, a thesis which Estragon will not accept.
Pozzo and Lucky play maximum-gap
master-servant scenes. The 'tramps' play low status to
Lucky, and Pozzo often plays low status to the tramps---which produces
thrilling effects. Here's a section where the
'tramps' are asking why Lucky holds the bags instead of resting them on
the ground.

---

POZZO{.small}: . . . Let's try and get this clear. Has he got the right
to? Certainly he has. It follows that he doesn't want
to. There's reasoning for you. And why doesn't he
want to? (_Pause_.) Gentlemen, the reason is this.
VLADIMIR{.small}: (_To Estragon_.) Make a note of this.
POZZO{.small} : He wants to impress me so that I'll keep him.
ESTRAGON{.small} : What?
POZZO{.small} : . . . In reality, he carries like a pig. It's not his job.
VLADIMIR{.small}: You want to get rid of him?
POZZO{.small}: He imagines that when I see him indefatigable I'll
regret my decision. Such is his miserable scheme. As
though I were short of slaves! (_All three look at Lucky_.)
Atlas, son of Jupiter!

---

If you observe the status, then the play is fascinating.
If you ignore it the play is
tedious. Pozzo is not really a very
high-status master, since he fights for status all the time.
He owns the land, but he doesn't
own the space.

---

POZZO{.small}: . . . I must be getting on. Thank you for your
society. (_He reflects_.) Unless I smoke another pipe
before I go. What do you say? (_They say nothing_.)
Oh, I'm only a small smoker, a very small smoker,
I'm not in the habit of smoking two pipes one on
top of the other, it makes (_Hand to heart, sighing_) my
heart go pit-a-pat. (_Silence_.) But perhaps you don't
smoke? Yes? No? It's of no importance. (_Silence_.)
But how am I to sit down now, without affectation,
now that I have risen? Without appearing to---how
shall I say---without appearing to falter. (_To_
_Vladimir_.) I beg your pardon? (_Silence_.) Perhaps
you didn't speak? (_Silence_.) It's of no importance.
Let me see . . .
(_He reflects_.)
ESTRAGON{.small}: Ah! That's better.
(_He puts the bones in his pocket_.)
VLADIMIR{.small}: Let's go.
ESTRAGON{.small}: So soon?
POZZO{.small}: One moment! (_He jerks the rope_.) Stool! (_He points with_
_his whip. Lucky moves the stool_.) More! There! (_He sits_
_down. Lucky goes back to his place._) Done it! (_He fills_
_his pipe_.)

---

It must be clear, I think, that even the stage directions relate to
status. Every 'silence' is lowering to
Pozzo. I remember a reviewer (Kenneth
Tynan) making fun of Beckett's pauses, but this just shows a lack of
understanding. Obviously Beckett's plays need
careful pacing, but the pauses are part of the pattern of dominance and
submission. _Godot_ earns its reputation
as a boring play only when directors try to make it 'significant', and
ignore the status transactions.

I don't myself see that an educated man in this culture necessarily has
to understand the second law of thermodynamics, but he certainly should
understand that we are pecking-order animals and that this
[affects the
tiniest details of our behaviour.]

Note

**1.** The high-status effect of slow
motion means that TV heroes who have the power of superhuman speed are
shown slowed down! Logic would suggest that you
should speed the film up, but then they'd be jerking about like the
Keystone Cops, or the bionic chicken.