Page 10
North Carolina Shcool of the Arts
An
Interview
With
William
Jaeger
By HENRY J, PANKEY
(This portion will deal with
questions directed to Dr.
Jaeger.)
Question: If you had your way,
to set up a four-year training
program - what would be your
plans for the first-year, second-
year, third-year, and fourth?
..Dr. Jaeger: Well, if I had my
way to set up a four-year training
program, for the first year I
would follow the school’s policy
on first-year students, even more
strictly. That is, I wouldn’t have
the student doing any performing
before an audience. I would have
him, first, getting in touch with
himself - doing awareness
exercises, yoga, improvisations -
learning the principles of action,
objective, focus, concentration,
and the beginning of character
work, without calling it
“character work”. I would make
sure that his body, movements,
mind and imagination were
deeply trained -to free him- so
that he' coiid deal with the “new
theatre”. This could be done with
sound and “movement” exer-
VOTE
WALLY
ARA
OR
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C1S6S.
The second year I would be^
with easy text work - not the kind
of text work that many schools do
now by having the students go
right into realistic scripts by
Ibsen, or Strindberg and read it. 1
would make it a “process
system”, continuing from the
first year, via sound and
movement exercises, via
physical exercises, then into the
rhjrthms of the speech, and then
the speech out loud, sup-
[demented by the movement. 1^,
when they begin realistic scenes
by then, which could become
closer to them, in the second
year- they will be reinforced. Of
course, this would include having
a syllabus from different
teachers which would be fused
together.
I think the School of Arts must
have one course which
“proceeds” from the others,
certain skills are gotten out of the
way before you move on the Step
n. I think, unfortunately, our
students do not proceed at
“even” stages. You see a
sophomore, or junior sometimes,
who does not know all that he
should know about the techniques
he should have gathered as a
freshman. Much of this depends
on which teacher they had, or
which sequence. So, I think, the
“performer” which means
“forming through”, the actor
must leam to uncover, unveil
himself - and to do this he must
be very free. First, he must know
himseif, then he must know and
work with others. So, I think we
need a movement program, on
campus that works together in a
different scheduling than we
have here.
The actor here, works too hard
all day long, not getting
ENOUGH in discipline, so what
we have is a lack of discipline.
Because what he does is go from
one academic class, with an hour
or two in-between, another
academic, to maybe a speech
class, so finally at the end of the
day he ends up in his acting class.
So he comes to the acting class
exhausted — if he has a scene
class he has no time to prepare
for the scene the next day. Or if
there is homework to be done on
movement or breath exercises,
he has no time - particularly if he
IS a sophomore, or junior and is in
a play. He has no time - his
ni^ts are tied up with the play,
he’s in class from nine to five,
and subsequently the play is
made more important than the
classroom work. The CLASS
should be stressed as more im
portant than the play.
Then we should have a
sequence of classes where you go
through realistic material your
sophomore year, certain styles
and material towards the end of
the sophomore year, and your
junior year beginning with
Shakespeare, Moliere, and by the
time the student has finished his
third year - having had
something like Judo, or
movement, game, sports.
Karate, then he would go through
using his voice, and body in
struments, performing the entire
year- and that would make a
much better school, which would
produce a much better artist.
Question: What would you say,
are the types of plays we should
be doing now?
Dr. Jaeger: During the first
year the student should become
closer to plays that are already
close to - for example, he
should know the American
Drama, which isn’t that ex
tensive. And then the British -
because it is the same language.
Then he should begin relating to
drama of other cultures, by the
end of the second year he should
te moving into easier to do
modes, not that it’s any easier to
do Iteen, for example, but cer
tain “kinds” of Ibsen...“Peer
Gynt” maybe not, before “A
Doll’s House”, or “Ghosts”...this
should be done so that he is kept
familiar with some often great
piaywrites. Then the student
should move on into Strindberg,
then Shaw, then up through our
own Eugene O’Neil. He ^ould,
by now, be ready to study other
styles, periods - all of tl^ sup
plemented by the English
Department. Classic periods,
Greek drama, Shakespeare, the
drama of the Renaissance,
French drama, the Restoration,
and the second and third year
should really go into depth with
the plays of the periods. Com-
[dimentary courses, for example
in architecture, the art and
philosophies, ideas of the period,
should be studied as well.
Question; How can the
academic department possible
help?
Dr. Jaeger: Well, I think there
shodd be more of a “course
curriculum”. Freshman students
should come in as “ensembles”.
That is the freshmen should be
divided into groups of 10, or 15,
what I mean is learning how to
play for repetoire theatre. I mean
they would take all, if possible, of
their classes together. And
hopefully the academics will
sui^lement the arts courses.
WMe a student is studying
realistic drama, they should also
be studying the history of the
culture, ideas, philosophy, the
philosophies of Ibsen’s Scan-
dnavia, he should be studying
about Russia, when studying
Chekhov - the music, as well.
They should study the art,
costumes, going through all of
this with perhaps 10 or 15 other
people. The ensemble-type set-up
would continue through the
second, and third years, and
hopefully by the fourth year the
10 or 15 that has survived will
emerge as the acting ensemble of
the School.
Question: With the Van
Peebles’ staff for instance, they
are asked to see all of the movies
that come out. Many times when
one asks a teacher about a cer
tain, popular firm, they haven’t
ever seen it. How do you think
this problem could be resolved?
Dr. Jaeger: I think that the
School should definitely keep a
store house of films, at hand. As
part of the educational program,
when students hit the third and
fourth year, and are studying
Shakespeare, they should be able
to see Olivia’s “Richard III”,
have it on campus, or rented.
They should be able to see his
‘ ‘Heni7 V” - even, in contrast the
American version of “Mid
summer Night’s Dream”; I
consider it siUy, though. But we
should have all of those great
films so that he could (the
student) have a model to study,
right before him. So that he can
see his Hamlet, good or bad. The
school should have a selection of
at least 50 films. Even Russian,
when needed with duped voices
or print underneath.
Question: It seems tliat often,
just when a student has
developed a comfortable feeling,
in an ensemble type set-up, he is
suddenly clianged to another
group of people to work with, or a
new instructor with new ideas.
What do you have to say about
these sudden changes?
Dr. JAEGER: I agree that this
is not good. It would be wise for
the freshman or sophomore year,
for the student to remain under
the same instructor, so that the
instructor can begin to leam him.
Because it takes 20 or 30 weeks
for him to leam your habits and
problems. By the second year, if
you can keep your ensemble
group for ano&er 10 to 20 weeks,
the instructor can “begin” to
work on correcting your man
nerisms or faults. I think there is
too much “accidental”, or casual
switching around here. Four
weeks is really not long enough
for a student to decide whether or
not to drop a course, although I
believe he should have that right.
It takes a long time to really
know a person, and people on this
campus don’t seem to realize
this.
Question: What kind of
movement classes do you suggest
for drama students?
Dr. Jaeger: I have very strong
oixnions that “movement” for
actors, should not be so much
dance, but primarily movement
that comes out of “mask” work,
yoga - body movements coming
from karate, judo - because I feel
that the actor must be able to
move himself facially, or lower
body, into almost any possible
positions to stimulate response.
To do this he must be so aware, or
consistently focusing, not only on
his lower body, but atuned to his
impulses, atuned to every muscle
in his body - even his lip muscles.
I think that the student here is not
aware of many of the mistakes
he’s making, his mannerisms,
because he is really not aware of
his own body. And we have
students who are juniors and
seniors who have all sorts of body
problems that we have not even
begun to work on. So they are not
free for moving on stage.