Using "Projective Modes" in the Studio and the Study

Examining Rutger Hauer's "Tears in Rain" Speech

I’m pretty sure this will be the last “type” of post you will be getting as a subscriber to “Theater / Ideas.” “It’s Not Your Fault” was a post about the system that exists for making theater in the US; “On Agency and Higher Education” was about how we learn to make theater; “The London Merchant” was about understanding and appreciating a play (or any kind of theater text); and this post explores an overlooked or underappreciated idea, from within theater or from another discipline altogether, that I think deserves reconsideration. So there’s your typology for “Theater / Ideas”:

• Systems

• Education

• Appreciation

• Hey! This is cool! I wonder how it might be used!

Of the four, the last one—and today’s post is a good example—has the greatest chance of being a total geek-out.

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Today, I want to examine one of the ideas of H. Wesley Balk, who was the artistic director of the Minnesota Opera Company and a professor at the University of Minnesota, where I had a class with him in the late 1970s. He is the author of three books: The Complete Singer-Actor, Performing Power: A New Approach for the Singer-Actor, and The Radiant Performer: The Spiral Path to Performing Power. Today, I’ll be discussing his concept of “projective modes,” which forms the center of Performing Power. I’m particularly interested in how it could be used both by a director in rehearsals and by a performer using video to deepen their acting skills.

The basic idea is simple but profound. Balk notes that there are three primary external channels (or “projective modes”) through which a performer communicates: the voice (hearing mode), the body (kinesthetic mode), and the emotions (seeing mode, which is centered in the face, especially the eyes). In other words, the projective modes are the way that thoughts, feelings, and imaginings are communicated to the audience.

So what interests me about this? Well, in my experience, one of the biggest challenges of directing is that, at any given moment in rehearsal, there is so much “information” that is coming at you all at once. There’s the way the actor is saying a line, or pausing, and gesturing, and standing, and moving, and where they’re looking, and their facial expression, their reactions to the other actor in the scene, and many, many other details, all of which are flashing by at the speed of speech, and all of which could be contributing to something that isn’t working in the scene, or something that is working that you want to make sure continues to happen in the future.

This sense of drinking from a firehose is particularly challenging for less experienced directors, whose feedback to the actors can seem a bit random as a result. This is magnified by the fact that a great deal of acting theory has been focused on internal activity—what is happening in an actor’s mind when performing (e.g., affective memory, objectives, tactics, etc.).

A director or teacher focused on the internal will often give feedback like these, which anyone who has ever acted has no doubt heard before: “show me more feeling,” “really listen,” “let down the barriers,” “be more vulnerable,” “react to what’s happening,” “get involved,” “show some guts,” “let it all hang out,” “there’s not enough humanity,” “you don’t seem to be feeling it.” These sort of comments, offered with the best of intentions, Balk says are “unclear, undefined, unspecific, and therefore strongly judgmental,” and performers often feel confused or, in the worst case, offended by them. Or both.

Balk suggests that by focusing on the projective modes, the director (or teacher) is tasked with providing a specific, accurate description of what is being projected, and thus avoids participation in a guessing game about the performer’s internal thought process. For example, instead of saying, “Really think about what you are saying,” one might say something like “I know you are thinking, but it doesn’t appear that way because your eyes are focused on the magazine you have in your hands and we can’t see your eyes.” If you want the performer to “be more angry,” you might say instead, “Your voice is expressing a great deal of intensity, and the emotion is strong from your eyes, but for some reason your left arm is swinging loosely back and forth at the same time” (I’ve actually seen this one in rehearsal).

An inexperienced director might focus very carefully on a single mode at a time, so that they can figure out what is causing a disconnect in the communication to the audience. It’s very difficult, but providing a description to the actor allows a conversation about how it might be addressed—or the actor might be left to reach a solution themselves the next time through. Modes are a way to filter and focus, to reduce the volume of information, and to let the actor stay in charge of what’s going on in their head.

Instead of watching everything all at once, you can tell yourself (and perhaps the performers—why not?) that during a run through of a scene you are going to give as much of your attention as possible to, say, the way the actors are using their bodies. While you may notice something in the way the voice is being used in a certain moment, your primary focus will be on movement and gestures. This allows you to zero in on a reduced number of things, and perhaps identify a problem you might not have noticed. You then describe it to the actor—the swinging arm, for instance—and run that moment again focusing on correcting that one thing (“could you make that arm as angry as the rest of you is?”). Then run the scene again, focusing on a different mode.

So that’s a brief intro to modes for directors. What about for performers who are trying to improve their skills? Applying a “modal filter” to watching a moment in a film can allow you to keep from getting swept up in the performance and instead see things you might not have noticed.

An example might be useful. Rutger Hauer’s “tears in rain” speech that concludes his role in Blade Runner is often acknowledged as a mesmerizing performance (it is an interesting fact that Hauer wrote the speech himself). Here is the scene (start at 1:19, if I didn’t manage to get that set properly):

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For the purposes of this post, I decided to focus on Seeing Mode first, paying particular attention to Hauer’s eyes. Here is what I saw:

• Initially, his focus is directed at Ford. The eyes are hard, almost angry.

• On the line that ends “"shoulder of Orion,” his eyes shift away from Ford and they take an internal focus as if remembering. They soften.

• On the line that ends “Tannhauser Gate” there is a slight frown, and the eyes become extremely sad.

• On the line that ends “like tears in rain,” there is a slight smile that crinkles the eyes. His focus is once again inside, but then he seems to bring his focus back to Ford, looking at him almost fondly.

If I then shift to Kinesthetic Mode:

• Bodily, Hauer is mostly still. No gestures of any kind. There is a slight, slow wavering back and forth with his shoulders, as if he is somewhat unsteady and tired. When he speaks to Ford, he holds his head up slightly higher, so that he is “looking down” on Ford, maintaining his superiority.

• But when he remembers and sadness overcomes him, his head falls forward, tired.

• On the line “all these moments will be lost in time like…tears in rain,” there is a moment that follows “like” that seems to perhaps indicate a sudden stab of pain, a sudden intake of breath and a wince, perhaps providing a signal that the end is near: the next line, off screen, is “Time…to die.”

I could go on to do the same with his vocal delivery, but you get the picture. By narrowing my focus to one thing at a time, I notice details that would have flashed by otherwise. If I really wanted to get granular, I could go a frame at a time at important moments.

So if I’m trying to improve my acting skills, how might such an analysis help me? Well, there are several things I could do. Art students are sent off to study a masterpiece, and then asked to paint that masterpiece as a way of “feeling” themselves the techniques used by the original painter. Similarly, an actor could seek to imitate Hauer’s monologue as closely as possible, in order to experience more fully those techniques in action. An actor who is struggling with staying still and taking their time might find this beneficial. One might also apply the observed techniques to another context. For instance, applying Hauer’s techniques while doing Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech. Where might you put the changes in eye focus, from external to internal? How does that body language feel? What does that slowness feel like? How might imagining that you are speaking in a nighttime steady rain affect the delivery? How does it affect Shakespeare’s monologue? Which lines are brought to life, which seem to fade away? And so forth.

Some of you may remember from my post about graduate school that I am in favor of artistic agency. Put another way, I’ve become increasingly suspiciuous of anything that results in artistic dependency, whether that means being dependent on subsidy, being dependent on teachers, or being dependent on other artists. I’ve also become quite interested in efficacy—in more effective rehearsing and learning.

In the case of H. Wesley Balk’s “projective modes” (and I recommend reading his entire book), I think it is something that theater artists can learn, practice, and apply independently, and I think using these ideas can make the rehearsal process more effective and efficient.

What do you think? Are there other ways the ideas could be utilized?

P.S. I also think focusing on describing what one sees would be a good way to offer feedback in post-show critiques, or for ACTF respondents. It would be an alternative to what I consider the insultingly patronizing and infantilizing technique promoted by Liz Lerman.