Ingemar Lindh:
Exploring a Character

---

INGEMAR LINDH, festival conference, Porsgrunn, Norway, June 5th 1997, upon a question to his preceding speech from a member of the audience:- 'In a discussion you have said an actor cannot become another person. But can you use a play to gain understanding into another person?':

"It's a very long theme, but I'll try to shorten it down a little bit.

Of course you can't become another person. And because we accept - and only if we accept - the impossibility of one level of reality, we have access to the next level of reality. As long as we get stuck on one level, we'll never have access to the next. And, of course, I can't become another person."

"IF it's the question of Hamlet, or any Shakespeare text, I know that this is a good writer, so I have faith. I see the truth is already there; everything is written down in those small, black points. And I don't have to worry about that.

As an actor, what I can do, is first of all to try to create my own world, so I have something to meet it with -- the monster of Shakespeare. I must arm myself in order to be able to meet it. The most beautiful fights are always between two masters. Not between a weak and a strong. That's slaughter. And in order to avoid this slaughter, I have to arm myself, so I have the means whereby I can meet him, with my instrument, my body. Then I try to penetrate, as we do in the martial arts.

You know that you can never be your adversary. But you can become one with what is in between. And in that way you can understand him, perhaps sometimes even before he does so himself. You feel that he will come with his blow, and you block there, and you know it before. And then we can come very, very close, so that my understanding have a marriage with the other ones understanding.

It is the way my desire of penetrating the other one, or the text, or the costume, or whatever it is that comes from an outside, that make it possible. And it's this meeting point that the eventual public will see. They will not see one or the other, but they will see them meet. And perhaps sometimes clash.

Because revelations are not always smooth. Revelations come also through clashes."

"TRYING to go a step further an becoming [one with your adversary is impossible. And even if it was, it would not shed new light]. So the pleonasm of the tautology should be avoided. There should be this meeting, but with the desire to breath more and more, in a way, together.

For that you must have the tools. The tools to create your own instrument, and the tools to read the other. Read the other in the sense of the prayer, which means listen. That my instrument, my gesture, even like this" - does a martial art stance - "is not only to protect myself. It's not my harness. It's not my escape from the world, but it's my antenna to the world. And when I do this, I feel my opponent, and therefore I know him better. And he goes in here.

You have to have a good technique, otherwise you can go too far. And it's the same with the text: You can be too pretentious. If you put too much of yourself into Shakespeare, he will vanish, he will not breath any longer. It's like playing a drum. You touch the drum, but as soon as you have touched it, you have to let it fly. Otherwise...." Silent beats. "The 'Boom!' is when you go back. The drum starts to resonate. Not if you say: 'Oh! I want to drum!'" Choking the imaginary drum with affectionate beating. "We should not suffocate our partners. Not even Shakespeare."

Jesting: "Not even Desdemona."

"So you can use the text to understand someone other than yourself by investigating a character...?" the female in the audience who coined the original question asks. "But you understand the other one through yourself," replies Lindh.

Replies to questions and comments from the audience after the main speech:

• The extensive need for therapy in society, as a symptom of lack of opportunities to be creative.
  
  
• You say you want a society were people are creative. How about those that does not dare to be creative?
  
  
• In a discussion you have said an actor cannot become another person. But can you use a play to gain understanding into another person?
  
  
• How do you work at the Institute for Scenic Art (Institutet för Scenkonst), and what do you aim at with your work?