Book Review – The Way of the Actor by Brian Bates

The Way of the Actor: a path to knowledge and power by Brian Bates, Boston: Shambhala Press, 1988

Did you know that when Alec Guinness met James Dean, he predicted that Dean would die within the week? How many actors do you know who have spoken of psychic, telepathic or ‘out of body’ experiences, or even casually mentioned the theatre ghost like it is the most normal thing in the world? What is that strange aura around people who can transform themselves apparently by strength of will to look different even without make up?

Brian Bates is better known for his work on Anglo-Saxon Druidry and shamanism, however he also hold a professorship in psychology at the University of Brighton, University of Sussex and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. The Way of the Actor is a record of the work he has done as a psychologist on the teaching faculty of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art interpolated with insights from interviews with established actors such as Charleton Heston, Liv Ullmann and Marlon Brando.

Bates explores the liminal nature of acting as an experience and as a profession. He delves into the historical love-hate relationship that exists in Western cultures for acting and situates this ambivalence with traditional acting’s connection with the spirit world and traditional shamanic practice. Bates suggests this is due to acting evoking* the spirit or character of another through the actor’s work – in an important way, the actor brings another person present through their performance regardless of whether the intent is ritual, magical or entertainment. Bates identifies this as shamanic due to the connection of such activity with the evocation performed by traditional/shamanic actors, practices which have not been lost to some cultures. Actors, whether they are character or ‘personality’ actors, share themselves with another presence during performance. This is where the liminality comes in.

A significant aspect of the way of the actor, identified as consistent between the personal narratives of many actors and a traditional society’s identification and setting apart of a ‘shaman’**, is that of being different, having an unusual life event or even experienced by others as fey/an outsider, which gives the actor access to other places, the spirit world, or other modes of being (whatever you want to call it).

“We have all felt ourselves to be outsiders at some time, somewhere in our lives. But perhaps this is a more important dimension of the actor’s experience. For, in traditional societies, being an outsider was not only a commin experience for the future actor. It was obligatory … The ‘otherness’, or outsider status, was considered to be the necessary prerequisite which opened the way for the young person to be connected with the spirit-world.” [p. 51]

Actors have a quality of unreality and historically been treated with suspicion because of this connection and their capacity to give so convincing a performance that they are able to deceive the audience as to what is the actor themselves and what is the ‘other’ speaking through them. This has lead to persecution of actors and banning of acting in various eras in christian church history, not only because of the connection with a previous religious tradition.

Bates also gives considerable time to the suspicion of actors and madness. Acting presents, in that traditional setting, the power to heal the rupture that gave rise to the actor’s otherness, that in creating a positive balance to overcome the breach, they heal themselves and become able to “achieve reintegration with the audience” [ibid]. Bates explores the various perceptions of actors as ego-centric, narcissistic and neurotic, utilising comments from actors themselves to dig into the practices that are required to produce good performances which give rise to the notion that actors are crazy. Perhaps the most significant of these is that actors show for all the world to see what most of us know within ourselves, that to some extent “sanity” is a performance we all do. Bates does however also make the important point that the actor (both modern and traditional/shaman) must walk the edge and stay on this side of madness, because the actor is required to be in control and exert balance on the performance.

Arranged through a series of concepts usually identified with that liminal activity of the traditional healer/priest/shaman, Bates presents a convincing picture of the way that actors continue to live this experience, even in the secular Western cultures most of us now inhabit. He sets out how modern actors are experientially connected with those he calls ‘primitive actors’ – presumably to get away in part from the accretions on the word ‘shaman’, but also to specifically identify it as a specific social and ritual role identifiable in shamanic activity but also in traditional theatres such as Noh. He explores such themes as charisma, transformation, seeing, dream, death, rebirth and mystery.

Liminality is not a concept Bates mentions specifically, but it would be a useful one to bring together the experiential and social aspects he explores in the way of the actor. Many of the actors interviewed talk about living on the edge in relation to their performances, and the psychological as well as physical dangers involved in their craft. Bates acknowledges himself as a scientist and the value in the scientific approach to knowledge. Actors, he goes on to suggest, “are more than just cultural luxuries, aesthetic appendages or upmarket entertainers. On the contrary, actors are essential for maintaining vital links with the imaginal world”. [p.204]

The Way of the Actor presents a fascinating study into a different way to connect with non-material/non-local reality in an accessible and ‘non fluffy’ form. It is unlikely to convert the stolidly secular Western skeptic to a mystical worldview, but may consider it an engaging insight into the psychosocial world of the actor.

* evoke – to bring here, in contrast with invoking ‘to call upon’
** I put in inverted commas because I feel the word is overused and has developed connotations in some new-age and pagan circles beyond the role identified in traditional societies.