Half a lifetime ago, I was directing Sean O'Casey's monumental play, The Plough and the Stars (The battle flag of the nascent - and in 1916 - ill fated Irish Republic) , when it occurred to me there was a war going on.
The history books call it the Easter Uprising, but to the folks living in Dublin in 1916, it sure as hell must have seemed like a war - as a British gunboat shelled the General Post Office from The River Liffey and troops got ready to storm the GPO in order to wrest it from the hands of the outmanned and outgunned Republican forces who had taken the GPO as an opening gambit in their struggle to gain independence from England.
In case you didn't know - that struggle's been going on for centuries and "The Troubles" are drenched in blood and earmarked by savagery on both sides. There's a thrilling movie, Michael Collins, which documents the struggle for Irish independence in the years following The Easter Uprising, starring Liam Neeson as Michael Collins, "The Laughing Boy", as he was known. And it paints a vibrant portrait of a troubled time. But I didn't intend to write a history lesson here. It's supposed to be all about acting. Sorry.
Anyway. The war. Well it rages throughout The Plough and the Stars and in the 2nd act, which takes place in front of a tenement building close to the action, soldiers, looters, onlookers and bystanders run to and from the scene of the battle. We hear the bombardment and the sound of gunfire, but never see the action itself, although we do see the results of it.
Actors getting ready to enter from the wings, I realized, had to bring the war onstage with them or the audience would never believe the war was raging all around the embattled folks trying to get through that bloody Easter weekend. And thus was born in my mind, The Moment Before. Refined, to be sure over many years, but birthed during rehearsals for The Plough and the Stars.
The idea is simple enough. The actor, before every entrance, must produce within him/herself the physical and emotional circumstances relative to what she/he's just experienced and bring that reality to the living moment on stage. It gives the actors performance continuity and provides the audience with the belief that the world of the play exists beyond the window through which they're viewing a selected portion of that world.
The Moment Before. More than important. Essential. Next time, why The Moment Before is even more critical for film actors.
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