Lincoln and acting and vipers

 I am looking at the phrase "Brood of vipers" from the gospel lesson for Sunday and I got to thinking about what does it mean to be a "viper"

Years ago, when I was teaching in a college in Virginia I would go back each summer to our place in Boone where for grocery money I would act in an outdoor drama. The summer before I went to seminary they gave me the part of the villain, the British ( I gave him a Scottish accent), Col. Mackenzie. I was so mean and vicious that every night during the climatic reenactment Revolutionary War battle of Kings Mountain, when it looked like I was going to kill the young heartthrob hero in a sword fight but at the last second I got killed by that sweet young man, the audience would cheer. Yet, there was more; at the top of the cheer- in my final ounce of venom I would shoot the young man in the back as he ran back in victory to oh- so -virtuous Dr. Geoffery Stuart, his loving father. I had played Dr. Stuart for several years, which was a much bigger part, but I sure enjoyed playing the villain, the viper, the snake in the grass. It was also part of the healing as I discovered my own "viperness"

There are two ways of doing a part; (1) from the outside in- where the actor uses technical skills to mimics what the character will look, move or sound like and then find your mark and says the lines the playwright wrote. Which is a not bad to earn a living, it is called play acting and it can be fun. So can turn on the tube of movies and see it done and if the actor is skillful it is non offensive. Let me give you examples in the new movie Lincoln. I can think of three actors which did good jobs; Bruce McGill playing Secretary of War Stanton, Jackie Earle Haley playing Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, and James Spader playing political operative William H. Bilbo. They all did competent work, McGill did a nice eye roll and impatience as Stanton listening to one more story from Lincoln, Haley got the walk and canniness right in Stephens, and Spader did a couple comic bits of corruption, good actors keep the story moving. But you didn't really see anything behind the lines. sometimes the problem is that the actor is just projecting a persona, mask, and if it goes on too long it can get boring or predictable for the actor and the viewer as the actor lets you in on the charade and you just don't take the character seriously. 

(2) The other way of doing the part is to go from the inside out. Here one uses one's deeper self and finds the resonance of the character with ones history. It requires the actor to construct a history which the playwright does not know. The actor asks things like what was it like when I was betrayed? What did it look like? What did it sound like? What did it feel like? What was the internal conversation at the time? The actor claims the character's kinship with themselves. Back to Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis projecting Lincoln, Tommy Lee Jones letting us see Thaddeus Stevens, David Strathaim inviting us into William Seward, here are living persons who understand the character and the spaces between the words are full of thoughtful activity just as if you were involved in an intimate dialogue with a real person's struggle, now you may not agree with his interpretation, you may be offended, or amused, but you are engaged as you discover the meaning behind the words. This is not an historical pageant but moments caught in lightning.