One sunny August afternoon during Canterbury cricket week, sometime towards the end of my playing days, I decided to experiment.
The occasion was a Sunday League match against Kent—some readers will remember it as the John Player League, which we in those unenlightened times thought of as an unconscionably short form of the game. Each side batted for a maximum of 40 overs, bowlers’ run-ups were limited to 15 yards and no one could bowl more than eight overs.
Middlesex had never been successful in this competition, and, as I recall it, that season had been no different. My aim was a modest one: to become Viv Richards, just for the day, and thus to improve our performance.
I imagined myself inhabiting Viv’s body, stance and posture. Quixotically I wanted to procure a little of his power by getting my weight more onto the front foot, so I decided not to worry too much about the risk of planting my left leg in front of the stumps and playing “round” my front leg. After all, Viv himself seemed able to do that without falling over to the off side, without losing his straight bat; this element in his technique enabled him to safely hit balls on off-stump through mid-wicket.
What happened? Not much. But one particular stroke I do remember. The ball was short of a half volley, medium fast, on about off-stump. I took my longer-than-usual stride forward; the connection was perfect. But because I was still me (and not actually Viv), with my “inside-out” swing of the bat (I was liable to open the face of the bat towards the off-side, and swing not directly through the ball but slightly from leg to off), this full-blooded shot went straight to the fielder placed on the cover boundary. But such was this borrowed power of mine that, having travelled 70 yards or so in the air, but not much above head height, the ball burst through the fielder’s hands. He must have been almost as surprised as I was.
I had long known, or dreamt, that had I been born into a different cricketing culture, and in another time, I would probably have become a different kind of player. We all, consciously or not, imitate our heroes. As children (and beyond) we may even impersonate them, get into their shoes in such a way that we say “I’m Len Hutton” or “Ben Stokes” or “Viv Richards”. We become those we imitate. We “in-habit” them. We adopt their gait, their mannerisms. Like actors, we take on a role; in our case, an almost scripted role.
At the theatre itself, when I saw Harold Pinter acting in a play that he had written, I would leave the theatre with a domineering Pinteresque walk, a deeper, more resonant, more interesting (I thought) voice. Or when I was with my father’s Heckmondwike family, my vowels would flatten a bit, towards their broader Yorkshire intonation. We become chips off the old blocks.
The art of acting is a matter of making use of this innate or natural ability, but, as Juliet Stevenson said, actors still retain a degree of professional detachment. This is so that if something goes wrong—if she muffs her lines, a fellow-actor speaks out of turn, a cue is missed or a glass accidentally knocked off a table—she is able to respond to this moment of intrusive actuality, and find a way of making the best of a bad job, without acting out of character.
Michael Apted, a distinguished film director, offered a different emphasis. He maintained that a fictional drama is more like a documentary than we usually think: a performance of Hamlet with Laurence Olivier as the prince may be seen as a documentary of Olivier pretending to be Hamlet.
It seems clear that performing happens throughout life
So, is “performing”—a word whose etymology, like that of “pretend”, includes Indo-European roots meaning “putting in front”, “putting out”—a matter of holding something in front of ourselves like a mask? And does this entail total identification, or rather a sense that one is always oneself even, or especially, while pretending to be someone else?
It seems clear that performing happens throughout life, not only on a (literal) theatrical stage. Most people regard it as natural for us (and our children) to behave differently in public than in private. We are taught to be polite—to “put on” politeness, say. We are not to be as frank as we might be with our immediate family, or with our lover or close friend (or as we are encouraged to be with our psychotherapist or analyst).
Homer spoke of “winged words”, which fly out beyond the “barrier of the teeth”. The lines drawn in different cultures between what may properly be allowed out beyond this dental barrier and what should be kept inside pursed lips differ, but we all believe there should be lines somewhere.
So, to greater or lesser extents, we put on a front. Montaigne quotes a figure from antiquity called Lykos, who went to a doctor because he had the mad idea that everything he did occurred on a stage. The doctor cured him of his “wrong imagining”, but was subsequently sued by the patient for taking away the only pleasures he had in life.
How then, as cricketer or actor, as politician or private person, as writer or psychoanalyst, do we become—or is it “find”?—ourselves? Do we have many selves, and if so, are some more “real” than others? Is there such a thing as our true self? When does a performance or “act” become Sartre’s “bad faith”?
This will need another article (or perhaps another lifetime) to work out. Or you might wish to read my ruminations on these questions in Turning Over the Pebbles, which is just out in paperback!
