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conflictdramascripts · 7 years ago

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Gardeners and Flowers - Actors and Roles

There are Gardener and Flower People, Therefore there are Gardener and Flower Actors and Characters – How to Understand and Identify Them

The concept of there being gardener and flower actors and roles is not really part of the language of theatre. (I doubt you’d ever hear Peter Brook talking about it.) However, the concept was first explained to me by director Dean Gabourie when we were working on a show together and he was identifying what was going so horribly wrong. In explaining why an accomplished actor was unfocused and unable to ground herself in a particular role, he said, “She’s a flower actor, and that’s a gardener role.” He went on to explain the problem in greater detail, but I am going to put it into my own words now.

The concepts of gardener and flower are fairly simple. The gardener tends and nurtures the garden, providing necessities and care; the flower grows and adds color, vibrancy and joy to their surroundings. Creating a metaphor out of this to apply to people and acting styles can seem like a bit of a stretch, however I have found it uncannily accurate as a descriptor for what is often happening on stage, with actors and character roles, or even in real life relationships. (I’ve explained the metaphor often in a Gender Studies and Literature course that I teach.)

To explain the metaphor it would probably be best to further define the terms:

A gardener is one who is grounded, who is aware of the relationships between themselves, others and the ways in which everything and everyone in the scene (or in life) is linked together or connected. The gardener nurtures these connections and relationships, finding meaning and purpose within them.

A flower is much more motivated by their own interests, which they are often only dimly aware of. Instead the flower always looks beyond themselves to the future or to a world beyond their present circumstances. In order to do so the flower shines brightly, takes risks and is excited about life and the world, for this reason they are also exciting to be around. There is an anxiety to being a flower, however, an ever present need to escape disappointment.

Returning to Gabourie’s explanation of what was going horribly wrong in the play that we were doing, the role that the actor was playing was a gardener role. That character was written to ground, care for, and nurture the other characters. We had, however, cast a flower actress, who was constantly attempting to take risks and shine brightly in the part, motivated by her own interests or objectives in the role as she’d identified them.

While it would be extremely unfair to blame what became a rather disastrous production on the work of one of the actors (everybody, with a few exceptions, probably had a part in it, none the least of which was my own) the summary of one of the factors was compelling enough to stay with me for years.

Because roles are founded in the circumstances and emotional realities of characters, and because in theatre there is an attempt to realize the reality of characters’ emotions and conflicts, the dichotomy of flower or gardener provides a tool of analysis, summarizing what’s going on in a role. Interestingly, because I teach from a scene based approach where student actors are required to perform in multiple roles, I will often purposefully miscast the scene, instructing young actors who can be identified clearly within the two types, gardener or flower, to play against type and to attempt roles which don’t really suit their acting styles. I usually will attempt this with more advanced students, (i.e. ones who are interested in working on their acting abilities) rather than with less accomplished students who find working within roles that suit them more compelling. To be truthful, I usually only get to this by the time my students reach the senior grades, prior to that we are still working on a wide variety of other skills, increasing their self awareness and acting range isn’t really the focus.

I’ve spoken before on the need to be able to express to students what is happening in their scenes, both successes and problems. I would not suggest teaching the flower/gardener metaphor to them at any point, but it might serve useful to your own understanding of what’s going on. Here’s how to understand it in terms of roles:

A gardener role is one in which the actor is required to give the other characters the space in which it achieve their goals, providing the emotional room and space, as well as allowing the circumstances of the scene to play out in ways that the other characters might express themselves fully. The gardener role does not allow the actor to simply pursue their own objectives, they must constantly identify their objectives in relation to what the other characters are trying to accomplish.

A flower role usually has the actor in a state of heightened emotion or dissolution. This character pursues their own objectives, and whatever havoc is created through this is left to the gardener character to ‘clean up’ or work with. The flower character can obviously be a force for positivity or negativity, but the character themselves would not be gifted with the self-knowledge to fully understand this.

While this is a binaried relationship, subtle shifts, navigations, negotiations and reversing of the roles does occur. No one (or character) is purely either, but part of the generation of conflict between characters, the subtleties and complexities of relationships, can be related to how these roles play out.

In terms of actors, the metaphor can again be extended. While it would be somewhat suspect to claim that actors are naturally of a certain character, it can be claimed that certain actors, whether through acting styles, training, temperament or comfort levels, are able to occupy roles wherein they are focused in nurturing relationships between themselves and the other actors rather than pursuing their own objectives or possibilities of role. The gardener actor can thus be identified.

The flower actor pursues possibilities for their own performance within their role. This pursuit is primary in their acting, not the relationship between the different performers, roles and performances on stage. This actor seeks to fully realize their own role first, before turning, and perhaps seeing what everyone else is doing.

While again, this is a statement of types, and no one is exactly this type. The use of the generalization is in identifying problems in production, in the understanding of the interrelations of performances, and in the ways in which actors and performances need to come together (jell) for the what’s on stage to be successful. If a flower actor is in a gardener role, pursuing his or her own possibilities prior to connecting their own performance to others, then this can have rather disastrous effects. Personally, I’ve encountered this problem from extremely well regarded actors much more than once in my own professional history. In each case the production was never satisfactorily realized. While it again seems unfair to blame the particular actor, and casting is an often tenuous process in productions with limited budgets, too often directors and playwrights are left ‘holding the bag’.

Whether most actors can even identify themselves within this metaphorical analysis is even in question. I’ve never heard of an actor say, “Oh, that’s a gardener role, and I’m a flower actor.” It sounds a little absurd even, however much the production can be affected by it. And again, as an acting teacher, I am probably never going to explain this metaphor to a student. I don’t think it would do anything but limit them and fill them with doubt. However, as an acting teacher, I think it can be extremely useful in identifying what is going on in a particular scene, or in identifying how actors need to become more versatile when working on their range. I’ve attempted to identify this in other terms before: the straight character working with the comic character, but always with limited success. Classroom work is very different from production work, however, and I while in a class I would accept that students need to work on their range, and therefore put them in roles that they are not inclined, by temperament or style, to be happy or shine within, if I were going into an extended production and rehearsal schedule, I’d be very disinclined to try to adapt to the situation.

As I’ve explained, a flower actor is pretty much ill suited to a gardener role. I’m firmly identifying them as a flower actor because they’ve never really gone beyond that; they aren’t able to play either, in other words. A lot of flower actors are quite successful precisely because they can shine so brightly at times. If the job of the gardener is to pay attention to, permit and nurture the relationships between themselves and the other actors and characters, then the flower can do a lot of damage while in the role. This brings up

the question, however, if a gardener can play a flower role. The answer is simple, absolutely... There is a lot of joy and opportunity in the flower character role, and gardeners are as likely to take joy in them as any other performer. While this might not seem fair, the flower is vilified while the gardener is elevated, acting isn’t really about being fair, there are no allowances if things don’t work out, the audience will simply turn away.

On a final note, I’ll account for how I’ve explained this metaphor in terms of personal relationships to my gender studies class. Basically, adopting the same terms and idealizations, people (not just actors and roles) can also be fit within this narrative. Most people can be binaried into the concept of flower or gardener personality type, whether by actions, temperament, inclinations or habit. I often ask my students which designation fits them better, are they closer to being a gardener or a flower, and it’s not really all that difficult to decide. Basically a gardener is a person who maintains relationships between themselves and their environment, considering others, looking after details, managing. The flower is the person who seeks to make an impact on the world, to be known in ways much beyond their immediate circumstances, who is always seeking what the unknown or the future might hold. They don’t manage or consider others well in this pursuit.

In relationships, if you’re a flower and so is your partner, then this can be deeply problematic, not enough care is usually being taken of either of you by the other or by yourselves. Two flowers together can start off brilliantly, both bringing excitement and a large sense of purpose to the relationship, however, to be blunt, it is probably doomed...

Gardeners, on the other hand, despite it being a not fully recognized or rewarding role, can be happy nurturing and allowing their flower partners the space to explore the world. They too, can be the beneficiary of the flower’s energy, and their temperament can often be suited to the nurturing role. Gardeners, as an added bonus, can often be perfectly happy nurturing each other; there are no drawbacks to all that ability to nurture and to allow excitements to come when they will without pressing the point. While it’s not necessary to belabor the point that it’s better to be a gardener than a flower, it’s really a question of the versatility that the gardener enjoys, it’s quite possible that flowers enjoy being flowers to a much greater extent than anyone else enjoys being themselves, so it’s best not to look askance at them.

I’ve now moved from a perhaps useful invocation of the gardener/flower idealization in theatrical term to a perhaps whimsical one. I suppose it depends on whether the form of analysis is useful at all in the first place...

#education #drama teaching #drama theory

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