The key to performances in our play, HONOR, was…teeth
Yes, teeth as in to ‘cast in one’s teeth’ to throw their own word back at them sa rebuke or retort . That was the key to the great performances in HONOR
Our take on the spine of the play, HONOR, was that each character had their view of what honor was and they fought to establish their reality through their questions and arguments. The key word was reproach.
Reproach: to cast one in their teeth
Two examples from literature
This is the full passage from Matthew
1 Then were there two thieves crucified with him, one on the right hand, and another on the left.39 And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads,
40 And saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.
41 Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said,42 He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.
43 He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God. 44 The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth. Bible (King James) Matthew xxvii. 44.
2
from Will Shakespeare
CASSIUS
Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come!
Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius,
For Cassius is aweary of the world —
Hated by one he loves, braved by his brother,
Checked like a bondman, all his faults observed,
Set in a notebook, learned and conned by rote
To cast into my teeth. O, I could weep
My spirit from mine eyes! There is my dagger,
⌜Offering his dagger to Brutus.⌝
And here my naked breast; within, a heart
Dearer than Pluto’s mine, richer than gold.
to (one’s) teeth, to the teeth of: intensive of ‘to one’s face’; directly and openly; defiantly; also, so as directly to face, confront, or oppose.
throw something in someone’s teeth in American English
1. to reproach someone for something
2. to hurl (a challenge, taunt, etc.) at someone
That’s the target of all three characters and as Declan Donellan advises, an actor has to have a target, something they wish to do to the other person.
“I do NOT accept your version of reality. No, you are not going to prevail in establishing your view of the world here today. “
“I’ve come to this, though, through trial and error over decades of work. And that if you play a love scene for just joy, trying to find love for each other during the love scene, I’ve discovered doesn’t really work. It falls apart and it tends to become sentimental. It always needs the edge, it always needs the negative of ‘don’t leave me, don’t betray me, don’t let me down, let this moment last forever, don’t let this moment end!’. If you find the negative in it, it works. So for example, the word that you can’t act, I believe, is ‘yes’, unless you put a ‘no’ in front of it. In The Actor and The Target there is a big riff on the fact that all text says no. And I still absolutely stick to that. Even if you’ve got to say ‘yes’, you have to find your ‘no’ in front of it. In other words, ‘no, I mean, yes’, because you need the friction to give you ‘the life’. No conflict, no existence.”
Declan Donnellan guided our direction here as in other plays but never was the impulse and intention clearer. It’s good advice for any action theatrical or otherwise: how are you trying to get the other to accept your reality. You can be Socratic and ask questions, Shakespearean and build magnificent speeches, or ‘Mametian’ and hurl angry words, or … well, who is your example?
