From Acting to Poetry: The Interdisciplinary Path
~ On My Mind with Dan Butler ~
I am an actor. I’ve been an actor for as long as I can remember. It’s who I am, it's how I process the world, life. I’ve tried my hand at directing, producing, playwriting, screenwriting, lyric writing, but all of them come through the lens of me being an actor. And they all share a common love— storytelling. How can I tell the most alive, compelling, and authentically true story. (And having a sense of humor doesn’t hurt.)
Two years ago, I had the gratifying pleasure of having my poetry published for the first time. In anything outside of acting, I always feel a bit like a beginner. With poetry, I got into the habit of calling myself a dilettante, but I didn’t like the “surface interest” aspect of the definition, so I’ve laid claim to a dated definition I recently discovered: dilettante – “an admirer or lover of the arts.”
A bit of background. I’ve always loved words, how they fit together, complement one another. My love of poetry probably first came from doing community theatre musicals and the lyrics of Meredith Wilson, Oscar Hammerstein, Lionel Bart, Jerry Herman, and Stephen Schwartz and Sondheim. Years later, when writing the book and lyrics for a new musical, I devoured a Lehman Engel book which parsed the techniques and rhyme schemes of all those lyricists and more. That learning lit me up. In the early 1990s, poetry started taking its place as a guiding, focusing tool. Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” buoyed me through a time of phoenix-ing change. I read it daily, either to myself, or declaiming it out loud on hikes. It inspired and led me to write a one man show about being gay, “The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me …” my official “coming out,” which was ironically at the same time I was playing a rabidly heterosexual sports announcer on a popular television show. (A piece of William Butler Yeats’ beautiful poem “Brown Penny” ends the play.) In 2012, I adapted Ted Kooser’s verse poem “Pearl” into a short film, which I directed, starring Francis Sternhagen and myself. I particularly love when there’s a joining together of my artistic pursuits, acting and writing, writing and acting, working together like electric current, feeding and inspiring one another.
When I think of how the practice of being an actor has served, inspired or formed a foundation for writing poetry, here’s what comes to mind:
- In acting, I believe a character or project comes into my life for a reason – to teach me something, to show me where I’m stuck, to remind me to have fun, to not take myself so seriously, to challenge or dare me, etc. I think the same is true of poetry. Often my poems have been narratives, memories, trying to figure out something from the past, paying tribute to a person or a time in my life, redeeming some act that still holds shame.
- I like to believe that everything takes its own time and to let it have that time. With a character on stage or in film or television, you have to deliver the goods at a specific time. But you can keep experimenting, figuring it out in process, encouraging it to develop more fully into being. Especially on stage, the aim is to honor the architecture you and the director and cast have put into place while continuing to discover, keeping it alive and first time. With a poem, for me it’s tricky. When is it time to push through to finish and when to let it have more time. What’s perfectionism? What’s only fear? Partnering with a mentor is helpful. But gosh I have 3 poems that have been lurking about for a while. A sweet haunting. I know there’s something rich there, but boy.
- There is a very similar thing for me with both acting and a poem where I have to try my best to let go of my idea or control and at some point say, “Okay, what do you want to be? Am I standing in the way of you becoming what you want to be? You tell me, I’ll try my best to listen. I give up.” It’s probably the same relationship between prayer and meditation. Okay, you’ve said the prayer, now give time for whatever higher whatever to actually communicate. I’m not always successful at this, but the spirit is willing.
- The penny will drop. It will always be in a different way, but the character will come through. It may be through a dialect, a physical gesture, a particular line (I loved the Meryl Streep interview where she said that inevitably the line she feels is utterly impossible to say turns out to be the rosetta stone for the character.), but the character will come through in its own way and in its own time. I have faith in that. That is somewhat tied to starting with a blank canvas, starting from zero. It’s a new journey, a new project, a new character. With a poem, it still feels like undiscovered country to me. I need to do more of it, but there must be a similarity of faith. Something’s trying to work its way through. This tied to letting it have its own time and letting it tell me what it wants to be.
Here are some guide poems of mine and a daily practice:
Ben Okri’s “Notes to an English Friend in Africa.” I love this poem. I recite it in first person and use it as a kind of meditation mantra. Mary Oliver’s “When I Am Among the Trees” I have always had a powerful kinship with trees. I agree with the Native American belief that trees are ancestors, as precious as any human being. And most recently, Rumi’s “The Guesthouse” keeps me on track and grounded. Ted Kooser is an amazing guide. Our shared midwestern roots speak to me and the deceptive accessible-ness of his poetry while running deep, deep in the soil so moves me.
I start most days with Kim Stafford’s (inherited from his father, William) 4 step poetry writing ritual. 1) Write the date on a piece of paper; 2) Stream of consciousness journaling, what’s going on; 3) Write an aphorism or idea; 4) Write a poem. Robert Bly once encouraged let it be a bad poem. It’s to get the fingers moving before writing the poem. I love it. And I also love something attributed to William Stafford when asked what do you do when you’re blocked or stuck on a poem. He replied: “Lower my standards.” I can’t tell you how much I love that.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Butler is known primarily as an actor whose credits include major roles On and Off Broadway, on television, and film where he has also written, directed, and produced. In 2011, Dan adapted and directed a screen version of Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s verse poem “Pearl” starring Francis Sternhagen and himself which had a great life on the film festival circuit. In addition to being published in ONE ART last April, Dan’s poems have been seen on the Poetry of Resilience site, on the “Commissary,” a creative artist’s collective, as well as in the anthology “The Paths to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy” edited by James Crews.
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