An old song, to be sure. They don't make 'em like that anymore. Actors, take note. What the audience relates to: You. All of you, body and soul. Too many actors, especially young ones, don't realize we need the whole enchilada. Inner Life, Voice and Physical Being. All three elements are brought to bear on every spoken moment. Acting conservatories, the good ones, anyway, insist that their students be trained to move and speak as well as to feel. Too often, these academies fail to connect the dots for their students - but that's a subject for another day.
So. If the text is a structure, then it stands to reason that in order to meet that structure, we apply all of our resources to it. Stanislavski, the great Russian theorist and teacher, proclaimed: "Chance is the enemy of art." He was right. The problem for the actor, then, is this. How can movement, gesture, voice and inner life all be brought to bear on the moment and not stifle it? Can we build the performance in such detail and then leave the hammer and drill at home when we perform? The answer is yes!
Creating specific, focused detail is fine - as long as we learn it, absorb it and then forget it. What we learned will stay with us, guaranteed.
I was talking to a student about this today and showed her Abbot and Costello's hilarious "Who's on First" routine. It's as wonderful today as it was 60 years ago. Every second of it - every nuance, every gesture had to be worked to a fare-thee-well - and yet when you watch it, it appears as spontaneous as if they were performing it for the first time. The economy of movement is fantastic, vocal emphasis is perfect and the inner process flawless. If you haven't seen this classic turn recently, It might be worthwhile to revisit it. Right now!
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