Oh Dear . . .

I went to the theatre the other night and was disappointed. This isn't an unusual occurrence. From the perspective of the actors/acting it was a very mixed bag. The director misread the play. You've gathered by now I'm not going to tell you what show, where and who - because this isn't a review and those particulars are unimportant. What's important are the technique issues the production raised and what might have been done about them.

It is definitely an ensemble piece in which most of the actors contribute almost equally to the effect of the whole. But there is a central character who carries the core of the play. Discussing this with a couple of students last night and with the lady who accompanied me to the theatre, they were all equally at a loss as to who that character might be.

There are a couple of problems here. First of all, the director is, when all's said and done, the company leader. It's the director's job to build a vision for the play, and to guide the actors' performances so they all, as a unit, fulfill the writers intent. That didn't happen. And this is where the actors responsibility to himself comes in. In reading the play, one of the first things that needs to be done is to determine what your character arc is. In other words, how do you change from the beginning of the play to the end, what are the steps along the way and when do the changes occur. This just didn't happen. The actor might have been miscast, but that still doesn't excuse missing the critical business of finding the essence of the characters inner state. Both things, both bad, unfortunately happened: No character arc and no viable inner state of being.

And it wasn't just the main character. All of the performers played from the chest. Loud, technically laudable, but rarely did emotion drop down to the gut. Consequently, the performance had zero emotional effect. Maybe the company decided it wasn't meant to be emotionally engaging. Bertolt Brecht believed emotion took away from the audiences rational examination of the plays message and was astonished when he discovered he'd been oh so wrong for years. Audiences would dissolve in tears at the pain and passion of Helene Weigel's "Mother Courage", and our Bert didn't get it. Well, finally, he did - but that's another story.

I've come to believe that if you don't care about the emotional content of the play, if you aren't moved by the plight of the characters, the message, like the best Chinese meal you've ever eaten, will dissipate shortly after you leave the theatre, leaving you hungry once again. The message of a play is delivered through the struggles of the people personified in it. Actors take note. It's all about the feeling, not how loudly and/or competently you speak the words.