A senior member of our cast said she gears her performance to the house. If its full, she give 100%, if its only a quarter full, she gives of herself accordingly. Is this acceptable in a professional actress?
2006-07-25 13:59:44 · 8 answers · asked by Spotlight 5 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Theater & Acting
Maybe she means that she modulates her performance like a film actor would- broader acting for long shots, very subtle for close-ups. An audience of 200 people would demand a different energy than an audience of 50. It could have been an innocuous comment, which sounds "bad" on the surface.
2006-07-25 15:49:29 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
Hell, no. That's not gearing her performance to the house, it's gearing it to her ego. Acting at its best is about the generosity of the human spirit at a very deep level. Every performance is an opportunity to change lives, even if only a little. Having a quota in place before you "give 100%" is ridiculous. It probably means she's louder when the house is full and she thinks that's "better". How could any decent actor decide to be bad? How can you decide to only partially engage emotions that have been grafted onto the production? You'd have to be amazinly superficial to even try. One of the things I love about theatre is that it has a tradition going back thousands of years and none of it is about phoning it in.
2006-07-26 14:17:55 · answer #2 · answered by dg 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Acceptable? Professional? She's neither. Anyone worthy of being called a professional (let alone a "senior member" of a cast) gives 100% even if there's ONE person in the house.
So, when she slept with the director to get the part, how much did she give? :-)
2006-07-25 14:17:32 · answer #3 · answered by zeebaneighba 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Sounds to me like a flimsy rationalization being offered by someone who isn't really capable of a full and vigorous performance.
"Professional" actors (which, in my long experience, is ALWAYS a function of commitment to the art, and not a function of whether one is being paid or not) ALWAYS give their best effort. Anything less cheats the playwright, the rest of the cast/crew, and every single member of the audience.
As a frequent director, it would be my pleasure to FIRE an actor who claimed to live by such a philosophy.
2006-07-26 09:17:05 · answer #4 · answered by shkspr 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No! Never! Engery levels MUST be high! 120% for everything you do. You can have 2 people in the audience, or 500 people in an audience. I would even put MORE effort into the 2 people one! And not all acting is preformed toward the house. Characters talk to each other, right? She can't 'punish' the audience because they couldn't find more people. They are still an audience.
2006-07-25 15:35:54 · answer #5 · answered by matt 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
By this reasoning the audience should get a pro rata reduction for having to sit through her substandard performance when the theatre isn't full, and she should be paid in proportion to the size of the house. She's a cheat.
2006-07-26 11:58:19 · answer #6 · answered by Dramafreak 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Harold Prince (Phantom of the Opera, Sweeney Todd), Jack O'Brien (Hairspray), Des McAnuff (Tommy), Kathleen Marshall (modern-day production of Grease), Rob Marshall (Chicago), Susan Storman (The manufacturers) are basically a number of a few very well-known Broadway directors.
2016-11-03 00:09:02 · answer #7 · answered by bulman 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
This isn't acceptable by any actress or performer for that matter. Joe Dimaggio use to play hard every day. and when asked why he hustled all the time no matter what, he answered, because there might be a kid at the game who has never seen me play before, and i owe it to him to play my hardest and best!
2006-07-25 14:40:29 · answer #8 · answered by dml2410 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋