Non-visible acting
April 24, 2012
David Fielder (Nations at War company) had a few of us to dinner on Sunday night. Rack of lamb, perfectly pink. We all agreed how lucky we were to have the excellent Barry the Butcher within close shopping distance. It seems everybody gets almost as much pleasure from their cheer as from their chops.
Between courses, Jim Kitson (same company) served up a delicious compliment - an amuse-gueule that I'm still delightedly chewing over - real sustenance for the spirit. He had seen Dealer's Choice, a National Theatre play I did a hundred years ago, and was keen to tell me how impressed he was by the fact that it so didn't look like 'acting'.
Well, of course, that is the thing we all most devoutly wish for: non-visible acting. And it set me thinking about what we do here. We strive to be recognisably real and human while we speak with a vocabulary and vernacular that are somewhat distant from what you might hear on a Clapham omnibus.
We play upon a spare and open stage on which there is no hiding place and which demands so much energy and drive. It's a hard call because there is real danger of evidently pushing too hard, or just not being strong enough to make the desired effect. Each performance -- in fact, each moment -- demands exactly the right amount of energy. Too much, and one is hammy. Too little, and one disappoints.
You need multiple and sensitive sensors. The audience 300 degrees horizontally and 80 odd vertically, your fellows and what they are trying to do in each moment of the story-telling, your light, your position on the stage, who you are masking at any moment, where the focus is, timing the jokes... and into all that we have to fit the arc of our own character's journey so that we take just the right amount of attention, not too much, and not too little.
I find it hard. I'd love the acting to be not visible, but sometimes it feels like an impossible dream. Economy of effort is perhaps a more reasonable goal. But the challenge to my ability and my judgement is what keeps me alive.
Hmmmm. OK - I'm braced for the chastening comments. Bring it on.
The picture today was snatched at the press photo call. Emily's sensational entrance.
by Nick Day
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