This is Theatre

I just learned that a director is refusing to let actors read the full script. This makes me angry.

You may have heard it said that film is a director’s medium, while theatre is an actor’s. This is never truer than in amateur theatre.

Let’s look at what an amateur actor gets out of the theatrical experience:
A few evenings of fleeting glory
No money

What she puts in:
Talent
Intelligence
Hard work
Upto six months of rehearsal – six months of her life, albeit only the evenings, gone from her life for good.

Why do actors do it?
There’s something the amateur actor is looking for, something that would make it all worthwhile. “The experience my first play - ‘Business is War’ gave me,” says amateur actor and my student, Ruchi Mohan, “is something I’ll cherish all my life. Rehearsing for more than a month for that final moment - to be on stage… not as you… but as Mrs. Daga – a character…. to cut yourself off from your world and enter hers!”

Adds Cedric, another of my students, “I saw a transformation in the cast, everyone so involved in their roles it was like a spell being cast. It was real magic, something I can’t explain in words and something which hit me deep within.”

That is what the amateur actor seeks – the joy, the energy, the magic of performance. Performing live before an audience gives the actor a high that cannot be described. It is a fix that keeps the amateur actor going on stage again and again, for no money, for little recognition and a soon forgotten mention in the local newspapers. It is what makes film actors sometimes forgo the millions they would make in the permanence of a film to go fleetingly on stage before a live audience.

The Director's Responsibility
The Director has a great responsibility in ensuring that the actor is not prevented from experiencing this thrill.

When the director uses a filmmaking approach to theatre, she treats the actors as mere elements in “her” production. Refusing to let the actor understand the context of the role and of the play itself, she uses her in her own grand design, leaving the actor nothing. No pleasure, no thrill, no glory, no money.

Not empowering the actor to experience this high has repercussions in the whole of amateur theatre. While amateur theatre is replete with those who are looking for just a one-time acting experience, there may be someone in that bunch who might go far in the acting profession but for the actions of a selfish director. Not getting the thrill they seek, they will drift away and theatre will lose a talented performer.

It might be argued that the purpose of theatre is not to make the actor feel good, but to deliver a good show to the audience.

Unfortunately, the filmmaking approach to theatre prevents precisely this “good show”. Granted, the audience may feel it is getting its money’s worth because of the elaborate sets, excellent sound and pyrotechnical lighting. But whenever people in the audience talk to me about this director’s productions, they confess to experiencing a feeling of “something missing”. They can’t articulate what is wrong, but they know something is.

Says professional British stage actor Simon Callow in his book, “Being An Actor”:
“An actor who performs in a certain way because the director told him to, is not really there at all. He’s in the past, his mind always harking back to the rehearsal room, thinking desperately: `What did he tell me to do now? Oh, god, I’m sure that’s wrong.’ And so on. The performance will never grow, the actor’s tension will block off any real expressive vibration because another, irrelevant person has clambered onto the stage between the actor and the audience: the director. The actor must own his performance, and the director must make sure that he does.”

And that is why I get angry when a director refuses to show the actor the complete script.