"There are musicians who practice all the time but we actors are not able to do that. We don't have an instrument, except if you say we are our own instrument, and yet I always try to continue searching and working for the moment where you have to deliver". - Michel Piccoli
Mostly I fail. Mostly I don't accomplish the thing I set out to accomplish. Or more accurately, I rarely accomplish my objectives in the time-frame I expected to. What generally happens, is I make an attempt, and fail, but within that failure, I learn what about myself I need to improve such that I am capable of accomplishing the thing I just failed at. And having made those improvements, I have another crack at it. Again here, we learn that life is like the rehearsal room, or put the other way round, we may see that the rehearsal room is a microcosm of life: at the start of rehearsals we are barely able to walk across the room, the director is an important crutch, but by the end we are strong and independent and long to get out infront of an audience, and in between, there were all those embarassing failed attempts at doing the scene, accompanied by the awkwardness and the gross feelings of falsity. But in the end we do get there. Similarly then, to life outside the rehearsal room, each failure should be an invitation to improve, not an excuse for lamentation. This is not always easy, especially for us actors because we are, in the main, tragic-romantics who love to throw are arms in the air and curse the cruelty of fate, our work is generally about dealing with overwrought emotions and situations – cool reason can sometimes appear to be our enemy, but we must recognise it's necessity, if we are to function as reasonable citizens.
So how to remain cool then, amid the frustrations of our trade. While we are working, all is well with the world, we seem to cruise along. It is while we are not working that we feel under pressure; the waiting all year for a job then two come along at the same time so one must be declined, the feeling of a lack of control over our destiny, the unjust slight by a director in an audition, the running out of ideas, the sense that time is passing....We have to pay bills and live life like everyone else, but we must also keep ourselves “ready for the moment to deliver”, which could come tomorrow or never.
Well, one way of staying cool, is by trying to see things as they really are, and not through the dramatic prism. We need to recognise that a bad day is just a bad day, a bump in the road is a just a bump in the road, it's not an earthquake. However, the fear of such reasoned living, is that we may lose contact with our dramatic channels – those parts of ourselves ordinary citizens shut down as they settle into their cosy routine, but which are the very source of the actor's work, and therefore must be kept alive. So then, it is a trade off; we become actors because don't want routine and are in love with the imaginary, and if we are to spend the time needed to continually increase the intensities of our imaginations (which is necessary to produce work over a long period of time), then we will be pre-occupied by our work for what may seem, to outsiders, as a disproportionately high percentage of our lives – ie – when we are not actually working, we will be thinking about our work. Seeing life through a dramatic prism then, is difficult to avoid in a life spent immersed in drama. Perhaps the best we can hope for, is to possess the self-awareness and strength to remove the prism when it may become harmful to accomplishing our objectives.
Check out this quick teaser for our new short, Phone Box Gun.
My action in the scene above, was to get my scene partner to agree with me (within the fiction of script, this amounted to Bob getting Vincent to let him buy him a ticket to Mexico). Now, the scene itself is a fiddly one because I want the guy to agree with me, but sometimes I want to be forceful in order to accomplish that, but not too forceful, otherwise he's going to be offended, and then my task will be made that much harder. So, in a gentle scene as is the one the above clip is taken from, the actor needs to be very self-aware, self-controlled, yeah sure, there'll be moments when passions rise, and the actor will lose self-awareness for a moment, but he will quickly need to regain his self-control or risk blowing the deal. That's why the whole notion of “becoming somebody else”, or “losing yourself in the character” is such utter nonsense: a) you cannot lose yourself because you've got a performance to give, which requires discipline and precision, and, b) you do have an actual task within the scene to complete, and you mustn't take your eye off the ball.
Actors are told “not to think”, but to “just do it”. When we are acting well (which is to say, truly) we have rhythm and grace, we are energised, the performance seems to carry us along, as though riding the crest of a wave, but we still must observe ourselves to ensure we remain on the right track. Again, these are not special rules which only apply to acting, they apply to real life aswell – when we function well, we seem to be self-conscious and instinctive at the same time. When we're doing a task we enjoy or is important to us, we may become engrossed and forget ourselves, but it is beside the point to actively not think, so why should actors not think in performance? The counterbalance to not thinking, is “characterization”, whereby the actor plots out everything, every little movement, every little gesture, every emotion, and does it in the way they think “the character would do it”, and regardless of what is actually taking place in the scene, thus murdering spontaneity. In the scene.
When playing, overdoing instinct or self-awareness can be damaging – if we operated purely instinctively, then our work may lack shape and become a meaningless mess, or alternatively, trying to control the results of our performance too much, can lead to a bland stodginess (ergo: most acting) – the pressure is removed from the actor, he becomes complacent. I say, don't worry about thinking, don't worry about not thinking, and don't worry about how instinctive you are or lack thereof, but concentrate only on doing your action as fully as you can, and putting your attention onto your scene partner, adjusting your performance in relation to his responses to you. This will bring you, an thus the scene, alive.
I hope you enjoyed the clip.
I'm often an advocate on this blog, of actors being their own bosses, creating their own productions, the reasons for doing so are too numerous to mention here, but in the modern era I would say it's essential rather than an option. Having recently produced Phone Box Gun, a short film noir, I would say one of the toughest parts of self-producing is ensuring that the quality of your own performance doesn't diminish due to multi-tasking. Typically, on productions where I am the actor only, what I would do going into the take, is relax, and let my mind rest onto the action I was about to perform, then go for it. However, on those productions where I am director aswell as actor, I may go through my usual routine but at the last minute, some problem with the shot may crop up, which I as the director need to address, so I have to turn my thoughts away from my acting action and onto the said problem. Once the problem is sorted, I then have to let my mind find my acting action again, and go into the scene – not easy to do, especially if fixing the problem has flustered you in any way, and some other detail may have entered your thoughts in the meantime. In order to keep making this adjustment, the actor needs to have total confidence in his technique, and the will to forget about everything else, and trust that everyone around him is doing his job, and focus only on doing his action in the scene, and doing so with total commitment. I have self-produced on stage and in cinema, and would have to say that stage is easier. Why? Because it's simpler. Assuming rehearsals have done the job, you just have to step on stage and do it. Whereas in cinema, there's all those nasty bits of technology which don't always do what you want them to do, and, if you're shooting on the streets of London, the general public don't always behave in a way that's best for your film – on Phone Box Gun, one scene was set in a public park, but we only had to get one very simple shot there, unfortunately, a dog decided to join us, and started barking at us to throw the ball he had just dropped at our feet. My relief at the arrival of the dog's owner quickly turned to despair, as the owner thought it was very cute that his little doggy had interrupted our schedule, he was proud, and he seemed genuinely bemused when it dawned on him that we did not share his sentiment. A small issue, for sure, but one which caused a little bit of anxiety, especially when spots of rain began to appear, and suddenly, what had appeared on the shot list to be a very simple task, had infact sent the mind off in all sorts of directions – I never thought I'd find myself in negotiations to get a dog moved. So yes, actors self producing requires; total confidence in what you're doing, iron discipline, and enormous mental strength.
Woof!
Phone Box Gun, my new short film, will be a minimalist heist movie, which I intend to shoot in black and white. It's about a young man, Vincent, who needs cash in order to visit his long lost sister in Mexico, and so, under the influence of his blustering best friend, Bob, decides to stick-up a jewellery store. Visually, and in terms of rhythm, the film owes a little to the film noir of Aki Kaurismaki, especially his London based film, I Hired A Contract Killer. I always try also to give the dialogue a certain rhythm and structure, which owes less to Kaurismaki and more to American auteur, Hal Hartley. When I started writing screenplays in my late teens (for fun), I instinctively wrote dialogue that was highly formalized, deliberate, but was told that this was wrong, that dialogue in films had to be “naturalistic”. It was years later I discovered the films of Hal Hartley, and for anyone unfamiliar with his work, Hartley crafts his dialogue until it is a “beautiful object”, and is infact one of the most distinctive features of his cinema, and a joy for the viewer. And so upon discovering his films, I decided that I would continue to write crafted dialogue. While what I'm doing is not going quite as far as Hartley, what I hope to do is structure the dialogue such that it compels the actor to say his next line, it thrusts him forward – here's an extract from Phone Box Gun to show what I mean:
BOB
So, you're short of money.
VINCENT
Nah man, it's not that bad.
BOB
You're short of money.
VINCENT
It's not that bad.
BOB
How much do you need?
VINCENT
I'm saying, it's not that bad.
BOB
How much do you need?
VINCENT
I've said, it's not that bad.
BOB
Tell me.
While this is not a particularly high stakes, heightened dramatic scene, it's clear that both characters want something different – if played properly, ie; each actor working off his scene partner (as oppose to merely trotting out the lines as he rehearsed them, ignoring what his partner is doing in the scene), then the result will be a snappy intensity, bringing the actors alive. In addition, the actor needs to bring a concretely doable action into the scene, in order to live truthfully under the imaginary circumstances of the scene. And crucially, what the actor is doing in the scene, is not the same as what the character is doing. I'll explain.
In a quick analysis of the scene above, we might conclude that what Bob is literally doing is; “trying to find out how much money Vincent needs” (you may find a different analysis, there is no perfect analysis). However, the actor playing Bob will never be able to convince himself that he actually is Bob and that the other actor actually is Vincent, and that the money actually exists, and that the scene is anything other than a fiction. So, the actor needs to get away from the fiction, and give himself something in the scene which he can actually accomplish, something he can actually do. If I was playing Bob in the scene above, I might give myself the action; “to get a straight answer” - this concretely doable, I can begin doing it immediately, and it is in line with the intentions of the script, and it's interesting to me. Armed with that action, I then take the attention off myself in the scene, and put it onto the other actor, responding to him in relation to my action. This enables the actor to perform fully and truthfully. But note that the action I have given myself has got nothing to do with the money, or Vincent.
Overall, the acting in Phone Box Gun will be fairly minimal, not bravura, but pared back, simple, perhaps alluding to classical noir. The world of Phone Box Gun is shabby and tired, the characters are low-grade, and they have a purposelessness, it is as though they are treading water and marking time, they act merely to avoid stillness. Perhaps then, this minimal quality, marks a deadness within the characters, they are not real people, they exist as images of figures occupying a certain space during a certain moment - as in a memory or a dream.
Check out this clip, where Mickey, a businessman, verbally dismantles a competitor (contains rude words).
In 2008, I wrote my first, and, as yet, my last one man play, called The Call. It was about a businessman, called Mickey, who, upon learning he has won a business award, decides to ring up a competitor, Tony, to boast, which in turn leads to a battle of dominance between them, over girls, cars and money. The way the play was structured however, the audience only hears Mickey's side of the conversation. The Call is about many things – it is about our need for contact while simultaneously remaining independent, or at least, feeling that we are independent: Mickey's only relationships are with Tony via the telephone, and with a blow up doll – the phone and the doll are both synthetic and controllable, it is within Mickey's control to terminate contact with Tony or the doll at any moment. But it's also about how the quest for social dominance leads to psychotic behaviour, especially when submission from others is not forthcoming.
At the time of the production, I was experimenting with the techniques of Michael Chekhov, an actor who had been frustrated by Stanislavki's plodding contraints at the Moscow Art Theatre. In response, Chekhov devised his own methodology, which stressed that the actor should use his imagination and the “fiery images” he saw there, and incorporate them into his performance. Creative Individuality was also an important component of his technique, as was the use of Iconic Gestures. Chekhov saw the actor as an individual creative artist, not as a director's tool, and his techniques lead to bold, thrilling performances, mystical and bravura. I had written the play with this kind of acting in mind, and the final text was very highly strung, any actor playing this part would need to reach way out of his comfort zone to fill this role, there can be no “just saying the lines”, and that's not to mention of course, the severe technical challenge of pretending to speak to someone on the phone, and doing so for the best part of an hour.
No doubt The Call has been an important step in my education, and is arguably one of the toughest roles I've played. At the time of rehearsals, I became neurotic about remembering my lines (not something I usually have a problem with), waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning, jumping out of bed, grabbing the script, and furiously going over them. I rehearsed doing the play in it's entirety scores of times – I was determined to walk on stage and give total commitment – and perhaps this determination went a little too far at times, leading to obsession. However, I often advocate on this blog, for actors to perceive themselves as individual creative artists, and not just employees, to forge their own destiny and not wait for someone to give them a break, and yeah sure this is hugely challenging, frightening even, and yes it can create pressure and the odd behaviour I have mentioned above, but isn't that the point? Isn't the actor's life about continually putting himself under pressure, then seeing how he deals with that pressure, and in the process, learning about himself, then carrying those lessons forward? This was certainly the case with The Call. It also happens to be a rewarding and enriching way to go about things.
I hope you enjoyed the clip.
Malkovich is one of those American actors who is regarded as a real actor, which is to say, he actually can act, he's an artist, he's in it because he wants to be a great actor, or make a great contribution, he's certainly an actor who gives something a little bit extra, he's always provocative, always intense. He's also one of those actors for whom we feel that the calibre of material offered to him is rarely commensurate to his talent – Malkovich has never had a great run of performances in the way his compatriots from the generation preceding his did, namely Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro. But then perhaps Malkovich has never quite been the Hollywood star in the same way either. Infact, off the top of my head, it's difficult to really name any of his Hollywood films. However, his output in Europe seems to be more distinctive, where he has worked with Raoul Ruiz, Manoel de Olveira, Michelangelo Antonioni and Liliana Cavani. Malkovich though, is an actor of such strength, that he can take fairly mediocre material, and render it compelling. And Colour Me Kubrick is an example of this.
The film itself is a light, fluffy affair, loose in parts, piquant in others, and had the actor at the centre of the film been of anything less than Malkovich's standard, then Colour Me Kubrick would have been a very ordinary film indeed. But there Malkovich is, delivering perhaps one of the great underrated screen performances of recent years (this is certainly an example of an actor's work receiving less than due attention because it was done in an unfeted film – an actor cannot enjoy success unless the production he is working on, is successful as a whole – there's moral in there somewhere). Colour Me Kubrick is based on the true story of Alan Conway, who went around passing himself off as filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. It wasn't that Conway looked anything like Kubrick, he didn't, but he was able to get away with it because Kubrick's reclusiveness meant that few people were certain of what he looked like. And Malkovich goes to town as Conway, playing him as a cheap, camp, bedsitland, alcoholic – imagine one of those middle aged men wearing a brown mac and tatty old baseball cap with a cheap bottle of vodka in his pocket, and you've got him . Scene by scene, he wins the confidence of wannabe showbiz types by appealing to their vanity; he promises a young rock group work on his new film, and so they buy him drinks (“rich people don't carry cash”), and on another occasion, he beds a young costumer designer after promising to hook him up with his Hollywood connections, and on another, he agrees to invest in a swanky restaurant in order to save it from bankruptcy, offering to get his Hollywood legal team to “look over the figures”. Perhaps Conway's most audacious con, was of a light entertainer, who, in real life had been Joe Longthorne but was coded as Lee Pratt in the film. After attending a party at Pratt's house, Conway tells him he will help him crack Vegas, and the con starts in a scene where Malkovich delivers a great piece of bravura acting – waving his arms about, and speaking in a sort of unmodulated bellow: he informs Pratt that he will speak to “Moe Green in Vegas”, and, “Sheckie in New York”, and get the ball rolling. It is a sensational acting choice, hilarious, and disquietingly true, the film is worth watching if only for this scene. The net result however, is that he takes up residence in a luxury hotel, all at Pratt's expense of course.
The film is choc full of these wonderful little moments created by Malkovich. Playing a character who is himself acting, offers rich performance possibilities. It's true that Malkovich, now in his late 50s, is a master craftsman. He is innately compelling, with his intensity, intelligence, dry humour and unusual persona. His work is always precise, always simple, never adding unnecessary detail, but always striving to express the scene, and he makes it seem effortless in Colour Me Kubrick, as all great actors do. Essentially however, at the heart of this performance, is the fact that Malkovich is making acting choices he enjoys, choices which interest him, which touch off his imagination, and which ultimately energise him and fuel him through the scenes. The alternative to making enjoyable choices, is making choices we do not enjoy, and this typically happens when we act to please the director – whether that's to give the director what we think he wants in order to make him like us, or whether it's to shore up an insecure director by doing it his way (insecure directors typically talk too much, and want to control how the actor does the scene) – the irony is, most actors make choices in order to please others, which is why so much contemporary acting is joyless and stingy. Malkovich doesn't fall into that trap – and as a result, we the audience, are delighted by a performance which is properly energised, vivid, various, and, well, fun.
Make choices you enjoy.
To quote the great David Mamet; “You not only have a right to choose actions which are fun, you have a responsibility – that's your job as an actor”.
I was completely stunned this week when I saw an astonishing masterpiece by Japanese auteur, Hirokazu Koreeda, called Maborosi. The film centres on Yumiko and Tamio,a couple who seem to live in a quiet marital happiness, until tragedy strikes when Tamio inexplicably takes his own life. For sure, Maborosi is not the first film to deal with this subject, however, no other film deals with it in the way Maborosi does. Shot with a quiet formalism, using largely static, frontal master shots, Maborosi does not attempt to explain away Tamio’s death, there is no expository trail for Yumiko to follow in order to come to terms with her loss. Instead, the film barely makes any attempt to find the reasons for suicide at all, instead, it focusses on Yumiko’s efforts to get on with her life. And herein lies the miracle of Maborosi; that although it does not deal with Tamio’s death explicitly (until near the end, when in extreme long shot Yumiko confesses she doesn’t understand why Tamio did it), infact, most of the film contains scenes of Yumiko getting on with, and enjoying, her life, we always sense that the burden of Tamio’s death is with her. Much of this is done through the reminiscence of objects which Yumiko and Tamio shared, such as a bicycle or a string of beads, and through the lighting. However, at the centre of it all, is a heartbreaking performance by Makiko Esumi as Yumiko.
When I say heartbreaking, I don’t mean that Esumi was trying to be heartbraking – that is what we see in so much English language acting these days: actors lining up to pour out their hearts, crocodile tears streaming down their faces in order to get noticed, endlessly balling their eyes out; “oh look how sensitive I am, look how I feel”, the truth is, this actor feels nothing other than the pangs of their own vanity – no, Esumi is heartbreaking because of her absence of tears, because of her restraint, because of her grace in the face of adversity. These days, in British culture at least, we have enthroned our feelings, as though whatever we feel at any moment is the only thing that matters, and that just letting it all hang loose is oh so brave – but it’s not brave, it’s cowardly, and not only is it cowardly, it’s tedious, meaningless, selfish, and createsliars as we compete to be the “most emotional”. Esumi, through her minimalism, reminds us that the emotion is supposed to take place in the audience and not in the actor. There is one moment, during a visit to Tamio’s old work place, where she turns and looks, it is a moment of such terrible sorrow, and yet Esumi’s face is blank, she barely moves, and there is no music to cue us in emotionally. Essentially, we the audience, project our own pain onto Esumi, and, in the process, we are cleansed (if only temporarily). Esumi’s minimalism matches that of filmmaker Koreeda’s for sure, Maborosi is one of those rare examples of when an actor’s aesthetic has integrated perfectly with the director’s, and an astonishing whole is created as a result. I can only think Koreeda handpicked Esumi for this particular film. Esumi is also a model, and although it’s difficult to say how much her model experience has impacted her acting, we may speculate that because of her modelling she is more used to being passive, as model’s are objectified, which makes her a natural for a role like Yumiko, whereas acting is traditionally about subjectivity and taking action. I should think though, her reserved expression is something which lies in her nature to a certain extent, and not something she grafted onto the performance.
Maborosi will be a difficult film for many, because of it's gentle rythmn and lack of exposition. However, it is a film of wonderful poetry, of grace and beauty, and one which enriches the viewer and makes him stronger. Esumi at the centre, is affirmation of human dignity, and of being classy, she is also another fine example of actor as artist. If only more directors thought along these lines instead of casting because you might "seem like a milkman". Koreeda is to be commended for the delicacy and precision of his aethetic, and for providing such a wonderful platform for the talent of Makiko Esumi.
“I cant stand intimate scenes in cinema....because every human being has an aura which is hard to penetrate. Professional actors imagine that it's part of their job to allow the director or other actors to penetrate their aura and enter into a totally unnatural contact with somebody they don't know.
Which is also why I consider it completely shameless to have very tight close-ups of people because the so-called “actor” cannot hide who he is, he's too close to us and he becomes distanced from the character. He becomes an actual person, an individual with all his considerations. And I have no desire to have an actual person on-screen. I want it to be a character, always a character.” - Otar Iosseliani.
I don't agree with much of what Iosseliani says here, especially about close-ups, because, for me, close-ups are not necessarily intimate. However, what did pique me, were his comments about “aura” and character. It's worth pointing out to those unfamiliar with Iosseliani's work, that typically he uses “non-actors” in his films, whose general lack of technique creates an awkwardness, and this awkwardness demarcates the performance, thus the character is always present.* Further, the “non-actor” is usually more inhibited than the experienced actor, and is therefore less apt to “show”.
But what does Iosseliani mean when he speaks of “aura”? Well, aura, in my view, means diginity – people with an aura, act with the dignity, it's their dignity which gives them an aura. And dignity is about self-control, self-respect, acting with conviction, and behaving honourably (Chishu Ryu immediately springs to mind). The character is always present if the actor remains true to the aesthetic integrity of the work at hand, which is to say; committing fully to the actions called forth by the scene, and excluding everything else. Whenever an actor supplies an emotion which has not been organically produced by his attempts to do the action of the scene, such as when those people with a knack for making themselves cry decide to turn on the waterworks for no other reason than that they can, the aesthetic integrity of the piece is violated, the illusion is shattered, suddenly the audience become aware of the actor exposing himself, and the dignity of not only the actor, but of the audience and the whole dramatic interchange, is lost (typically, in a desparate scramble for self-respect, this exposure manifests itself as admiration for the actor's technique by the audience, and for the actor's part, he speaks about the moment as “liberating”, and, “a breakthrough”).
The intent to remain true to the aesthetic integrity of the scene, is not the same as the intent to expose oneself. All this stuff about actors “going further” or “making themselves vulnerable”, points to a gross misunderstanding of what acting actually is, and is part of the trend in our wider culture to just let it all hang loose. In the end however, this transparency leads to trivial acting: because in letting us see everything, the actor expresses nothing. Great acting requires discipline and restraint, precision and control, artistic choices are made, only that which is essential is offered. A truthful performance, that is, one where the actor is true to the work and to himself, is always dignified, always mysterious, and, to use Iosseliani's language, never penetrates the aura of the actor. And, for the actor, the character does not exist other than as a reference for analysis, but by only sticking to the actions of the scene and cutting away everything else, the actor's performance becomes hi-definition, deliberate, and as a result it would seem, as Iosseliani would have it, as though the character is always present – the actor is ignoring those parts of himself which are not required for the scene, certainly his quotidian troubles have been left behind. This is also how the actor may reveal the truth of his own personality, while at the same time, maintaining the essential mystery of himself.
Donald Wolfitt made a name for himself at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1936 as Hamlet, and he tried to persuade the management to bankroll him on a tour of the provinces. They declined the invitation, so he withdrew his savings and started his own touring company in 1937.
I, like pretty much everyone else, have been indoctrinated to believe that an actor is someone who spends his time asking the powers that be for permission to do work, and occasionally that permission is granted. If a poet wants to work, he merely grabs his pen and starts writing, a filmmaker picks-up his camera, and a painter his brush. This seems patently obvious, none of these people feel that they need to seek permission in order to work, it would be absurd for them to do so. But this is not true for the actor, who is supposed to pass through some process before he is allowed to perform*. And, as always when a new production of my own starts to come into focus, one in which I will not only act, but write the script, direct and produce**, I must once again find a rationale for doing so, or, put another way; make the way clear for artistic freedom by sweeping away the dulling crust which forms around the employee mindset. One of the problems is that there is a tendency to over complicate things – essentially, all an actor does is communicate something to a group of people – but the complications arise when we think of it as a “career”, because then the notion of communicating something to a group of people becomes the holy grail rather than the norm – bizarrely, validation must be sought from outside agencies: attending auditions and meetings, but before we attend auditions and meetings, we have to set up those auditions and meetings, and how are we going to do that, and so on and so forth...yes, it can get complicated, and it's easy to see how the true work of the actor gets lost in the tunnel-vision-pursuit of winning the favour of potential benefactors (as we perceive them) - infact, many who try their hand at acting, quit, as they become overwhelmed, demoralised and exhausted by the constant demands of having to scythe their way through the layers of resistance between them and the audience.
As I try to design a philosophy which will carry me through my next project then , I wonder if the modern notion of the jobbing industrial actor need be rethought, and my mind turns to the pre-industrial actor. In the beginning, there was only the actors (who had formerly been priests but were cast out of the church for being too entertaining), moving from village to village, delivering corner-street oration for their daily bread; if they were good, then they ate, if they were bad then they starved to death (perhaps the choice for the modern day actor is not quite as stark, but perhaps that is one reason why standards are falling despite ever more “training”). But the point is, the actors were there long before the playwrights, long before the directors and the producers, and the theatres and the marketing people, and (the most powerful class in our society) the bureaucrats. Long, long before any these people came along, there was only the actor, who entered the village as a stranger, alone and broke, possessed with only his wits and his intent to create a powerful illusion – he certainly didn't ask permission.
So now it's the 21st century, and actors have been colonized by the paper-pushers – the implication is that the courage and generosity of the actor is worthless, that only obedience has any value. The downside risk of starvation is no longer the motor for the drive to greatness. Nowadays, the street corner is the internet, and digital technology offers the possibilty for the actor to reclaim the work which is rightfully his. It's time to cut out the middle men.
*Perhaps that is part of the actor, his psyche, that needs this process, but perhaps we shall reserve an analysis of that for another time.
**The separation of these job titles is, for me, in practical terms, utterly meaningless. I only separate them here to emphasize my point.
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