Sallyacious

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March 05, 2007

Let's Turn Out All the Lights and Play "Guess Who's in My Mouth"

That, in a nutshell, explains the difference between theatre people and pretty much everybody else.

Not because theatre people regularly play games like the one mentioned in the subject heading, but because if anybody else heard that in the workplace, they would most likely be appalled. Theatre people? Laugh like hell. Because it's funny.

Yes, it's offensive. Yes, it borders on sexual harrassment. However. We have much more malleable boundaries when it comes to that sort of thing. We have to. Occupational requirement. An actor has to be able to create instant intimacy with another actor and "fall in love" on very short notice. Often with someone they don't know. Or with someone who isn't the person they're married to in real life. So we have to be pretty comfortable with letting other people into our space anyway. For art's sake.

Plus, we have to be comfortable with our bodies (dancers may have to be even moreso). Actors, even though we are forced to deal with all the age and thinness bullshit, still have to be able to move the way we need to, to be sexy when required, to be brutish when required, to be physically whatever is required when it's required, even if we're not that way in the rest of our lives. We also have to be willing to be stared at, to "accept the look," as one of my former acting teachers would say. And that also leads to a much greater comfort with foul language and suggestive conversation.

This makes it hard for the rest of the world to understand us. Because we operate in ways so contrary to most of society.

I recently read a story about "how not to give an Oscar acceptance speech" that offended me so much I couldn't finish it. It was quite clear that the writer didn't know the first thing about actors. This sentence in particular gave it away, "If anything, you'd think the actors would be better able to control their emotions than most people."

Um. No. Actors are probably some of the worst people in the world when it comes to controlling their emotions. You know why? Because control kills acting. You have to be relaxed and available to allow what is going to happen to happen. The minute you try to either force or tamp down on an emotion, you kill it. The craft comes in knowing what you're doing and why, knowing what you're saying and why, knowing the truth of it, and then getting yourself out of the way so it can happen.

And the part that makes us so hard to live with? The minute an actor starts trying to regulate and control emotions in their daily life, they start locking up in their work. That's why we're louder than other people, why our emotional highs and lows tend to be so much more than other people's, and why, frankly, so many actors are addicted to various substances. Because sometimes, you just need to numb the pain.

I am not, by the way, trying to suggest that other people don't have feelings. Or that those feelings aren't valid. As my mother frequently told me during my childhood, "Feelings are neither right nor wrong; they just are." I just want to make it clear that actors? Are not like most other people. We can't afford to be.

I like to tell people that I'm a professional human being. Because that's my job. To be a human being in the most heartfelt and true way there is. I just have to do it using someone else's words, in artificial light, in a costume that may or may not be comfortable to wear, in front of hundreds of people. And I have to do it in a similar way, in a similar order, several nights in a row.

Posted by sally at March 5, 2007 04:15 PM

Comments

Posted by: fire4hairlady at March 5, 2007 07:21 PM

Posted by: Sallyacious at March 5, 2007 07:51 PM

Posted by: fire4hairlady at March 5, 2007 08:11 PM

Posted by: Desiree at March 7, 2007 10:47 AM

Posted by: Sallyacious at March 8, 2007 08:26 PM

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