(Captain, "Androcles and the Lion")
 

Free Ranging Theatre

Wow, they must be crazy to give me carte blanche to write about any old thing that pops in my head about theatre. Actors, in general, tend to be very random people, and I'm no exception. Let me put it this way, if you are at a party, talking to an actor, the biggest mistake you could make (if you had hopes of mingling anymore) would be to ask the actor an open ended question about theatre. If you were to ask, for instance, "So, why did you get involved in drama?" what would almost certainly follow is a mile long ambling theory of what theatre is to that actor at that precise point in his or her career. To the actor it is a question more deeply psychological than, "Zo, tell me about your muzza." We don't mean to be annoying, it's just that it is rare that we get to speak our own words. So to conclude this bloody awful introduction, I would like to pledge not to go into a long-winded diatribe on the answers to everything theatrical. Oh, I will be random, no doubt, but I will try to be concisely random.

In this age of hyper-techno e-tainment the question may arise as to why we need live theatre. It really does go against the main values of this era: efficiency, dissemination of info to huge demographic groups, and you actually have to go somewhere to see it. Well, my cyber-walleyed friends, the answer is because it is an affront to these values. No matter what you accomplish when you temporarily shuffle of this mortal coil to become an anonymous IP address, you are still a human being interacting with other human beings, and sometimes it is easy to forget that. Theatre may be older than Christ, but it still says more about the human condition than anything I have seen on the misinformation superhighway.

I love the adrenaline rush of opening night, and the sad pride of closing night. I love to hear a laugh, a gasp, or a tear-drenched sniffle from the crowd. I love it when I'm so far into my role that I'm no longer making the calls. I love a well-delivered one-liner. I love the wisecracks and parodies of the greenroom. I love words. That’s why I do this. I'm an addict, a word abuser, and I don't think I'll ever kick this vice.

I hate therapy theatre! One of the things that makes for the worst kind of drama is when the cast, director, or especially the playwright treat the play solely on a therapeutic level. People don't like to be emotionally vomited on unless it is part of the plot.

I hate the theatre of sociology! I have seen way to many "issue" plays that are completely devoid of characters, and no real drama. These plays use case studies instead of characters, cliché taglines instead of dialog, and the issue preempts the plot. This is not to say plays should not have issues, it's just that issues should not have plays.

A director once told me, "If you wanna make an actor complain give him a job." A very true joke. It's like marriage really: you bitch about the little things, but when all is said and done you're still in love.