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Post by Phantom of London on Jun 27, 2016 19:04:48 GMT
We read it in the paper that she was 'sublime', 'stellar' or simply 'superb' or on the other end of the spectrum that person was a 'car crash with 5 dead bodies'. So what makes a great actor?
Listening to Elaine Paige do her Tony round up she spoke to 4 times Tony winner Frank Langella who offered this advice;
1 - Learn Your Lines
2- No What They Mean
3- Mean Them when You Say Them
Surely it can never be that simple?
I remember seeing David Suchet opposite Zoe Wannamaker in All My Sons, it was one of my early plays, in mid dialogue between the 2, David suddenly walks off and with his 2 fingers goes up and taps this wooden bench, then walks back then carries on talking, always remember this, as got me thinking that was a great piece of acting, the deed was very simple in its execution - but what made him do? It was so random, how do you talk and think of your lines, then think to do that? There was no rationale behind it, that's what made so utterly brilliant.
Does great acting mean mastering accent brilliantly? Or portraying a person to a tee, like Helen Mirren did with the Queen in the audience? Or push the boundaries with singing, acting and dancing like the Billy Elliots?
Then again the 3 times Oscar winner Daniel Day Lewis, one of our greatest actors, but cannot do the stage, he was meant to be awful when he did Hamlet at the National, in the end he quit mid performance stating he has seen the ghost of his dead dad, he didn't even reach act 3. I heard it said he didn't understand the stage and how to use it, whatever that means?
One thing is for sure, you can't put your finger on it, you cannot always explain it, but you know when you have seen a great performance.
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Post by jaqs on Jun 27, 2016 19:34:47 GMT
Mark Rylance had me believing the giants were coming and I've never quite got over Derek Jacobi as Lear in the storm scene.
I don't know quite how it happens but some performances inhabit the whole world and some while perfectly competent stay on the stage.
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Post by peggs on Jun 27, 2016 21:30:04 GMT
Simplicity, timing and extreme generosity to those you share the stage with. All imbue your performance with deep humanity, which has to be the core of it all. Might be going slightly off topic but i've heard some actors described as being selfish on stage, what might that mean exactly, sort of hogging the attention from the rest of the cast, making it revolve around you? |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2016 21:38:41 GMT
Yes, and also distorting the play.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 28, 2016 8:21:42 GMT
Easy. Someone hot willing to do nudity.
I take what I can nowadays at my time of life.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 29, 2016 8:05:35 GMT
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Post by lynette on Jun 29, 2016 17:53:25 GMT
Suchet was def special in All My Sons. I think for those in the theatre a great actor must be one who gets on with the job and makes everyone else look good regardless of the production! For the audience it must be the ability to make us feel that this performance we are seeing is the one that counts and that ability to draw us in so that we almost hold our collective breaths. So easier to define for a great tragedian but even in a farce it is that quality on top of perfect technique that makes the audience feel special. Much easier to name names than define.
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Post by peggs on Jun 29, 2016 19:52:04 GMT
Does an actor have to be consistently great to be considered great? I don't mean they never have a bad day at the office like everyone else but illustrate this greatness in multiple roles? Lynette's right, very hard to define but I agree with 'ability to draw us in so that we almost hold our collective breaths' though that does lead me onto to wonder does that argue that the majority of people watching a performing would have to agree on the greatness going on? If you're a great actor would more people agree than disagree on that experience even if they couldn't agree on or name exactly what made it great?
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Post by kathryn on Jun 29, 2016 20:31:01 GMT
One of my favourite authors has a line in one of her books that I think applies:
'All the geniuses I ever met were so just part of the time. To qualify, you only have to be great once, you know. Once when it matters'.
To be 'great', you only need to be great in one role that everyone sees and remembers. You can be terrible any number of times before and after that - people will only remember (in fact, most people will only see) the role you were great in.
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Post by Phantom of London on Jul 13, 2016 19:24:23 GMT
This thread hasn't even got off the first page.
Which I am both surprised and unsurprised at. Maybe as I said on my original post, it is a rhetorical question, where there is no right or wrong answer, so therefore no defining answer. Perhaps then great acting is something that cannot be explained, it is just understood instead. You know when you leave that theatre and you have just seen one great performance, but why is that? Something you cannot explain, but you have to go and book tickets for this show, that this person absolutely knocks it out of the park, and is a must see.
Therefore perhaps that's what makes theatre so great and unique, as it is totally random and not definitive.
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Post by kathryn on Jul 13, 2016 20:34:33 GMT
Yup. It's one of those things you just know when you see it - and totally subjective! My colleague thought Vanessa Redgrave was wonderful in Richard III, I thought she was under powered. We went on different days, so we could actually both be right, or it could be that she is wonderful from the front row of the stalls but underpowered when you're in row C of the circle.
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Post by ncbears on Jul 15, 2016 13:17:34 GMT
I think a great actor is a person who makes you - somehow- forget that they are an actor - but gets you to see them as a character. Even if it is someone you know or have seen before.Angela Lansbury, for example. I saw her in Blithe Spirit and within a short bit forgot she was Angela Lansbury and saw only Madame Arcati.
I have not seen Mark Rylance on stage - but reading comments about his performances, people don't see "Mark Rylance".
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Post by Phantom of London on Jul 15, 2016 22:30:23 GMT
I agree with you and it is a great contribution, however aren't we with the whole cast meant to invest our imagination in the characters? They transport us from a place in the West End or wherever your theatre is to a new place, after 2.5 hours you step back into reality?
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Post by kathryn on Jul 16, 2016 12:21:03 GMT
And you get that slightly disconcerted feeling when you step out into a cold winter's night after being transported away to a warm summer's day for a couple of hours.....
(It's never quite as disconcerting the other way around, for me.)
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Post by theglenbucklaird on Jul 16, 2016 15:46:19 GMT
I reckon it is ability, yeah that's it
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Post by Phantom of London on Jul 16, 2016 23:25:34 GMT
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Post by Jan on Jul 17, 2016 16:13:22 GMT
No. I mean he may have said it but it is not true. He was a very technical actor, everything was rehearsed and calculated. For Othello they had 9 weeks rehearsal and he took daily voice lessons to turn his voice into a bass (including sessions shouting at cows in the countryside) and also daily weightlifting to build up his body. Christopher Plummer said "He moved me as Othello BECAUSE of his technique. He mesmerised us with his effects, his tricks, and though we could see the whole process it didn't matter a damn because it was still shamefully exciting". |
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Post by Jan on Jul 17, 2016 16:14:02 GMT
No. I mean he may have said it but it is not true. He was a very technical actor, everything was rehearsed and calculated. For Othello they had 9 weeks rehearsal and he took daily voice lessons to turn his voice into a bass (including sessions shouting at cows in the countryside) and also daily weightlifting to build up his body. Christopher Plummer said "He moved me as Othello BECAUSE of his technique. He mesmerised us with his effects, his tricks, and though we could see the whole process it didn't matter a damn because it was still shamefully exciting". |
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Post by peggs on Jul 17, 2016 19:15:22 GMT
Oh is that what it means when people refer to an actor as being very technical, I have oft wondered.
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Post by kathryn on Jul 17, 2016 21:26:36 GMT
When I hear that story repeated it is usually by actors talking about the alchemy of live performance, and the impact a live audience can have on your performance - how no 2 performances are ever quite the same because no 2 audiences are ever quite the same.
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Post by Jan on Jul 18, 2016 5:58:00 GMT
When I hear that story repeated it is usually by actors talking about the alchemy of live performance, and the impact a live audience can have on your performance - how no 2 performances are ever quite the same because no 2 audiences are ever quite the same. I think for what I would loosely call technical actors like Olivier, McKellen and Sher their performances ARE more or less identical every night because it is all calculated and rehearsed. At the other end of the spectrum would be actors like Ralph Richardson maybe, or Vanessa Redgrave, the "real tears" lot who are far more spontaneous. Olivier cried on stage in one part (I forget which) but it was calculated and he did it every night. |
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Post by kathryn on Jul 18, 2016 13:03:56 GMT
That's an interesting argument. I haven't seen any of those actors play the same role more than once, so I can't dispute your assertion. However I am fairly sure the actors themselves would dispute it - I'm sure Ian McKellan has talked about how his performance differs in front of different audiences. Edit: A quick google brought up this from McKellen: www.mckellen.com/writings/8204shakesq.htm |
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Post by Jan on Jul 18, 2016 17:20:10 GMT
That's an interesting argument. I haven't seen any of those actors play the same role more than once, so I can't dispute your assertion. However I am fairly sure the actors themselves would dispute it - I'm sure Ian McKellan has talked about how his performance differs in front of different audiences. Edit: A quick google brought up this from McKellen: www.mckellen.com/writings/8204shakesq.htmI've seen McKellen play the same part twice several times. It was near identical. I mean compared with actors like Peter O'Toole and Michael Gambon who sometimes deliberately were different every night. When I first saw McKellen as King Lear I was very close and you could see he had a slight tremor in his fingertips. The second time I saw him he didn't. It seems he had read Germain Greer's appalling review of him which in passing noted that there was no point doing that as people in the circle couldn't see so he cut it out, it was all calculated, plenty of other actors would have left it in to stay "in character", the method acting people. In Coriolanus McKellen hated having audience members on stage with him, of course then it really was different every night. Sher makes a related point. He says some actors go to the part and some bring the part to themselves. He means in the former case (like him and Olivier) they actively try to change themselves to fit the part - Olivier was notorious for loving different accents and things that would change his appearance like false teeth. The latter type of actor tries to find elements of the character within themselves - Simon Russell-Beale is one I'd say. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2016 17:40:10 GMT
I agree with your assessment of Simon Russell Beale. I'd say Michelle Terry, Mariah Gale, and Rory Kinnear do this too, whereas, say, Bertie Carvel and Jonathan Slinger are much more the other sort.
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Post by peggs on Jul 18, 2016 20:11:27 GMT
Interesting, am going to have to think my way round that one but glad for your input. The actor I heard referred to as being very technical was David Tennant, so if on this line of argument that might argue that his performances are very planned if that's a term I can use, 'I do this, then this etc' that would make some sense of when I saw Edward Bennett covering his Hamlet, as whilst of course it was not surprising that his performance was based very much on Tennants (and i saw it the first night he covered so he'd have had little time to develop anything else and not sure as an understudy if you'd be encouraged to do that' it felt very much like someone doing Tennant in that the gestures, ways of speaking were all for Tennant like.
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