Performing Arts and the Role of the Actor
The role of the actor on the stage of performing arts varies from actor to actor, and everybody has their own methods. Everybody comes in with a different agenda. Everyone has their own background in performing arts education or online performing arts education. Everything is different, and it’s up to the director to pretty much funnel it all in.
Having been raised by a theater director, I was taught and I hold it as what my own beliefs are is that when I go to do a play, I’m there to realize the director’s vision of that play. I’m an interpreter, and as an actor I will interpret the role. And I will come in with what I think the character should do, and how the character should behave, how the character should walk, everything.
Then the director will have his or her very strong ideas about the character, and then the rehearsal process — that four weeks of going into a room with actors, and your director, and the designers — is just, for me, why I do it. It’s an actor’s playground. You get to fail in that space because you don’t have an audience. You get to stretch your instrument. You get to try many different things and explore the possibilities.
Then you’ve got this director with his ideas or her ideas coming at you, and then you have another actor coming at you with who they are. So, maybe a preconceived idea of how I was going to react to a character is different depending on who’s playing the character, and all of you in this room give birth to something nobody could have thought of on their own. And that’s what’s thrilling. That’s creativity. And I could literally not perform at all and just do the rehearsal and be a very happy actor.
