British Film, Stage, and Television Performance: Training, Praxis, and Culture
1997; Issue: 44 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2562-2528
Autores Tópico(s)Theatre and Performance Studies
ResumoTHE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BRITISH AND American acting was a recurrent issue in my 1995 book, Figures of Light: Actors and Directors Illuminate Art of Film Acting(Plenum/Da Capo). Some of comments made by American actors were: we're great at is this kind of organic, shoot-from-the-hip, react-off-the-other-person, casual arena of acting. What we're not so good at is control--voice work, interpretation, clarity, being able to use text...It's what English are so good at, and why we love their theater.-Lindsay Crouse It's a very complicated relationship between British actor and American actor. There's a kind of mutual envy and a mutual inferiority complex. American actors tend to think Brits are great stage actors, and Brits tend to think Americans are ones who act truly from guts.-John Lithgow The implications of these statements are that British actors are technically proficient, but somehow--compared to Americans--lack raw emotional power. Through repetition, this generalized and rather cliched view of British and American performance has taken on status of truth. Unfortunately, such statements do not begin to account for vigor, authority, complexity, and emotional depth of performances by British actors. Acting is largely an art of self-portraiture, and actors are universally required to draw on their personal resources--emotional, mental, physical and spiritual--to develop and enact an interpretation. The route taken to formulate and express that interpretation will vary from performer to performer. In British actor training, where technical excellence and control is stressed, notions concerning self-revelation and access to emotional truths will undoubtedly depart from more visceral, direct American approach. British performance is undoubtedly more text-based, whereas American acting is normally more dependent on behavior. After visiting major British drama schools (RADA, LAMDA, Central School, East 15, etc.), I began to interview working actors for a follow-up book on British performance. I spoke with alumni from each of these main schools, to explore their impressions and ideas about their training, and how their initial training has effected them as performers. I expect these interviews to shed some light on relationship of classical British training to actor's creative process. The discussions with actors revolve around a variety of issues. We speak in detail about their training, their preparation for a role, how much research they do, how they deal with different elements of characterization (physical, emotional, psychological), what their relationships are like with fellow actors (e.g. how closely they discuss process they are involved in, how much they rely on other actor for inspiration, etc.), relationship they develop with different directors, varying approaches to rehearsal, and concept of ensemble playing. We also discuss actor's ideas about the Method and differences between American and British acting. The interviews have also involved ruminations on British character, and how this might influence nature of British performance style. There is also curious fact that British actors, no matter how highly valorized, prefer to be thought of as ordinary blokes. It is a factor that no doubt emerges from British class system. The sense that acting is just a job makes actors' role in Britain quite distinct from his/her counterpart in U.S., where performers acquire a rather special status in society. The following is an extract of an interview with Miranda Richardson took place at Edinburgh Festival in Summer of 1996, where she was performing lead (and only) role in first English language production of Robert Wilson's adaptation of Virginia Woolf's book, Orlando. Richardson trained at Bristol Old Vic Theater School, and has worked extensively in film, theater, and television. …
Referência(s)