Tag: Actor Wisdom

John Malkovich, Interview with

You first became known for your Steppenwolf Theater Company work: emotionally confrontational, pushing audiences or forcing them to react. I’m curious how you think contemporary audiences are different from audiences back then.
Hey, each generation is entitled to do their thing. There are things my kids like that I don’t quite grasp, but that is the natural flow of life. We say these young people are lost in this way or that. I could also say: “What were we? Geniuses?” I don’t think so. Things seem crazy sometimes, and unrecognizable, but I’m 70 years old. It’s perfectly natural that they seem unrecognizable because part of the thing of aging is, as Linda Loman said in “Death of a Salesman,” “Life is a casting off.” This is the natural ebb and flow. People change, art changes, their relationship to art changes, the artists change.

You left me hanging on something: Do you remember what it was about “Being John Malkovich” that made Spike Jonze say you were too close to it?
I do. That was after I’d seen the cut of the film that was going to be shown to the people from Cannes. Although his best note in that vein was when he told me some choice I had made, he told me that wasn’t the way John Malkovich would do it. Which I thought was fantastic.

John Malkovich on (Really) Being John Malkovich
By David Marchese

Anna Deavere Smith – NPR Interview

Anna Deavere Smith plays real Americans on stage – and she shares her lessons
It’s Been a Minute

LUSE: Anna is a pioneer of what’s called verbatim theatre, where the characters’ lines come straight from interviews, transcripts or recordings. But what does that look like? Basically, Anna interviews real people, selects their most powerful moments, then studies their words, speech patterns, and body language so that she can sort of become them.

DEAVERE SMITH: My grandfather had said when I was a girl, if you say a word often enough, it becomes you. I decided to really study how the people around me spoke. I literally would walk up to people in the street of New York – this is in 1980 – and say, I know an actor who looks like you. If you give me an hour of your time, I’ll invite you to see yourself performed. The whole idea was to use this technique in a way to chase that which is not me.

…

DEAVERE SMITH: I became interested in how the rhythm of speech could inform an idea of who someone was. First of all, I don’t become anybody. People say that. I think of it as trying to make a jump. I call it the broad jump towards the other. You don’t make it, but you’re in this other place – colleague of mine, Richard Schechner at NYU, would talk about an idea of the not-not. So I can’t be you. So I’m not you. And I’m not me, but I’m in this other place. I’m in this effort.

And psychologically, what that is about, I think, is how I’ve decided to deal with my own sense of nonbelongingness, having grown up in a segregated city. If you really look at the whole thing I’ve been doing, it’s to get close to my opposites and to get close to strangers as a way of dealing with the sense of estrangement. And technically, what I do is listen to speech the way that you might listen to music. So I don’t just learn words, I learn utterances, and I – so I become acquainted with the – what I say is the song someone’s singing. And a lot of my work has to do with disaster and catastrophe…

Hamlet Meets Father – Jonathan Pryce, Sandra Huller Interpretations

Enter Ghost
Rebecca Mead, in her piece on the German actor Sandra Hüller, describes Hüller’s performance in a 2019 production of “Hamlet” (“Interiors,” December 4th). During Hamlet’s encounter with the ghost of his father, Hüller spoke both characters’ lines, with the ghost’s exhortation to revenge seemingly torn from Hamlet’s innards. I was reminded of another production, at the Royal Court, in London, in 1980, directed by Richard Eyre and starring a young Jonathan Pryce: the encounter with the ghost was performed the same way, with Pryce fairly vomiting his father’s words, a bodily possession both painful and purging. It still resonates with me as one of the most exciting and terrifying stage moments I’ve witnessed.

Chris Rohmann
Florence, Mass.

New Yorker
(From The Mail, December 18, 2023 issue)

Lance Reddick – Memorable TV Shows and Movies – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/arts/television/lance-reddick-tv-shows-movies.html

The Wire
Reddick’s breakthrough role came in 2002 with the role of Cedric Daniels, who began the critically acclaimed HBO series as a principled but ambitious lieutenant in the narcotics unit of the Baltimore Police Department.

Fringe
Most stars of the fascinatingly loopy Fox sci-fi drama “Fringe” played multiple parts in multiple universes, creating several versions of primary and alternate characters. Reddick starred as Special Agent Phillip Broyles in one universe and Colonel Broyles in the other. (In the third season, the actor had the surreal task of playing Agent Broyles meeting the dead body of Colonel Broyles.)

Corporate
Reddick spoofed his own stoic severity in several comedic roles — highlights include an inappropriate toy store manager in a Funny or Die sketch; a guest spot in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” in which he struggles to control his temper; and an appearance on Eric André’s Adult Swim talk show that started strange and just got stranger. André seemed just as befuddled as the audience when Reddick punched the desk and left, before returning later to dramatically declare that he wished he were LeVar Burton.

Bosch
After doing “The Wire” and “Fringe” back to back, Reddick was hesitant to play another top cop role. But Irvin Irving in the Amazon crime drama “Bosch” is not just another cop — the Los Angeles chief of police is more of a political animal who loves power games.

John Wick
Reddick’s most popular film role came late in his career: Charon, the sleek concierge at the Continental Hotel in the “John Wick” movie franchise. As an employee of a Manhattan establishment that catered to traveling assassins, Charon — named after the ferryman of Hades in Greek mythology — was the soul of discretion. But he was especially sympathetic to the needs of one guest in particular: the very dangerous John Wick (Keanu Reeves).

RIP – Keith Johnstone

Keith Johnstone, a pioneer in improvisation who trained a generation of actors and comedians in impromptu performance and creativity, on and off stage, has died. He was 90.

Johnstone passed away at Rockyview Hospital in Calgary on Saturday, according to his personal website, with no cause of death specified. The creator of Theatresports and co-founder of The Loose Moose Theatre Company was born in Devon, England on Feb. 21, 1933.

Johnstone trained at the Royal Court Theatre in London and was a teacher at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. The Royal Court Theatre commissioned a stage play from Johnstone in 1956 and he remained a part of that prestigious live stage troupe over the next decade.

Summing up his philosophy, the key to improvisation is not to be prepared, Johnstone told a TEDx event in Calgary in 2016. “Improvisation is high risk. People think it’s like show business. It’s much more like sport,” he said, before adding the best performance calls for reaching for the obvious, not the clever. “The clever is an imitation of somebody else, really,” Johnstone added.

Keith Johnstone, Improv Trailblazer, Dies at 90
The creator of Theatresports trained and inspired a generation of actors, screenwriters and comics in improvisation and in-the-moment creativity, including ‘Better Call Saul’ star Bob Odenkirk.

Highly recommend Johnstone’s book – Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre

through line – Stanislavski on

A through line is a connecting theme or plot used in media such as films and books. it is sometimes also called the ‘spine’, and was first suggested by Konstantin Stanislavski as a simplified way for actors to think about characterization. He believed actors should not only understand what their character was doing, or trying to do, (their objective) in any given unit, but should also strive to understand the through line that linked these objectives together and thus pushed the character forward through the narrative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_line

Noises off – Intro, Quote from

It was during the run of my very first professional show, The Two of Us, four one-acters in which Lynn Redgrave and Richard Briers played eleven characters between them. Five of those characters were in the final farce. One night I watched it from backstage, and as I saw Lynn and Richard running desperately from door to door, doing quick changes as they went, it seemed to me that this was at least as funny as what was going on round the front. It also struck me that the overwhelming obligation actors feel to make their next entrance on time, come what may backstage, was the archetype of the obligation we all feel to keep up our appearances in the world, despite all the difficulties of circumstance and the inherent waywardness of our nature. What would happen, I wondered, if the strictly ordered disorder of a farce onstage was overrun by the real disorder of the actors’ lives off…?

Noises Off
Michael Frayn

Baltimore Details and The Wire – Michael K. Williams on

When I first got down there, I did my homework to learn the specific Baltimore accent. I remember sitting at a table at Faidley’s, in the back of Lexington Market, over some crab cakes, and just watching and eavesdropping on people for hours. I picked up the interesting phrases, the habits of speech, the way those vowels sometimes took left turns. Baltimore has this character, like a stew, that comes from being part North and part South. Some things come up from Virginia and the Carolinas (where my dad’s family was from), and some down from the Northeast. It all converged in Baltimore, meshed together, and became its own unique thing.

When I came out of the downtown market and—in broad daylight—saw addicts nodding out right at the corner of Eutaw Street, I actually thought it was a setup for a shot for The Wire. I didn’t know much about Baltimore, but that sight woke me up. It drove home what we were doing. I’d met some people, heard some stories, and learned that the life expectancy in the Black neighborhoods of Baltimore is worse than in North Korea and Syria. Part of my process involved walking around the hood to get a sense of what it was like, especially at night. I knew East Flatbush, but you can’t just transfer one hood to the other. I feel like too many shows and films just do “New York” when they’re trying to capture a certain kind of urban Black community. But David Simon and Ed Burns were definitely going for something specific. There are similarities—we’re all human—but the character and textures are different, and I aimed to absorb what I could.

One late night I was driving around that area with a friend—windows down, sunroof open—and I heard some dude yelling what sounded like “Airyo!” After the second or third time, I pulled up at the curb and called one of them over to the window.
“What is that?” I asked. “What are you saying? ‘Air-Yo’?”
“Where you from?” he asked.
“Brooklyn.”
“What do you say in Brooklyn when you call each other?”
“Oh!” I said as it clicked. “You’re saying ‘Aye yo’?”

So I worked that into Omar’s vocabulary. It’s like “Hey, yo”—but “Aye yo,” with a peculiar Baltimore r sound jammed in there that took some practice, as did Omar’s specific drawl. I got compliments from Baltimore people on that, and when viewers were surprised I was from Brooklyn, that meant a lot to me.

Scenes from My Life
Michael K. Williams, with Jon Sternfeld

Highly recommend this book. After I read this I re-watched, for the nth time, Season 1 of The Wire. Still awesome. Still my favorite show.

Alice Cooper vs Marilyn Manson – Two Approaches to Character

ALICE COOPER: I looked around and noticed [that] everyone I was trying to be like was dead. I went, “Okay, I get it. Alice has got to be one thing and I’ve got to be another thing. I can’t coexist with Alice; Alice has to be a character I play onstage.” When the curtain comes down he really doesn’t want to live my life and I don’t want to live his. He lives two hours a night onstage. He doesn’t want to play golf, he doesn’t want to be married, he doesn’t want children. He doesn’t like anything except what he’s doing onstage, and you leave him up there. To this day, we have a great relationship.

MARILYN MANSON: I’m completely unlike a lot of other performers in the past who have been forgiven or come to terms with the real world because they tell everyone their performance is just a show. So people say, “Oh, it’s okay then. We don’t care. He’s not really a bad person.” It’s not just a show for me. It’s my life. I live my art. I’m not just playing a character onstage. Anyone who thinks I’m just trying to be this weird or shocking guy is missing the point. I’ve never tried to be merely shocking because it’s too simple. I could do a lot more shocking things [than I do]. I’ve just always asserted myself as a villain because the villain in any walk of life is the person who refuses to follow blindly and always wants to question things.

Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal
Jon Wiederhorn, Katherine Turman

Throw One Away – 2 quotes

The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. […] Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.
Fred Brooks
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
Wikiquote

Frears is carefully and patiently teasing out the power and subtlety in Shashi by getting him to act simply and underplay everything. You can see the performance developing take by take. After eight or nine takes Shashi is settled, a little tired and bored, more casual and relaxed. Now he is able to throw the scene away. And this is when he is at his best, though he himself prefers the first few takes when he considers himself to be really ‘acting’. Sometimes he can’t see why Frears wants to do so many retakes.
Hanif Kureishi
Sammy and Rosie Get Laid Screenwriters Diary

“An actor is a man who pretends to be someone who is usually pretending to be someone else.” – Kenneth Tynan

How much of theatre has to do with imposture! Walter Kerr, in his brilliant book The Silent Clowns, points out that Chaplin’s genius lay in his ability to assume any identity at the drop of a hat – to become, in a split second, according to the demands of the plot, a great lover, a great gymnast, violinist, skater, thief, gourmet, conjurer, etc. etc., while having, at bottom, no true identity of his own. This leads me to reflect how much of world drama concerns people pretending to be what they aren’t. Hamlet feigns madness; the noble King of Thebes is an incestuous patricide; Kent pretends to be a serving-man, Edgar to be a mad beggar, In Too True to Be Good (which I saw last week in Clifford’s excellent production) nobody is what he seems – the humble Private Meek is in fact the military commander, while the commander himself is a frustrated water-colourist; the confidence trickster is a priest; his henchwoman poses first as a nurse and then as a countess. Throughout Shaw, burglars turn out to be philosophers, and villainous exploiters turn out to be heroes; even Saint Joan dresses up as a man. Mistaken identity is not only what the craft of acting is all about; it is what much Of drama is all about. An actor is a man who pretends to be someone who is usually pretending to be someone else.

November 16, 1975

Kenneth Tynan. The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan