The Great Acting Blog: “Actors Can Show The Magic Of Life”
Never forget why you became an actor. That sense of play, the joy of creation, that longing to give expression to the art you felt within yourself. Never let the stresses and strains of the life grind you down so that you fall into a casual professionalism, whereby you no longer really care about what you do, just turning up and delivering a base competence. Continue to explore, yourself and the world, stay curious, stay interested. Bring that sense of wonder and awe to the work, create afresh with each new role, begin with a blank slate rather than just doing what you’ve always done so well. Don’t allow the resistances to your work to make you cynical – ours is an ancient craft, with a rich and varied history, it was around long before we were and will be around long after we’ve gone, show some perspective about your own place and about your own experiences.
None of this is a luxury, none of it is an optional extra, it is essential. The audience needs us to remain open to life, and they need us to bring that openness to our work. We live in a world which requires people to compromise and be reasonable and hold their tongue and surpress so many parts of themselves in order to fit in. Actors however, have an obligation to be unreasonable, to speak out, to be impolite, and to keep as many aspects of their personality alive as possible. The audience needs us to be remarkable, they need us to re-affirm the magic of life, the idea that there is something more, and in order for us to do that, we must believe in that magic, and cultivate it within ourselves.
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