The Great Acting Blog: “Where Does This Fear Of Independence Come From?”

The Great Acting Blog: “Where Does This Fear Of Independence Come From?”

Buster Keaton believed that the locus of artistic control in film should be with the performer. His style of long shots and long takes, was largely developed in order to give his performance as much freedom as possible, and to draw attention to his physical comedy. This belief in the performer’s artistic freedom stemmed from his years in vaudeville where producers rarely got involved directly in the work of the performers, instead they limited their role to booking the acts and arranging the bill. The performers had complete creative control over their work. It’s natural then that Keaton thought the same set-up should operate in the cinema.

We live in an era when it seems that most actors just don’t want artistic control. We see this clearly in the theatre, where a hundred years ago lead actors routinely headed their own companies, now it is something of an anomaly for them to do so. In cinema, it has never been easier for actors to control their own work – developments in digital technology now mean that it is possible to make a world class feature film on a desktop computer, and yet we see so few taking advantage of this opportunity. Further, so many actors believe that they cannot act unless they have a director to tell them what to do, and so as a result they do not even have artistic control over their own performances let alone their own productions (we even see critics praising the director for the actor’s work: director X drew a marvellous performance from actor Y). Ironically, it was around the same time that Keaton was making it in Hollywood that directors began to get a stranglehold on actors in straight theatre (see, it wasn’t always this way). If Keaton’s mindset, his independence, was the result of his background in vaudeville, then we might ask where today’s fear of independence came from? What is it in the backgrounds of today’s actors which leads them to be happy to await instructions rather than seize the initiative? Actors are willing to sit at home, unemployed, waiting for someone to hand them work when it’s never been easier for them to go out and start their own company. Why?

Subscribe to The Great Acting Blog