The Great Acting Blog: “Why Bad Work Succeeds”

The Great Acting Blog: “Why Bad Work Succeeds”

People who only care about numbers, don’t really care about what they do, it’s just a mechanism for making money. This person is only concerned with box office stats, Youtube hits, creating empty mass media* to appeal to everyone (which is of course nobody), and no expense is spared in stripping a work of it’s integrity, of it’s generosity, it’s individuality, it’s truth, just to eke out a few more sales. Actors do it all the time, smoothing away the provocative parts of their personality (which is to say, their art), becoming uninteresting, non-threatening and impossibly inoffensive in the hopes of getting more work – this is the key reason why so many performances are so bland these days. The final irony here, is that by being as quiet as possible to get the work, all they can produce in performance is noise.

The audience enters the theatre with an enormous amount of good will. They want to have a great time, they want the artists to succeed, and it is extraordinarily difficult to use up this good will. No matter how bad the presentation is, the viewer will always look on the bright side in an effort to keep the good times rolling. When they leave the theatre, they want to have been delighted, thrilled, to have made a discovery, to have their minds altered in some way, they want to be moved to tell their friends about what they have seen. They will applaud at the end (regardless of the awfulness of what they’ve seen),  as part of their enjoyable evening.

That’s why bad productions can succeed, why bad actors succeed. Meaningless  work is shovelled up (albeit professionally), the audience is bundled through the box office, then bundled out again after experiencing a couple of hours of noise. And their need for entertainment ensures they come back again.

But why be a huckster? Isn’t it better, rather than to exploit people, to trick them, isn’t it better to actually produce a piece of work which treats the audience with respect? Which is characterised by a genuine desire to communicate? Which is not embarrassed by beauty? And where the audience’s response to the work is truly generous? This way, however, is not so easy, because it requires honesty and vulnerability on the part of the artist, it’s much easier to snigger and churn out the same old garbage.

*the flip-side to mass media, is to put something “shocking” in the work, such as graphic sex or extreme violence. It’s all degrading and exploitative, and redolent of those who lack the strength for a true artistic journey.

 

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