That's, uh, some picture at the Wikipedia page.
Hmm. I wonder if stage actors draw on the same level of emotional intensity performance after performance. After a certain point they probably just start phoning it in, and if they're good enough at acting, the audience can't tell.
I'm amazed at the level of physical stamina required by certain roles. Wagnerian operas? Five hours of belting it out?
1 - I figured I had to find some way to draw the straight boys into the theater discussion.
I had da's question. What's it like to be a good actor in an emotionally demanding role for a long engagement? There has to be some psychological effect, you'd think.
The opera case is interesting, because people really do blow out their voices on the demanding stuff. (The studio "Tristan" recording was spaced out lot partly to ease the strain on Domingo's voice.)
3- well your plan seems to have failed --they must have gotten to the Wiki page and become distracted, because they're sure not here.
I think it's just that 1 is about as far as our contributions are going to go.
I would say professional musicians practice upwards of four hours a day. I wonder how different that is for singers.
Singers, unlike professional musicians, don't need to practice. Anyone can sing.
Didn't Daniel Day Lewis have a nervous breakdown after the Irish prison movie? Or am I making that up?
yeah, but DDL is one of those actors who "becomes" the character for months at a time... he's supposed to have lived off the land for six week or something for Lawst of the Mohicans.
... the little known sequel to Last of the Mohicans, about Native Americans with posh British accents...
The Onion Radio News has this one covered: Director Decides Against Casting Method Actor In 'Director Killer' Role.
See, this is what I mean. You occasionally hear about film actors having breakdowns because of how they inhabit their roles (DDL, Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, etc.) but I don't ever hear that about theater actors, despite the fact that they seem to become their characters more fully because they do the show night after night without breaks between scenes. Wouldn't it seem logical that theater actors would have more breakdowns about this stuff than film actors, who may do a bunch of takes for a scene but then get to move on instead of theater actors who constantly reliving it and can't take breaks?
15: Maybe so, but I can just as easily imagine how screen acting could be more intense. And, of course, theater is lower-profile, so breakdowns might be about as common.
Yeah, DDL is a little crazy with the method acting. For My Left Foot he stayed in the wheelchair and made people help him with eating and everything (the character had cerebral palsy) for the duration of the shoot.
15: Film actors are overall more famous than theatre actors, so maybe it's just that we hear about the movie-star breakdowns more frequently.
And re: Opera singers, it is pretty taxing, but they don't do nearly so many shows per week, and they're for more limited runs. Otherwise we'd have a large population of mute former Opera singers.
Some cursory googling suggests that singers are recommended to keep practicing down to 2 hours a day.
That sounds about right, I never did much more than that even when I was in multiple choirs at once. But also, after you've been singing for a while you learn how to practice without straining yourself. There is a limit, though.
Opera also has a theatrical aspect, though. You can't practice with voice as many hours as you can with instruments, but there is also a technique called `marking' if I recall correctly --- where opera singers (particularly principles) will practice the part without singing at full voice. That way you go over the staging and movements etc. without straining your voice....
Now, I know nothing about acting. But I get an impression that stage actors approach their work in a less "Method"-y way, with less agonizing about becoming a character.
If an actor's only going to do a few takes and then move on, she might be more inclined to psychologically throw herself into the scene. To get it perfect, for posterity's sake.
"Marking" would make sense as the right word. That's what it's called when dancers move from place to place in a barebones rehearsal making gestures instead of dancing full out. In dance at least, you very rarely rehearse on the stage full out--maybe once or twice before a very elaborate production. You mark it a bunch, but all of the real rehearsing and training happens in the studio. I'd bet something similar goes for opera.
To point out the obvious, many actors drink heavily.
There is that famous story about Dustin Hoffman staying up for 2 days prior to a crucial scene in 'Marathon Man' -- so he'd appear suitably tired and feeling it -- and Lawrence Olivier hearing about this and turning to him and saying, 'Why don't you just act it, dear boy?'
Then again, I've never really rated Olivier in movies, so what do I know...
"Marking" is also what non-musical (or musical, for that matter) stage actors call the phase of rehearsal where you still have the script in your hands and basically the director is working out where everyone should be on the stage at a given time, how people should move around, on or off, etc. It's not expected to be real acting, it's just learning the steps.
Keep in mind that stage productions, generally, involve a great deal more rehearsal than films do. Actors have a lot of time (comparatively) to learn to step in and out of the role, and in some ways the ideal stage performance is one so well-practiced that the actor can be fairly checked out, mentally, and still hit the boards. (Taken to an extreme, it doesn't make for very exciting theatre, of course, and not all productions get a lot of rehearsal time, but I'm talking generalities here.)
I recall hearing an interview with Laura Linney a few years back, on NPR, when she had a film about to come out. She talked about one of the signs of the director actually caring about the performances was that he got the actors together and did traditional stage rehearsals for a couple of weeks before shooting started, and how unbelievably unusual that was in films.
I once saw Jack Lemmon talk about acting when he came to receive an Arts First Medal. I don't remember the movie that he was talking about, but he said that he nearly lost his mind when he was driving hoem from the set of one of his films. It may have been a movie where the character loses his mind.
I don't remember exactly what he said, but it might have been something like, "you can take this method acting thing too far."
I also have a sense that true method acting works better for very intimate settings--tiny theaters and camera work. More traditional theaters--and if you wante to go back really far, think about the festival of Dionysos and he Lenaiean festivals--required exaggerated theatricality. Just experiencing emotions and displaying them as one might in real life doesn't seem to work in theater.
experiencing emotions and displaying them as one might in real life doesn't seem to work in theater.
One can go too far with this, though. Avery Brooks (of ST:DS9 fame) was in a production of Othello in D.C. last fall, and he went a little nuts with the emoting. Falling on the floor and violently shaking to express grief, and so on. Maybe, as primarily a t.v. actor, he felt he had to overcompensate for the stage or something, but it was kind of distracting. Unless it's something really stylized (like opera), I think subtle is something to shoot for, even in theatre.
27. Qwll, yeah, duh. Extremes are always absurd.
27: Reminds me of that episode of Futurama.
Some TV/movie actors also have trouble moving to theater because they don't have the stamina. I really like Chris Coo/per as a movie actor but I saw him in a play a few years back and he completely lost his steam about halfway through and couldn't get it back. He looked like he just wanted to crawl off the stage and take a nap.
31: Qwll?
Look at your keyboard, and you'll figure out what I meant to write.