Acting in New Writing

One of the most exhilarating experiences an actor can have, is acting in a brand new play. The play may even have been written with that actor in mind, but either way, to work on an original play is exciting. To give a play its first outing in front of a live audience, is to offer a brand new creation to the world, and it should be offered as closely to the intention of the writer as possible, otherwise misconceived, misrepresented and misunderstood.

I’ve spent a lot of my time as a theatre director working on new plays. The delight is in discovering the work of a living playwright and bringing their intentions to life. The trend however, is to interpret the play to what the director thinks/feels/believes is important to present. Presenting the writer’s intention and presenting the director’s vision of the play, is to tear the performance asunder – the writer’s intention goes one way and the director’s production the other.

So the job of the actors in a new play is to help to bring the intentions of the writer’s brand new work to life. Acting in new writing is not really different from that of acting in an existing play, except for the presence of a continuously creeping trend towards helpfulness.

There is a rather foolish myth among directors, which they pass on to actors, that they can help a play’s development. When the actors buy into this belief, it is a mistaken one and it fills them with a shocking level of misguided self-importance.

The directing myth goes that the director has such experience of making live theatre, that they will know what makes for the best play. This is not correct. Only the writer can know what is best for their play, for only the writer knows whether something works into their existing vision or not. Forcing the director’s ideas onto the play, is literary rape, more about the power of the director than good theatre. The director who goes to the effort

The acting myth goes that the presence of live actors, who are used to acting in plays, will help the writer by giving them a living source for the development of the script. In other words, the fact that actors speak lines for a living should make them experts at helping the writer with their play and its dialogue.

The trouble is that it’s bullshit. What they are really saying is that since I speak dialogue, I know what would sound best. Well, the same goes for every human being. We all speak. I’ve been eating my whole life, but I wouldn’t presume to tell master chef how to make food that tastes divine.

The actor’s job is not to help the writer with the writing of the play, it’s to provide a living embodiment of what the writer had in their head – so that they may develop their play. That’s the purpose of any development phase.

I remember years ago, a circle of writers watching a pair of actors ‘acting’ out their scenes and then the actors giving feedback on the scenes. Each scene was critiqued on the basis of a first impression the actors had on the scene. And the feedback that came was utterly useless. 

The feedback was not on the basis of what served the writer’s intention, but on basis of a gut reaction to a first impression, read aloud, under the scrutiny of an audience of writers. As such the feedback was immensely superficial, and something other than useful. When some of the writers got defensive about the criticism (a justified, reasonable, but unnecessary response) – then they were given a lecture about the industry and how it works, and how they must be able to take criticism. The difference is that the value of the criticism offered was zero. Therefore, the writers were responding because the actor’s didn’t know what the writers intended, and therefore their critique was meaningless. It was a gut reaction to a first reading.

Feedback in this sense was useless. The feedback process occurs as the writer watches their own work being read/performed and considers what worked and what didn’t work dramatically.  If a line should be changed, ANYONE could suggest a replacement line, because we all speak words, but NOTHING entitles the actor to do this, they don’t know the character and what they would or wouldn’t say.

To offer this kind of advice is not your job, it’s not what you are good at and so you miss out on really helping, by misunderstanding your role in the process. Do you want your opinion heard? Well, when you act out of the writer’s intention, you will be making your opinion heard, but you will not be doing it with helpful suggestions, but through your skills as an actor. I do not say this denigrate you, but to remind you that your skills, the ones you trained to earn, the ones you keep sharp, the ones you are hired on the basis of - they are very MUCH needed by the writer.

But if you do really want to help the writer, discover from them what the habitual action of the character is, and if they ask for help, give advice on the basis of seeing the script from the writer’s perspective and the dialogue suggestion’s connection to that and the habitual action of the character. If they don’t ask for help, then your best help is not to offer help but to do your job well. And your job is to embody the lines in a way that presents the character in line with the writer’s intention for the scene/play.

The purpose of a development process, a rehearsed reading, a staging is for the writer to see if what they have written works dramatically. If it serves their intention, if it works when performed live. To be the writer’s collaborator, you must discover their intention, and work from that – and that is the case regardless of whether the author is living or dead, the play old or new.