The Audience Can’t Tell Good Acting from Great Acting

It is my belief, controversial as it may be, that the audience cannot tell good acting from great acting. In fact, I’d go as far as saying, they don’t really know the difference. They know when something is too awful for words, like when the person can’t animate a sentence, but beyond that, when we look at what passes for acting, it is regularly lauded and applauded. The audience don’t know the difference. They can tell when someone can’t act at all, but beyond that they have no clue.

Okay, maybe I’m being a bit harsh, but most soap acting is okay, not great, acceptable, passable, sometimes groan-worthy, but people don’t switch off.

They’ve learned to put up with it. So, this is shoveled out and called acting and… the audience eat it, cos frankly there’s nothing else.

The Oscars is a good example. Those voting on them are as much an ‘audience’ as the general public. As they are often involved in the arts, they sometimes admire beautiful, truthful performances. But some times, they just reward effort, or those that have kept trying regardless of their inability to reach beyond a certain level. But the audience will watch the movie, and most of the time, the actor will keep working. Why? Because it’s better the devil you know.

The average audience member is so used to pedestrian acting that they accept it as the norm. The ‘expert’ audience knows awful acting, knows ‘can’t act’ and then they get stuck again. Sometimes, they choose right, they have some common sense after all. But sometimes, they just reward the effort of their fellow traveler.

So if the audience can’t tell good acting from great acting, why should we bother? There’s plenty of ‘okay’ actors working on national television and plenty of ‘acceptable’ actors working on stages across the land. And if the audience will accept it, and the critics will reward it, why should we strive to create something better?

Because although the play is put on for the audience, we don’t do it for them, we do it for us, and we have the desire to produce the highest quality, the most truthful, beautiful acting possible (and by beautiful, it can be ugly too – that’s beautiful too).

Just because they’ll eat burgers and beans, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to educate our palettes. Doesn’t mean we should strive to create something better.

So, let the audience watch what they will, their tastes are simple and they love a good story, and let’s produce acting that gets out of the way of the story, and let them enjoy it. But it doesn’t mean that we settle for less, for our craft is at stake, and that’s something we should protect and cherish, regardless of the audience.