Different Every Night

An actor’s performance should never be set in stone. It is a constantly evolving thing.

When it becomes set in stone, it denies the very essential element of their humanity, their changeable nature, their liveness.

Yet over the course of the history of acting, rehearsal has become more and more about repeating something until it’s ‘right’.

Inevitably this process eventually drains the life right out of the performance.

An actor’s performance should be alive, from moment to moment there should be changes – always channelled through the needs of the scene and the director’s instructions, but always new and changing.

As the Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold once said: “The good actor is distinguished from the bad by the fact that on Thursday he doesn’t play the same way he did on Tuesday. An actor’s joy isn’t in repeating what was successful, but in variations and improvisations within the limits of the composition as a whole.”