Just Say the Lines

My experiences as a writer are that given enough rope, the actors will labour the lines to death. They’ve also develop an assumption through popular culture or training that they are superior to the words in some way, and can (and often do) request changes to the text based on ‘what sounds better’ or the removal of something that doesn’t ‘ring true’. My point is this. Shut up and say the lines. If you were asked to bring your editorial skills to the table by the playwright/screenwriter, then by all means, please do. In film of course, the director and the actors regularly shit all over the writer’s work. In the name of ‘what works’, or ‘what rings true’, or basically, some deficiency in the actor that means they can’t say the line the way it is written. Here’s a trick. The writer, through fluke or gift or training or none, is actually probably quite good at their job and has been paid money to produce the words. If as an actor, you think you can do better, please do. Otherwise, just say the lines.

An excerpt from a 2008 article in The Independent makes this point for me: “The uncanny exactitude of Mamet’s notation is borne out by a story told by the actors David Suchet and Lia Williams, who played the professor and the student in that production. At the start of rehearsals, they found the carefully positioned emphases inhibiting. So Pinter asked the author for a script without the underscoring. Mamet declined on the grounds that the stressings were all in the right place and necessary. Pinter stuck to his guns and an unmarked script was provided. The telling point is that when the actors re-consulted the marked script four weeks into rehearsal, they discovered that they were in fact playing virtually every emphasis originally indicated there.”

Say the lines, don’t labour them, and enjoy the benefits of the writer’s own talents, add yours to theirs, rather than trying to avoid doing your job by taking on their job too.