Please Don’t Act

I hate watching actors that are performing to me. They rob me of my chance to look at what being human is as an observer and remind me that they are attempting to play a trick on me. I may disagree with the notion of the 4th Wall for actors but not for the audience. I want to overhear. I want to see things as if the actor is unaware of me.

One of the things that leaves me cold is when I see actors ‘performing’ and not living. This I think is a point upon which many of us could agree, the actor that is living gives off a completely different energy to the one who is projecting their act to the audience.

Imagine our enjoyment to come from an act of voyeurism, when you break the spell, when ‘Act’ or ‘Perform’, you kill the enjoyment for us.

We’re all in this together, it’s a highly enjoyable complicity. The audience suspends their disbelief and the actors behave as if there’s no one there. But once you start performing, mugging, emoting, theatricalising your performance, we break the covenant between us. From there, there’s no way back.