Rehearsal Kills Performance

Why do we insist that the best way to get a spontaneous-seeming performance is to ask the actors to do something over and over again until all impulses have stopped, the spontaneity has died, and along with it the body and spirit of the show. Then every night, we are asked to reanimate that corpse, knowing well that all spontaneity, all immediacy, all life has gone from performance?

Cos that’s how we’ve always done it.

Shouldn’t we do it differently?

No, that’s how we’ve always done it

But might there be a better way?

No, if there was a better way, we’ve had invented it by now.

And so night after night, actors reanimate the cold dead corpse of their live performance, and the audience whoop and cheer, and the opportunity for exceptional acting dies a little more.

But hey, that’s how we’ve always done it, so why change?