On Thought and Action.
I do not enjoy plays. I do enjoy the theatre. I enjoy cinema and television. The main reason is the distinct lack of movement that most stage plays have. I don’t mean physical action, I don’t mean car chases, I’d be equally repulsed by Spiderman the Musical. The problem with most plays that I see these days is that they lack that element that I find most compelling: story. Somewhere along the way, British theatre particularly seems to have gotten lost and turned away from action and towards a sort of intellectualism and ended up taking a shortcut to shit via it’s own arsehole.
I don’t come to the theatre to hear the playwright think through ideas of philosophy. That’s not why I bought my ticket. I came to enjoy the story, to sit and enjoy the moments of drama that we all enjoy in life and fiction. When thinking takes over from my enjoyment, I stop enjoying and start getting bored. How many times have I sat in the theatre wishing it would end soon. And yet, I adore the theatre and am inspired by it. But so often I sit there and go crazy with boredom. I don’t want to be taught, I don’t want to be lectured to, I don’t want your philosophy of life or your vague political discourse, what I want is dramatic action. I want to be constantly wondering what will happen next and I don’t want to get ahead of the story unless it benefits my enjoyment of the story. And yet so often, dramatic literature is something other than I just described, it’s only words. Again, I don’t need explosions or fights, I just need to be kept interested.
In drama as in life, thought without action is stasis. Action without thought is dangerous.
In acting, I want my actors to act without thinking, but this spontaneous capacity occurs after thought, when we know what we’re doing, when thought has been exhausted, and then we act. This is the same in life. A life spent in thought is a good one. But without adding action to thought, we only have a life half lived. Acting requires us to leave thought alone once the moment for action arrives. The same for our career, thinking about education, thinking of being an actor, thinking of writing, they’re all static. Until you marry your thought with action, and then it transforms into potential and from there… well.. anything can happen.