Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

18 Chapter 1 What Is Theatre?
Spotlight
Film Stars on Stage Acting
The vast majority of film stars got their start acting
onstage in high school, college, or small theatres near
their hometowns. Many of them—including the most
successful—return to live stage performing. Film and
TV stars Patrick Stewart Al Pacino, Scarlett Johansson,
James Franco, Bryan Cranston, Michelle Williams, Daniel
Radcliffe, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Cera, Andrew Garfield,
Frances McDormand, Michelle Williams, Kiefer Sutherland,
Edie Falco, Ellen Barkin, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jude
Law, Denzel Washington, Laura Linney, and Christopher
Walken all found themselves acting on Broadway in recent
seasons. Why would these actors, plus the likes of David
Hyde Pierce, Neil Patrick Harris, Katie Holmes, Jane Fonda,
Matthew Broderick, Jeremy Irons, Anne Hathaway, Frank
Langella, Geoffrey Rush, John Lithgow, Christian Slater,
Anthony Hopkins, Ethan Hawke, Meryl Streep, and Kevin
Spacey, leave Hollywood for such vastly lower-paying
stage work? Here are some of their replies:
I love theater, I go as much as possible. It’s been a
big part of my life for so long, but just as a fan and
a viewer and as a student.
—JAMES FRANCO*
I love acting for the camera. But in film your performance
doesn’t really belong to you. It belongs to the
director and the editor and the producers. Onstage
[in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge], the audience
saw everything I had, not some reshaped
version of it. The same arc was there every night, of
course, and yet it was a living, breathing thing.
—SCARLETT JOHANNSON**
Theater is about authenticity. It’s in front of you;
you feel it. It’s so hard to feel stuff anymore from
film. . . . It can get very remote.
—MERYL STREEP
If my movie career was totally terminated, I would
be saddened and disappointed . . . but if that were
to happen with the live theater, it would be devastating.
[Theatre] is like a fountain that I have to
return to.
—PATRICK STEWART
One of the glorious things about the theatre is that
it cannot be preserved. You can’t look at it again;
it’s live. . . . Cinema’s dead. You can laugh, you can
cry, you can shout at the screen and the movie will
carry on. But an audience in the theatre, whether
it knows it or not, is affecting the performance. . . .
That’s the stream of life at its best, isn’t it?
—IAN MCKELLEN†
In film, the challenge is to be able to shape a performance
when the process is so piecemeal. And
the absolute joy of being onstage is you get to surf
that wave. It’s a much more muscular experience.
—CATE BLANCHETT‡
There is only so long you can go from film to film.
Theatre is a more raw experience. For an actor a
live audience is creative inspiration.
—JUDE LAW §
My primary focus is theatre. It’s the most satisfying
place to be as an actor.
—KEVIN SPACEY §§
Acting on stage was the best life experience I’ve had.
—BEN AFFLECK
I love the stage, and I love being on stage, and the
rush and the fear and all of that.
—DANIEL RADCLIFFE
Nothing was going to stand in my way of doing
that play.
—ASHLEY JUDD, EXPLAINING WHY SHE TURNED
DOWN THE TITLE ROLE IN HOLLYWOOD’S CATWOMAN TO BE
ONSTAGE IN A NEW YORK REVIVAL OF CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
† Crews, C. (2001, December 28). At the Top of His Form by Chip Crews.
Washington Post.
†† Dobkin, M. (2006, February 27). Hedda Steam. New York Magazine.
§ Gibbons, F. (2001, January 12). The next stage: Stars pledge millions for
theatre ventures. The Guardian. Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd
2001. Used with permission.
§§ Jury, L. (2004, April 23). Spacey makes light of ‘mugging’ and pledges
future to the Old Vic. The Independent.
Bisbee, D. (2000, May 6). Damon, Affleck bring good will to Hub.
Boston Herald.
*Cerasaro, Pat. “James Franco Says ‘I Love Theatre’ & Talks OF
MICE AND MEN On Broadway, April 11, 2014, Broadwayworld.
com.
**Scarlett johannson quoted in “Definitely Didn’t Get Lost in Translation”
By Charles Isherwood,The New York Times., May, 12, 2010.