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

54 Chapter 3 The Actor
The legendary British-American actress Angela Lansbury, at 89, returned to Los Angeles in 2014–2015 to once again perform
the role of the eccentric medium, Madame Arcati, in Noël Coward’s 1941 Blithe Spirit (an “improbable farce” he called it), a role
for which she had won her fifth Tony Award in New York in 2009. Michael Blakemore directed. © Geraint Lewis
inconspicuous movement. The waggle of a finger, the
flare of a nostril, the quiver of a lip can communicate
volumes in a performance of controlled movement. The
beginning actor is often recognized by uncontrolled
behaviors—fidgeting, shuffling, aimless pacing, and
nervous hand gestures—that draw unwanted audience
attention. The professional understands the importance
of physical self-control and the explosive potential of a
simple movement that follows a carefully prepared stillness.
Collective movement, involving continuous physical
contact between two or more people, is often taught
through dance, contact improvisation, and even theatre
games, all ways to release actors from their individual
isolation and make them part of a creative and physically
interactive ensemble. And specialty movements, as with
period dance and various forms of combat (hand-tohand,
fencing with a variety of weapons, gun battles) are
also standard parts of actor training for today’s theatre.
All of these are components of an actor’s physical
training, and the basic instructional technique
for all of them is nearly identical to athletic training:
demonstration, memorization, repetition, and constant
drilling. This is where the actor learns that to be part of
a “play” requires a tremendous amount of what can only
be called “work.”
The actor’s instrument also includes his or her psychological
gift of imagination, and a willingness and ability
to use it in the service of art. At the first level, an actress
must use her imagination to make the artifice of the theatre
real enough to herself to convey a sense of reality
to the audience: painted canvas flats must be imagined
as brick walls; an offstage jangle must be imagined as a
ringing onstage telephone; and a young actress must be
imagined as a mother or grandmother.
At the second, far more important level, the actor
must imagine himself in an interpersonal situation created
by the play: in love with Juliet, in awe of Zeus, in
despair of his life. This imagination must be broad and
all-encompassing: the successful actor is able to imagine
himself performing and even relishing the often
unspeakable acts of his characters, who may be murderers,
despots, or monsters. To the actor, nothing must be