Being reactive onstage

[breakinglight11]

It occurs to me as I go through Love's Labor's Lost that the most difficult draining thing for me to do is spend a long time onstage doing nothing but focusing and reacting. Having actions and interactions and speaking lines is a lot less mentally demanding for me than staying in the moment reactively. It is especially tough for me to do so in this show, where my character is a bit thin and no personality for him suggests itself to me naturally. I know having to do a lot of that tends to be disliked more the greater the experience of the actor-- I can't remember who said it, but I remember readibg some older theater actor like Richard Burton or somebody said that the ideal role was one with the highest ratio of being the center of attention to time spent onstage. I think I'm starting to agree with that.

I think I must resolve in my future theatrical writing to make characters have to spend as little time as possible onstage when theyre not doing anything. Just to show mercy on them. To Think of Nothing kind of violates this, I guess, but I think all eight characters stay involved enough all the time that the times when they are observing or reacting isn't too onerous. Or at least their characterizations are well enough defined to better inform how they should be behaving at thosr times. Actors in TToN, care to weigh in on your experience with this? Was it tough or easy to be reactive in that show?

Comments

[morethings5.livejournal.com]

I think that the combination of having a strong character and having a character defined completely in relation to another character saved me from ever being bored onstage (which is how I conceptualize the experience you're talking about, I think). I always knew how Palamon felt about the other characters and how he should be expressing that. Also you blocked the show tightly enough that I always had something to do. I've definitely had moments in other shows where I kind of felt like I was standing in one place for a long time and my character didn't have much to contribute to whatever else was going on.

[breakinglight11.livejournal.com]

Yes, "being bored onstage" really is the notion that I'm talking about. It pleases me to hear you say both that you got such a strong sense of the character and that you felt the show was tightly blocked-- both of those things I was working really hard to establish. Also, you remind me of how lucky I was to have actors as good as you all, because you were capable of getting enough into character to stay in the moment all the time.