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

[nennivian.livejournal.com]

I think that TTON pulled off stage times beautifully, considering that everyone was on stage for the whole show. The constant presence was necessary, I think, to the dynamic of the show as well as the plot. Not to mention that the action and dialogue were quite well distributed throughout the cast. I got off easy as far as reacting goes, I think, because for the first half of the show I'm essentially a non-person anyway, so if I reacted at all it was almost in pantomime. In the second half, I _was_ emotion, so reacting was very easy and clear. Also, reacting is what I do. I've been in a lot of plays and only a handful of times have I played a central character. I'm so experienced at reacting with smaller roles and background characters, that it's not really a burden to me anymore (if I do say so myself).

[breakinglight11.livejournal.com]

Selene IS an interesting case with this, as she develops a person with thoughts and feelings over the course of the show. You did an amazing job portraying that journey. And I'm glad to hear you that say you thought things were well-distributed, it was an effect I was going for.