| re: At what point does a Bway actor get completely bored? | |
| Posted by: | MikeR 07:57 pm EDT 03/17/14 |
| In reply to: | re: At what point does a Bway actor get completely bored? - enoch10 07:09 pm EDT 03/17/14 |
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Let's see...Les Miz is a long show. And it was a long time between my cues. One night a couple of months into the Palace run, I got really tired of listening to the score. It happens. One just gets sick and tired of the play. It's actually when I start to do my best work. When I'm bored, I stop "acting."UGH. She goes on to talk about how she missed her cue for her final entrance as Fantine. So, the answer to "at what point does an actor get completely bored", in Patti's case, would be "a couple of months into the run." And the answer to "what happens when the actor gets completely bored," in Patti's case, is "she zones out backstage and misses her entrance." | |
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| re: At what point does a Bway actor get completely bored? | |
| Posted by: | MikeR 08:03 pm EDT 03/17/14 |
| In reply to: | re: At what point does a Bway actor get completely bored? - MikeR 07:57 pm EDT 03/17/14 |
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There's also this (page 54):The touring aspect, being on the road for months at a time, was totally new to us and we were in for some big lessons. We lost several bookings our first year because our training at school only prepared us for three performances of the play we'd been rehearsing. That's all we ever did. On the road when we got to the fourth performance of any given show, our performances fell apart. We weren't taught to maintain a characterization or a show. We basically stunk, while we behaved like spoiled brats out of some fancy acting school.So apparently what she says about training is "it doesn't help with preparing for long runs." | |
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| Isn't it rich! | |
| Posted by: | Michael_Portantiere 01:35 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
| In reply to: | re: At what point does a Bway actor get completely bored? - MikeR 08:03 pm EDT 03/17/14 |
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| "We lost several bookings our first year because our training at school only prepared us for three performances of the play we'd been rehearsing. That's all we ever did. On the road when we got to the fourth performance of any given show, our performances fell apart." So, they were trained and prepared to do only three performances of any given play -- and as soon as they got to the fourth show, their performances "fell apart?" What an outrageous statement -- part and parcel of so much else in that book. Aside from everything else that's wrong with the statement, perhaps she should only have spoken for herself. I think it's reasonable to assume that at least some of the other members of the company didn't feel their performances "fell apart" after three shows. | |
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| re: Isn't it rich! | |
| Posted by: | JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 02:03 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
| In reply to: | Isn't it rich! - Michael_Portantiere 01:35 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
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| I don't understand her statement at all. Even when I started in the theatre, in community theatre as a kid, there were often as many as 12 performances of any given show. And we were expected to give the same performance at Show #12 as we did at Show #1. I don't understand the concept of a performance with such a limited shelf life. Had none of these actors ever done anything outside Juilliard? Were they unfamiliar with the idea of a commercial play running on Broadway for several months or years? LuPone strikes me as a very smart lady who sometimes has trouble expressing herself appropriately. This is an instant of when her editor or ghost-writer should have pressed her for a more coherent statement or clarification. | |
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| re: Isn't it rich! | |
| Posted by: | whereismikeyfl 04:33 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Isn't it rich! - JereNYC 02:03 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
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| Academic theater usually has short runs so I have heard many graduates of MFA programs make similar statements to LuPone's. They say that it takes a stamina and kind of focus to do a run of a month, or 30 performances or more that just cannot be taught in a program where production runs are short. Even if one is aware of a commercial run lasting months or years, until you actually do it, it is hard to know how to do it. No big mystery. Just common sense. And its a common observation that did not originate with LuPone. | |
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| re: Isn't it rich! | |
| Posted by: | JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 04:53 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Isn't it rich! - whereismikeyfl 04:33 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
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| Still, I find it hard to believe that none of these actors had ever in their pre-Juilliard days done a run longer than 3 performances. Some fatigue will set in on a long-run, especially a tour, but the way that LuPone depicts it, as the show falling apart completely during performance #4, beggers belief. If she'd said performance #40, I'd be more inclined to go with her on it. | |
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| What I think she is saying... | |
| Posted by: | Quicheo 05:45 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Isn't it rich! - JereNYC 04:53 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
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| ...in her hyperbolic way (and certainly, no one here on All That Chat should be unfamiliar with hyperbole) is that she had learned to give the kind of performance that exhausted her energy after three performances (and, presumably, a week or more of tech). She had not learned to budget physical resources or developed the stamina for a longer run. And while she may be over stating that the show literally fell apart on performance #4, the point is that there is a difference in giving an full-out performance for a one week engagement full of your peers and professors and a much longer professional run. An analogy--I am a physician. In residency, we were trained to see far fewer patients / day than professional physicians see. This allows for learning the skills needed to be competent and the supervision to be safe and thoughtful and creative. In the first month of general practice, many new physicians find themselves exhausted, over-whelmed, even suffer breakdowns because the work load ramps up so quickly. It's not the doctoring skills that are now needing work, it's the stamina and self-care that comes on-the-job. Some, however, in both professions, either have taken the time to develop stamina or had the experience before or are less burdened by the work and do not have these experiences. But, many do. | |
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| re: What I think she is saying... | |
| Posted by: | Michael_Portantiere 05:56 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
| In reply to: | What I think she is saying... - Quicheo 05:45 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
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| A three-performance run is very short, even by high school standards. And aside from that: Even though Juilliard itself presents "academic theater," it obviously trains actors to be pros. So if it were true (and I don't believe it for a moment) that the school didn't train its students to allow them to effectively perform for more than a three-day run, then I highly doubt it would have the excellent reputation it has. | |
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| re: What I think she is saying... | |
| Posted by: | whereismikeyfl 06:31 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
| In reply to: | re: What I think she is saying... - Michael_Portantiere 05:56 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
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| Virtually ALL academic theater is training actors to be pros. And yes, Julliard productions do have a short run. I used to go and productions (including the first NYC production of Part One of Angels in America) only ran one weekend. Maybe they have increased the length of runs since I stopped going, but I doubt they increased them significantly. One hopes the training will help students do long runs, but again, actors usually do not know how to apply their training to long runs until they actually have the experience. That is one of the reasons organizations like The Acting Company that send recent graduates out on tour and programs that link training to a regional theater (like Yale or A.R.T.) have value. | |
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| re: What I think she is saying... | |
| Posted by: | Michael_Portantiere 07:42 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
| In reply to: | re: What I think she is saying... - whereismikeyfl 06:31 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
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| If any acting school in fact trains its students to give so much on stage in terms of body energy, manner of speech, etc. that their performances "fall apart" (or even deteriorate slightly) after three shows, I would say that's a worthless school. But of course, I don't think Juilliard does anything of the kind. And I don't know of anyone who seriously considers four performances (or even eight, or sixteen) a "long run," so I don't understand your point. | |
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| re: What I think she is saying... | |
| Posted by: | whereismikeyfl 09:23 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
| In reply to: | re: What I think she is saying... - Michael_Portantiere 07:42 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
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| Read what the doctor said again. Maybe the analogy will help you understand. I am sure you will find that any performer will have to do some adjusting if they start performing more frequently than they are used to. The Acting Company toured. They did not just do four performances of each production but rather many over the course of a months long tour. Again, other people who have toured with them have said that playing roles, even in rep, over the months of the tour was a challenge because it was not something they had ever done before. (One even said something similar to LuPone about stops where they gave more performances were harder than the ones where they did one or two performances of each piece in the rep.) | |
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| re: What I think she is saying... | |
| Posted by: | Michael_Portantiere 11:06 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
| In reply to: | re: What I think she is saying... - whereismikeyfl 09:23 pm EDT 03/18/14 |
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| I think I do understand, but it sounds like whining and a gross exaggeration to me. And I still think LuPone shouldn't have spoken for the entire company when she wrote that their performances fell apart after three shows. If she feels her own performance fell apart, she has every right to say so. | |
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| re: At what point does a Bway actor get completely bored? | |
| Posted by: | Chromolume 08:18 pm EDT 03/17/14 |
| In reply to: | re: At what point does a Bway actor get completely bored? - MikeR 08:03 pm EDT 03/17/14 |
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| Thank you, Mike. I *knew* she must have some human tendencies after all. ;-) | |
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| re: At what point does a Bway actor get completely bored? | |
| Posted by: | enoch10 10:24 pm EDT 03/17/14 |
| In reply to: | re: At what point does a Bway actor get completely bored? - Chromolume 08:18 pm EDT 03/17/14 |
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| i'm not going to go digging for quotes but somewhere (i'm pretty sure it's in the book) she talks about training and (i think) relying on sense memory and, as someone just said, knowing when to leave in relation to how to keep performances fresh. i don't remember all of what she said well enough to paraphrase it without mangling it and as i said, i'm not going to go look it up. | |
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| re: At what point does a Bway actor get completely bored? | |
| Posted by: | Chromolume 12:27 am EDT 03/18/14 |
| In reply to: | re: At what point does a Bway actor get completely bored? - enoch10 10:24 pm EDT 03/17/14 |
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| But I still think that's a very different thing than "never getting bored." I think the point is, training like that can help if you use them once you DO get bored, but that's conceding to the fact that yes, even the Great God Lupone has indeed found herself in need of that help. So yes, certainly actors can use all sorts of tools/tricks to keep their performance honest - but first of all (getting back to your original post), just because you have that training doesn't guarantee you're going to use it -- and second of all, somehow you seem to be twisting Lupone's philosophies around to make it seem like she never gets bored with a role or never has off-days where she might want to be doing something other than the show. I personally can't imagine any performer who hasn't struggled with those impulses. The trick is to find ways to recover from that. I think that's all she was trying to say. | |
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