Public Profession; Private Man

We confuse celebrity with talent and artistry with commodity. This is somewhat understandable in the world of cinema where actors and performers are literally larger than life; arguably so in the weird, cool, bluish light of television; flat-assed wrong for people working on the stage.

In a universe where bottom-feeders like Perez Hilton [sic] shriek, "Why did you become an actor, then?!" - where preadolescent girls are answering career queries with the response, "I want to be a celebrity." - Where older, injury-challenged professional sports players muse into microphones, "I guess I'll become an actor." - it's time to draw a line in the sand.

As a successful stage actor, I live out in the Kuiper Belt of somebody-ness, yet even here in the cold, dark region of attention-getting the feature writers and publicity managers of our newspapers and theaters want to know more. About. Me.

That makes it considerably harder to do my job. My job is to sublimate myself and allow the character to step forward. I become a vessel - hopefully - where the ghosts of these varied creatures I portray may inhabit, allowing us to become a spokesman for the creator - the playwright. The less known about me, the better to suspend your disbelief and convince you I'm the character you're listening to and watching. I want your attentions to center on the ideas of the play, not on my comments to a journalist. It isn't about me.

And, yes, I am aware that blogging is a profoundly public and revealing act; but I'm in control here and this is as far down the beach as you may go...

Critics and Theatre

Critics and artists are binary star systems, circling in tight orbit, one the other. In some creative fields a gravitational symmetry is struck, but it is in the theatre where the greatest unbalance and distance between the circling partners occurs. Reviewers are White Dwarfs using their exigence to diminish the Gas Giants of theatre people, seeking to occasionally shine more brightly than the artists they're covering. American Theatre does not suffer a lack of gifted artists or a lessened level of thoughtfulness or proceed with immature silliness. The Theatre is haunted by illiterate, apathetic, and unsupported criticism. To quote Robert Brustein,

I am not talking about boosterism or cheerleading; I am speaking of the kind of intelligent support that F. R. Leavis once gave to D. H. Lawrence, Edmund Wilson gave to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and George Jean Nathan gave to Eugene O’Neill, the intelligent mentoring that helped these writers to learn and to grow. What we have instead today is something I have come to call Himalaya criticism, after Danny Kaye’s famous rejoinder, when he was asked how he liked the Himalayas: "Loved him, hated her." In other words, thumbs up, thumbs down. Judgments based on ignorance, arrogance, and relentless opinionating.

We return then to the Colosseum where the Emperor’s mood, whim, or agenda on any given time and day determines worth. The focus is no longer on the performer, but rather on the celebrity nastiness, ego and attentional needs of the destroying angel – the White Dwarf – of the Reviewer. It becomes all about them and not about the art.