What Do You Think?

Don't be a blueprint. Be an original

Roy Acuff
******************
"Well, that's the way they did it in the movie."

Something I've never understood is why some actors and directors insist on producing a play to look like it was in the movie. Directors will search for an actor who looks like the actor in the film and it doesn't much matter how good he is as long as he looks the part, or the part as it was on the screen. And I've known actors who will go through elaborate make up and hair styling to resemble someone from a film.

I've played "A Christmas Carol" a number of times and often there was a fresh view of the story, but sometimes the director wanted to reproduce the film. How stupid! If I can deliver a reading of a line that is fresher, more interesting and more relevant than the fellow in the film why should I be forced to do it his way?

I lost an audition for Big Daddy in "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" because I wasn't fat. Burl Ives, who played it in the film, was fat. But nowhere in the script does it call for Big Daddy to be fat. I went on to play him in another theatre and nobody minded that I wasn't fat.

I've also observed the same imitative trait in speech. I've gone into the first day of rehearsal and heard some actor trying to sound like Marlon Brando, or Al Pacino, or Rex Harrison.

Discoveries are not made through imitation. Once you choose to be like, look like or sound like someone else you put aside creativity and imagination, two of the greatest gifts a human being can carry into life.

I don't care if it's a performance of a play or a great piece of music, if it's a garden, a chocolate cake or a rock band. I don't want to see or hear what someone else did. I want to know what you think.

DB - The Vagabond
(Never give up.)
***************************

SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

Come on. 11 diverse and interesting answers so far. Where's yours?

NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.

Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
******************