Unburdening Utterance 11/08/08

It is our responsibilities not ourselves that we should take seriously.

Peter Ustinov
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For the artist the creative life is a fascinating, all encompassing and magical existence. Sometimes the art seems to happen by itself, the painting paints itself, the poem writes itself and, in a play, the character plays itself. I've written about that.

I have also written about actors I have known who are so self centered and egotistical that they think they are superior not only to the other actors but also to the play, the production and everyone else involved.

It took me several years to learn to laugh at myself. But I learned that there is a measurable relationship between one's insecurity and one's need to be too serious about oneself. Those who call themselves "perfectionists" and put down those around them are generally the ones, ironically, who aren't doing all that well.

The better I became as an actor the more earnestly I treated it. It was no longer just playing around and having fun. It became, instead, a serious work that had important results. But even then I had to admit its relation to the world.

Those who are involved in the theatre should remember they are not in battle, performing life or death surgery on a patient or sitting in a space ship hoping to get safely back to earth. It is art and therefore to be taken very seriously. But the artist is the steward of talent and craft, not the inventor of it.


DB - The Vagabond