If you’ve never watched a movie, play or TV show, you can skip this column. It’s about acting.
I’m a sucker for catalogues. I don’t mind that ordering something from one company usually means that my mailing address will be sold to other similar companies. I can always toss them into the recycle bin.
I particularly like the ones that deal in remainders. A “remainder” is an item — usually a book, CD or DVD — whose retail life is over and is being marketed at a greatly reduced price. Of course, the reason it’s no longer selling well may be because it wasn’t a very good item to begin with, but occasionally you can pick up some gems.
I mention all this because a year or so ago in a catalogue I saw a DVD of a play, “For the Use of the Hall,” which I’d once directed at the Evergreen Playhouse. As it turned out, the production didn’t fill the house every night, but I was satisfied with the way our amateur actors presented it.
Such wasn’t my feeling while watching the first act of the same play on a DVD of the original performance, which I found in one of those catalogues. I never made it to the second act. The actors — some of whom were well-known Broadway stars who I won’t name here — were obviously playing to an imaginary TV audience instead of to their fellow actors. They were doing little more than reciting their lines.
And that brings me to the reason for presenting the following short and simple seven-word dramatic lesson, namely this: acting isn’t about pretending, it’s about becoming. Method actors have an expression for this. They call it “being in the moment.” That’s all there is to it, but oh, how difficult it is to put into practice.
It’s fun to look through old books about acting and see all the exaggerated expressions one was supposed to show, and all the positions one was supposed to assume to exhibit various emotions. “How quaint,” we think, but it’s surprising how many actors, even professionals, still exhibit watered-down versions of those instructions in their performances today.
I immodestly feel that I’ve been able to bridge that gap at times, at least in the Mark Twain shows I performed for over 30 years. It’s always nice to receive compliments, but the one that always pleased me most came when a friends who had known me for years would say afterward, “I forgot that was you up there.” That’s as good a description as any of what being in the moment is all about.
Let me go back in time to my first appearance on the stage. I may have mentioned this before, but it’s a good demonstration of today’s topic. I was in the first grade and our school was presenting a play based on the famous Charles Dickens Christmas story. I was Tiny Tim. The scene was the Christmas Eve dinner for the Cratchet family. My only line, which I was to say after the proper cue, was the familiar, “God bless us, every one.” Simple enough, right?
Food for the dinner scene was provided by some of the mothers. The bowls of mashed potatoes, gravy, meat, etc., were being passed around, but, being the smallest, I felt that I was being ignored, so at one point I simply blurted out, “Would somebody PLEASE pass me the potatoes?” To me, I was no longer in a play. I was “in the moment.” How about that! I practically invented “method” acting and I was only 6 years old!
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
