The Actor Factor

 

Actors suffering for their art...

I recently got a series of text messages from a friend of mine about an article she'd read entitled "Community Theatre Audition Red Flags." She didn't send me the link, so I can't share it, but I'm actually kind of glad she didn't. It sounds like something that was written by a director who's been burned by bad actors one too many times, and has finally taken to social media to vent their frustrations. 

I get it. I understand. I have been hurt, badly, by many actors in my time in community theatre. I've been hurt by actors mentally, physically, emotionally, financially, and in lots of other ways I'd rather not mention. I've had my name dragged through the mud, my artistic decisions, competency, integrity, and even my sanity called into question by actors with whom I failed to connect with in a positive way. Actors have destroyed my scripts, my productions, my entire company (a few times over) and have made me feel like a complete and utter failure as a playwright, director, producer, and artist. Red flags? I've got enough of them for a hundred articles of clickbait. 

But my friend also has a point. Actors are people, not puppets, and directors are people too, not gods. Theatre happens when actors, directors, and everyone else involved in a production truly collaborates with one another. As a director you can't be a tyrant, nor can you be the ultimate enabler. Having been guilty of being both, I find that tyrants tend to produce boring plays, while enablers tend to produce pointless ones. I'd like to think that I've moved on from both of those extremes, and that I find collaboration in the rehearsal hall more often now. But I guess that's not for me to decide. 

So what about actors who have to miss rehearsals? What reason is a good enough reason? How many rehearsals can an actor miss without it hurting their own performance, or those of everyone else? Do you cast someone in a chorus role when they're only interested in a lead, or vice versa? What about actors that don't want to help out behind the scenes if they aren't cast? 

I don't think there are any easy answers to these questions, and the many other common ones that community theatre producers and directors wrestle with all the time. Every theatre company, every play, every director and every actor is different, and what is perfectly acceptable behaviour for one person in one show might be enough to get an actor thrown out of a show somewhere else. What's more, people change. I used to keep a "black list" of actors that I'd worked with before, and then swore I'd never work with them again, only to find myself working with them again. Times change. Circumstances change. People change. And I've changed too. A lot of things that I used to think were really important to me as a director are things that I don't think are all that important any more, and things that I'd never even thought about in the rehearsal hall twenty years ago are now the things that keep me up at night. 

So at the risk of contributing another worthless opinion to this never-ending debate, perhaps I will simply say that community theatre auditions are an act of mutual bravery. For the director, you're being brave enough to say "I'm doing this. It means a lot to me, and I can't do it without some very specific people to help. Would you please come out and see if you are one of those people?" And for the actors, you're brave enough to say "I have the time and space in my life for the next little while to become really, really intimate with a group of strangers, be someone that I never otherwise would be, and I ask for nothing in return than the emotional satisfaction of having done something amazing."

Does it always work out? Of course not. I weep for every director I see desperately searching for a male actor, or having to replace an actor at the last minute, or watching their carefully-crafted dreams crumble before their eyes as an actor with 10 lines can only remember 6 of them, more or less. And I see the hard-working parent struggling to focus in rehearsal after a long day at work and feeding the kids a rushed supper while their partner has to deal with homework, baths, and bedtime, the star-struck kid who doesn't understand that there's no such thing as talent, only hard work and discipline, and the aging "grand dames," older actresses dripping with decades of skill and experience, watching helplessly from their walk-on roles as the young and the pretty fight to recall half of the words they need to say. 

But for all that, I still think community theatre is worth it. That's why I keep coming back, year after year, writing and directing my little plays at the Ennotville Library. No matter what damage the process of working with actors does to me (and yes, I know that I do at least half of the damage myself) it is still worth it. When it works, when collaboration truly happens, when you can look back on it all from the perspective of the cast party and say "yes, that was good" that is still worth it. And it always will be.