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Wednesday 14 July 2010

Not Coming Out To Play.

Tomorrow night I am going to see a couple of friends who are in a play. And then I am retiring permanently from going to see friends on the stage.

I find plays boring. I don't know anyone else in the industry who feels this way - everyone seems to talk a lot about 'stage and screen.' I enjoyed the play 'Blood Brothers' the first time I saw it. Aside from that, I have been utterly bored by absolutely everything I have seen on the stage. I do not like theatre. It does nothing for me. Even if it has great actors and a great story, I get completely bored.

I am friends with a lot of actors. They all act in plays. They all invite me. I feel a complete and utter disinterest every single time, yet I try to get to see many of them because I want to be a supportive friend. And to be fair - more often than not the actors are people who've been very supportive of my work.

But here's the thing. To go and see a play is, for me, a major chore. I dread the event for days, I hope and pray for a great excuse to come up. I beg and beg for the London Tube network to break to pieces only hours before the curtain is raised. Nothing.

Seeing a play in London generally means a forty-five train journey, followed by a painful couple of hours watching a play that bores me, followed by me having to wait around afterwards to tell the friend "no really, you were great, I loved it!", followed by lots of people I don't know saying "yeah, I like acting in films, do you have any roles?" followed by my friend saying "Stay for a drink, I want you to meet some actors!". Ugh, I hate it. And then I have to get another train journey home.

I like that my friends do something they're passionate about. And I like that they want me there and I also like that I can often see their great talents on the stage. But I can also see a good chef's talents in a kitchen, it doesn't mean I'm going to watch their every move for two hours. For me, going to the theatre is like being forced to watch a four hour documentary about lemonade production just because your friend Dave was the cameraman.
My friends, I love you, and I want you to succeed - but after tomorrow, I am officially retiring from coming to see you perform. But I will happily watch your film work.

8 comments:

  1. I'm curious: What makes theater so different from film? Are the performances and the stories not what draw you to films? (I'm not being confrontational, honest. Just curious.)

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  2. The truth answer is: I don't know, theater just bores me.

    But if you want a theory I just made up, which may be true, it's this: I don't like performances. In a great film, you're made to believe it's real. A good actor becomes a character. Hanks IS Gump. Morgan IS Red, etc. But on the stage, y'know, you're acting with a capital A. You're performing to a bunch of people who are looking at you. You can't get away from the performing aspect, so it's not real, it still feels like a bunch of 9 year olds putting on a crap school play.

    I get touched by things that are real. Or pass for real. Like, I like my music stripped down to a piano or an acoustic guitar. I like to feel something I can believe in. The stage doesn't support that.

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  3. i love plays ! i can't believe that you don't . but then again, maybe it's because you've seen way too many.

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  4. I get what you're saying. Because some films DO portray real events as played out by real people, whereas with live theater it's pretty much guaranteed to always be a person pretending. If you don't go in for that, I totally get why you loathe plays. :)

    Does the same go for musicals? I mean, sometimes the fun of it all is just the spectacle and appreciating the singing. :)

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  5. I don't mean real events as in, y'know, films about terrorist attacks. I just mean, y'know, even during a big Hollywood action film - the actors are likely to act like a real human being in that situation, to hold that reality. It doesn't happen on the stage.

    I don't like musicals!

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  6. OH, I see. Yeah, there's a difference. I tried out for a student film once, and I felt like an idiot cause I realized I was stage acting in front of a camera. lol

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  7. I think I love plays for the same reason you loathe them! Without the luxury of the close-up there is only performance; of which nuance is just one aspect (and perhaps why many film actors can't cut it on stage?).

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  8. Kid, so interesting!

    I get what you are saying about the performance part of the plays turning you off..

    i have to say though, as soon as I read that I thought "wow, he must not have seen any truly good plays then".

    I live in NYC and whenever I sit down to see a piece of theatre and I don't noticed "performance" once...I know it's a good piece of theatre. Theater can be just as natural as film can be. Too bad you haven't gotten to see that yet. Trust me though, it's out there... a lot of the off broadway shows I see have been lovely in that way :-)

    Lisa

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