In long-running productions, I mean. Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane did The Producers for over 2500 performances. How can actors, even though acting is what they do for a living, do that many performances without landing in a padded cell somewhere? How do they keep their focus? How are they able to switch it off and not wake up screaming dialog in their sleep? If I hear a song twice in a day, it’s an ear worm for the rest of the week.
A related question: How is an actor able to go from reciting the same dialog every night for 2500 nights to learning new dialog for something else, without totally fucking it up? It would seem that the old dialog would intrude into the new. If I run into trouble speaking Spanish, I tend to revert to French. Not the same thing, I know; I just can’t imagine having that much focus.
I guess it becomes routine after a while and, well, they’re actors. Feigning is what they do, so what’s feigning focus ? Must be even more tiresome for musicians who can go forty years having to play the same songs that made them famous back in the 80s, every single concert.
How do people do anything well? Practice, innate skill and determination - it’s no big secret.
With that being said, stage acting is obviously one of those careers that can’t just be a paycheck. On some level, you have to love the work itself. I’ve hard many actors talk about the way they feed off the audience’s reactions, reading them to adjust their performance moment to moment. Great actors can direct an audience’s emotions almost the way a conductor controls a symphony orchestra. When it’s done well, the emotional payoff for the actor who truly loves the work is indescribable to anyone who hasn’t had that experience.
It may be a routine, but it’s never tedious. They don’t trudge onto stage like they’re heading down into the mines. They make it interesting by trying different things each night, subtle changes in intonation or comic timing can be enough to see if audiences respond, so it’s an ever-refining process.
There’s a good chance that in the last few shows of the run is a great time to see a play, especially a comedy or musical, because they put much more gusto into it and throw some caution to the wind with their choices.
I never really acted. But I danced on stage all thru college. I was in a semi-pro dance company. No matter how excited I was for our new season and new dance choreography by the time dress rehearsals were happening I was sick of it. This is how I knew I couldn’t go pro. Those that did obviously could deal with repetition better than me.
Actors in long runs do take rests, and the understudy plays the part for one or more nights. I don’t know how often that would happen in a very long run though.
What amazes me is how the good actors make you believe they’re saying what they say for the very first time. Heck, even not-so-great productions on the semi-pro level can have such moments.
On the other hand, I’ve sung in various choirs and choruses over the years and it never felt tedious. Tho I do wonder how many times Mick Jagger has sung *Satisfaction *since the 60s and if he ever hates singing it.
I’ve heard that often, when a fan goes up to an actor at a convention or whatever and quotes one of their memorable lines, it’s totally unfamiliar to the actor, because it’s been so totally displaced by their roles since then.
Which reminds me of something else I’ve wondered - how often does something in a script prompt the actor to learn more about the subject? Or are they just words to be memorized…? I don’t mean research for the role, but rather curiosity about a topic or event.
For example, when there’s something on Big Bang Theory about the Higgs Boson, how likely is it that one of the actors would have wondered about it and did a little reading? I’m guessing probably not likely at all, and my engineer brain can’t understand such a lack of curiosity.
From the very beginning (“How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore…”) and all the way through, every performance was delivered with such authenticity and energy that it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Even though they’d just performed it the night before. And the night before that.
I cannot imagine being able to accomplish that.
mmm
There are always things that keeps you on your toes: someone blows a line, a cell phone rings, something breaks, the trained dog poops on stage,* etc. You have to be alert or you’ll create problems for the whole production.
I know that when I did community theater, each show had enough variables that it kept you on your toes.
*This happened when Lucille Ball was starring in Redhead. No one was sure what to do until Lucy asked for a mop and bucket. She then went on stage and started cleaning, pausing to say, “I really need to read my contract more closely.”
Great question, I have always thought the same thing.
I saw Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief musical with my students from school and it is a very cute, funny musical(funnier than the book in some ways) and I think the laughter from the crowd and the fun reactions would keep it fresh.
If it pays well, I could do it.
I mean, Tom Jones sings “It’s Not Unusual” every show and makes it seem special. That’s more annoying when you’ve done it thousands of time.
See, I’m the opposite - after a month of practicing a song, I just have to sing something else and never listen to that song for a while else somebody will **die **; even if I’m not necessarily happy with the result of my singing the song or I haven’t quite found a solution for that fiddly bit or this technical difficulty. I’d really, emphatically rather we find another song with similar fiddly bits to practice with.
Which is why I don’t join choirs
I remember a Billy Joel interview where he talked about how his mind wanders while he’s performing since he’s been doing the same songs for decades over and over. His example;
“It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday”
(I wonder what I’ll have for breakfast tomorrow)
“The regular crowd shuffles in”
(Either eggs&bacon or pancakes)
“There’s an old man sitting next to me”
(Oh, definitely pancakes)
Still, performing something for an audience over and over again (a different audience each time) is probably way more bearable than practicing the same thing over and over again.
I asked of a performer how they keep things fresh after so many repetitions. He replied, “That paycheck on the dressing table every Friday is a real motivator.”
For me, the bolded part was the key: no matter how often I said the same line, I kept in mind that the audience was hearing it for the first time. Also, audience feedback was never the same and definitely had an impact on the performance (it helped that the vast majority of my work was done in small, non-proscenium theaters).
That was my guess; they just go on autopilot to a large extent. It’s like driving to work in the morning- after 10 years of working in the same place, a lot of it was muscle memory, and while I wasn’t asleep at the wheel, there wasn’t too much conscious thought going on with being in the right lane at the right time to catch the right exit, etc… I spent most of my actual conscious thought watching out for the other cars and listening to the radio.’
I imagine it’s very much like that for a performer who’s performed that role a thousand times- they don’t have to really think about most of it- just pay attention to whether the drummer’s off pace (or whatever it’s called) and adjust accordingly.
Every career’s like this- there are aspects you just do by autopilot, and aspects you really have to think about.
And to keep the Billy Joel analogy going, I suspect most listeners would rather hear the version polished by ten thousand repetitions than him experimenting anyway.
Now, if I were Billy Joel doing Piano Man, I’d get bored (and think "WHY did this drivel become my biggest hit? Why couldn’t it be “We Didn’t Start The Fire”?)
But performing a song you wrote and love, or acting in a role you love… it’s great fun! A couple of times, I did the same role over and over, and loved it.
I think I imagined myself as an audience member and thought “Oh, man, this is going to be SO much fun tonight…”
So my answer to the OP would be “How could stage actors NOT do what they do?”
I think it would be hell a stage actor. It is my thought of one of the worst jobs on earth along with chef or musician. Doing the same thing over and over again with hopefully as little craziness as possible. I vast prefer jobs where every day is completely different. I once said that to a PA on my tv show who was an broadway actress as her passion and disagreed for many of the same rreasons people have mentioned so far she fells she can get more into the character after playing them multiple times and then as the other actors make different choices she can react to them so the performance is different to her each night.
Must be even more tiresome for musicians who can go forty years having to play the same songs that made them famous back in the 80s, every single concert.