The Influence of Acting

Actors are seducers; I believe I read somewhere.  They are very pretty and some purely beautiful.  How can one not be attracted to the stories they tell?  How can one not be jealous of their certainty?  They know when to speak, when to stay silent, when to move and where.  They have an advantage.  They know what is coming.  An offstage actor must make time a terrible burden to know what to do with.  Just as bad as a director with no one to direct, I suppose.  Maybe that’s why they get married and have children.  They then have somebody to appreciate the shows they put on and somebody to direct when there are no shows.  Actors must have a terrible time trying to know whom they are when they are not characters, especially the older ones who have been in the profession for years.  When a shape shifter has been changing shapes for so long how do they know what their original shape is?  Or was?

Directors cannot be left alone and actors should not be allowed to wander the streets.  There’s too much fiction in their blood, too much power in their heads.  A director has the power to force an actor to perform a scene they perhaps may not wish to be a part of, even though they are happy with the rest of the show.  An actor can force an audience to watch a brutal scene and force them to listen to terrible words, though they come of their own will and do not mind the rest of the scene.  In fact they can even forget about that particular scene if they so wished.  Actors aren’t allowed to forget quite so easily.  They’ll repeat lines without realising, they’ll rehearse movements out of nostalgia or they’ll dream that they’re still in the show and wake up thinking its all gone wrong.  Their minds and personalities are part of the territory that comes with acting and only another part will release them from their last role.  Or deepen their typecasting.  Directors cannot escape any easily than actors but mostly they do not want to.  They are troubled from the start and are always obsessed with a show, a scene, an actor, an audience.  Actors think only of a single spotlight upon them, but directors are aware of every light and they give thought to their brightness, nearness and sequence.  They look at every detail and strive for a coherent image.  Their joys and sorrows are contained in these details and they never want to let go of the images they make, regardless if they provide either joy or sorrow.

Some forms of entertainment are performed as research and some go to study in order to record and document the performers.  They write theories, preventions and cures for both the performers and those who watch them.  They often cannot agree or help themselves.  A collection of thought out opinions is all they have.  The actors stay acting, the directors stay directing and the researchers still study.  So long as all this takes place within one dark, closed off building, no-body minds too much of what goes on inside.  It is a secret they do not have to be a part of.  A conspiracy they will allow to conspire.  They do not take heed to conspiracy theories no matter how well thought out, they know that every fact must have a figure and there is a lot said and a lot to not believe in.  Let the whole pretenders pretend that there is violent acts, revelations and miracles occurring everyday, let them think they are loving and dying daily in that little box.  Put them together and do not let them leave alone.  A theatrical artist alone is a danger.  Who knows what they may make others to believe in?