VictoriaWorld: 30lbs and a Fake Nose

“So, they’re playing themselves? Hmm. Well, isn’t that kind of cheating?”
That’s what I overheard someone (who I’m assuming was dragged along by his theatre loving companion) say as I was walking out of the [title of show] invited dress rehearsal last Thursday evening. Now, since I’m not acquainted with anyone in the cast of [title of show] I can’t offer much insight into the first half of the question. However, I think the second part is worth exploring: why is it that audiences feel “cheated” when they feel an actor is playing a part that is too close to the actors real self?

I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard someone say “yeah, but that part was easy for (insert name of current actor getting a lot of praise) since they were basically just playing themselves.” In fact, last August I was having brunch with my extended family, and at one point something came up about the Tony Awards. My aunt commented that she had at first been happy that Julie White won for The Little Dog Laughed, but upon hearing her acceptance speech she changed her mind. Her reasoning? She thought that Julie White seemed too similar to the character she had portrayed in the play, and therefore she should not have won. All of this my aunt decided from a thirty-second acceptance speech. I asked her why she thought any similarities between the actor and the character would de-value a performance that she’d seen and enjoyed, and she responded with “when I go to the theatre I’m paying to see someone transformed.” I guess if Julie White had gained thirty pounds and worn a fake nose my aunt would have thought she deserved the Tony.

It seems to me that if someone goes to a show and enjoys the performances it should be irrelevant whether the similarities between the character and the actor extend beyond physical appearance. Why is it that people feel they need to see some sign that the actor has been working really really really hard on preparing for their role, and that the preparation must be a complete personality transformation? Isn’t it enough that the actor just be good? The point of theatre is to tell a story, and the best way to do that is by having the best actors for the parts, and if there happen to be similarities between the actor and the character then so be it. Just be glad that, hopefully, it will lead to seeing a real person on stage instead of just a caricature.

The other facet of this is how many of us are actually intimately acquainted with any actor enough to have any idea whether they are playing themselves or not? Now, I’m as guilty as the next person of sometimes feeling like I know (insert name of actor of your choosing) since I’ve seen everything they’ve ever done, and read all their interviews, but I’d like to think that the more reasonable part of my brain knows that isn’t true. Think how long it takes to really get to know your friends; is there anyway you can really know someone who your only conversation with has occurred at the stage door? Also, we live in a world that is full of US Weeklies, Entertainment Tonights, and Internet message boards that trade on telling us more and more about actors personal lives, and try to make us feel like we know them. So which is it? The more you know (or think you know) about an actor the harder it is to see them as the character they are playing.

Of course, there is also the issue of whether it’s even possible for an actor to be “just playing themselves.” I’d think basic reasoning skills would lead one to believe that if an actor is handed a script with lines written by another person, given direction by a person who is not themselves, and put up on a stage in front of hundreds of people nightly that it would be fairly difficult to, as my mother might say, “just be yourself.”

By Victoria Myers