I found today’s visit from an actor from the London stage to be riveting and thought provoking.
I liked his genuine appreciation of our seemingly “normal” acting. After spending a semester in London and seeing a dozen theatre performances, I can relate to the notion that some performances seem overdramatized. Our normality proved refreshing through his eyes. He noted that actors nowadays feel the need to “put on a jacket” while performing in order to mask their true selves. However, he instructed us to “take off the jacket,” in order to unearth our vulnerability and get to the core of who we really are. I certainly related to this comparison and took it into account during the improvisation activity.
I also enjoyed his mockery of a typical British drama audition, including the need to be overly friendly, seem perpetually employed and act with another person who is purposefully abysmal at acting. He gave insight into the industry that confirms that British auditions and American auditions are similar if not identical.
In regards to British television, he insisted that the BBC and ITV1 still produce the highest quality programming. He actually scoffed at the existence of other channels, claiming that they featured unnecessary and unpolished television shows. He also stated that he only had approximately 20 channels on his home television set. For an actor, this surprised me. These ideas point to the fact that the Brits certainly take advantage of all of the “freeview” channels and perhaps place the main British channels, including BBC and ITV, on a pedestal.
When referencing Doctor Who, he expressed the idea that the interaction between Doctor Who and his token female sidekick is particularly essential to the success of the show. Without the addition of the female lead, Doctor Who would come across as boring and one-dimensional. I did not think about this notion upon my initial viewing of the show, but now believe it to be true. The relationship between the two is mysterious and adds degrees of consistency and complexity to the show.
In other news, I thought Doctor Who was SERIOUSLY scary… But that would call for an entirely new blog post. Anyone with me on this one?!
In regards to your point about it being surprising that an actor didn’t like the variety of TV channels, I didn’t think of it that way when he was saying it. You’d think they’d like more chances to get work!
Also, the Companion(s) is (are) always my favorite characters in the series. There have been some winners (Donna, Amy, Rose, Rory, and Jack are my top 5 from the new series) and some less awesome ones, but they amazingly always bring something fresh to the show. The Doctor changes less often than the Companion, and when a new one comes onto the scene, there’s always something interesting about the way they come into the Doctor’s life. A new Companion always freshens up the show and keeps it from getting stale. I can’t wait to see who the next companion is going to be and what kind of relationship he or she will have with the Doctor.
Here’s a handy visual guide to the Doctors and their Companions through the years: http://celebs.icanhascheezburger.com/2011/06/30/funny-celebrity-pictures-doctors-companions/
First off, I absolutely loved the acting exercises. Although they overshadowed our time to talk with him about television, I think it is completely refreshing as a film/television major to be able to get some insight and experience into the theatrics and talent that exist on the other side of the camera.
However, his brief insights into British television were equally rewarding and it was very interesting to hear his opinions on the channels offered. For example, his bias towards the BBC and ITV demonstrate the complete domination that these two channels had during his childhood and the lingering prestige and charm that they will always hold with their aging viewers.
Oh man, that’s crazy! Glad everything turned out okay. I too really enjoyed the acting portion of Michael’s lecture. I’m a terrible actor, but it was still fun to hear about the process an actor goes through while auditioning and figuring out his or her character. I also appreciated that he at least tried to tie it into television by having us do “television acting” instead of “theater acting.” By the end of the exercises I felt myself really getting into it, and it almost made me want to try doing an acting class at some point in the future just for the fun of it.
I don’t know if it was just me, but I got the impression that Michael doesn’t actually watch that much television. This would kind of explain why he spent the majority of the class working on acting exercises with us. I’m not sure what it is, but I feel like if I went to a British university to talk about my experience watching American television, I could talk for hours and hours about it. Granted, I’m a television major, but I feel like any of my friends would be able to do the same. Despite this, I thought a lot of his throwaway comments were some of his most interesting ones, like how the BBC doesn’t have any money, how expensive the carriage fees are getting, and that he still basically only watches the BBC and ITV. It seems like the carriage fee issue is a big deal in Great Britain, and I have a feeling there are going to be some big changes in the next couple of years over there.
As a television major who tried theatre as a concentration first, I have had classes with Actors from the London Stage before. However, this one was particularly exciting. I had a lot of fun with the acting exercises, and he seemed to genuinely enjoy watching us. I have been in other classes where the guest maybe thought everyone was extremely dedicated to the inner workings of the craft and wanted to analyze the text very deeply. I thought this class had a good balance of both worlds to accommodate everyone from the serious professional actor to the nervous student trying not to be called on. It was a fun deviation from lectures and discussions and my favorite visit from an Actor from the London Stage to date.