My Actor/Spectator Dichotomy

Masked spectators watch actress Tori Sparks in a production still from SNM

One of the lenses through which I viewed SLEEP NO MORE was that of fellow actor.

I went on stage the first time in 5th grade, and the passion/practice has continued to the present day. I studied acting in high school, college, and grad school, and I currently teach acting for a living.  I began as a Stanislavski kind of girl, still revel in Michael Shurtleff, converted to Uta Hagen, perused Stella Adler and Richard Boleslavski, and was skeptical at first but enjoy greatly dabbling in Anne Bogart, Augusto Boal, Meisner, and many others who aren't coming to mind at present. 

As I contemplated SNM, I wondered if I could do what these actors do, or if my comfort level would keep me confined to the traditional relationship between audience ("you guys stay seated and behaved over there") and the performer ("I'll be over here on the stage -- within seeing and hearing distance, but away from you.")

I tend not to like to act in 'direct audience address' scenarios.  Ironically, as 'professor' I'm totally fine, but as actor.....It's often uncomfortable for the audience (and me) to make eye contact.  For them, they came to be voyeurs, not to participate. For me, as the old saying goes "the eyes are the windows to the soul," and I don't want just any Tom, Dick, or Harry looking into mine! Plus, the spectators "don't know their lines," and you never know what they're going to do. I'm a fair improv-er, but I don't like getting caught too off guard or even risking it.  Also, on occasion they will maliciously try to OUT-do you, throw you, or grab for attention by making it all about them.  And, perhaps scariest of all, sometimes, just because you talked to or interacted with them in character, they presume some sort of intimacy in the real world too.  In SNM, given the kind of experience it is, the opportunity for negative things like these to happen for the actor increases exponentially!  I don't know that I would like it as an actor -- like it happening or even existing with the possibility that it could happen at any time.  Or maybe it would be something I'd get used to, and come to love the immediacy and 'danger' of it.

There's also the dissonance of being simultaneously the spectator and a trained actor/teacher of acting myself. Though I tried to simply be an 'audience member' -- July 22, 23, and 24, 2013 -- I couldn't help thinking like an actor.  It both enhanced and thwarted my experience.  I'll discuss the 'thwart-y' part for now.

I received two one-on-one (1:1) encounters, and in the first especially I found myself exhilarated and terrified resulting in adrenaline-induced heart racing.  I think the pressure is greater on a spectator who also understands the craft: you want to be a good audience member, you want to do what they want you to do, but you also want to experience it fully and come to the brink but not go over the seemingly ever-shifting line.

One of the joys of acting for me is connecting with an acting partner.  When you're in the moment together, trusting and vulnerable, listening with your whole being and in tune with one another, that connection is just as good as life gets! There is no feeling like it in the whole world! You can't explain it to someone who hasn't felt it, but when you do experience it -- it makes you want lots more of it!  I wondered if something like that was possible in SNM -- if there could be that magic connection in a 1:1 for both me and this present acting partner. 

The trouble is you don't know YOUR 'dialogue' or responsibility in the encounter; you don't know what will help them and what will distract; you try to be in tune but they are the only ones who know where it's going, where the 'line' is, and what is necessary to execute faithfully their role in the larger SNM narrative.  They cannot afford to get too vulnerable, so though the experience is thrilling, amazing and DAMNED intense, ultimately, while you may be an actor, in SNM your role is "spectator," not actor. 

I found it mighty difficult to separate the two, though.