Don't 'act' when you're acting

And so to the Words of Wisdom. They are ‘Don’t ‘act’ when you’re acting.’ It’s about the difference between artificiality and directness. The people in the audience haven’t come to see actors acting; they’ve come to see a play. They don’t want to hear people saying lines; the want to listen to the words. They don’t want to hear you reciting Shakespeare; they want to bridge the gap of 400 years and hear the play as if it was being performed for the first time. As an actor, don’t intrude between the writer and the audience. Paradoxically, the more you make yourself disappear inside the character and the situation, the more you will be admired after the event.

Treat the audience as equals; shun the mindset of cultural superiority so evident in, for example, TV costume dramas; we, the audience, don’t want to see two actors playing the parts of two tramps; we want to see two tramps. Don’t ‘act’ when you’re acting.