To The Theater I Will Go

(This entry was originally published on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 @ 6:37pm)

I wish I could remember how or when I first came up with this idea. Years ago, I enjoyed live theater enough to travel to London and New York to enjoy it on it's premier "stage".

Over the last few years, though, I haven't done much of it. A few days in Ashland during the summer or Shakespeare in the Park here in Seattle. Really just change-of-pace stuff.

My passion has become film history ... watching great movies within a specific context. For example, this month, Turner Classic Movies is featuring "Method Acting in Hollywood", which traces the impact of "The Method" school of acting as developed by Konstantin Stanislavsky in 1890's Russia, and taught in this country at The Group Theatre and its' successor, The Actors Studio.

TCM describes the Method this way -

"It’s a process by which actors behave naturally, stripping themselves of all artifice, using their emotional memory of past experiences and feelings to create a character’s motivation. "

Watching movies pre-dating the emergence of the Stanislavsky Method, one can be overwhelmed (or bored) with the preeminent style of the time featuring theatrical gusto and the phony pseudo-British enunciation of America's leading actors. After all, does anyone born and bred in the United States really talk with that "refined" accent?

At the time of its' emergence The Method sent shockwaves throughout Hollywood. But, it would take someone far more knowledgeable than me to ascertain the difference between Frances Farmer and Bette Davis. Well, maybe not (Bette was the Queen of Overacting and the Phony Accent). But, it wasn't until actors like John Garfield came along that Group Theater-schooled actors really began to distinguish themselves with their naturalistic styles.

I can't think of any movie that demonstrates the clash of the two acting styles more than "A Streetcar Named Desire". However, Director Elia Kazan very effectively uses the old-school style of Vivien Leigh to highlight the delusional aspects of Blanche DuBois' psyche to contrast with the more naturalistic styles of Karl Malden, Kim Hunter, and Marlon Brando, all students of the Actors Studio.

Having said all of this, one of the problems I have with many of the films that came out of the Actors Studio "family" is many of them tend to be stagy/static. Think of these films: A Place in the Sun, The Member of the Wedding, A Hatful of Rain, and the aforementioned A Streetcar Named Desire. All of them are excellent movies, all of them look like someone took a camera and set it up in front of the stage as it was being performed on Broadway.

So, watching this, I began to wonder, what is it that I've enjoyed so much about live theater, yet dread when I see the same thing on film? I really need to answer this question. So, over the next 12 months, I'll be working to answer this question for myself. I'll let you know how it's going.

See you at the theater!!!