PERFORMANCE: The Actors' Roundtable: "Trusting the Audience"

Each week, Paden Fallis poses one question to a group of professional working actors from a variety of backgrounds. Our goal is not to demystify the work of the actor or explore their careers, but to dig a bit deeper into their artistic working process. ACTOR’S ROUNDTABLE: TRUSTING THE AUDIENCE Recently in one of our discussions, one of you commented that you must “trust your audience,” that you need them “with you”. This dovetails nicely into our next question. We know the audience is the lifeblood once the show starts. They complete the circle with playwright, director, tech team, and actor. However, what can we really expect from our audience? And, should we trust them? Oftentimes I hear actors say, “That was a bad house,” or “The house was quiet tonight,” or “They were really with us tonight, etc.” But what does all that mean? I can assure you that I’ve laid a total egg on stage and still garnered a standing ovation a time or two. Conversely, I’ve been “in the zone” on other nights and been greeted with a tepid response. So what do we take from this and, more importantly, what does this have to do with your performance and the show? Do you trust your audience? And what should the actor expect from them? - Paden Fallis, Performing Arts Contributing Editor

WILLIAM BELCHAMBERS It’s hard to put across to someone who is not involved in theatre the wonderful experience of being an audience member or being an actor who performs in front of a good house…when the show is good. It is also hard to describe to the same person how toe-curlingly bad and embarrassing it can be when the show is bad. I have had quite remarkable evenings on both sides of the proscenium arch and truly that is what we all want. But then you will turn to your left or right and the other audience member/actor will say that was the worst evening of their life. It’s that ambiguity that keeps us all alive and spontaneous in theatre, and if we all felt the same at the end and we were discussing what we should have for dinner, then we have failed as both performers and audience members. To inspire conversation or thought, whether good or bad, is the most important thing.

MANON HALLIBURTON To trust or not to trust, that is the question…. Simply put, if you don’t trust an audience you have no business being in front of them in the first place. Yes, the audience is the final piece of the creative process in theater, but it’s also the one piece that hasn’t been rehearsed. Just as every performance will be slightly different, so will the audience and their response to that performance. The older I get and the more shows I have under my belt, the more I try not to let the audience effect my performance in a negative way… for example, if I’m in a comedy and there are not enough laughs, I try and not internalize everything and have negative feelings towards myself or the audience. It’s a balancing act because the audience does help inform a performance, but it shouldn’t dictate it or overhaul important moments discovered in rehearsals. Some audiences are great listeners and not very vocal one night, where they may be rolling in the aisles the next. That also has also to do with just the sheer energy of the crowd as well and how that energy feeds off of each person. Just as an actor has to trust themselves first, they must trust the creative process up to the opening night when they get that final piece of the creation… but the beauty of live theater is that it is ever changing and hopefully growing with each performance. I think a lot of actors when starting out are taught this negative way of thinking by bad directors. I have worked with many directors that have commented, “Oh, you guys were great but the audience sucked tonight.” When in reality, that particular audience may have enjoyed the show immensely but just internalized it. Also as actors, we are naturally insecure about “response”, because we are telling stories to affect people on some level…and without that affirming noise, gestures, or energy telling us we are reaching them, we sometimes feel like we are not doing our job or they are unappreciative. In the end you have to tell the story and sometimes an audience may inform that journey and sometimes they wont, but you have to trust everyone in the room or else you will being doing a disservice to yourself, your fellow actors and the whole creative process.

NELSON LEE It is very easy to say that regardless of the size of the house and how invested they are, the performance I give will remain the same. It’s easy to say, yet very hard to do. I have always been highly aware of the energy of the house and their response to what I’m offering up, be it positive, negative or dead neutral. And while there are times my awareness does not manifest itself onto the stage, quite often it does whether I like it or not. I become more energized or less, more vocally present or quieter, the stakes may rise higher or drop beneath the earth. Yet, no one side is solely responsible for either amazing or terrible performances. It is a dance that plays off of one another, conscious and sub, willingly and un. I can only trust and expect myself to give my performance and the audience can only trust and expect to see one. In better, beautiful words: A few moments after he found himself on the stage amid the garish gas and the dim scenery, acting before the innumerable faces of the void. It surprised him to see that the play which he had known at rehearsals for a disjointed lifeless thing had suddenly assumed a life of its own. It seemed now to play itself, he and his fellow actors aiding it with their parts. When the curtain fell on the last scene he heard the void filled with applause and, through a rift in the side scene, saw the simple body before which he had acted magically deformed, the void of faces breaking at all points and falling asunder into busy groups. -from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

LAURIE OKIN The audience is an entity unto itself—having the shared experience, in the dark, of being exposed to the same stimuli—and seems to inherently have that sort of “mob mentality”. As much as I feel, onstage, like a very vital part of the whole dynamic, I am not experiencing it in the same way that they are with one another, and so their inclination is going to be more influenced by each other’s reactions than by me or my fellow actors. I also think there are a lot of people who have internal reactions but because others don’t seem to be having the same ones; they don’t want to be the only person laughing or crying or clapping. Many times I have been told this sort of thing after a performance. When I am, I think…well, maybe you could have been the one to start something! Of course, I whither up inside every time I can tell they’re collectively not with me, and it stings. I try not to take it personally, though, and remind myself that, over time, there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to how they’re reacting, as compared to how I might feel about a particular performance. As an actor, it can feel pretty random. In this sense, I don’t think that “trusting” the audience means depending on them to be an accurate barometer of the work on an empirical level. It seems to me that all we can do is give it our best shot at moving them in some way. When they walk into the theater—I have to trust that they are opening themselves to the experience, and that I can let it go to them and they will take from it what they can.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

William Belchambers is an actor who trained at R.A.D.A and has spent most of his career in theatre, in England, Europe, and U.S.A. Currently performing at The National Theatre, London, he has also spent seasons at The Globe and The Royal Shakespeare Company. Manon Halliburton is a regional theater actress who has worked all over the country. She has also appeared in television shows such as Law and Order and The Sopranos, and recently shot her first film this past year and closed August Osage County at Kansas City Rep to rave reviews. She lives in Kansas City with actor Bob Elliott. Nelson Lee left his native Canada for New York to pursue training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Since then, he has appeared in various television series, including Blade: The Series, Virtuality, Oz, Covert Affairs, Hawaii Five-O, and the Law & Order franchise. Recently, he took to the stage for the world premiere of Zayd Dorn’s play, Outside People, at the Vineyard Theater in New York, and the American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) production of Maple and Vine in San Francisco. He currently resides in Los Angeles. Laurie Okin is a Los Angeles-based actress who has been seen over the years in dozens of national commercials, as well as guest starring on The Office and as a series regular on PBS’s Copshop. She has also appeared in Samantha Who?, My Own Worst Enemy, Friends, and MadTV. Laurie also has an extensive background in the theatre and is a company member at The Road Theater and Rogue Machine Theater.

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