Acting versus Acting: by Lozuaway McComsey

"Mercutio" of Romeo & Juliet, as played by the author (notice the "M" necklace)

    I am new to acting in plays but an actor of old as I have always sought to entertain in school, sports, check out lines & restaurant tables. Class clown? I certainly aspired to be, but, as at least Mr. Wells says, I have hit the mark for, "the class scapegoat," or as I say, more politely here than I would usually, "attention seeker."

    And as I skipped the preceptorial class where I would have been absolutely invaluable, the one in which y'all discussed the differences between stage and film acting, I will enlighten you with my experiences of both and their differences. 

    Sunday night I performed my last (and, sadly, only second) night as Mercutio in Romeo & Juliet. The best piece of advice I got for this performance was to act for my castmates. As someone who wants to be beloved by the audience, I thought it would be better to perform for them directly. However, once upon stage with over a hundred Johnnies & co. surrounding me, I was glad to heed the advice. 

    As I pranced around stage, I kept Romeo and Benvolio as the near constant target of my eyes and my speeches. I'd memorized 62 speeches varying from one word ("Right.") to hundreds ("...Queen Mab...") and needed to deliver them clearly, loudly and with physical movements to relay their message (this last bit is what we in the biz might call "acting"). My scene-mates' faces anchored my eyes and my eyes, tethered to both body and brain, kept me grounded in the moment. It felt almost just like rehearsal. The more I focused on interacting with fellow actors, the more fun I had. It's like dating: if I try to date many people at once, I can't give them the same attention as I can give to one person, and in stage acting, for me, I think I performed better for all the anonymous strangers in the crowd when I paid attention strictly to that one. My attention was honed in and my intuition followed. I made funny decisions and heard people laugh. This is good, very good. But I could not relish in the laughter as I needed to act more. Such is the paradox of the stage. The more attention I give to acting, the better it is and the less I can reap the benefit. Remember this when you applaud at the end–it's the only time the actor (or at least I) can receive the full attention you give to me. Such is not the case in film, as an actor at a premier is mostly just a spectator like everyone else. 

    Back to the stage: in addition to my attention being focused on, say, Tybalt (that rat-catcher), I was also aware that I needed to keep my body moving and voice loud so no section of the audience would see my back the whole time, nor be forsaken the Bard's beautiful lines as delivered near perfectly by myself. In film, there is one camera–at least for what I have done–for which I need to give my best, and one microphone. In this way, film acting is simplified. 

    It seems as though film acting for this reason, and not having to memorize 62 speeches, would be much easier than stage acting. You're damn right. Stage actors are the best. However.

    As I filmed the movie bad actor, available on this very blog, YouTube and TikTok, I realized how much attention must be paid to details. A lot goes into a stage production–I try to react authentically to my scene partners' lines, try to face the audience properly and try to deliver my lines as "word perfect"–that is, as Shakespeare wrote it–as I can.

    With film acting, perfection is a much more possible goal. There are do-overs. On stage, if I make a mistake, one of the worst things to do is go back and rectify it. "The show must go on," is not only about the show as a whole, but each moment. Stay the path. But as I filmed my film, I realized how much attention need be spent in perfecting so many different things. I needed to figure out where to put the camera and what it would focus on. I needed to figure out where to walk in the scene and where to stop. I had to figure out where to put lighting and which lighting to use. I had to have a story and chose not to have dialogue, but that is still a choice I had to make. But most of all, I had to act it all out perfectly in one take as I wanted a one-shot film. 

    And unlike stage acting, I could do it until I got it right and no one would know. In a stage rehearsal, a perfect run does not mean a perfect performance. I understand better than ever how Ozu could take the same shot 134 times to get it just right. It's like an author editing a sentence until it is perfect: e.g. "One fine morning in May, a slim young horsewoman might have been seen riding a glossy sorrel mare..." Truly, nothing (or everything) is ever perfect, but there is "good enough"  which means I spent 100% of my time getting 90% of what I wanted and there is "masterful," which means I spent double the time to get to 93.7%. bad actor is good enough. In two minutes, there are already ten things I'd change if I did it again. This essay is not "masterful," but it has helped me to clarify some thoughts I'd had about acting at all. And if you have never tried stage acting, do it. It's not really like anything else, not even film acting.