On Actors

by David Macfarlane

Let's talk about actors. I don't think they'll mind.

 

Just the other day, I was reading in a newspaper about how Tom Cruise attends to his eyebrows. As informative as all this was from a personal-grooming perspective, it did indicate to me that there is nothing more that I can possibly contribute to the astonishing wealth of knowledge already at our fingertips. Somewhere out there, someone much better informed about these things is probably writing about how Gwyneth Paltrow or Ben Afleck trim their toenails.

 

But all this aside, I think we should make a point when next we enjoy a play, of not rushing from our seats to get to our parked cars at the final curtain. We should take a moment to thank actors. Real actors, if I might put it that way.

 

That is to say, actors who do not arrive at work in limos, but rather on bicycles, or on foot, or in used cars that aren't paid for yet. Actors who don't fly Concorde but who still know what buses and trains are, and who post notices in the Green Room asking if anyone's driving to Edmonton next week. Actors who don't take a suite at the Four Seasons, but who live in borrowed rooms -- in Stratford, in Toronto, Queens, Yonkers, New Haven, Evanston, St. Paul or Lynnwood.

 

Actors who don't eat at Spago's or Tavern-on-the-Green, but who eat cold pizza in a rehearsal hall or a bowl of cereal at the kitchen counter at midnight after getting back, too tired to cook, from an evening performance. Actors who start off dreaming of doing Hamlet or Cordelia on Broadway, and end up dreaming of doing Lear or Gertrude anywhere, and in between live out of suitcases across the country for an entire career of vulnerable auditions, drafty rehearsals, opening-night jitters and tearful, closing-night goodbyes.

 

Actors who have worked their way through the eternity of summer stock and the brief runs of winter; who have weathered both the stinging truths and the wildly unfair misjudgments of critics; who have approached the classics with the care and focus of surgeons preparing for a difficult operation, and who - a few weeks later, on the other side of the continent, wrapped in sweaters and living on cold coffee and cigarettes, have bravely thrown themselves into rehearsals of some young playwright's improbable, but dramatically exciting experiment.

 

Actors who always weep; partly out of sentiment, partly out of sheer professional admiration, when they watch Alistair Sims in A Christmas Carol, or hear Send in the Clowns... Actors who, trying to find their marks in the pre-curtain darkness, who have stuck their spears in a styrofoam Roman column, or who have taken a particularly wide step while climbing the plywood ramparts at Elsinore and have heard the loud, unmistakable sound of Danish breeches ripping from codpiece to hindmost. Or who, in the very middle of a Lady Bracknell to end all Lady Bracknells, have stood, frozen, stage right, as Algernon inexplicably shifts gears into a speech from Charley's Aunt. Oh, the stories actors tell

 

These are the people who have bowed to packed audiences in big cities and small towns, and who have soldiered on through the dead air of an almost-empty house; the cast outnumbering the audience, and the polite, isolated clapping of a looming failure. They learn more about triumph and disaster in a single season than most of us do in a lifetime. Who among us throw themselves into work with more whole-hearted passion, more commitment, more disregard for practical concerns and more undiminished, ever-optimistic hope than an actor?  They fall in and out of love on an endless tour of a recycled Broadway hit that is as lucrative as it is tedious.

And while they're away from their apartments, their phones are disconnected and all their plants die.