Thorstein Veblen wrote that typesetters were given to alcoholism in the 1800s because they belonged to a profession which was mobile and unstable.
They would switch jobs often, as the need for their services arose in some other town or part of the country; and they could switch jobs often, as their skill was much in demand, and their equipment was their talent only.
They had no investment in machinery, stock, or goodwill, and moved as the need for employment or change arose.
In a new locale the typesetters would seek out their own kind. After a day of work they would congregate in pubs or restaurants near work and socialize.
The only means they had for displaying their worth to each other were social means: conviviality, liberality, wit, good nature.
So they drank and talked, and the excellent man was one who could drink much, buy many rounds, and talk interestingly of the exploits of himself and others in the confraternity. The typesetter had no goods. He could not display excellence through the splendor of his carriage or his home.
He had no history except that which he invented for himself and could substantiate through bluff or humor.
He traveled light and carried few clothes, and so could not impress others by his wardrobe.
He could only establish his excellence through his social habits.
So he drank a lot.
Excellence in the theater is the art of giving things away.
The excellent actor strives not to fix, to codify, but to create for the moment, freely, without pausing either to corroborate what he or she has done or to appreciate the creation.(This is why theatrical still photographs are many times stiff and uninteresting – the player in them is not acting, which is what he or she is trained and, perhaps, born to do, but posing — indicating feelings — which is the opposite of acting.)
A life in the theater is a life spent giving things away.
It is a life mobile, unstable, unsure of employment, of acceptance.
The future of the actor is made uncertain not only by chance, but by necessity – intentionally.
Our problems – like the problems of any professional group – are unique.
Our theatrical drolleries, necessities, and peculiarities may be diverting to others, but they are fascinating to ourselves.
The question of who did what to whom, who forgot his lines, what the producer said to the propman, who got and lost what part to whom and why (‘This is the real story. I was there’) is the endless interesting inquiry.
We in the theater tell stories about and on ourselves and our colleagues, and these stories are exactly the same ones Aristophanes told to and on his friends. They are attributed to different personalities, but the stories are the same. The problems and the rewards are the same.
It is important to tell and retell stories, as the only real history of the ephemeral art is an oral history; everything fades very quickly, and the only surety is the word of someone who was there – who talked to someone who was there, who vouches for the fact that someone told him she had spoken to a woman who knew someone who was there.
It all goes very quickly, too.
Apprenticeship becomes rewarded with acceptance or rejection. This seems to happen overnight, and the event we have decided on as the turning point in a career was, looking back, quite probably not it at all.
A life in the theater is a life with the attention directed outward, and memory and the substantiation of others is very important.
We acquire skills through constant practice. They accrue in increments so small that we seem to be making no progress. We lose competence in the same way – taking for granted our hard-won habits and barely aware they are leaving us.
At the end of a performance, or the end of a season, the only creation the performer has left is him– or herself. This, and artifacts: clippings, programs.
Which is, perhaps, one reason we love stories.
‘Do you remember…?’ also must mean, ‘I remember. Don’t I?’
At the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, Sanford Meisner said, ‘When you go into the professional world, at a stock theater somewhere, backstage, you will meet an older actor – someone who has been around awhile.
"He will tell you tales and anecdotes about life in the theater.
‘He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man.’
Not only do these people exist, but as one continues a theatrical career, one has a tendency to turn into them. At least I find that I do.
We certainly all need love. We all need diversion, and we need friendship in a world whose limits of commitment (a most fierce commitment) is most times the run or the play.
Camus says that the actor is a prime example of the Sisyphean nature of life.
This is certainly true, and certainly not novel, and additionally there is this: a life in the theater need not be an analogue to ‘life.’ It is life.
It is the choice and calling of a substantial number of persons — craftspersons and artists — and has been for a very long time.
My play, A Life in the Theater, is, though I may have led you to believe otherwise, a comedy about this life.
It is an attempt to look with love at an institution we all love, The Theater, and at the only component of that institution (about whom our feelings are less simple), the men and women of the theater – the world’s heartiest mayflies, whom we elect and appoint to live out our dreams upon the stage.
the art is inside
