One thing I’ve always wanted from my friends and co-workers that I never receive is honest-to-God constructive criticism.  It’s just so hard to get people to tell you what they think of the shows that I’ve done.  No one will give a straight answer when all is said and done.

Your parents will always love your performance, no matter what. And even if they didn’t, they’d never tell you.
Your friends and castmates don’t want to hurt your feelings (or ruin future networking ops).
Your director doesn’t want to lower morale and/or admit that he/she screwed up in casting you.
Any random audience member is going to say SOMETHING positive to your face.
Critics’ reviews, if any, are generally going to focus on the show as a whole rather than individual things you can do to improve your own performance.

When I took my first Directing class and had to direct a one-act, one thing that Doc told us was that we were not allowed to perform in our own show.  His reasoning was simple:  you can’t see yourself on-stage

In film and TV, you often have directors making cameos or even starring in their own shows.  This works because of the simple fact that they can see themselves on screen and see if it works or not.  An actor on stage can’t do that.

As an actor, I rely on someone else to tell me what I can do to better my performance.  Not a show has gone by where I haven’t asked the director on multiple occasions what I could do better — ESPECIALLY on nights when he doesn’t give me notes at all.  It’s imperative to me that each performance be better than the last, and there’s no note that I hate worse than “You’re fine”.

Fine? That doesn’t help me at all.  First of all, the entire performance can’t be “fine”.  There’s always, always room for improvement.  So what parts are “fine”, what parts are “good” and what parts are “not-so-good”?  Help me out here, man.

As a director, I strive to provide as much honest criticism to my cast and crew as possible.  If I’m not happy with the way something is going, I speak up.  If someone is talking too fast, I slow them down.  If someone keeps changing the blocking, I put them back on track.  If someone is seriously misinterpreting a character or doesn’t understand a punch line or is simply reciting his lines or seems to stumble over her lines, I’ll speak up.  I’m not going to be rude about it, but I’m going to be firm.

“Matt, you need to slow down.”
“Okay.”

(later)

“Matt, you need to slow down.”
“Okay.”
“No, listen.  Your character is setting up all of Zoe and Adam’s punch lines, so the audience needs to be able to understand you.  You’re speaking so fast that nobody will get the punch lines, because they didn’t understand the joke.  Make sense?”
“Ohhhh, i see.”
“Yeah.  Slow down.”

The above example is a true story from my last show.  I had to tell his one guy to slow down every five minutes.  It was insane.  Opening night, he was still a little fast, but he had slowed down considerably — enough for the audience members who paid attention to get almost all of the jokes.  He often came to me after rehearsals and said “How am I doing?”

I refused to answer with just “You’re fine.”  On the nights when he did well, I told him so.  “You were a lot slower tonight, which is good.  You didn’t miss very many lines at all, which is good.  You’ve got the personality of the character down pat, although he’s a little more sarcastic and a little less nice.  Overall, good job.  I have some specific notes that i”ll give you tomorrow.”

I’m pretty sure he appreciated my candor.

I want YOU to be the best actors you can be.  I’m going to do everything in my power to make that happen.

So why doesn’t anyone else do the same for me?

Over at Angry White Guy in Chicago, Don often breaks out into angry rants (fits his blog title!) about every topic under the sun, from tourists to theatre, politics to gas prices, stupid hats to idiot bloggers calling for civility. In his latest post, “Is being ‘civil’ just another way to shut people up?”, Don argues that his ranting style brings honesty to a culture and community that simply isn’t used to being honest. And let’s face it, folks, he’s right.

When is the last time someone came to one of your performances and, when asked how it went, said “That was a shitty show”? Honestly, when did someone give you NEGATIVE feedback? They don’t. Or if they do, they cushion it with “Well, I didn’t like this part so much *mumble*becauseithoughtitwasstupid*mumble*, BUT I liked your performance. You were so funny!” They deflect the negative criticism while focusing on the positive.

One of Don’s favorite pasttimes was to rip Scott Walters a new one each week. And each week, Scott would retaliate. It always resulted in interesting conversations and arguments for us readers, but to be honest, when the overarching plot of both blogs should have been moving forward, they were standing still, rehashing the same arguments over and over. Many readers, including myself, put out a call for civility.

Don clearly takes offense at this statement. Why should he be civil? Clearly, we’re just trying to shut him up.

That’s not the case.

It’s one thing to say “This Pine Tree cigarette sucks donkey balls” and quite another to say “This Pine Tree cigarette sucks donkey balls because I feel like I’m smoking a picnic table and I think I’m gonna puke”

The first is just antagonistic and worthy of you wearing an “I’m a fucking retard” hat. The second expresses the same feeling, but offers justification which a) validates your opinion in that at least fact-based opinion and b) lets them know exactly why you felt their product sucked donkey balls.

Any time I call for civility, that’s what I’m asking for — not just criticism but constructive criticism. Meaningful feedback that can be acted upon.

I feel like Don’s review of GreyZelda’s The Skriker was a good one — he pointed out the flaws, essentially saying “I felt like this was crap and could’ve been a lot better, and here’s why…” As a director, I would have walked away with a lot of useful information from that. I might not agree with the criticism, but I’d at least listen and learn. The next night, I might watch it with the newfound information and notice what that person was talking about — or decide that their complaint wasn’t relevant (i.e. it only happened that one night, or perhaps you had intended something to work this way — in which case, you need to figure out why they didn’t get it, etc etc).

Just because you don’t like something I did does NOT mean that I’m obligated to follow your suggestions. It simply means that you had an opinion. And most people don’t just make comments like “That was horseshit” without at least a semi-good reason. So if find out what that reason was, I can maybe make it more clear next time.

Be honest. Be critical. Be constructively critical.

For you theatre people out there, if you honestly don’t like something — SAY SO. If you don’t say anything, we’ll never know and we’ll never change! We’ll assume it just works and keep on keeping on. But if you say something, then at least you can rest in the knowledge that you put in your six cents (gas prices, you know) and that if they don’t take your criticism to heart, then you’ve done all you can.

Cause let’s be honest, folks. There’s a lot of shitty theatre going on out there. And we put up with it because we’re too nice to say otherwise. There’s a lot of good theater out there, too. You know what separates the good theatre from the shitty theatre? Criticism. Lots and lots of constructive criticism. These guys get advice from people they trust so that they know what works and what doesn’t.

Anyone who doesn’t accept constructive criticism and at least listens to it with an open mind and hopes to learn is a fucking moron and deserves to wear Don’s stupid hat.

Be honest. Be bold. Be in-your-face. Be constructive.

I often get into discussions (I guess you could call them arguments) about the best actors and whether so-and-so is a good actor or not. Usually, my definition of a good actor isn’t the same as the other person’s. In fact, I would go so far as to say that my definition is not the normal definition of a good actor.

I consider a good actor to be one that can change personalities, change physical behavior, and change their reactions to fit the part of each character. In other words, a good actor is someone who, when you see them in two different roles, you don’t recognize them.

There are plenty of good actors out there — unfortunately, most of them are not in movies or on TV. In fact, I’m going to go out on another limb and say that most movie actors aren’t good actors. Popular favorites like Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, and Denzel Washington aren’t good actors. Before you jump up in horror at my blasphemy, take a minute and see my reasoning here.

Let’s take Julia Roberts as an example. There is no doubt in my mind (or anybody’s mind) that Julia Roberts is a movie star. She’s a very bankable actress. Actually, she’s one of the most bankable actresses out there, making something like $25 million per film (Julia Roberts’ Salary). This is not an opinion, this is fact. Julia Roberts is a movie star.

Is she a good actress though? I sincerely doubt it. You can find a sampling of reviews at Defamer.com. As you can see, they’re pretty negative. She was boring and intimidating, she couldn’t maintain her Southern accent, she was awkward and tense, and she was unsatisfying and ultimately ruined the play.

You see, the difference lies in the method through which the audience sees the performance. Julia Roberts has been in several blockbuster movies, including Erin Brockavich and Runaway Bride. She did a pretty good job in those. However, for any given shot, she had to maintain character for as long as that shot lasted. Should she make a mistake, no problem! Just reshoot the scene.

On Broadway, or any live theatre for that matter, you only get one shot. You have the whole rehearsal process to screw up, but come opening night, you better have it down. And it’s not just for a few minutes either. You have to hold that character in your mind for hours. It’s not easy. It’s not supposed to be.

There are plenty of actors out there who have made it a point to be different, to be able to carry a variety of roles. Some of my favorites include Leonardo DiCaprio (salary), Kevin Spacey ($4.5 mil for The Negotiator), and Michael Caine (no salary listed).  These guys are definitely paid what they deserve, if not too little.  There are plenty of others, sure. Johnny Depp ($20 mil for Pirates 3) is amazing, but he has what I call “Tom Cruise Syndrome.” TCS is when I can’t stop thinking of the character as the actor.

When I see a Depp movie, I always think of him as Depp, not Willy Wonka or Sweeney Todd or Inspector Whatever-his-name was. When I see Mission Impossible, I don’t think Ethan — I think Tom Cruise. Kate Winslet has TCS (for me, anyway), as well as numerous other actors. Morgan Freeman, Adam Sandler, etc. I will admit that each of these actors I’ve mentioned has had performances that completely blew me away (Adam Sandler in Spanglish, Tom Cruise in Collateral, Depp in the first Pirates of the Caribbean, etc). But by and large, I attribute those changes to directors, not to the actors. I could be way off on that, though.

A friend of mine has this terrible habit of rocking on his heels when he gets nervous. Every single time he’s on stage, he’ll rock on his heels at some point. He also has some other mannerisms that repeatedly show up in his performances. Often, I’ll point those out to him, and he works hard to reign those nervous behaviors in. When he manages to reign them in, he is a phenomenal actor. It’s distracting, though, to see six performances in six different shows, and he has the same physical mannerisms in each one, when the characters are completely different characters. Sometimes the rocking on heels works — like Nicky in On the Verge, but sometimes it doesn’t, like when he played General Whats-his-name in Arms and the Man.

Of course, my definition is slanted towards stage acting, but theoretically, it should be able to carry both ways. After all, many actors have transitioned from film to stage and back again with no trouble at all. The trouble truly lies with the producers and with the fact that some actors are hired because of their performances in other movies. I’m sure Tom Cruise could be a phenomenal actor if he chose — but people don’t want him to play Collateral roles. They want to see Cruise in roles similar to Minority Report and Mission Impossible. They want Maverick back. And until he pushes himself to become a better, more diverse actor, that’s what they’ll get.