Not Hamlet

Quick! Someone buy me this book!

An essay in the Guardian UK by Janet Suzman shows me that this 1960's LAMDA grad w/RSC & film credits as well as a Dame of the British Empire has been thinking about this topic for a long time. 

A few choice quotes from the article:

What I am struck by – as I write in my new book, Not Hamlet, about the frail position of women in drama – is that none of the women are awarded interiority in nearly the same measure as the male characters.

Women have never been, perhaps never will never be, autonomous creatures, unshackled. Even Shakespeare ducked giving their thoughts extended airtime, as if listening to women was not quite worth it.

RTWT.


And here's a description of the book.

Roundtables from the Hollywood Reporter

For a while now, the Hollywood Reporter has been putting up group video interviews of actors during awards season.  Since Emmy noms are soon, they've just done a set with tv actors.  There are four interviews, roughly an hour each in length, separated into comedy and drama and men and women. 

I found gems in each of these interviews - ranging from Juliana Margulies' recommendation of an app for script work to Johnny Galecki reminiscing about the Roseanne set to Martha Plimpton and the comedy women talking about the intersection of female and comedy to the overall humility coming off of Kiefer Sutherland.

You can watch them at these links:

Comedy Women Roundtable
Comedy Men Roundtable
Drama Women Roundtable
Drama Men Roundtable

Let me know what you think! (I first found this via the website/blog Daily Actor)

On Making It Interesting

At a recent audition for an indie film, while I was using my prep time, I overheard two other actors discussing the sides.  One had decided to give the character a British accent.  Why?  She wanted to 'make it more interesting.'

Hoo boy!

I don't know how much research this actor had done, but the emails from the casting director had included a link to a website with more info for the film. From looking at that website, it was a pretty good guess that the characters they were casting at this session were at best, supporting characters, and probably in reality more like under-5's.  Characters who were not the focus of the story.  Characters who were there so that the leads had someone to talk to while they revealed major plot points, grew and changed emotionally, etc. 

Not characters who the viewer of the film was supposed to think 'that character is so interesting - I want to know more about her.'

I'm not saying these characters shouldn't be well-rounded, fully fleshed out, have an inner life.  Of course that's true.  But it behooves the actor to know why the character is there, what function the character has in the story, and to let that knowledge inform the choices.

Don't be funny if your character is the straight man.  Don't take focus when your character's function is to give focus to the lead. 

Figure out your job, and do it.  If you trust yourself with that, it's gonna be interesting.