Bring us........a shrubbery!

I want to talk in this blog about landscaping. And since it's my blog, what I say goes! :) OK, hang in here, it is still a blog about acting and performing, read on......

Imagine in your mind a wide flat area spread out before you. Just an expanse of land laying there, flat,  and uninteresting. Perhaps a stretch of dessert, or a plain of dead grass. Now, let us change the view, picture a different landscape before you. Perhaps flat in the foreground, but leading to some gentle sloping hills, with trees of different shapes and sizes. There is a river that winds in and out of your view, and far away, wonderful mountains rise, blue and majestic. And off to the left, a powerful waterfall cascades down to a lake, glittering and shimmering.

Now, you get to choose which of those to stare at. Oh sure, beauty could be found in the starkness of the flat landscape, but if you look at it for more than five minutes, you are likely to become bored. Rather, most of us would prefer to look at the landscape with different aspects to it, filled with interesting features, nooks and crannies, (mmm English muffins...sorry got distracted there!).
     
                                                                  
Now it is no great leap to think of how an actor or other performer, also could have a flat, bare landscape. I know the trend these days are for spareness in acting, being a minimalist. But if that were taken to the extreme, how very dull would the performance be! Rather, we would like to see an actor fill a role with variety, highs and lows, moments of intensity and moments of calm. They create for us a landscape with many levels, interesting things to look at. We like performances with wonderful moments of passion, but also moments of stillness, or sweetness or even evil. A performance that is all played at one level, with no variety is just dead boring.

Think of this. We can listen to an audio version of many books and plays. The good ones have a reader with a great voice, who uses that voice to create a vocal landscape. At times they speed up, slow down, add emphasis. The best readers give a great landscape. I have a Kindle that stores books for me to read, and it has a feature where a computerized voice will read words aloud to me. It is an Ok voice, not like a robot, but still rather flat and uninteresting. If I want to fall asleep fast, I go with that sound. To be entertained, I download a book with a great actor reading it.

Audiences want the same. Rather than a flat dullness, they want heart, soul and life. YOUR heart, soul and life. So when you perform, landscape well.

J.T. Turner
The Actors Sensei