Playing for Real: Actors on Playing Real People (review)

Mary Luckhurst opens the introduction to Playing for Real: Actors on Playing Real People with the claim that in contemporary society, "film and television have reflected a growing obsession with the real throughout the world," promoting a fascination with celebrity culture (1). She states that "despite the explosion of interest in representing persons of historical and contemporary significance on stage and on screen, there has been virtually no attempt to examine this phenomenon from an actor's perspective" (ibid.). Luckhurst and her co-editor Tom Cantrell offer Playing for Real to address that oversight and to document, through the interview transcripts they include, what they call "representations of the real," or the portrayal of a real person as a character. They hope to ignite a new thread of theatre research concerning the process of portraying an actual person onstage or on screen, and desire to help actors and acting theorists better understand and appreciate such approaches.

The editors do not call what follows the introduction a "workbook" or "methodology," but rather an invitation to start a discussion of the performance processes of creating a character based on a real person. Cantrell and Luckhurst conducted interviews with sixteen actors who are critically acknowledged for their portrayals of real people, and these resulting transcripts make up the bulk of the book. The majority of the actors included have played several real people throughout their careers, including Simon Callow (Mozart, Oscar Wilde) and Elena Roger (Eva Peron, Edith Piaf ). The book includes the interview transcripts without commentary or argument, thus allowing their subjects to steer the interviews where they feel the discussion should go. Cantrell and Luckhurst, in fact, withhold any analysis and refuse to draw conclusions among interviews in an attempt not to codify a scholarly approach and risk imposing limitations on what they consider an overlooked topic.

The editors do, however, identify three recurring themes in their interviews: researching the part, acting strategies, and the relationship between performer and audience—which provide, almost, a through line (3). For these actors, the process of researching a role takes precedence when playing a real person. Many of the interviewees assert the importance of research in attempting to determine the subject's inner life based on how he or she moved and expressed his-/herself. Callow, for example, discusses how he imagines miniaturist Thomas Cosway might view the world based on his research on Cosway's artistic medium, which is confined within a tiny oval, while Roger speaks of determining Eva's thoughts based on the amount of tension she observed in her hands when she gave speeches. Most of the actors included emphasize that one ought not get lost in the research, but to continue to fulfill his/her obligations to the dramatic text. As with any dramaturgy, the actor must incorporate research in his/her understanding of the character and then set it aside, coming to a state that Henry Goodman calls "a prepared openness to the starting point of the play" (79).

Once the actors begin the process of research, a pathway for approaching the character (and a second theme) begins to emerge, and the book's collected interviews offer glimpses into their various strategies. Timothy West, for example, reveals his use of a Stanislavskian approach, investigating the character's internal beats moment to moment to determine if he has gotten to the truth of his character. Others dismiss that approach altogether; for example, Callow shares how prominently Chekhov's psychological gestures play into his characterization. Several other actors indicate the significance of discovering the subject's vocal patterns and tone as a way into the character. Joseph Mydell says that he gave immense study to Robert Mugabe's speech and movement patterns not only to convey his exterior presence, but also to tap into his psychological states of being throughout the show (118-19).

With the third theme, the relationship between performer and audience, Cantrell and Luckhurst relate how their subjects feel the audience responds to...