Your point is not invalid, though obviously I do not see it that way. No need to rehash everything I have stated, but I will just point out, for brevity’s sake, that that is why I included the final sentence. Yin and Yang. Middle ground. An actor can go too far, certainly, in expecting a certain response. (Though I maintain my article is more about acknowledgment than expectation.) But an actor can also carry to extreme the notion that the only thing happening at any given moment is him and the script, and that the audience ought to be what it may. Every audience is different, yes, but the medium exists to move and to entertain, not simply to regurgitate the work of a playwright. It is forgetting that truth that leads to problems, and that is the arc of what I was saying here.

Thank you for your comments, and for reading my column.

–Ty Unglebower

“Any actor who tells you they don’t care if the audience laughs or applauds I venture to say is either lying to you, or to himself. If such people really mean what they say, it is to their detriment. For if you do not care about audience reaction, then you are refusing to acknowledge them. If you do that, you are not respecting them.”

When an actor goes out on stage excepting an audience to laugh, cry, applaud or any other emotional reaction and then doesn’t get the reaction he wants in certain places he is not trying to perform but manipulate the audience. The actor’s job isn’t to manipulate the audience to get a certain reaction but to perform the play and hope the audience is engaged in whatever way they desire. Audience tastes and reactions will differ from night to night and from location to location. I have seen many an actor come off stage pissed that the audience didn’t laugh, cry, or do what the actor expected them to do at a certain time. I have always found that selfish.

Now you may say that by not caring that the actor isn’t acknowledging them. I say that it isn’t a case of not acknowledging them but instead it is the actor respecting the audience and whatever reaction they do have.

All my best,

Bill Aitken