ON ACTING: The Actor's Obligation

The actor has in performance a fiduciary trust: to enact the character and the character only; it is a betrayal of fiduciary trust to proselytize judgments for himself (as actor) or, for that matter, to be the overt speech-maker/PR-person for the writer. The writer’s thematic intent is served best when the actor serves his internal character function as character. The actor’s job in performance is to live the life of the character within the play, unconscious of the ultimate truth or meaning of the whole play. The true discovery and judgment…the author’s intent…is left perhaps for the character and always for the audience at the end of the performance…and should arise independent of, and often in spite of, any actor-judgments falsely imposed during the performance.