Twenty-eight productions in 4 years, yeah.  I've repeated a couple of titles in there.

>Can you tell me: do certain aspects of acting get easier the more
>experience you gain when you compare what you're like now with your
>first efforts? If so, which ones?
More than anything else, auditioning has gotten a lot easier.  I mean, it was never super nervewracking, since at the start, it was just kind of a lark, I didn't consider myself an actor by any means.  But it's a combination of it being sort of old hat by now, and having a track record of success that lets me take a relaxed attitude.  That really helps, especially when it comes to vocal auditions -- I've seen plenty of auditioners who you can tell, the problem is simply nerves, and wonder what lies underneath that.
Also, I can't tell if this is contrasting, or goes hand-in-hand, it's gotten easier to deal with rejection.  You know there will be another show, and another, and another, and you'll get one or two of those that maybe you couldn't have done but for that one.

>But in last night's show, no-one seemed to miss a beat. I don't get it.
>How can they be that cold in their delivery on opening night? Or maybe if
>I was following along with the script in my hands in would have been a
>different story?
First of all -- yes, almost certainly there were slips you didn't notice because they sounded natural or the actors just covered and kept going.  The audience SO rarely actually notices errors that seem obvious when you've been living with a script.  Earlier this year, I was doing The Odd Couple, and in the opening scene, which is a poker game, one of the poker buddies missed a cue.  There was a bit of silence (as happens in that kind of situation -- not too telling) then one of the others tried to cover, by giving his next line he could think of -- some 5 or 10 pages later in the scene.  Threw the entire action sequence into chaos.  A minute later, the guy playing Oscar tried to cover by giving the cue line for the phone to ring, which should have been coming up soon and was a necessary action point (that had flown by) to re-establish things, and ... the tech staff wasn't expecting it.  So nothing happened.  So he just walked over to the phone and picked it up and started talking.  We then semi-righted the ship and went on from there, repeating at one point some of the dialog we'd accidentally jumped to earlier.  After the show, audience reaction was along the lines of "oh, is that what happened?  I just got that the phone didn't ring."  That's pretty typical.
The other thing I have to say is that really, you should be pretty damn solid on your lines for opening night.  I mean, we've all had those tricky bits of verbiage you may paraphrase a bit too long and it may not be 100% set in stone for night one, but it should be pretty much there.  That's what those 5-10 full runs you have before opening night are for.

>I've read plenty about famous actors going up on lines or stumbling even
>on Broadway. So...what gives?
Going up is part of the experience, but that's a kind of random thing.  When it happens, you usually walk off stage repeating the line you blanked on to anyone who will listen to you.  You KNOW it, dammit, it just wouldn't begin to come out of your mouth right then due to synaptic misfire.




Edited by Rorgg - 9/02/12 at 11:21pm

Originally posted by micbarry There was this feeling of 'this is the very last time I will speak these words with this cast - go for it!'

You don't always get to a point in performing a show where everyone's so in sync that the play just seamlessly evolves, but when it happens, it's magic.  :)

I just revisited this thread after closing a show last weekend. First, let me say that I loved this play and loved the role I had in it.  It allowed me to play a whole range of emotions.  It was challenging and, in the end, very rewarding.