the nashville theatre lost and found

leadership in acting

One of my favourite things about a life in the theatre is being able to watch almost anything and learn something valuable to my own life or career.

I was watching one of my much-loved sit-coms a few days ago. Let me rephrase that: I watch "The Golden Girls" rather religiously. With all I've learned from those four women about comedic timing, character consistency (among many other things) I wasn't surprised to notice something new, although I'm a bit bewildered that I never realized it before.

It was my umpteenth time enjoying the very last episode of the show, in which Bea Arthur's character Dorothy gets married and moves away. Then it suddenly dawned on me that "The Golden Girls" could not have properly ended if any of the other girls had left. It had to be Dorothy. Over the course of the show's run, she became the clear leader of the pack, not because her role was any bigger (it wasn't), but because she took charge as an actress. Bea Arthur commanded every minute of that show to the point that if she wasn't on screen, I think we were all wondering when she would reappear. Her consistency as the loving - forgive me - bitch was not matched by the other girls, as wonderful as they all were.

Although I'm not acting all that often anymore, seeing that episode with new eyes made me think of how we actors could take a lesson from Bea Arthur and learn to captivate our audiences so well that no matter the size of our parts, we are capable of leading a cast. One dilemma an audience often sees in a production - just as much with professional companies as with community productions - is that actors don't take as much initiative to take charge of the stage when they're on it. Especially when there is a clear "lead role," we tend to try to back down in order to let the "lead role" have their moment in the sun. The problem with that is not that lead roles don't deserve that time, but that it can't be left up to a role to demand the attention. It must be the actor. If the actor in the lead role doesn't have the chops to demand that, somebody else has to in order to keep the audience engaged. Even if all the leads in a show are wonderful at taking charge of the stage and owning their time, so must all of the roles with less time or fewer words on stage - there's no better way to be forgotten as an actor than to not volunteer yourself to be remembered.

Now, I'm not saying by any means that all characters need to fight for attention on a stage - that is often the worst possible course of action. However, we must all tastefully and wisely discern who should be in charge of the stage. On "The Golden Girls," I imagine after a few seasons of developing characters and seeing where the show was going, they all recognized that the nature of Bea Arthur and the character of Dorothy was the necessary focus in order to keep the show going, and I have a feeling that they would not have had the closure they needed when the show ended if it had been Blanche moving away to some other life or Rose going home to marry an old sweetheart from St. Olaf or Sofia returning to Sicily, or God forbid, dying. It had to be Dorothy leaving the family in order to create a true ending for everyone. And it was proven years later that the show could not have existed without her, with the trial and failure of "The Golden Palace" - aka the girls without Dorothy.

It needs to be the same for theatre actors - we all need the wisdom to discover by way of the characters themselves and the people who are playing them to decide as directors and casts who needs to own the stage. And when it is our responsibility, we need to own up to it for the sake of our audiences and our productions. Now, we don't all have the 8-year run of a sit-com to get that down, but the effect of "leadership acting" is enormous, and often sadly underrated.

Are YOU ready?