How have watching plays affected me?

Well the subject of this post is how has watching plays change me and my perceptions on theatre. I think that college theatre is entirely different from professional theatre, as can be seen when I went to cleveland playhouse performance: Beethoven as I knew him, the CASE mfa performance: All's Well that Ends Well at the cleveland playhouse, and CASE's undegrad production: The Hedi Chronicles at Eldred Theatre.

Undergraduate student actors perform with basic acting skills beyond the high school level. They don't fidget in their places and have mastered the art of movement. What needs to be fine tuned is the actions they perform and the belivability of the actions, and not making them look 'fake' or 'acted'. One trouble actors seem to have is 'acting' as an actor. You need to actually be that charater on stage. I think Scoop had it on the Hedi Chronicles, but Hedi herself was not a belivable character as protrayed by the actor. She needed to be more well develped and belivable and not just 'playing a role' and 'doing this here' and 'that there'.

Graduate student actors such as the MFA students in All's Well that End's Well, were accomplished actors. They were belivable and well rounded in ther acting skills and were ready to go onto the stage as full time professional actors. Although All's Well could've been directed better because of the way the british director inseted some iffy politics (we don't want to be reminded of avan gard while watching something for entertainment. Especially if it's not our fault, it's our government's. When the president is in then you can do something like that, the american people on the other hand, no.)

And the professional actor of the Beethoven As I Knew Him, was well rounded to the point where he could perform a one person show with ease and simplicity, with added humor and accent and advanced character development. He kept the audience entertained without worrying about his role, and he was marvelous at keeping his energy and stamina up when there was only one guy doing it.

So how has watching plays changed me? It has changed me because now I know what the differences are between different acting groups and actors. I also cannot wait to see twelfth night at the Great Lakes Theatre festival.

Speaking of which there was an article in the paper about Tom Hanks in the Great Lakes Theatre festival in it's infancy days. How amazing.