Theatre Thursday - What’s an Actor Anyway?

Today's post is long, and I couldn't think of any pertinent pictures to include, so I put in a bunch of kitty pictures to keep you entertained. And there's a special treat at the end...



I had a really interesting conversation with a friend the other night about the artistry involved in being an actor. She, an actor, was explaining to me that she didn’t consider herself an “artist,” ceding that title to the writers whose words she interprets, and the directors whose guidance she follows.

It’s a perfectly valid viewpoint, and I know from personal experience that even if she doesn’t see herself as such, she performs with the quality and expertise of one who might readily call himself or herself an “artist.” But I think the question, “Are actors artists?” is an interesting one, with more complicated an answer than one might imagine.

I, myself, felt similarly to my friend just as I was entering college. For me, an actor’s job was to show up and do what a director told him. Of course there was outside work that I would do - research my character, break down a scene, hunt for insight into the play’s meaning, etc. – but I regarded this effort as more or less a duty, the tedium of an actor’s work similar to filling out TPS reports as an office manager. How good an actor was depended on his ability to fulfill the requests of playwright and director.

Speaking personally, this was a huge impediment to my development as an actor, leading me to become lazy and disinterested in the actual work of acting. I started to approach roles as if solving a math problem: How do I make this line fit into this scene score? If I modulate my voice here, will that make me come across as more authoritative? I worried less about creativity and originality, and more about whether my beats were organized cohesively.

And it led to acting becoming thoroughly boring for me.

But as I meandered my way through my undergraduate degree, something happened. I started to realize that I had more freedom as an actor than I had imagined. I found that good directors were less interested in my geometric calculations of how a scene should progress than in exploring and making discoveries of what worked and didn’t work. They were actually interested in my ideas and concerns about my role. Putting on a play was no longer about adhering dogmatically to my original perception of the words on the page, but mischievously deviating to find that there may indeed be (gasp!) more than one way to approach a text.


How silly I felt! All of a sudden, I realized that the technical skills of acting that I had striven so hard to learn (cheating out, comic timing, vocal training, presence, physical work) were being trumped by the ability to think differently and innovatively. Artistically, perhaps…

But is an actor by definition an artist? Dictionary.com seems to think so. They are specifically mentioned in its definition for “artist,” alongside the overarching definition, “a person who produces works in any of the arts that are primarily subject to aesthetic criteria.” And do we think of actors in the same way that we think of musicians, dancers, creative writers, painters? For the most part, the answer is, of course, yes.

Yet something still holds me back. Though technically an actor is an artist by definition, what we’re really after here is the answer of what separates true artists from the rest of the pack. What distinguishes the Beatles from a cover band? What turns Johnny Depp into Johnny Depp?

Here’s what I think the answer is: A desire to work.


An actor-artist not only has the ability to illuminate words on a page and follow a director’s orders, but also an unflinching drive to make his or her performance the best it can possibly be. Great actors can not only portray a character, but also explore the infinite ideas that can be brought to a performance. They are not satisfied with a good performance or even a great one; they hunger for the ability to dig deeper, find a new angle, see with different eyes.

After all, actors are hired for all of the skills they bring to the table – not just their looks and their technical ability. A director of Shakespeare will want someone who can come up with creative solutions for those oddly-scanning lines; a director of devised work will want an actor with amazing improv skills to fuel the potential script.

It’s a rookie mistake to believe an actor’s job is to become a character – to play a role so convincingly that an audience member actually believes that you are Willy Loman. It will never happen. Always conscious that they are in a theatre, no audience would ever actually believe that what is on the stage was real. Instead, actors are meant to find ways to better tell the story being told. There is no perfect fit – no actor can simply plug into any part and do it perfectly. My recent time as a director has shown me that regardless of how you imagine a role to be played, the actor will never be able to do it the same way as you envision in your head. But this should not be looked upon as an actor letting a director down. Rather, it should be seen as a mutation (or, perhaps, adaptation) in the production, with the end result being a collaboration different from what any one creator has envisioned, but hopefully pleasing to an audience.


There was a time when directors weren’t even needed. Actors alone were able to perform the words of Shakespeare and Moliere, unaided by a clear overlord. With the rise of film, the director has somewhat diminished the perceived stature of the performer, but ask anyone in the world, and they’ll quickly be able to name their favorite actor. Favorite director? Not so much.

Although the act of being onstage is in itself creative and artistic, I think to an extent that my friend is right. It’s unfair to simply call an actor an artist based on the nature of his work. Acting is a profession not too terribly different from being a businessman or hairstylist, and we do not by definition refer to these workers as “artists.”

But the crème de la crème of businessmen have an uncanny passion for making deals and bolstering profits that regular businessmen don’t have. In their field, they are artists. Some hairstylists have an incurable desire to do the perfect –do, bringing forth hair that is truly beautiful. They are artists.

Some actors can’t help but constantly improve their work, never feeling that a role is complete or a play perfected. It’s this zeal for continuing to explore and create that makes an actor an artist, rather than simply a professional. And if an actor is an artist, he or she should be viewed as a partner of the director and writer, not just an employee.