"Geez, I'd like to do that...I wonder if they get paid anything" - Liev Schrieber

Day 29

I'm a theatre nerd. To the extreme. Want to know why? When I get bored I go to the New York Times Theatre section online and just read the articles they have on random plays. They do this really neat thing where they'll interview an actor or playwright about a particular play they are doing at that time. Then they'll make a slideshow and put the audio from the interview with it. It's fascinating to watch and listen to. One that I just found is by Liev Schrieber. He is currently acting in a revival of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge".


http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/25/theater/20100125-liev-schreiber-multimedia/index.html


I've never read the play so I don't know exactly what it's about. I'm not a big Arthur Miller fan. I feel like his plays are formulaic a lot of the time. There's the father figure who is the backbone of the family, the wallowing mother who stays strong but will break at any instant there is weakness in the family, the son or other male who is troubled and reveals some deep secret, and the other random wilting flower girl. I like to read the plays by themselves, but when you read one after the other, it all kind of flows together, like dejavu. I probably can't talk, I'm just and undergrad and have read only a handful of his plays.

But, back to the interview. I really want to see his performance in the show because he is getting rave reviews, and this interview is just icing on the cake. He seems like an extremely intelligent actor. I won't get into this now, but I truly believe that the best actors are some of the smartest people in the world. I think you have to be smart to be a good actor. You have to take into account so many different aspects of a role on top of analyzing a script and so much more. Anybody can act. I really believe that any person can get on a stage an act. But the thing that separates a good actor from a bad one is intelligence. Now mind you, I know there are exceptions to the rule. There are some really good actors who are dumb as a rock and some really bad actors who have a PhD...I get that. But I find, more times than naught, the better actors are very well-roundedly smart.

Yes, I made up a word, deal with it :)