Actors // Current

Equalizer Actor Edward Woodward has died

British actor Edward Woodward has died aged 79. His agent said he was... more

AnnieMole
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6 days ago
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Twilight 3 Eclipse Movie Vancouver Set News&Pictures

The Latest From the Twilight saga 3 Eclipse Vancouver Filming Set Latest Pics Of... more

TrailerBlazer
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9 days ago
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Twilight Eclipse 3 Movie Trailer Leaked Scenes

New behind the scenes footage of the upcoming Twilight 3 Eclipse Movie Trailer

TrailerBlazer
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9 days ago
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Katt Williams Arrested For Burglary

Comedian Katt Williams was arrested outside of Atlanta, Georgia on Sunday night... more

Makavelli45
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12 days ago
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24 comments

Arthur Romeo

Highlight: We saw talented performer Arthur Romeo take part in Sweet Baby J'ai's... more

jellynoose
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14 days ago
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Top 8 actors turned lingerie models

It’s no secret that a famous and easily recognizable face is the key to a successful... more

espl4
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18 days ago
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COMPLETED: Ask Chiwetel Ejiofor anything you want...

Chiwetel Ejiofor (American Gangster, Children of Men, Talk to Me) is taking over... more

chapinyoung
added this
24 days ago
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13 comments

"Thrill the World" Dancers Transform Into Zombies to Reanimate Thriller in Texas!

By 6:45 Saturday night, I finally had my roar turns down pat. But that... more

remanns
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26 days ago
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2 comments

Paul Haggis Ditches Scientology

After 35 years as a member of the Church of Scientology, Paul Haggis is calling it... more

TrevTar
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26 days ago
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29 comments

Microphones Create Controversy on Broadway (Seriously)

"On stage at the Broadway revival of Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs" are seven actors—and 23 hidden microphones. The new musical "Fela!" has 80 speakers hung around the theater, and mic transmitters embedded in a character's tap shoes. And during one song in "The Phantom of the Opera," actors choose whether to sing along—or just mouth the words—to a prerecorded vocal track.

With theater producers increasingly reliant on revenues from touring shows playing spaces with as many as 4,000 seats, more shows are being rigged with miniature mics and high-tech sound systems to project the performances to the far reaches of the theaters. Sophisticated sound mixing systems can make singers' voices sound better than they would otherwise. And, unbeknownst to most audience members, some performers in musicals are occasionally backed by prerecorded vocal tracks, allowing them to sing quietly, or sometimes not at all, during strenuous dance numbers or scenes with complex effects.

Just as Bob Dylan was booed when he "went electric" at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, the theater community is divided over the growing manipulation of sound on stage. Manny Azenberg, 75 years old, whose first Broadway show as a producer was "The Lion in Winter" in 1966, agreed to allow hidden mics on stage in "Brighton Beach" but refused to put body mics on actors. "You lose quality, you lose intimacy, you lose the reality of the theater," he says.

Many theatergoers have come to expect the miking effect. Microphones on stage allow actors to speak more naturally, emulating the more realistic performance style that audiences are used to from movies and television. Audiences also expect entertainment to be louder generally, after years of surround-sound in movie theaters. Sound designers say it's necessary to turn up the volume on actors as Broadway theaters themselves get louder, with automated lighting and set-moving equipment making a continual background noise. "There's very little true quiet in the theater anymore," says Tom Clark of Acme Sound Partners, which is designing the sound for "Bye Bye Birdie" and other shows this season.

Playwright David Mamet is known for refusing to use any mics at all in his plays. It may be a losing battle. At a recent performance of "Oleanna," his play about sexual harassment now on Broadway, an audience member complained at a "talk back" for theatergoers after the show. Dennis Sandman, a 56-year-old financial planner from East Brunswick, N.J., said he couldn't hear the play from the balcony. "The actors should've worn mics," he told the group. "It's important when you have one of these talkathons to hear it clearly."

Stage sound isn't always invisible. Actor Pablo Schreiber was half-naked for much of "Desire Under the Elms," a fraught drama by Eugene O'Neill on Broadway earlier this year. Audiences seated at the front of the 1,623-seat St. James Theatre could see a battery pack in his long johns with his microphone wire running down his bare back.

Mr. Schreiber says initially he was opposed to using a mic, but later realized it helped involve the audience in ways an acoustic performance might not have in a large theater. During his character's love scene with his voluptuous stepmother, played by Carla Gugino, he could whisper to her and look into her eyes instead of projecting outwards.""On stage at the Broadway revival of Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs" are seven... more

St_Alia_10191
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27 days ago
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Depp Named Sexiest Man of All Time

Okay I have some real issues with this list, but here it is in all it's glory.... more

hpseaton
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1 month ago
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1 comment

The Trouble With Actor-Speak

Hadley Freeman writes, "Last weekend, with my brow raised high, I attended the New Yorker festival which was full of people talking, very earnestly, very cerebrally. In other words, it was like stepping right into the magazine, Purple Rose of Cairo-style. Perhaps because I got so carried away on this cloud of cerebralism, I did something I vowed never to do: I went to a talk by some actors.

I have always been interested in what I call actor-speak – and when I say "interested", I mean "intrigued in the way you might be by a man talking to himself, without having any desire to go over and engage him in conversation". However, while I continue to march past muttering men on park benches, I am, thanks to my job, an unwitting expert on actor-speak, having spent many hours of my life listening to actors bang on about their "love of the craft" and "the thing about [insert name of director] – he takes you on an emotional journey".

Some may call this argument prejudicial, but those who do have never spent a morning with Helen Hunt, listening to her expound on her skills. This has nothing to do with lack of respect for actors; just a lack of respect for the language they learn – perhaps at acting school – to describe what they do.

The New Yorker event sounded promising: its panel of pleasing scene-stealers included John Turturro and Joan Cusack. But when – just 10 minutes in – panel member and actor Richard Kind (you'll know him, look him up), said actors do theatre "to nourish themselves", I knew I'd made a grave tactical error. The verb "nourish" should only be used in a culinary context, and even then with restraint.

And, lo, they kept a-coming: there was "our craft" and "the journey one goes on". To finish, actor Christine Baranski announced that "acting is like creating life". Considering this comment came straight after the clip showing her in the sitcom Cybill, that seemed a pretty awesome claim. Shrieking onset at Cybill Shepherd v being God – I guess it's six of one, half-dozen of the other.

Does anyone else on the planet talk about their jobs like this? Well, having spent eight years reporting on fashion, I can assure you they most certainly do. Designer Miuccia Prada, for example, said that her collection for Miu Miu next season was about "questioning innocence". This should be translated to the layman as: "I decided to do cat prints.""Hadley Freeman writes, "Last weekend, with my brow raised high, I attended the New... more

St_Alia_10191
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1 month ago
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Delayed Response Short Film

Delayed Response Short Film synopsis Delayed Response is a short film which... more

birthrightx
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1 month ago
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Village Girl

A Village Girl Goes to an Audition Digi Photos View with music Mixed Media... more

thushari
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1 month ago
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The Hold On Success

Brian and Kristina started Holdon Log: A wonderful tool for actors I remember... more

jellynoose
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1 month ago
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2 comments

50 adverts featuring Hollywood stars

Movie stars and advertisements have always been an awkward mix...here are 50 of the... more

Skyscraper08
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1 month ago
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Rupert Goold is wrong: Judi Dench is not 'strangling theatre'

"To claim that Dame Judi Dench is “strangling theatre” by suggesting that younger actors ought to have a bit more respect for the traditions to which they belong, as Rupert Goold has done, is insulting, absurd and maybe even self-serving. The director is hugely gifted, but he’s surely guilty of Year Zero, clean-slate thinking.

For him, freshness is too often about imposing his own clever-clever ideas on plays, not in discerning and fulfilling an author’s aims and intentions. And that’s not a generational problem, as Goold must have discovered when members of his own cast rebelled against his reinterpretation of King Lear, with the result that it was a bit more Shakespearean when it moved from Liverpool to London.

On the other hand, he’s right to defend younger actors from any inference that they’re less able than their predecessors. He’s equally right to add that they’re more physically adroit than, say, many members of the Gielgud generation. One can only judge the quality of actors from their performances on stage and my own recent experiences tell me that the future of acting and therefore of the British theatre is very bright indeed. Just last month I went to the little Bush Theatre in West London to see a play called 2nd May 1997, was delighted by a mainly young cast, and thrilled by a total unknown, a recent RADA graduate called Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

She played the unlikely pick-up of an earnest Lib Dem on election night — and suggested vulnerability, need, damage, even desperation, behind a tipsy, flirtatious and immaculately observed exterior. Would her and others’ performances have been better if they’d immersed themselves in theatrical history or watched their seniors from the wings, as Dame Judi did? In this case, probably not. In the case of major classical actors performing major classical plays, well, maybe.

Vanessa Redgrave is said to be able to walk on stage from the wings and, without obvious preparation or missing a beat, to transform herself into whatever character she is playing. American Method actors such as Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino will spend hours thinking, feeling, willing themselves into a role. Dame Judi herself tries to have a quiet, reflective time, girding herself for the fray in her dressing room and, when she’s not on stage, turning on the Tannoy and listening to the unfolding production.

To watch Sir Ian McKellen or Dame Judi herself evolve their characters in rehearsal and then present the result on stage is obviously an education.

But each performer must find his or her own way to excellence. It’s not as if the pressure is missing. In a profession where unemployment often exceeds 90 per cent, performers who fail to exploit every opportunity for self-improvement — well, they would have to be foolish, self-destructive, mad.""To claim that Dame Judi Dench is “strangling theatre” by suggesting that younger... more