My strength is with actors. I think I'm good at working with them to get the best performances, at seeing what it is that they have and that the story needs.
Sydney PollackRead
When you rehearse a play, you spend four weeks with one goal in mind - to wean the actor away from you. You want the actor to become completely independent and to understand all the emotional and psychological moves within the character.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The goal of rehearsing a play is to help actors develop their independence in understanding their characters.
In this quote, Sydney Pollack emphasizes the importance of rehearsal in theater as a process designed to cultivate an actor's independence. Rather than simply following directions, the actor must immerse themselves in the nuances of their character's emotional and psychological landscape, ultimately leading to a more authentic performance. This independence is crucial for the actor to truly embody the role and convey it to the audience.
Themes
ActingIndependenceTheaterRehearsalCharacter
In practice
Example use cases
In a drama class, when discussing the importance of rehearsal.
More from Sydney Pollack
All quotes →And I taught acting for years, and without knowing it that was the real thing that started bending me toward directing.
Sydney PollackRead
If you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn't go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I've fooled everybody. I've made personal films all along. I just made them in another form.
Sydney PollackRead
It's my job to motivate the audience to believe. I have to get them to suspend their judgment in favor of involvement.
Sydney PollackRead
You hope that the responsibility of making movies will fall into the hands of essentially moral people.
Sydney PollackRead
Making a movie is a network of decisions that keep multiplying as you go. You leave a trail of decisions behind you, and that's how you start to see the shape of what you've done. When you get far enough, you turn around and say, 'Ha, that's the movie.' It's only then that you find out if it's going to work or not.
Sydney PollackRead
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