Marlon Brando and the Promise of Danger
Danger is the most important essence an actor can bring to the stage because it is nigh impossible to capture. The most dangerous actor in the history of the American Theatre is Marlon Brando.

Danger is the most important essence an actor can bring to the stage because it is nigh impossible to capture. The most dangerous actor in the history of the American Theatre is Marlon Brando.
Many non-theatre students who take an acting class think two things: It will be an easy class and acting is pretending to be something you are not. They are always fearful to learn how wrong they are on both counts. The good students overcome their overweening to discover new niches of existence and broader planes of self discovery.
I had another great discussion with Howard Stein this week, and our conversation turned from necessary writing, to the Mozart Syndrome, and then into the realm of imagination as described by the great acting teacher, Stella Adler.
When I was a wee lad — perhaps 8 or 9-years-old — I acted in a lot of community theatre plays and musicals.
Acting was an opportunity to escape an ordinary life for one of imagination and history and it was a tasting of a freedom that has sustained me ever since.
Theatre made me an escapee from the mandatory expectations of a pedestrian community where staying and longing were demanded over exploration and fulfillment.
The actor plays a unique role in society by bringing light and meaning to the relationship between the human and the ethereal.
The actor’s role is not to define life, but to interpret it through the blood and muscle of their bodies.
The actor is the heart of us, the beating of us, the rhythm of life within us all.
Without the actor in society, we crumble into our selfish selves and whine away the opportunities for insight into what made us thrive in the past while decaying in the now.
I was sorry to learn from Rosie O’Donnell’s blog that Broadway actor/singer/dancer and all-around-great-guy Jason Opsahl is dead. She misses him and so do I. Jason died of a brain tumor called “anaplastic astrocytoma” on Oct. 25, 2002. He was 39.
by Steve Gaines
the fourth wall has been shattered
blown away!
stage and house is all one…
no longer a clear line of departure between us and them
the actors… the audience
Continue reading → The Fourth Wall… Up In Smoke (An Actor's Experience in a Very Small Black Box)
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