THE ACTOR’S CRAFT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23529, 18 June 1938, Page 27

THE ACTOR’S CRAFT

Skill is recovering its authority on the stage as it is in the general life of the community, and bright young amateurs are learning sense by the most painful method: lack of employment, writes Mr St. John Ervine, the dramatic critic. Let no one suppose that mere industry is enough. Imagination remains at the most important clement in an artist’s composition. But imagination which is not related to experience and drawn up in a technique is waste of energy and life. Blake raved at the experts more than any man, but he took care not to practise his own preaching, and was uncommonly skilled at his craft. Show me an actor who trusts entirely to inspiration and is scornful of technique and I will show you a men who cannot act: for acting is not a series of lucky chances, a succession of flukes; it is a close knowledge of craft, a sure sense of cause and effect, and a high accomplishment won after long experience and deep, intense study of means and material.