Acting must be scaled down for the screen. A drawing room is a lot smaller than a theatre auditorium.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In musical theater you have to be very big and very animated, while film and television are more toned down.
The great difference between screen acting and theatre acting is that screen acting is about reacting - 75% of the time, great screen actors are great reactors.
Theatre's a whole different beast to film. It requires a lot more of you.
Acting is like any other art form, in that you have the option to go very big or go very small.
In theatres, you're kind of disconnected. Also, it's way too big for the likes of me. Unless you're Robin Williams or someone that can fill a stage with movement and energy, it just looks like a small man on a big stage.
Musical theater is often seen as a lesser form of acting, although I don't see it that way.
In a regular theatre, you'd be kind of moving your eye from one character 5 feet over to the right on the cut. In IMAX, suddenly that's like 20 feet. So I would love to do something. I think I would really want to take the massive screen into consideration so that it would be done properly.
One of the skills you have to master in theater is the ability to make the audience believe that things that aren't there are there - just like when you're acting against CGI. Also, in a theater, the people in the back row can't see the whites of your eyes. Or your lips moving as you deliver dialogue.
When you play arenas you can create whatever you want. At a theater the height of the stage and the limitations of the theater can make you feel more separate from the audience.
The wonderful thing about theater as an art form is it's a purely empirical art form. It's all about what works. And every show, every production, is created anew right from the moment you go into the rehearsal hall.