The Basis of Acting

Dan Sullivan’s parenthetical statement that being a liar is the basis of acting (“Helmond as Sarah Bernhardt: The Legend Doesn’t Translate”) reveals an ignorance of the craft unacceptable in a professional theater critic. He should know that the basis of all good acting is the truthful recreation of the artist’s own experience brought into the context of the scene through creative imagination. This process has no more to do with lying than it does with pretending as children do at play.

Among the best practitioners it is a process of relentless searching after truth combined with a sensitive and well-trained capacity for the repeated expression of it once it has been found.

Painters, musicians, even poets may lie all they like and still make great art. Only the actor must always, always show the truth. That is the good actor’s stock in trade, and every critic ought to know it.

H.D. AMACKER

Santa Monica