Trade Secrets: Australian actors and their craft

By Terence Crawford, Strawberry Hills: Currency Press, 2005, 230 pages, paperback, $34.95. Reviewed by Donald Pulford in the May 2006 issue.

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What actors actually do is pretty much a mystery to most of us, even though we encounter their work every day. There has to be more to it than just learning lines and moves and making them seem real because pretty much anyone could do that. And why are some actors so much better than others? Added to the oddness is that actors choose to confront public humiliation, one of our greatest fears.

Terence Crawford provides insider views of the mysterious art in Trade Secrets: Australian actors and their craft. Though Peter O'Toole apparently considered acting 'farting about in disguises', the 200 odd pages of transcripts from interviews with actors in this book suggest that there may be more to it than that.

There are fourteen in Crawford's cast, each introduced in well crafted prose evoking the private personality and the public artist. Veteran stars, Billie Brown and Geoffrey Rush, begin and close the volume. Theirs are the most insightful, articulate and engaging of the transcripts. Between them are such luminaries as John Gaden, Wendy Hughes, Pamela Rabe and 'Bud' Tingwell. The newer generation of actors is represented by Paula Arundell and Joel Egerton. Respected figures such as Judi Farr and Robert Grubb make valuable contributions.

Concerns that run through the interviews include the intersections of the actors' lives and their art, the rehearsal process, building to moments of high emotion, and acting as a team sport. Sometimes autobiographical details illuminate particular performers' acting styles. For instance, Geoffrey Rush's expressive, hypercharged physicality may have its genesis in his introduction to performing through watching travelling tent vaudevillians in his rural Queensland boyhood. Rush reports his admiration for Gordon Chater: 'He could sing a very funny song and pour tomato sauce over himself at the same time, stick syphons in his ear and smash boiled eggs on his head, and make it high art! It was fantastic.'

In speculating on what might be the business of the actor, Billie Brown reverses the usual idea of the audience's 'suspension of disbelief' to assert a 'conspiracy of belief' entered into by both actor and audience, highlighting the etymology of 'conspire', 'to breath together'. Pamela Rabe also sees a mutual journey in which actor and audience 'lose ourselves in the experience in order to go somewhere else'. Wendy Hughes describes an acute sensitivity to the audience that means she can feel when someone is going to cough. Paula Arundell, actor, describes her gratitude as an audience member when she recognises something of herself represented on stage: 'And you think, My God, thank you so much, because I'm a person who has felt that way, and that really makes it easier to be alive'.

John Gaden insists on the importance of inspiration and personal connection with the part. He speaks movingly of how he was able to give the 'seven ages' speech from As You Like It a special power having just put his mother into aged care. He applies the point more broadly when he observes that 'the best things I do tend to be informed by emotions that I am either having or have remembered vividly'. Paula Arundell describes how her approach to some roles improved after she experienced grief. There is consensus that it is useful if actors can use their own life to prepare for a role, and sometimes actors go to extremes to acquire useful experience. When Paul Goddard had to play a prostitute, he joined the rent boys in Kings Cross. While there, he was approached by a well known Sydney theatre critic and had to explain that he was misrepresenting himself.

Sometimes the testimonies are surprising in more standard ways. For instance, many of us would imagine that a live and arresting performance comes from intense concentration and a great deal of nervous energy, but several actors assert the importance of relaxation along lines reminiscent of Stanislavski's 'public solitude'. Heather Mitchell aims to go on stage with a 'relaxed and prepared body' and describes the feeling of being ready to perform, thus:

I feel really prepared and relaxed and ready for anything. And there's that wonderful feeling ... where you're on stage and if anything gets thrown at you, you can deal with it. You feel so in control, but out of control. Aware of the audience, aware of everything. Everything's heightened and wonderful.

Citation

• Donald Pulford. 'Review: Trade Secrets: Australian actors and their craft by Terence Crawford' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), May 2006. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 03 September 2010].

Back Cover Blurb

• Australian actors are now taking their place on the international stage, becoming regulars among the nominees and winners of major international acting awards. They are famously indifferent to the honing of skills outside of the actual workplace.
  
  So what is it about the approach, technique and focus of the Australian actor that has the entertainment world's favour and respect? How do our best actors do what they do? Fourteen actors, a mixture of ages, backgrounds and experiences, have different answers. In revealing their very personal views on craft they show off the idiosyncrasies of the profession and take you inside the experience of being an actor.
  
  Those interviewed include: Paula Arundell, Bille Brown, Helen Buday, Joel Edgerton, Judi Farr, John Gaden, Paul Goddard, Robert Grubb, Wendy Hughes, Heather Mitchell, Sean O'Shea, Pamela Rabe, Geoffrey Rush and Charles 'Bud' Tingwell.

Have You Also Read?

• Plays of the 70s
  
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