Setting the Stage
I was practically born in the theatre. I was acting with a children's theatre company before I launched my 'main' career (music) by taking piano lessons at age eight. Years later, when I began teaching drama and directing shows, I understood why it came so easily to me, especially since my formal theatre education had only consisted of one high school drama class by the time I became an adult.
There is something about the spontaneity, the nerves, the thrill of the opening curtain, that sucks people in whenever a show is onstage. The dark corners backstage, where everyone is sweating or practicing breathing, or mumbling their lines for the last time, or touching up the makeup -- that is a magical, mysterious place unlike any other on earth.
I'll never forget seeing my first Broadway show ("A Chorus Line"), not only because the show itself is so riveting -- but because everything was so perfect. I had never experienced anything so high-speed, precisely coordinated, powerful and perfect in my life. I am extraordinarily blessed in theatrical experiences -- seeing Julius Casear at the Old Vic in London, watching the elephants onstage in Aida at the Baths of Caracalla, watching Ingrid Bergman in person as she delivered lines by Shaw, and seeing Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Private Lives on Broadway.
One thing that strikes me about Liz and Richard is that they wanted to do that show. They didn't need to; they had already split up; what they got paid was probably pocket change compared to their bank accounts; and they were the most famous acting couple in the world. They did it because they wanted to come back to theatre. They wanted the live audience, the backstage magic, the special feel of bright lights in a dark house. Finally, they wanted to ensure that their astounding skills had not been dulled by years of movies and marriages and traveling the world.
Interestingly, most of the highly successful film actors I know about have made it clear that every actor should come back to theatre, again and again. Being on stage demands precision, timing and finely tuned response from an actor in ways that can sometimes be shirked when in front of a camera. When I look at actor resumes -- several thousand every year -- I nearly always study the theatre credits more closely than the film or music or education or anything else.
It is so exciting to look ahead to World Oceans Arts on stage in 2018! We already are producing a Shakespeare video series, music videos, live showcases and more. But next year, we will take to the stage with Henry the Sixth Part 1, Swanwhite, Cafe Playa Moon, and hopefully a brand new play we have not even discovered yet. Best of all, these productions will be wrapped in "All 51", our mission of taking the arts to every state in the U.S. We are already getting excited letters from theatre directors and actors and audiences in tiny places, empty spaces, forgotten towns. Many of them have a surprisingly steady diet of theatre, but they want more. Most budding young film actors and comedians and dancers in the world practice everywhere they can -- shopping malls, parking lots, the shower, at parties and cafes and breaks from their jobs. Why? Because they hunger for a stage. They long for an audience which the camera does not provide.
A fairly decent playwright once said "The play's the thing". Theatres and stages are exalted spaces. If you haven't been to a play or musical or opera in months or years, please go. Just go see something on stage. Theatre has a very special treasure of its own: it is never exactly the same twice. There is always the thrill of the unpredictable. You don't watch it at home on your sofa while munching chips and talking. In the theatre, you are there.
--James Gibson
There is something about the spontaneity, the nerves, the thrill of the opening curtain, that sucks people in whenever a show is onstage. The dark corners backstage, where everyone is sweating or practicing breathing, or mumbling their lines for the last time, or touching up the makeup -- that is a magical, mysterious place unlike any other on earth.
I'll never forget seeing my first Broadway show ("A Chorus Line"), not only because the show itself is so riveting -- but because everything was so perfect. I had never experienced anything so high-speed, precisely coordinated, powerful and perfect in my life. I am extraordinarily blessed in theatrical experiences -- seeing Julius Casear at the Old Vic in London, watching the elephants onstage in Aida at the Baths of Caracalla, watching Ingrid Bergman in person as she delivered lines by Shaw, and seeing Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Private Lives on Broadway.
One thing that strikes me about Liz and Richard is that they wanted to do that show. They didn't need to; they had already split up; what they got paid was probably pocket change compared to their bank accounts; and they were the most famous acting couple in the world. They did it because they wanted to come back to theatre. They wanted the live audience, the backstage magic, the special feel of bright lights in a dark house. Finally, they wanted to ensure that their astounding skills had not been dulled by years of movies and marriages and traveling the world.
Interestingly, most of the highly successful film actors I know about have made it clear that every actor should come back to theatre, again and again. Being on stage demands precision, timing and finely tuned response from an actor in ways that can sometimes be shirked when in front of a camera. When I look at actor resumes -- several thousand every year -- I nearly always study the theatre credits more closely than the film or music or education or anything else.
It is so exciting to look ahead to World Oceans Arts on stage in 2018! We already are producing a Shakespeare video series, music videos, live showcases and more. But next year, we will take to the stage with Henry the Sixth Part 1, Swanwhite, Cafe Playa Moon, and hopefully a brand new play we have not even discovered yet. Best of all, these productions will be wrapped in "All 51", our mission of taking the arts to every state in the U.S. We are already getting excited letters from theatre directors and actors and audiences in tiny places, empty spaces, forgotten towns. Many of them have a surprisingly steady diet of theatre, but they want more. Most budding young film actors and comedians and dancers in the world practice everywhere they can -- shopping malls, parking lots, the shower, at parties and cafes and breaks from their jobs. Why? Because they hunger for a stage. They long for an audience which the camera does not provide.
A fairly decent playwright once said "The play's the thing". Theatres and stages are exalted spaces. If you haven't been to a play or musical or opera in months or years, please go. Just go see something on stage. Theatre has a very special treasure of its own: it is never exactly the same twice. There is always the thrill of the unpredictable. You don't watch it at home on your sofa while munching chips and talking. In the theatre, you are there.
--James Gibson
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