Tom Stoppard: The Space between Writers, Actors and the Audience

In December 2011, celebrated British playwright Sir Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love, Arcadia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead) spoke in Melbourne with theatre critic Alison Croggon for The Wheeler Centre. Here, he discusses his conceptual difficulty with acting as an art or profession; noting the tension between the work of the writer and the work of the performer.
Watch the full hour-long interview at our website: wheelercentre.c...

[@JamieJobb]

David Mamet says essentially the same thing, but without Stoppard's precisely imprecise inclusion of "audience distance". More than once, Manet has written that actors should convey lines directly as written, without imposing or evoking the actor's personal emotional memory of some dead cat from her past -- or something. Put another way: The Method is in the writing!

[@ellie-tk4jy]

But does Stoppard write (sarcastically) as a guide in the written script?

[@andrewdeakin7078]

Odd choice of interviewer for a Stoppard event - Croggon's disdain for Stoppard's plays and politics was much in evidence in her review of a MTC production in 2007 of his play Rock 'n' Roll.

[@ellie-tk4jy]

You don't have to like someone to interview them? I'd imagine most interviewers deeply dislike the personality or the work of a number of people they interview.

[@karl246111]

Talk to stanislavsky about this tassidly spun theory.

[@ellie-tk4jy]

Why?