Tightrope

Sanford Meisner, the acting teacher who first devised those repetition exercises we do each week at the Actors' Bothy used to have a little known quotation by the Germanic poet-playwright, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, displayed on the wall outside his Neighbourhood Theatre office in New York. And sometimes, especially at the end of a frustrating teaching day, Goethe's epigram sums up (better than anything else I can think of) my feelings about the arrogance and laziness of most would-be 'actors'.

"I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of the tightrope dancer, so that no incompetent would dare step upon it."


Swingeing... And all the more delicious for it. :-))