The Actor Anti-Defamation League

by David Fairhurst

When a newspaper publishes as many words about actors as Back Stage does, I suppose it’s inevitable that some of them are less than complimentary. But that’s no excuse for the sort of thoughtless, demeaning clichés about our profession that too often land in print. Unfortunately, it’s not entirely the fault of Back Stage’s writers, as these stereotypes are pervasive in our culture. So come join me in stabbing a knife in the sclerotic heart of these insulting clichés and killing them off once and for all.

Let’s start with the most pervasive and pernicious one. From an actor profile that ran in the Dec. 7 issue comes this sentence: “Many actors want three things: critical praise, celebrity, and an agent so devoted that no industry pothole will impede their professional progress.”

The phrasing here may be more tempered than I’ve seen before—note how the writer says “many” actors instead of “all” or “most,” and no one would argue with the need for a good agent—but otherwise the meaning is clear: Unlike painters or poets or other “real” artists whose work is inspired by a pure, creative, expressive impulse, actors just want to get ahead, get famous, and have everybody love them.

Excuse me a moment while I wipe the vomit off my laptop.

Yes, we’ve all encountered people like this, but among the hundreds of actors I’ve known in my life, the ones motivated by fame and acclaim are a small minority. Sadly, they’re also often the most annoying in their fanatical self-promotion, making them the most visible on the cultural radar, and thus we all get painted with the same brush. Being the most impatient for stardom, however, they’re inevitably the first ones to give up when show business reality smacks them in the face.

The actors who survive are the ones not motivated by anything so shallow and vulgar, the ones for whom acting is its own reward, filling a need in them most would be hard-pressed to describe, the same need felt by those compelled to paint or sculpt or write poetry despite the high unlikelihood of any tangible return—or perhaps nothing more than the simple satisfaction of knowing you’ve given the audience its money’s worth and sent them home happy. Far from seeking “critical praise” and “celebrity,” these are the actors who don’t care about reviews and consider fame a potential unwelcome side effect of their craft, preferring to remain anonymous and have their work speak for itself. (After all, no matter how chameleonic an actor may be, once you’ve achieved a Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts level of celebrity, it’s hard to ever again “disappear” inside a character.)

This particular cliché is a manifestation of what I call “the infantilization of actors”: the idea that we’re nothing but needy children seeking toys and candy and putting on shows for the approval of surrogate parents because Mommy and Daddy didn’t love us enough, and it’s pervasive not only in Back Stage but in the industry itself.

But if you’re a writer who thinks actors are motivated by fame, then this next cliché makes perfect sense. The sentence comes from the Dec. 7 review of the current Broadway revival of “Company,” but the sentiment has appeared in print before: “I missed being able to distinguish between actors unquestionably representative of the Broadway brand and those merely good enough to offer a fine regional-theatre performance.”

Oh, God. It’s that condescending “merely,” isn’t it? The verbal equivalent of an upturned nose on the doughy face of some supercilious Broadway twit. (The writer probably isn’t even aware he’s being a supercilious Broadway twit, so widespread and unquestioned is this belief.)

Of course, being motivated by celebrity, as our writer assumes us to be, any actor unlucky enough to be stuck in the backwoods of Providence or Minneapolis or, God forbid, San Diego, forced to entertain the yokels on the straw-and-spittle-covered stages of barns like Trinity or the Guthrie or the Old Globe, must be a miserable wretch, knowing he’ll never be good enough for Broadway, right?

As someone who grew up watching and eventually working in regional theatre, it’s hard for me to express how insulting this is to tens of thousands of actors across the country. Fortunately, I’m sure most Back Stage readers are sophisticated enough to know it’s not true. But for provincial, narrow-minded New Yorkers—you know, the kind who consider the Bronx to be “upstate” and think any trip west of the Hudson requires a malaria inoculation—let’s shed a little light on the subject.

Most actors in regional theatre are there because they choose to be. They’re there because they’re not motivated by glitz or fame or money, but because they want to be someplace where they can practice their craft consistently, in challenging roles and quality productions, far from the noise, distractions, careerist obsessions, and condescending snobs of the New York theatre world. Consequently, they work a lot—probably more than most New York actors—and they get really, really good at what they do. They’re certainly not in regional theatre because they’re not good enough to work anyplace else.

In fact, when I moved to New York nine years ago, I was shocked by the quality of acting in this city. Not that it was bad; just that it was no better than what I was used to in regional theatre. I had fallen for the popular myth that if it’s in New York, it must be better. Yes, there are definitely more good actors in New York than anyplace else, making the competition keener. But don’t forget, there are also more bad ones. And I’m really getting tired of unimaginative writers using “regional theatre” as a patronizing shorthand for anything that’s not up to the vaunted “Broadway brand.”

These are two of the more prevalent demeaning stereotypes I’ve noticed in Back Stage in recent weeks. But if you spot any more, send them to me at DFairhurst@backstage.com. Or even better, send a letter to the editor at editorial@backstage.com. An angry word or two from the readers has far more sway around here than I do. After all, I’m “merely” an actor.