By Mursi Saad El-Din Casting is an important element in the success of any drama. Intelligent casting to a great extent characterised Ramadan serials this year. After a few episodes one almost forgot the name of the actors and remembered only the characters. Thinking about this made me rush to my accumulated heaps of old paper cuttings and magazines. An old issue of the Quarterly Theatre Review published by the British Theatre Association caught my attention -- I often wonder if it is still in print. This issue includes a feature article with the title "An Actor's Motive" by Ronald Hayman, which can serve as a lesson on what drives actors and actresses to become thespians. The writer explains the enthusiasm of people to act although "an average actor earns less in a year than the average coal miner, and the average actress earns less still; because less parts are written for women: Why is it that artists accept such a situation? An actor is the only human being who will work for nothing, if you let him. He will also put up with long periods of unemployment and long periods of waiting around in theatres, rehearsal rooms, and film sets and cramped, shabby ill-equipped dressing rooms." The fact that so many actors refuse to give up in spite of daunting professional conditions indicates an extremely powerful drive. The writer then explains the psychology of acting. In his opinion an actor is schizophrenic. An actor tries to resemble other people, characters drawn by the author thus participating in their reality. An actor always wears a mask, figuratively speaking. The mask is physically restricting; voice and movements need to conform to the new person. Wearing make up and a costume can be almost like wearing a mask, and without wearing either the actor can still have the feeling that he is and is not himself, that some of the puppet's strings are in somebody else's hands. He conceals himself behind the character but simultaneously reveals more of himself than he could normally reveal in his life off-stage. An actor is not his own master. It will be the production, not his own self- assertiveness, that will push him into the foreground, the only rebuffs he can get on the stage are rebuffs for the character he is playing. An actor's relationship with the audience is the only one that cannot be predetermined. The actor's actions are also effective only in appearance. There are no real bullets in the revolver, no desire to kill in the duel or seduce in the love scene. The display of virility is an end in itself. The actor is choosing to realise himself by making himself into an object of other people's observation. An actor confronts the audience merely with himself. It has often been said that all actors are insecure and that their very insecurity compels them to prove themselves in the most arduous way. Actors always seek self-assertion vis-à-vis the audience. There are actors whose relish of self-assertion is blatant. They listen to their own voices, as if the auditorium has no echo and occupy stage space like a liberating army, enjoying every gesture they make as if the audiences' silence were proof of approval. But moments like this are rare because nightly repetitions of a performance tend to ossify it. Actors have to fight very hard not to lose interest and work mechanically. Many find it easier to be creative during rehearsals, preferring them to the actual performances. Plays often involve intimacy and the actors are often strangers when they sit down for the first reading. They are safe in that nothing will be exposed to an audience for some weeks -- but there are also dangers. Real emotions and real experiences are bound up in the make-believe. Real desire, real hatred, real jealousy, real anger can flare up at any minute. Rehearsals are like children's games and like the games lovers play -- through them people get to know each other far more quickly and intimately than they otherwise could.
