This is a book about the experiences and approaches of British television actors. Given the bookâs title, an opening statement such as this could appear self-evident. However, in the context of broader academic traditions in investigating screen acting, it is an important opening statement to make. There already exists an abundance of articles, chapters, edited collections and monographs studying screen acting, but not necessarily the methods and insights of the screen actor. Whilst such work on screen acting originates within the field of film studies and remains focused predominantly on the cinematic, this is where we shall begin, as the prevailing critical philosophies and analytical approaches of this body of work play a significant and continued role in shaping subsequent academic investigations and understandings of television acting.
Touchstone examples of screen acting research for film, such as James Naremoreâs Acting in the Cinema (1988) or Andrew Klevanâs Film Performance: From Achievement to Appreciation (2005), whilst offering richly detailed analyses of textual case studies tend to neglect the perspectives and processes of actors themselves in realising their contributions to the end performance texts that we see on screen. Indeed, there exists a long-standing critical tendency within screen acting research to prioritise the analysis of end performance products over an understanding of the professional or artistic processes on the part of the actor. This is no surprise, given the highly visible and accessible status of end text as performance artefact, versus the more problematically obscured or even invisible nature of many of the acting processes behind such end texts. Given the time constraints on television drama production in particular, as the following chapters shall go on to evidence, these acting processes are often highly personal to the individual actor and sit outside formalised rehearsal time, as opposed to shared rehearsal periods that constitute part of some (but by no means all) official production schedules. There are undoubtedly, therefore, methodological challenges involved in delving behind what we see on screen in order to better understand acting process as well as end product. Nevertheless, since a holistic understanding of screen acting is our aim, these are challenges that we must address.
In Reframing Screen Performance (2008), a noteworthy study in stressing the limitations to the prevailing practices of textual analysis in understanding screen acting, Cynthia Baron and Sharon Marie Carnicke note that
[t]he mediated status of performance elements has led observers to elide the training, experience, and creativity that actors bring ⊠Often overlooked is the bank of knowledge and experience that actors draw on to produce the gestures, expressions, and intonations that collaborate and combine with other cinematic elements to create meaning. (2008, 17)
Baron and Carnickeâs resultant assertion that âboth academics and journalists ⊠identify film performance with almost anything other than actorsâ labor and agencyâ (2008, 17) remains a persistent truth in the study and discussion of screen acting in general. The particularities of the screen actorâs work often become overshadowed by the more visible âauthorialâ status of the director, writer, producer or televisual âshowrunnerâ hyphenate, or conflated with the more easily discernible formal components of the finished performance text, such as framing, editing, lighting, costume and set design, for example, as parallel/intersecting performative elements. Tellingly, prominent essay collections with a cinematic focus, such as Lesley Stern and George Kouvarosâs Falling for You: Essays on Cinema and Performance (1999) and Cynthia Baron, Diane Carson and Frank P. Tomasuloâs More than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film (2004), are inclined to foreground the director in framing their investigations of screen acting. More recently, Claudia Springer and Julie Levinsonâs Acting (2015) offers welcome new material on screen acting and includes interview data from the actors themselves, but still views film acting chiefly through the lens of broader technological, industrial and aesthetic shifts within the medium over the last century. Although it is indisputable that such factors inevitably influence (whilst also being influenced by) the work of the screen actor, it is important that they do not work to mask the individual creative contributions that the actor makes to the larger mechanisms of production, in terms of their training, experience, perspectives, skills and practices of character preparation and execution. Thus, whilst acknowledging that screen actors are by no means the sole creative agents behind screen performance and thus not the only authorities on screen acting, to overlook the distinctiveness of the actorâs artistic input leads to an incomplete picture at best.
The evolution of âstar/celebrity studiesâ as a fertile offshoot of performance studies in film and subsequently television,1 building on Richard Dyerâs early contributions with Stars (1979) and Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (1986), could be interpreted as an affirmation of the individual agency of the screen actor. However, in practice, the impressively diverse range of interests and perspectives in contemporary star/celebrity studies, accommodating not only screen actors but also musicians, comedians, sports figures, television presenters, ârealityâ show participants and online cultural commentators, amongst many others, works to expand the conceptual sight-lines for what constitutes âperformanceâ even further. This is aligned with Richard Schechnerâs inclusive approach to performance studies, beyond just âtheatre, dance, music and performance artâ, to encompass âa broad spectrum of activities including at the very least the performing arts, rituals, healing, sports, popular entertainments, and performance in everyday lifeâ (2004, 7). Whilst admirably ambitious, and indeed necessary for the long-term relevance of the field, such inclusivity of investigation does little to help pull the working methods and experiences of the screen actor into more precise focus.
What is Television Acting?
If the artistic perspectives and approaches of screen actors, in a collective sense, remain positioned on the periphery of the critical and conceptual spotlight, then the work of the television actor is even further in shadow. John Caughie, in his seminal chapter on the subject of television acting, âWhat Do Actors Do When They Act?â (2000), stresses the conspicuous âabsence of theoretically informed critical writing about [television] actingâ, noting that whilst there is âa considerable body of writing about film stardom, and some about television personalities ⊠there is very little attention to reading the actorâ (2000, 162). There have been a number of valuable chapters/articles that begin to address this absence since the initial publication of Caughieâs chapter, particularly in recent years, from television scholars such as Roberta Pearson (2010), Trevor Rawlins (2010), Lucy Fife Donaldson (2012), Douglas McNaughton (2014) and Richard Hewett (2013, 2014 and 2015).2 Moreover, there have been two illuminating UK-based symposia investigating television acting specifically; the first, organised by the authors, Playing the Small Screen (University of York, July 2012), and the second, organised by Simone Knox and Stephen Lacey, Acting on Television (University of Reading, April 2016).3 In addition, since 2015, Knox has co-authored a blog strand for CSTonline.tv, titled âWhat Actors Doâ, with Gary Cassidy.4 As evidenced by such recent activity, and as the authors argue elsewhere (Cantrell and Hogg 2016), there remains much work to be done to reach substantive answers to the question first posed by Caughie over a decade-and-a-half ago regarding what television actors actually do when they act. This book aims to make a significant contribution to arriving at those answers.
With the industrial motor of production on television dramas seemingly faster than ever before, alongside continuing broader trends towards what has been termed the âsoapificationâ (Nelson 1997, 30) or âsoapisationâ (Ellis 2007, 104) of television drama, with increasingly non-finite, ongoing âflexi-narrativeâ (Nelson 1997) structures prevailing, it is easy to dismiss television actors as being little more than replaceable cogs within the production machine which must and will motor forward at all costs, with or without the ongoing involvement of the individual actor.
Moreover, the ever more limited space for formalised rehearsal within the production schedules of long-form television drama appears to further compound this sense of a lack of space for exploration or agency on the part of the actor within these creative processes, echoing Caughieâs description of the common conception of the television actor as âa movable piece in the chess games of creativity and artistic innovationâ (2000, 166). However, little to no formally scheduled rehearsal time for actors does not logically entail little to no preparation or thought on the part of the actor. As television director Sophie Lifschutz notes in relation to her work on the British soap opera EastEnders (BBC 1985â):
[A]ctors often come to the set with their own pre-formed ideas about how their characters would handle certain situations ⊠itâs important to trust the actor and be open to what they bring to the floor, because, whilst I have my eye on the structure of the scene, they often know their character much better than a director ever could. (2014)
Supporting this, Baron and Carnicke reflect on comparable production conditions in a cinematic context, highlighting that such conditions necessitate âmore independent preparation than that required for stage performancesâ, and that â[c]ompressed rehearsal time requires players to come to the set or location fully prepared, with a good understanding of their characters and a readiness to adjust that understanding to the directorâs vision as neededâ (2008, 236). Therefore, what happens before filming begins must also be acknowledged as contributing to the final âshapeâ of what is seen on screen. Yet, because these contributing elements often cannot be readily discerned (either in the presence of tangible rehearsal time within production schedules or in the ultimate composition of the text), they are all-too-easily overlooked.
Indeed, whilst its meaning may appear clear at a simplistic level, âtelevision actingâ resists easy definition. Perhaps the most common-sense understanding of âtelevision actingâ is âwhat the actor does in front of a cameraâ. However, as the lessons of preceding screen acting studies tell us, this proposed definition fails to account sufficiently for the various preparatory processes which an actor may work through in advance of arriving at their mark ready for shooting. As Caughie notes, acting is âvery difficult to nail down analyticallyâ and âtests the limits of critical languageâ (2000, 162, 170), whilst Marvin Carlson has identified that analysis of acting has been viewed as a âtroubling distractionâ in screen studies (1996, 82). Reflecting this, existing academic explorations of television acting collectively evidence ambiguity and discord in precisely identifying their object of study. As a launching point for addressing such ambiguities, as we have suggested previously (Cantrell and Hogg 2016), a working distinction can be made between âtelevision actingâ and âtelevision performanceâ. For our purposes, âactingâ refers specifically to the actorâs portrayal of a character within a dramatic context, whilst âperformanceâ extends more broadly to other forms of performative involvement within television production â of the sort suggested by Schechnerâs (2004, 7) more inclusive definition â such as presenting game shows or appearing in reality-based programmes, for instance. Textual âperformanceâ also extends to the inflection of an actorâs work by other performative elements beyond the contributions of the acto...