DramaLit Blog 1.0: BU School of Theatre

So I read this interview/article in ArtsBeat with John Lithgow. He’s one of my favorite actors and he has a new book coming out called, “Drama: An Actor’s Education,” so I thought I’d definitely find something interesting/inspiring/something to really just comfort me. Instead, I found that his life and approach to acting are so different from mine, and I became disturbed…at first. So the article starts out praising Lithgow not only for his career but for his amiability, his intelligence, etc. not to mention a new Broadway show (in which he’ll play famed journalist Joseph Alsop) and upcoming book. Okay, he’s in his ‘60’s, the man’s allowed to be impressive. Then came his early life biography which included an actor-manager father (Arthur) who was the artistic director for the McCarter Theatre (no big deal…) where Lithgow began performing at age 2. Okay… now I feel old and behind at age 21. Like, really behind. So, Lithgow goes to Harvard (again, no big deal…) and pals around with Tommy Lee Jones, Al Gore, Stockard Channing, Terrence Malick, etc. and switches his focus from painting to acting when he receives a standing ovation for a performance in a student production. Wow, am I far behind in my career already or what?

The article then talks about the role of “deception” in Lithgow’s life and career—how he pretended to be crazy to draft-dodge in the late-‘60’s, his numerous affairs with co-stars during his first marriage, and his belief that, “Acting at its best is all about deceiving people, and this makes it all the more interesting to us.” Okay, so he sort of lost me there. Affairs, draft-dodging, I can forgive/understand/accept. But deception? Is that all we’re doing? I’m doing? Lithgow says he learned to deceive-act by moving around a lot as a kid: “There’s no way you can’t learn to be an actor if you’re going to move that many times. You’re always playing to an audience, trying out a new role and winning them over just to save yourself — to save your sanity.” My experience has been so different—does that make it less valid? Just because he’s a 2-time Tony winner, 2-time Academy Award-nominee who graduated Harvard and whose theatre and film resume kind of make Robert DiNiro look like a punk?

I have a tendency to think that everyone else is doing things right and I’m behind the curve somehow. I’m trying to break myself of this habit. So, instead, I’m taking this article/interview as something interesting to consider—a fun addition to the world of strange knowledge swimming in my head that might one day become useful to me somehow—rather than the word of God. In the end, I did find something we share in common; the notion that, as he puts it, “One of the things you learn as an actor is that human beings are capable of almost anything. I’m sort of in the business of illustrating that fact.” Human beings are capable of anything—great or terrible—and it doesn’t matter how they get there and how it differs from the next guy, just that they get there uniquely, boldly, and with joy.