ABSTRACT
Acting has always been associated with drugs. In the old days, of course, this was alcohol, and nowadays it is more potent brews. There must be a reason for this, and one reason is the wild difference between the actor in rehearsal, moment by moment creating new ideas and thoughts, new bits of business and moves, and the actor in an eight-performances-a-week straitjacket, with a stage manager reporting to the management every time an actor wanders even slightly from the moves in the prompt book. Some drugs can elongate apparent time and others can speed it up, so if one high and his fellow actor are not, then he will be on different time scales, which makes good acting between him very difficult. Neither alcohol nor chemical drugs are to be encouraged, but it is wise to know the different effects they have on his acting.
