ABSTRACT
Goals herein include clearly identifying the difference between good actors (A) who are well suited to acting in classical theatre and good actors (B) who are not. Readers are asked to identify some actors they believe fall into one category and the other. Lupita Nyong’o is chosen as a consummate A actor and Tom Cruise as a B. Thirty additional actors who have been chosen in previous versions of this survey are also listed. It is essential that B choices are not weak actors, but rather performers whose skills are suited to contemporary rather than classical acting. The style checklist (which appears with extensive subcategories on the inside cover of the text) is applied to classical acting itself, to establish those elements of all successful period performances. These common threads include physical (dignity and simplicity), vocal (crispness and clarity) and spiritual (heroic dimensions) lives. Verse is the consummate way in which language is heightened beyond that of prose. Special skills, such as asides and the elaborate art of hand kissing are explained. Connections continue to be made between what it takes to move to a new city or country in one’s offstage life and what it takes to enter the world of the plays onstage.
