I remember being at a reading once some time ago. I couldn't quite understand the play, and I did not have the opportunity to read it beforehand. The playwright/director emailed it to everyone in the cast but for some Gmail malfunction I didn't get it. So, in effect, I was reading it cold, though I wasn't the only one among that reading cast doing so.
After the reading, there was applause, I felt the excitement of fellow actors, although, because of the half-hearted reading of less committed actors in the circle, I lost got lost in some bits of the plot. Anyhow, the good thing about all this is, I have a copy of the script now and I can read through it again and do my analysis.
The reason the playwright/director called us for this reading is that he is also hoping that we shall become the workshop cast, and eventually, the actual cast when his play gets staged. This is exciting. I'm not the most in demand of actors and so I don't always get to originate a role, and the one I got assigned to read is one hefty, block, mammoth, boulder of a role. I mean it.
Now in that reading one fellow actor commented that the character assigned to them (OED says I can use them now as a singular, and I want to sorta camouflage this actor's gender) was phlegmatic, and if allowed, the actor would like to make certain changes.
My thoughts, though unexpressed because I never stick my nose in other people's businesses:
a) it's going to be workshopped anyway, so why make decisions based on the first reading? You are given time to explore the character, make informed choices, try them out at rehearsal. Why dismiss the character already as "phlegmatic?" Did you want more stage time? Exposure? Is that serving the story or just your own career as an actor?
b) that's really one way to insult a playwright, to call their character a non-mover, as if you alone know objective truth and that's just not your opinion. Is it not better to ask the playwright if he thinks the character does nothing in the play, really, at all?
c) adjusting a character to suit your own personal judgments and limitations as an actor hinders any growth opportunity for the actor, period. The theater is the greatest classroom where we learn from the playwright's words and the character's eyes just what it means to be human in this world, but to avoid exploring the playwright's intentions and vision for the play and the characters, to pass a summary prejudiced indictment at a character assigned to you as a phlegmatic, to refuse to explore possibilities within the text without needless tampering with it, is for me plain laziness and egotism.
The five of swords in the tarot warns us that the need to win and be proven right may be self-gratifying, and that's all. It may just be ego-based stubbornness. I write this bit about the tarot's advice because in all these things I may be wrong, I may have misunderstood my fellow actor's intentions, the playwright/director has been to my knowledge cool with it. And it's not my business.
I just have more respect for actors who respect other people's works, and not just fellow actors', but playwrights' and directors' opinions.
