Acting: art, craft, work, what?

[MikeH]

Posted: 5/25/05 at 12:19am

I've been thinking about this for some time now and I wanted to see what some of you thought. I listened to an interview with Alfred Molina where he shared his thoughts about acting as a "craft, but not art", and similarily Denzel Washington called acting "a privilege, but not work". What do you all think?
Updated On: 5/25/05 at 12:19 AM

[romanov]

Posted: 5/25/05 at 12:48am

I get tired of words such as art , craft, etc. only being applied to theatre, film, painting, dance, and other performing fields. Anyone's profession is an art as long as they are passionate about it. In the musical Working there was a song called It's An Art To Be A Waitress. If the waitress loves it and is passsionate about it. It is ART!

[Jazzysuite82]

Posted: 5/25/05 at 2:03am

actually it's all of that. It's less of an art than it is a craft to me. BUt I think art is pretty apt. I mean I look at what Tonya pinkins did in Caroline and i think Art. But it's also a craft that takes YEARs to develop and make good...and even then you're never done perfecting it. But it is HARD work. I don't know what Denzel is talking about. Maybe he's speaking of the Sondheimian thought "Work is what you do for others, art is what you do for yourself". He loves what he does so he doesn't consider it work in the terms of GOING to work a job. However it is hard work to create consistantly 8 times a week. It's all of that. But it's work people enjoy. So muich so that it's the only job that employees will do it for next to nothing.


And I don't think anyone said that careers and "non artistic" occupations aren't art. Updated On: 5/25/05 at 02:03 AM

[romanov]

Posted: 5/25/05 at 7:07am

Jazzy, you missed the point.

[actress_06]

Posted: 5/25/05 at 9:58am

It seems to me that it all depends on the type of acting you are doing. I definitly feel that theater is art because there are somany aspects that are needed from the actor, but film any one can do, and you don't need any sort of special education to do that. well I have to get to class, but perhaps i will add more to this later.

[Jazzysuite82]

Posted: 5/25/05 at 11:59am

what's the point then romanov?