Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?- Page 5
Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
#100Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 12:24amSo what are the 5 most demanding jobs? I'm so curious.
"Get mad, then get over it." - Colin Powell
#101Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 12:29amI would like to know that too. Since anything I say seems to be useless.
"I don't want the pretty lights to come and get me."-Homecoming 2005
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Phyllis Rogers Stone
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/16/07
#102Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 12:31am
Eponine
Elphaba
Evita
Young Eponine
Elphaba
#103Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 12:34am
According to the wonderful gossipguy215, every job is demanding in its own way and everyone works hard, so I must listen to him.
Marianne2, don't feel like anything you say is useless. Just have confidence and believe in yourself.
Mattbrain
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/23/05
#104Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 12:49amEh, everyone has an off day. I went up on a few lines in the last show I did one night. And then I was sick for one week so I had to sing through a sore throat and damn-near laryngitis.
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#105Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 12:55am
I don't know why I'm giving the time of day to this ridiculous and incredibly offensive thread, but I find it comical that you're hating on teachers who ultimately are responsible for molding their students into all (yes, all) of the professions mentioned. Without teachers, where would the doctors or lawyers or nurses or even your beloved performers be?
#106Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 1:26am
I was specifically talking about teachers in middle schools and high schools. Besides, I'm not saying that all teachers' job is meaningless or not valuable. Their job is just not that demanding. DEMANDING is the word of the day here.
Updated On: 5/20/13 at 01:26 AM
#107Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 1:35am
So middle and high school teachers have an easy job?
You're delusional.
#108Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 1:38amI'm not saying that their job isn't easy. I'm saying it's not as DEMANDING as being a Broadway performer.
#109Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 2:41amI think I'm inclined to agree that people have off days! I mean I just read through this whole thread laughing, when I really should be preparing for the exam I have this afternoon!
dramamama611
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/4/07
#110Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 3:25am
Yes, I can see how demanding it is to sing and dance in front of your audience. Yikes. Performers -- however do they do it? Whatever could be done to make their job easier and less 'demanding'. And before you ask, I've performed plenty of times in front of a packed house. It's exhilarating.
YOU are the best example for why teachers have a stressful job.
If we're not having fun, then why are we doing it?
These are DISCUSSION boards, not mutual admiration boards. Discussion only occurs when we are willing to hear what others are thinking, regardless of whether it is alignment to our own thoughts.
#111Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 4:31am
You know that being a Broadway performer is much more than just performing in front of an audience. That's not even half of it. So I don't know why you're underestimating the demands they go through and implying that they don't do anything but perform on stage. You know about the workshops, rehearsals, crazy schedules they go through and all the hard work that leads up to the opening night, and 8 shows a week. Performing is exhilarating and amazing, but showbiz is cut-throat and tough! I shouldn't even have to explain this to you. You should know better.
Updated On: 5/20/13 at 04:31 AM
dramamama611
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/4/07
#112Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 6:22am
YOU, child, have no idea.
No actor, ever, has said, "Wow, that performance was so connected because I could recall every single person that I beat out for the role."
If we're not having fun, then why are we doing it?
These are DISCUSSION boards, not mutual admiration boards. Discussion only occurs when we are willing to hear what others are thinking, regardless of whether it is alignment to our own thoughts.
Updated On: 5/20/13 at 06:22 AM
#113Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 8:46amAnd YOU, mama dear, need to stop underestimating the amount of demands that these Broadway performers go through and realize that show business is like a freakin' shark tank. They have to have a thick skin in order to succeed and do what they love to do.
#114Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 8:52amYeah, dramamama, surely you must realize that playing Officer Krupke 8 times a week is *far* more demanding than actually policing a gang-infested neighborhood. Surely you must realize the mental and emotional strains that actor goes through are far and away more taxing than the rigors of just being an actual police officer in a violent and dangerous environment. For shame.
Words don't deserve that kind of malarkey. They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good anymore…I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#115Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 9:05am
I expect that anyone can have an off performance now and then. A night or matinee when it just isn't happening.
I don't expect it to happen on a weekly basis.
#116Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 9:12amI for one am sick of the old chliché that it is demanding to be a broadway performer. It is so highly variable. Obviously if you're Bernadette Peters playing Rose for 1.5 years it must be quite physically demanding considering the effort she had to put in to sing the role and her age. But for many ensemble roles in many shows I'm sure it's an easy, if slightly tiring routine (but the same can be said about almost ALL jobs). At absolute worst it seems like a bludge if you're doing something like one of the cameo roles in MASTER CLASS.
"You can't overrate Bernadette Peters. She is such a genius. There's a moment in "Too Many Mornings" and Bernadette doing 'I wore green the last time' - It's a voice that is just already given up - it is so sorrowful. Tragic. You can see from that moment the show is going to be headed into such dark territory and it hinges on this tiny throwaway moment of the voice." - Ben Brantley (2022)
"Bernadette's whole, stunning performance [as Rose in Gypsy] galvanized the actors capable of letting loose with her. Bernadette's Rose did take its rightful place, but too late, and unseen by too many who should have seen it" Arthur Laurents (2009)
"Sondheim's own favorite star performances? [Bernadette] Peters in ''Sunday in the Park,'' Lansbury in ''Sweeney Todd'' and ''obviously, Ethel was thrilling in 'Gypsy.'' Nytimes, 2000
#117Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 9:16amHenrik has (not surprisingly) given the most reasonable answer anyone could give to this question. Not that it matters at this point, but his answer is really the only answer.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
#118Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 9:26amWell, jnb9872. NO ONE here said that being a police officer is less demanding than being a performer on Broadway. You're the only one who said that. Not me or anyone else here.
Wynbish
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/27/12
#119Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 9:44am
So, class, let's update BroadwayStar4's list of Top 5 Demanding Professions
1) Police officer (where people can die)
2) Theatre Performer (i.e. musical, where people can dance)
3) Soldier (where people can die)
4) n/a (but not a teacher)
5) n/a (but not a teacher)
#120Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 9:58am
You do realize, BroadwayStar4, that when you say things like "it's in the Top 5," people will assume that you mean them. Since a Top 5 is preposterously arbitrary, but you introduced the concept, until you state what your Top 5 consists of the entire line of reasoning you pursue is hilariously ridiculous.
You are an exercise in hyperbole and reckless expression. You reap what you sow.
Words don't deserve that kind of malarkey. They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good anymore…I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.
#121Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 10:00am
Teachers' jobs are more demanding than Broadway performers' - the hours are longer, the work is harder, the rewards are lesser, and they are rarely applauded.
And yes, I want a performer to give a great performance when I'm at their show - that's the deal made between a performer and their audience.
TheatreDiva90016
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/10/04
#122Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 10:14am
Why are you all feeding this troll?!
It took Kad to page three to figure it out, but some of you just keep on posting, end are expecting some sort of logical answer, when its obvious that the OP isn't going to give you one.
Stop feeding the trolls.
"TheatreDiva90016 - another good reason to frequent these boards less."<<>>
“I hesitate to give this line of discussion the validation it so desperately craves by perpetuating it, but the light from logic is getting further and further away with your every successive post.” <<>>
-whatever2
#123Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 10:21amIt's better than working.
#124Do you expect performers to be great 8 shows a week?
Posted: 5/20/13 at 10:29am
Yes it's a troll, and yes, the responses it gives are predictably ludicrous, but the question is actually a good one that can illicit good answers from/for others. Chiefly, there are people who need to get over their mythologized ideal of professional performing as being something other than a job.
It is a job. A union job that people are paid to do. And performers love what they do, as many people who have jobs love what they do, but they don't do it purely for love--no matter what A CHORUS LINE says. They do it for, among other things, a check and medical benefits. And so, like every other job, there is an expectation of consistent professionalism and a high standard for performance.
Like Henrik said, everyone has an off day. This is true of performers, of teachers, of office workers etc. but it should happen few and far between. If it is something that happens consistently, then there is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Performing may seem glamorous to some, but it's a job first and foremost. And a certain level is expected.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
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