Word: actor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...first substantial recognition was as an actor playing a "Proletariat Thunderbolt" in the Group Theater's legendary Waiting for Lefty in 1935. More recently he has been dismissed as an "extinct volcano." Between those two notices he became what no American had ever been before, the dominant directorial force in both theater and film. His productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman defined Broadway's highest aspirations in the 1940s, and On the Waterfront did the same for American movies of the 1950s. In that period he also conceived and co-founded the most influential teaching...
...truest tone -- flat and harsh, undercutting his own attempts at rationalization with the bitterly truthful ring he cannot keep out of his voice. It is the voice of a man with no patience for poetry (he confesses that when he staged Archibald MacLeish's J.B. he simply moved the actors whenever he was bored, which was approximately every three lines) and no patience for ideological impositions, intellectual cant or institutional stability. It is perhaps a peasant's voice, valuing survival above all. But surely it is an actor's voice, one that knows it is impossible -- and finally maddening...
...more definite in his conclusion: since conservatism triumphed with the election of his pal Ronald Reagan, Buckley has lost his competitive urge. The last lap of the 20th century may provide a new liberal challenger, but until then we are left with a small irony. Reagan, the former actor, entered the White House at about the same time that Buckley, the political activist, began changing into an entertainer...
Though she says she sometimes feels her "nature" would be "happier doing something less open to continue change," Hunt adds, "the function of the actor is really to exist on uncertainty." Because it is uncertainty that is at the heart of creativity...
Especially strong are the performances of Laurence Thomsen and Maria Catherine Troy, who play the befuddled Dr. and Mrs. Zubrisky, leading citizens in the small Russian town in which the play is set. Thomsen is a clever actor, deftly mixing deadpan and ham. Similarly, the utterly natural theatrical poise with which Troy plays her part is admirable...