Optimise: How to survive and thrive in professional life by Pearce Steven

Author:Pearce, Steven [Pearce, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rethink Press
Published: 2020-06-24T16:00:00+00:00

KEY QUESTIONS

What used to absorb you as a child, and how can you revisit it as an adult?

Where do you record your daily/weekly achievements?

How do you introduce yourself in a way that highlights your accomplishments?

15  C G Jung and A Jaffé, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Fontana Press, 1963)

13

The Actor: Sir Antony Sher

Is any profession more precarious than acting? There are endless rejections, and then, even when successful, the actor stands vulnerable before the unforgiving gaze of the spotlight, the audience and the critics. You need a special kind of resilience to survive in that business. Sir Antony Sher grew up in South Africa, a shy, artistic child at odds with the country’s apartheid-era culture. He crossed the world at the age of nineteen to audition to train as an actor in London, where he was rejected by RADA with the warning that not only was he not good enough for the country’s most esteemed drama school but he should abandon all hope of a career on the stage and go do something different. He didn’t. Instead, he became one of the greatest stage actors of his generation. Many respected critics would say that his performances as Richard III and Macbeth were definitive. He is also an accomplished artist and writer, having published several gripping diaries which illuminate the journey he goes on to bring his landmark performances to the stage. I spoke to him just after he had completed a long run in the role many call the actor’s Everest, King Lear.

SP: So, was Lear a Mount Everest to climb when you played him?

AS: No. I suppose my discovery was that it isn’t that different from the other great Shakespeare parts. Each of them is absolutely enormous. Each of them feels like Everest in different ways. And you come to each of them with a sense of inadequacy and humility – and excitement, of course. How am I going to do this iconic part? And Lear really wasn’t that different, although I’d been warned that it was. Of course, it takes an enormous amount of experience, I guess, to play it. And of course, it’s got some formidable challenges, primarily the storm scene. You’ve basically got a man arguing with a storm. And just vocally, and hard for the director, how to create that image? It’s a huge challenge. But, otherwise, it was as exhilarating and punishing as them all. I can’t really detect a difference now.

SP: Tell me about Lear’s ear. 16

AS: Well, I think that the body will invent strange reasons for you not to do this task that is difficult to do.

SP: So, it was psychosomatic?

AS: I still can’t tell. It’s hard to believe that it wasn’t, because it just came upon me so conveniently. But I think, if I think back over my career, there’ve been different [times] when I’ve had different things happen to me that seems to be . . .

SP: Such as? Which other ones?

AS: The worst was actual stage fright, which I suffered from for about two years. This was around about the time I was doing Othello.

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