Full Body and Voice Acting

SCOTT KAISER: Acting on an outdoor stage is a very different acting style. I like to talk to our actors and say that it's a very different acting style, in that you really have to use all of your body and all of your voice in order to act. It's very unlike doing American realism in a small 300-seat house where, you know, your pupils can dilate and tears can run down your cheeks and people understand what's going on.

In an outdoor space the size of ours, you can't see minute muscular changes in the face. It's all reflected through voice and through body, and so you need to use your whole body from the toes up. You need to move through space and reflect your acting choices through a full physical involvement and full vocal involvement.

But it does mean a fully physically and vocally realized performance in a way that in a small indoor space would be considered absurd. When you're in an outdoor space in the back of the balcony, you need those vocal and physical clues. So what you're looking at is a very, very different style. You end up facing full front more often and talking to people, not by looking at them, but by talking through your right or left ear. You end up facing full front a lot more than you would in realism. You don't have to make eye contact nearly as much, which in American realism in small indoor spaces is an essential. So it really demands a very, very different acting style than an indoor space requires.