Realism - The importance of details

Subject: Realism

In reading chapters eight and nine I began to think about all the performances I have seen and the movies that I continue to enjoy, and I quickly realized that realism plays an important role in my overall enjoyment of the performance.

I really want to focus on chapter nine’s section, Evoking a World Through Detail. I think that small, minuscule details make all the difference in a performance. Most recently, the smaller details in performances tend to ruin things for me. For instance, I despise moments where an actor drinks “unrealistically” in between each line. I don’t find it realistic that a person takes that many drinks. This very tiny, and most likely unnoticed detail, makes a big difference in my eyes. The smaller details of a production tend to stay in my head much longer than the overall production itself. In The Foreigner I remember the constant drinking of Froggy, I remember the way the walls were designed, I remember the facial expressions of Charlie, and those are the things that I will remember once I left the theater. These minor details mean a great deal to me.

Minor details are not just the way the sets are designed, or if an actor is using the correct type of liquor glass, but it is underlined performance the actor is giving. In reading And the Soul Shall Dance it is hard for me to get some of the value that I could get from a live performance. The Foreigner, more specifically, Charlie’s performance really made things real for me. The actor did a wonderful job of using his body, facial expressions and eyes giving a chance for the audience to appreciate the “true” feelings he was trying to express.

Realism comes down to the little things in a performance. When we watch a live play or sit on the couch to watch a rented DVD, we appreciate the realism of the performance. We also quickly notice when things are not presented to us in a way in which we believe it is “real.” Special effects on movies may not be accurate, but they are presented in a way in which we believe them to be how they would be in real life. If there is a mistake in special effects, or if an accent of an actor isn’t just right, we are very quick to point out the flaws.

In American theatre, Realism is possibly the deciding factor to success.