Acting Citizen: No Matter Who You Are

By James Knudsen

Equality, or the lack of equality, or the prevalence of inequality, is a common topic lately. Eventually, as in before my Apple watch has marked the passage of another 24 hours, I’ll get around to considering this issue. Acting provides a good vantage point from which to consider inequality. Inequality is everywhere. Pay equity exists for union actors – acting for scale. But there are scores of actors who perform for free, and only a rarefied few who command seven-figure salaries for one film. Choice roles are distributed unequally, as is effective representation…and talent.
    Discussions about the greatest actor of our time are frequent, and the answer from ten people can result in ten different names. And while I can’t guarantee she would be my choice, I’m confident that the name Meryl Streep would be one of the names. Now in her seventies, her lifetime achievement awards compete for space on her mantle with her three Oscar statuettes and nine Golden Globe awards.
    Given the studio machinations that are behind nominations, this isn’t the best metric for “greatest actor.” Range is what stands out. Many, many actors enjoy long and productive careers (and a few lucky ones lucrative careers as well) doing one thing. And that one thing is often confined to one medium. Ms. Streep excels in all three: film, stage, and television. Portraying characters as disparate as Sophie, the concentration camp mother in “Sophie’s Choice,” which garnered her second Oscar, and her devilish turn as Miranda Priestly, in “The Devil Wears Prada,” Streep covers a great deal of the human condition.

    But it is a role she is not well known for that tips the scales. The 2006 production of “Mother Courage and Her Children,” by Bertolt Brecht, provides the backdrop for the film documentary, “Theater of War.” Streep portrays the title character, and in the process cements a claim to greatest living actor. A musical section in which Mother Courage sings displays Streep’s ability to swoop from giddy heights to despairing lows.
    Behind-the-scenes interviews reveal Streep’s reluctance to tell the audience about the sausage-making process. The film examines the play’s production and its venue – The Public Theater, in Central Park – given the mood of a nation at war in 2006. Important figures from the production (director George Wolfe and playwright Tony Kushner, who adapted the original script) and a number of social commentators provide insight into the play’s significance in theater, as well as the moment of New York City in 2006. And new insight into archival footage of Brecht testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 is provided by his daughter, Barbara Brecht-Schall. “That old fake,” she remarks, “his English was much better than that.”

    Novelist Jay Cantor also weighs in from the perspective of a professor teaching Brecht at Tufts University. His teaching aide is a can of Coca-Cola. “Coke is America in a can,” he contends. Coke reminds us that no matter what the situation, you have to have entertainment, “that’s the bubbles.” Cantor also quotes artist Andy Warhol, who noted that, “No matter how rich you are, you can’t get a better bottle of Coke.”
    And looking at my Apple watch, it occurs to me that a technological equality is at hand…er, at wrist. My watch is every bit as capable as the corporate chieftain’s. And whatever I do, there’s entertainment.

Image selected by the editor to commemorate Earth Day

Copyright © 2023 by James Knudsen