A veteran columnist once confessed to me an obsession that destroyed his personality if he ever had one. The guy, who logically prefers to remain anonymous, claims to have become the puppet of a ghost. And who doesn’t. His issue dates back to the moment he began reading the comments left by his readers in the digital newspaper. Illustrious, at first he was having fun. After years of writing blindly, digitalization gave him the opportunity to look at the other side, at his audience, at the mystery of the invisible interlocutor, the mind of that person who reads on the subway, in bed or in a bar.
It is as interesting to hear the criticism as the praise, said the columnist, self-assured, like someone walking through a zoo and stopping in front of the tiger cage as well as the pelican cage. Thus, little by little, he acquired the names – pseudonyms or aliases – of his regular commentators, quite polite even in their worst complaints. But one day an unknown alias broke in and destroyed an article from beginning to end, with a viciousness to detail, a criticism as devastating as it was sagacious and well written, a phrase-by-phrase dismantling, ruthless and meticulous, that left him upside down. And that began to be repeated, to his astonishment, one article after another.
An actor can adjust the personality of his character to the supposed taste of a viewer
I couldn’t believe it, says the columnist, in each new publication I looked for the cursed alias among the comments and there it was, with its fierce criticism. Always well presented, funny and frankly incontestable. I started writing for him, or her, he confesses with a few extra wines. I still do it, I don’t know who I am.
Some actors also recognize, in their dressing rooms, that they can end up adjusting their character’s personality to the supposed taste of a viewer. Not so much that of a professional critic, but that of a friend or family member. Artists who suffer from this kind of chameleon syndrome due to fear prefer to never know who comes to see them at the theater. If, for example, they know that their aunt is in the audience, they may end up giving the interpretation that they think she would like to see in her nephew. In an exercise of suicidal supposition, the actor will make a finer or fiercer or duller Hamlet that night. The public doesn’t know the power he has, luckily for him.
Source: www.lavanguardia.com
