"Your primary job is to fill a stage with a performance that works seamlessly with the other actors.
What results, in one listener's limited experience, is a style of performance that works well at home, in a festival atmosphere awash in community spirit, less well on the road.
But it is the supporting performances that work best.
Clare works with the BBC and Lucy, steeped in Cornwall, has come back as an actor/director and has recently worked with Wildworks, an international theatre company based in Cornwall, which creates fresh and brilliant performances that work with the landscape.
But while Sean Penn, Philip Seymour Hoffman or Meryl Streep win prizes, and their acting may feel true or right, it is detrimental to the craft to hold up as ideal only those performances that work as audition pieces, or as 30-second excerpts on Oscar night.
The performances that work in his films, significantly, are either those of mediocre actors like Schwarzenegger who actually play machines or good actors playing tight-lipped, emotionally shut-down characters, like Sigourney Weaver in "Aliens" (1986), which Cameron wrote and directed.
And when I reviewed Chekhov productions, my formula became singling out one or two performances that worked for me, but usually didn't jibe with any of the others.
Making yourself better and improving areas of your job performance that need work will show your boss your dedication.
A polished performance of that work, by Fabian Menzel and Bernhard Endres, appeared on the German label Antes in 2000.
(Carnegie Hall will host a performance of that work, including New York student musicians, on March 10, as part of Mr. Golijov's current residency).
