Don: Wait a minute. You mean, I'm not an actor? Pantomime on the screen isn't acting?
Kathy: Of course not. Acting means great parts, wonderful lines, speaking those glorious words. Shakespeare, Ibsen.
There persists a notion in fiction that stage acting is True Art in comparison to screen (film and television) acting. Assumptions used to justify this way of thinking include:
- Humans have been staging theater for millennia. Comparatively, film and television have only been around for a very short time, starting from the tail end of the 19th century. Therefore, stage acting is a time-honored art, unlike newfangled on-camera acting.
- Stage acting is unobscured by camera tricks and visual effects, and is primarily the actor nakedly emoting to the audience.
- Stage actors have to be good every day that they perform the role, compared to a screen actor who "simply" needs to get one good take.
- Stage actors are paid less than screen actors of comparable fame and career, resulting in the thought that they're Doing It for the Art in comparison.
- Theater is more exclusive and less accessible than film and TV, which contributes to its perceived prestige and purity.note This flavor might overlap with Slobs Versus Snobs or It's Popular, Now It Sucks!.
In real life, each of those reasons can be varyingly true or false depending on the specific performer/s and production/s. However, this is about the in-universe belief and is thus In-Universe Examples Only.
This can be the work's message or something believed by a character. A famous movie star might take a stage role and find it to be more fulfilling, while someone who makes the jump from screen to stage might be considered a Sell-Out. Onstage experience might be considered a plus on an actor's resume compared to rivals who have only done screen acting. It might be the source of resentment for a Classically-Trained Extra, who is unable to get onscreen roles that both pay the bills and befit their Shakespearean training; or a principled Starving Artist who turns down blockbuster paychecks for the love of the craft.
Compare and contrast Luvvies (pretentious and often classically trained but struggling British actors), The Wicked Stage, and Horrible Hollywood. See also Books vs. Screens (comparing the mediums of literature and film/television), The Power of Acting, and Master Actor. Compare this to One for the Money; One for the Art (when an actor recognizes the merits of both on-screen and stage performances, and uses the money from the former to finance the latter).
In-Universe Examples Only:
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Films — Live Action
- All About Eve: The two lead characters, Margo and Eve, are both stage actresses, and everyone thinks very highly of their craft. While their thoughts on film are never mentioned, television is specifically derided as a lesser art form. The ditzy, less-talented Miss Caswell bombs an audition for a stage show and is told she can still have a career...on TV. It's clearly meant as a jab, albeit one she's too naïve to get.
- Babylon (2022): Jack is a big silent film star, while his third onscreen wife Estelle is an acclaimed Broadway actress. They have a Slobs vs. Snobs dynamic in their opinions about their respective crafts: Estelle finds Jack's movies lowbrow and uncouth, while he argues that their popularity means they can touch more minds than her ivory tower acting can.
- Birdman: Mike firmly believes that being a Broadway actor makes him superior to (former) Hollywood star Riggan, claiming that "popularity is the slutty little sister of prestige."
Mike Shiner: If this doesn't work out for you, you fuck off back to your studio pals, dive back into that cultural genocide you guys are perpetrating. You know, a douchebag born every minute. That was P.T. Barnum's premise when he invented the circus, and nothing much has changed. And you guys know that if you crank out any toxic piece of crap, people will line up and pay to see it. But long after you're gone I'm going to be on that stage earning my living, baring my soul, wrestling with complex human emotions 'cause that's what we do.
- The First Wives Club: Zig-Zagged.
- Inverted with Elise's ex-husband/producer, who discouraged her from doing theater when they were married because it would be bad for her film career (which he conveniently benefitted from).
- Implied when Elise takes a lead role in a play that better suits her than the ageist film roles she was being offered in Hollywood, which, along with becoming sober, becomes a point of character development for her that leads to great career success.
- Alexander Dane of Galaxy Quest laments that he was a classically trained actor who once played Richard III ("Five curtain calls!") but is now rather washed up and resents that he's best known for the alien Dr. Lazarus in the schlocky sci-fi TV show Galaxy Quest.
- Played for Laughs in The Producers (2005)'s credits song, "There's Nothing Like a Show on Broadway". Movies and TV are boring, so go to the theater and experience the unique magic of a play or musical...even if it is terribly expensive, uncomfortable, and liable to miscastings and bad audiences.
- Played for Laughs in The Prom, where Trent waxes poetic about his classical stage training to hide his shame that he's currently unemployed and only known as an actor from an old sitcom.
Trent: You see, my passions are fueled by the power of Lady Theater and how she can, with a gentle touch of her hand, sculpt a human soul. But we learned at Juilliard...If I could soliloquize, "If you prick me, do I not bleed?" "And if you do not pay me, do I not still act?" That might be enough. Still, I have played Hamlet, and yet I'm only known as that guy from the beloved early aughts sitcom...'Talk to the Hand.' I question the very meaning of my existence.
- Singin' in the Rain: The first meeting between famous silent film star Don Lockwood and self-proclaimed stage actress Kathy Selden has her claiming to have never heard of him and dismissing his profession as "not real acting", then calling him "nothing but a shadow on film" after their conversation turns into an argument. Her attitude doesn't last very long past Don discovering that her "stage acting" is as one of a nightclub's rentable dance troupe, though.
- tick, tick... BOOM!: Theatre Is True Writing variation. Jonathan's passion is theatre and he voluntarily lives the Starving Artist life because he wants to write a great show, but in "Play Game" he despairs at both the increasing commercialization of Broadway and the "crap" that's being written on film and TV... but at least you get paid to write for film and TV.
- Tootsie: Michael Dorsey is a talented, effective stage actor who drives everyone in New York nuts with his perfectionism. However, while he saves the best of himself for the stage he knows that screen work is necessary to earn a living, and even tells his agent to get him work in commercials and radio to help finance an upcoming play (which doesn't work because he's managed to alienate Hollywood with his behavior too). He also doesn't look down on one of his friends for auditioning for a soap opera, knowing she's trying to survive and get ahead in acting too.
Literature
- According to director Elia Kazan's autobiography, A Life, he initially thought that stage actors needed to have technique and eloquence film actors did not, but then eventually came to think that screen acting was the more 'honest' of the two.
"Whereas you can — and many effective actors do — get away with faking, posturing, and indicating emotions on stage, it's difficult if not impossible to get away with anything false before the camera. That instrument penetrates the husk of an actor; it reveals what's truly happening — if anything, if nothing. A close-up demands absolute truth; it's a severe and awesome trial. Acting for the screen is a more honest trade."
- All the World's a Stage, set in 1911, decries the "cinematograph" as the death of acting, as it cheaply immortalizes an art that should be transient.
"A play may be good or bad, but it is alive. A film is a fly in amber. Exactly as if it were alive, only it is dead. I shall never, do you hear, never act in front of that box of yours with its big glass eye!"
- Station Eleven: Arthur is acting in King Lear, which he views as his true academic accomplishment. Unlike his decades' worth of prior film work, he has a genuine emotional breakthrough while he's acting as Lear.
Live-Action TV
- Frasier: Frasier and Niles are absolutely appalled to discover that somebody they remember from childhood as a great Shakespearian stage actor has been reduced in later life to playing a Mr Spock expy on a TV show not unlike Star Trek. They consider this to be a huge fall and plot to restore his fortunes to place him where they think he should be — on stage. They are appalled to find out that to their more refined adult perceptions, their hero is a Large Ham.
- Reboot (2022): Screenwriter Hannah Korman is aghast when the studio stunt casts a reality TV alumna to play her Author Avatar. She complains that she had already found a "real" actress from Broadway to play her.
- Slings & Arrows: Jack is playing Hamlet on stage for the first time: as an (American) movie star, he’s used to having to work with less than a page of dialogue at a time, and having twenty takes to get his performance right; he’s very nervous about Hamlet, not only because of the size of the part, but because he imagines that the audience will mentally compare him to the great actors of the past. Nevertheless, he’s deeply committed to the role, not regarding his performance as a publicity stunt.
- Station Eleven:
- Arthur is a famous movie star who has become frustrated and disillusioned with his career. It's mentioned that he takes the title role in a buzzy Chicago production of King Lear because he wanted to reconnect with the craft of acting.
- Arthur's protege, child actress Kirsten, then has to live through an apocalypse that sets humanity back to pre-industrial revolution tech levels. Twenty years later, she is part of a troupe of actors who traverse the Great Lakes regions performing transformative versions of Shakespeare because they believe that the stage is a life-affirming art.
Theatre
- Variation in Merrily We Roll Along. Franklin Shepard gives up his career as a successful Broadway composer to produce formulaic films, losing the respect of his friends and colleagues along the way.
Western Animation
- In Bojack Horseman, Bojack repeatedly tries to transition into stage roles, as his mother has long disdained his television and film work as "it's not Ibsen" and he desperately wants to prove to her that he could do a stage play if given the chance. In the finale, he finally gets his chance... directing a production of Hedda Gabler while in prison.
