Refining studio realism

By the early 1960s television was more established and widespread, and its conventions were beginning to be tacitly understood by audiences and performers alike. While the introduction of videotape pre-recording, as employed on Doctor Who, did little to change the ‘outside’ rehearsal and multi-camera studio performance template of the live era, it also meant that actors were for the first time able to watch their own performances, and adapt them to the medium. While still arriving at television via a multiplicity of routes, actors now typically shared the same degree of screen experience, leading to a greater uniformity in studio realism. At the same time, the growth of social realism meant a subtle shift in the style of acting that would be acceptable to audiences of the time. Despite its perceived outlandishness in narrative terms, reports show that Doctor Who was more than acceptable to contemporary audiences in terms of performance style.

The return of studio realism?

While location realism would seem to predominate in the 2010s, live drama continues to be popular in the form of ‘one-off’ specials and ‘event’ television. Special anniversary episodes of soap operas EastEnders (BBC, 1985- ) and Coronation Street (ITV, 1960- ) in 2015, plus the 2005 re-mount of The Quatermass Experiment and the combination of theatre and live musical forms that comprised Frankenstein’s Wedding (BBC, 2011), suggest a continuing fascination on the part of both producers and audiences with the practices of live studio realism. In this closing chapter, modern-day practitioners discuss the possibility of multi-camera studio drama once again finding a place in the British television landscape outside of soap and sitcom, and what form the ideal template, balancing rehearsal and performance, might take in the future.

Introduction

Creative and interpretive work demands concentration … The effort is apparent when experienced actors are watched in rehearsal. Often the labour is a contradiction of the effortlessness that is eventually shown to the audience in performance. Indeed, at times, the rehearsal process may seem to be by far the most interesting part of the work....

Conclusion

The methodological approaches employed herein offer as complete a picture as possible of the determinants of British television acting, and cover distinct historical periods. In the live era, from the mid-1930s up to the early 1960s, the type of experience gained by actors was arguably of greater importance than duration. Many were unaccustomed to the mediating effects of television technology, and had yet to ‘scale down’ approaches to performance that had typically been acquired and developed through stage experience. The varying backgrounds of ...

The age of location realism

The huge shift that has taken place in British television drama production in the 2000s, away from multi-camera studio and towards single camera location (and occasional soundstage) work, has been mirrored in performance style. Television now having supplanted theatre as the medium in which actors are now most likely to gain their first professional experience, serial television has replaced repertory as the actor’s training ground, and drama schools are also specifically training young actors for screen work for the first time. As a result, the style of performance employed for television has moved further than ever before away from the projection of stage work, the prior rehearsal period of the multi-camera studio having all but disappeared, and post-production has come to play a far more prominent role. As a result, many perceive generational differences between in the performances of actors trained in different eras, Survivors and in particular Doctor Who featuring an intriguing mix of approaches to television acting.

The genesis of location realism

Just as studio realism reached its apotheosis in the 1970s, BBC television drama showed signs of moving away from the multi-camera practices of Television Centre and out onto location. While technologically primitive compared to the cameras used today, the early employment of Outside Broadcast videotape equipment for drama (as opposed to live sporting events) saw a move towards a less projected performance style, linked in turn to the gradual introduction in English drama schools of Constantin Stanislavski, whose influence in the UK had been signified a decade earlier by the opening of East 15 and the Drama Centre London. While training for television at drama academies remained minimal, this period saw the beginnings of the birth of location realism, whose emergence in Survivors was praised by contemporary viewers.

Scaling down in early studio realism

Though still commonly referred to as the ‘early’ era of television, by 1953 it was possible for actors working in the medium to have acquired over a decade of experience. The Quatermass Experiment features a cast taken from a variety of backgrounds, with differing amounts of television experience. The ways in which this informs performance style are examined alongside the exigencies of live multi-camera television studio production, which required the continuity to which actors versed in theatre would be accustomed, while imposing severe technological limitations on freedom of movement and the need for physical and vocal projection. The extent to which the nascent studio realism of Quatermass was representative of its time is examined via Viewer Research Reports and contemporary press reviews, which already reveal a notable divergence of opinion with regard to what was acceptably verisimilitudinous in television acting.