
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Preparation for a performance on stage goes beyond just memorising lines, learning blocking and hoping it will be alright on the night. A diligent actor studies the history of the period of the play, learns about the intentions of the playwright, and absorbs from older colleagues knowledge of how the play has been done in the past.
In his less than stellar career as an actor, Michael Goldfarb went through this process many times.
In this essay, he appears in Maxim Gorki's Summerfolk, a play about the Russian upper-middle classes at their summer homes, as their country teeters on the brink of revolutionary catastrophe. He remembers Russian theatre, theatrical friendships and after-show drinking.
By BBC Radio 34.2
8282 ratings
Preparation for a performance on stage goes beyond just memorising lines, learning blocking and hoping it will be alright on the night. A diligent actor studies the history of the period of the play, learns about the intentions of the playwright, and absorbs from older colleagues knowledge of how the play has been done in the past.
In his less than stellar career as an actor, Michael Goldfarb went through this process many times.
In this essay, he appears in Maxim Gorki's Summerfolk, a play about the Russian upper-middle classes at their summer homes, as their country teeters on the brink of revolutionary catastrophe. He remembers Russian theatre, theatrical friendships and after-show drinking.

7,913 Listeners

143 Listeners

1,067 Listeners

5,576 Listeners

1,808 Listeners

303 Listeners

1,729 Listeners

1,018 Listeners

1,952 Listeners

488 Listeners

585 Listeners

70 Listeners

410 Listeners

306 Listeners

756 Listeners

841 Listeners

129 Listeners

62 Listeners

241 Listeners

55 Listeners

52 Listeners

181 Listeners

4,186 Listeners

3,245 Listeners