There are many ways to determine the success of an actor. There is the amount of money, their fame, how much they are in demand, whether or not they perform certain scripts, how easy they are to get along with. A million more. In the end, however, I doubt there can be a better, more appropriate, more powerful metric by which to determine the success of one who acts than this ability to hold the universe in the palm of their hand. After all, what good is the fame, or the money to the rest of the world if every time you walk out on stage all anybody can think is, “Look! There’s John FamousPerson!”

If an audience comes to a performance and doesn’t think about who you really are, at least for a few hours, that is acting. If how you make an audience feel overpowers their impression of your technique, or your training, or your résumé, that is acting. If someone who pays to see the production is able to recognize in your performance some aspect of themselves, (aspects they either love or hate), and is made to feel as if they know who you are portraying, that is acting. If they can’t wait for you to come back on stage when you exit, that is acting.

Some are certainly born with the gift to perform on stage, or on screen. But that gift is of little use to anyone if they don’t wish to explore it. To practice it. To dig deep into it and find out what is there. To challenge it and to see it from a distance. If even a gifted actor is unconcerned with exploring that universe that has been placed in his hand, he isn’t much of an actor. Great acting, therefore, is more about commitment and dedication to the craft and to the individual role than about anything else. An actor with those two qualities will succeed. They will matter on stage far more than the lazy gifted actor will.

These great actors can be found in both Broadway and your Main Street playhouse. They appear at the Kennedy Center, and they also appear in your local high school’s senior production. Some make a living doing it. Most don’t and even more don’t get paid at all for doing it. Not in money. But when they open both their heart to the possibilities, and the palm of their hand to reveal the universe, they give an audience what it most needs; they give it truth. This is the ultimate advice for every actor that I would impart if I had but a short time to impart it. Decide first and foremost to be true. The greatness will follow.

If you are not bound by contract to be in a show, but have elected to anyway, there should be very little reason for you to not continue with the program. A few exist, I am sure. Such is life. But commitment is commitment, and if you don’t think you can provide that to a show for any number of reasons, you owe it to the show, the others in it, and in the end, to yourself, to not agree to take part in the project.

It isn’t just that your name will be attached to a project. (Or attached and removed frequently.) It isn’t just that the arts as a whole are just as worthy of your dedication as any other endeavor in society, if not more. It is a matter of respect for what a show is.

When you only agree to be in a show because there is nothing better to do, or because you are killing time until a “better gig” shows up, you are making the case that your own aggrandizement is more important than the time and effort being put into a play by the others involved. The director. The other actors. The crew. And people who may have been denied a place in the play because it was given to you instead. There are in fact more people involved in the theatre world than you, personally.

Community theatre has a reputation for being of lesser quality because of these very difficulties. It is seen as a joke, often because actors of lesser quality or dedication allow it to be a joke. They may or may not show up for rehearsal. They may or may not be off book by the time they were supposed to be. They will be in a show for now, but if down the road there is something more interesting happening in their life, they will do that instead. All such behaviors, and more, contribute to the long-standing black eye through which community theatre must view the world.

Not that there are no dedicated, talented people in the community theatre ranks. There are many, in fact. I work with them all the time. And sometimes even they have their lives intrude and they are unable to contribute as much as they otherwise would. But if art for art’s sake (which in the end community theatre should be) is not enough of a payment in your mind to give of your time and energy, perhaps theatre is not the place for you to spend your spare time.

If you wish to act, act. Commit to it. Be an actor, wherever you get the chance, so long as it is appealing and enjoyable to you. But go all in, or don’t bother. Don’t sling your coat over the good seats to keep other people from sitting there while you are meandering around the neighborhood seeing what else is going on. Especially if once things begin, you grab your coat and go.

The smallest cast I was ever in was three people. It had its obvious advantages. Small casts such as this are preferable if you want the chance to relate to everyone on a more personal level. To converse, explore the play and establish trust in a more intimate fashion with all those involved in the production. With a cast of three to five people, each role more directly impacts all the others, and can bring about a greater sense of collaboration on stage.

Not to mention that off stage you have a greater chance of finding some privacy between scenes if you need to. Fewer people to avoid, as it were.

But of course a smaller presents the risk of “claustrophobia” as it were. If you don’t get along with the other two people in the show, no corner of the theatre, no matter how obscure will offer any relief. Day in and day out you will be confronted with the same quirks, the same annoyances, the same personalities. You won’t have anywhere to retreat to when it gets hairy between you and someone else.

And of course is one person has the flu in such a show, you are looking a week without a third of your cast. That can be quite a void, especially early in the rehearsal process.

Large shows (my largest ever was a cast of 42) offer one a greater chance of finding an individual or group with whom one can socialize, or at least vent when needed. Being around so many people doing so many different things opens our experiences up to many different ways of viewing the show, and theatre in general. We become exposed to all sorts of perceptions that we may not experience in a tiny show. The chance to expand our viewpoint increases.

And in many cases, when one person out of 42 is missing for a few days, it is easier to keep that train moving along just fine without them.

Yet there is often nowhere to go when one wants to be alone. People in the dressing room, the green room, out in the empty house seats during rehearsal, up in the balcony. Everywhere you go, somebody else. (Unless you are lucky enough to be in a very large venue.)

One’s individual voice and contribution also tends to get lost in such an ocean of people. There isn’t as much time to address individual concerns. And unlike a smaller cast, the odds of the talent level varying drastically from great to poor increase with every five people in a cast. (Not scientific…a general estimate on my part.)

So, regardless of the script, the specific people, and the venue, the size of a cast has its pros and its cons right from the start. Consider them before you fill out that audition form.