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I grew up in the theater, and you can't improvise shakespeare and ibsen. you have to speak the language. but obviously, in a contemporary film, there's often room for improvisation and spontaneous things that happen. as long as i know what i'm trying to achieve in the scene, and when something comes up, i know that the response is genuine, i'm comfortable. that's really how i build everything.
-Victor Garber
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I Grew Up In The Theater, And

Victor Garber
I grew up in the theater, and you can't improvise shakespeare and ibsen. you have to speak the language. but obviously, in a contemporary film, there's often room for improvisation and spontaneous things that happen. as long as i know what i'm trying to achieve in the scene, and when something comes up, i know that the response is genuine, i'm comfortable. that's really how i build everything.
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Long Trying Rooms

More From Victor Garber

I grew up in a theater family. my father was a regional theater classical repertory producer. he created shakespeare festivals. he produced all of shakespeare's plays, mostly in shakespeare festivals in ohio. one of them, the great lakes theater festival in cleveland, is still going. so i grew up not wanting to be an actor, not wanting to go into the family business.
Father Lakes Ohio
When i was doing shakespeare and i had spent a lot of time and effort in trying to become a great shakespearean actress. that was how i started my career, was in the theater doing shakespeare. and my ambition was to be a great classical actress. that was what i wanted more than anything. so, i really pursued that in the first four years of my career. and it was an uphill struggle. it really was. shakespeare's difficult and shakespeare in a big theater is even more difficult. so, anyway, it was a struggle for me.
Struggle Ambition Effort
When we got to the part where we had to improvise an argument in a poetic language, i got cold feet. "i can't do this," i said. "i don't know what to say." "say anything," he said. "you can't make a mistake when you improvise." "what if i mess it up? what if i screw up the rhythm?" "you can't," he said. "it's like drumming. if you miss a beat, you create another." in this simple exchange, sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that i have accessed my whole life.
Mistake Simple Feet
In theatre you can't ad lib, so you want to pick really good material, like david mamet or shakespeare or whatever. you want to be really careful about what you do. but in the movies, you do have more wiggle-room. you do have more opportunities to improvise. it's fun to improvise, but i still think it's better to have a great script.
Fun Opportunity Thinking
What is a scene? a) a scene starts and ends in one place at one time (the aristotelian unities of time and place-this stuff goes waaaayyyy back). b) a scene starts in one place emotionally and ends in another place emotionally. starts angry, ends embarrassed. starts lovestruck, ends disgusted. c) something happens in a scene, whereby the character cannot go back to the way things were before. make sure to finish a scene before you go on to the next. make something happen.
Character Unity Goes On
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