The Changing Spaces of Television Acting

Abstract

Why study television acting? While works focusing on cinema performance have increased in recent years, small screen drama has been largely neglected – despite the fact that developments in acting style provide as valuable an index of the times and places in which they were created as any other aspect of production. The Changing Spaces of Television Acting addresses this lack by providing an overview of historical changes in performance style from the live era to the present day. Utilised as case studies are programmes from three diverse eras of television production: The Quatermass Experiment (BBC, 1953), which was transmitted live; Doctor Who (BBC, 1963-89), pre-recorded ‘as live’ on videotape; and Survivors (BBC, 1975-77), which swiftly adopted an Outside Broadcast ‘rehearse/record’ model. Each was also re-made in the 2000s, allowing for both a chronological study and a ‘then-and-now’ comparison of television acting. Archive research into production and reception is combined with textual analysis and interviews with actors and production personnel to examine the effects of the shift from multi-camera studio production to single camera film location work. The result is the first book to investigate not only changes in acting style for television drama, but also the underlying factors which influenced them, from production process and technology to direction, actor training and experience. Only by fully comprehending the conditions under which performances are produced can we understand and appreciate the resulting acting style; The Changing Spaces of Television Acting is the first book to comprehensively address this neglected area of research.