Live Performances

Last night, my family sat together and watched "Peter Pan" one of Leslie's favorite shows of all time! This version was the live one that premiered not too long ago. It was supposed to be like the "Sound of Music - Live!" that premiered last year. I didn't see that one, so I can't compare the two. Sorry!

It was fairly well performed. There was a couple small mistakes, which of course, is what people sometimes tend to focus on when they watch these live shows. That kind of bothers me though, that when something is advertised as live, people try to look for those small mistakes.

Live theater should not be a big deal, especially to the actors. Most actors have built up their acting skills over time. There are very few cases where actors just started out famous. A possible example of this could be Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen. They were cast as the cute baby on "Full House" and they did an amazing job! This is a VERY rare case.

These actors usually build up their skills and get their name out there by being in live theater. When you go for a night out to see a play, that is live theater. We don't make as big of a deal out of it then. Why don't we? They could mess up then, too.

Here are a couple of reasons why we tend to make a bigger deal about live theater on TV:

1. It's typically on National Television. It is a bigger audience than when you actually go to a theater. Plus, that means it is advertised a lot, and is made to be a bigger deal than it actually is. Both of these put more pressure on these actors if they mess up.

2. DVRs are a live actor's worst nightmare. With our modern day technology, we can record this live performance on TV and watch it over and over and over again. If they mess up, people can watch them mess up over and over and over again. That's also a lot of pressure.

3. Actors in these live television programs are typically already famous stars. On one hand, this means that should have live theater experience already, but on the other hand they haven't done live theater in a long time. Plus, people would expect more out of them. This adds even more pressure to these actors to do well - to not disappoint their fans.

These three pressure points are seen by the actor's fans which is why they tend to look for these mistakes. Sometimes it is more interesting for people to see mistakes that weren't supposed to be there, than just watch and enjoy the performance.