Is honouring the text such a bad thing?

Not being able to sleep the other night (again), I  listened to a fascinating interview with the young British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. During it, he was asked about who his influences were. He immediately spoke of another British cellist, the late Jacqueline du Pré. He then made a comment which resonated: “She made a commitment to every note.”
That struck me as quite profound.

"She made a commitment to every note."
For me, that says a lot about her respect (and his) for the score and by virtue, the composer and their work. She attended to the detail of their detail. She respected the work. I guess as a professional, she wanted to do it justice. And it reminded me of an adage, the origins of which are now lost to me: when you honour the writer, you honour yourself.
 
When it comes to writing, I have no delusions. I’m a very small fish in a huge sea. But I am still very particular about what I write. My process isn’t quick. I can spend what feels like an eternity on a play. It’s no exaggeration that I do consider every single word. A few words together can create a unique and special moment in the life of a character and their journey. For a member of an audience, that moment can sometimes catch their breath and remain with them for long after. And if you get the alchemy of word-smithing right, a moment can last a lifetime.
 
I have often said that I don’t write plays. I write life. And life isn’t easy. Because of that, neither is my writing. Knowing that, I make no apologies for it. You will like it or you won’t. You will perform it or you won’t. That’s life, I guess. I can’t write to please everyone so I write to please me in the hope of finding kindred spirits.
If you are an actor, I believe that if you commit to performing something, you are committing to perform the piece and all the moments it contains and which the writer has created for you. Not your version of it (unless that's the intention). There must be interpretation in the delivery of the text and the character in any performance. Otherwise how can you make it your own? 

As a writer, I get a buzz from watching my work staged and witnessing that essential nuance, personalisation of delivery which gives the performance spontaneity, energy; makes it exciting and “in the moment.” That is the actor's art, their job. It is the challenge I have given them. And I am humbled that they accept it.
 
I don't then feel I'm wrong in being passionate that the text is respected. I guess I have an expectation that performers will feel the same, appreciate the moments which those words create and want to deliver what they have been provided with.

Unexpected inaccuracy, dropped lines (even pages!) when delivering dialogue does not invalidate the performance. It happens - and we've all been there, done it or watched it. Such are the joys of live theatre! It's how you roll with it that matters.

But this is something very different. My difficulty is when changing the text happens by default. When an actor - whether it is by design, inability or "their way" - is happy to give you a version of the text. And then, everyone just goes along with it. It's how they work, their style. It's how they 'act.'

Setting aside that it's not my words any longer, something far more important is lost. Respect. Moreover, delivering a version of the script is done at the expense of those all important moments created by a crafted text and which create the magic of storytelling, of theatre. They might still happen. But at what cost?

And if you are an actor reading this, before you self-combust, this goes far deeper than you. It begins at the point of casting. Some people excel at certain roles. Fact. If an actor struggles with (say) delivering a soliloquy, why cast them in a role where they have several? At what cost to them, the audience, the performance, their fellow actors, the text?

I'm not being precious. I'm just being honest.

And if you are a director shouting at the screen about having a limited pool of people to choose from, then go find another pool. Maybe, get better at choosing plays which you can cast.

 
People who know me also know that I take issue with producing companies/directors who have a penchant for taking a pencil to a text. This is different. An actor doing what they like with the text because they can't, don't or won't do what's in the book. That's not fair on anybody. And way, way down the food chain, it's not fair on the writer.
The quality of a performance shouldn't be measured by the word count, be the subject of a QA process. I don’t expect any actor to make a commitment to every word. That's absurd.
But at least having an aspiration to? Is that such a big ask?