I Believe I have Developed Another Theory
I believe that the best performances come from measured and calibrated dynamics.Playing each scene at a energy/intensity of 10 and then at a 1, setting the possibilities, and then the team makes the decision for where one plays the final product from there.Or in a show like the Collyer Brothers - what Langley's arc looks like.
You are not wood, you are not stones.
One of the evergreen topics on the rotating menu that theatre blogs cycle through is the "fight" between professional theatremakers and community theatre makers. This is of course a radical narrative distillation of a more nuanced relationship.
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you
Live performance is a system of interlocking skills honed individually and together over time like any other muscle-building, and then deployed all at once. It is almost always desired that the edges of that displayed set of skills are folded under and invisible to the uninitiated, and, on the highest level, even to fellow initiates. So as one progresses, craft becomes more and more opaque. The skilled stop understanding how and why they do it and the very best seem to require no effort at all.