From Fo: "To Swim Like a Violin"

The actor who has the audience eating out of the palm of his hands is like the virtuoso violinist who no longer has to watch his fingers as he plays, nor even keep an eye on the bow. He feels the notes as they leave the violin, and listens to them as they float back. You will never see a great maestro of violin or piano with his eyes fixed on the keyboard or on the instrument: the instrument has become part of him. In the same way, a skilled mime has no need to watch his own hands or to check their movment. The same should be true of a great actor and his voice or his body.

It is also important to bear in mind the need to keep the level of spray to a minimum. By spray I am not referring to anything produced by the excess of salivation or by pronouncing with excessive emphasis the letters P and B, because in me, for example, that level can be extraordinary. I was really referring to producing spray as in the art of swimming or rowing. In Italian theatre slang, the verbs "to spray" or "to splash" are used to describe actors who declaim and roar on stage. The expression derives from an analogy with bad swimmers, splashing as a small motor boat. The real swimmer can push himself forward in the water without producing needless commotion. He appears to do everything effortlessly; he glides lightly and rapidly, without making a single splash. His power comes from co-ordination and economy of gesture: on the other hand, the unfortunate amateur waves his arms as though they were windmill sails, and beats about wildly, as though whipping several bowls of mayonnaise at the same time. And does not move forward one inch; indeed, he is more likely to drown. The same is true in theatre.

This is not the same as giving less than your best, or performing lazily. I have seen an actor, who shall be nameless, but who had an uncanny resemblance to Vittorio Gassman, walk off stage after a performance and collapse into the nearest chair, completely exhausted, and yet had you seen him on stage at any point during the evening, you would have sworn that he'd had no problem in the world. That is what talent and a command of craft mean.

So, to sum up: to get on top of this business, with dignity, to become a worthwhile man or woman of the theatre, the key is to work hard to acquire those elements of knowledge we have been discussing, and these come from study, from direct observation and from practice. In short, shun prejudice, avoid following fashion if you are keen not to end up on your backside. Be involved with your own times even when dealing with stories from other times. Reject definitions and classifications which purport to give lists of importance -- in other words categories of the Aristotelian type, which would set up a scale of values with tragedy at the top, followed by drama, then comedy and so on down, down down to puppet theatre, acrobats and clowns.

Dario Fo, The Tricks of the Trade