"The staff, stage managers, ushers all behaved as if they respected the actors"
About this Quote
A tiny line with a loaded pause inside it: "as if". Estelle Parsons isn’t praising theater workers; she’s spotlighting the performance of respect that the industry teaches everyone to give and receive. The staff "behaved" respectfully - stage managers, ushers, the whole backstage ecology - but Parsons clocks it as behavior, not belief. Respect here is choreography.
Coming from an actress, the jab lands because it collapses the romantic myth of theater as a communal art. In the ideal story, the building runs on mutual awe: actors revere crews, crews revere actors, everyone reveres the work. Parsons implies a colder reality: respect is often a customer-service mode aimed at keeping the machine running, protecting the aura, avoiding conflict with temperamental talent, or simply obeying hierarchy. The actors are the show; everyone else is trained to treat them like the show even offstage.
The phrase also flips the usual stereotype. We often hear actors complain about disrespect. Parsons suggests the opposite problem: the strange falseness of being treated like you're important, like you're fragile, like you're the point. That "as if" carries the fatigue of someone who has lived inside applause long enough to recognize when it’s automatic.
Subtextually, it’s a critique of power disguised as etiquette. The theater is full of roles, and Parsons is noting that deference can be just another costume - professional, polished, and utterly detached from what anyone actually thinks.
Coming from an actress, the jab lands because it collapses the romantic myth of theater as a communal art. In the ideal story, the building runs on mutual awe: actors revere crews, crews revere actors, everyone reveres the work. Parsons implies a colder reality: respect is often a customer-service mode aimed at keeping the machine running, protecting the aura, avoiding conflict with temperamental talent, or simply obeying hierarchy. The actors are the show; everyone else is trained to treat them like the show even offstage.
The phrase also flips the usual stereotype. We often hear actors complain about disrespect. Parsons suggests the opposite problem: the strange falseness of being treated like you're important, like you're fragile, like you're the point. That "as if" carries the fatigue of someone who has lived inside applause long enough to recognize when it’s automatic.
Subtextually, it’s a critique of power disguised as etiquette. The theater is full of roles, and Parsons is noting that deference can be just another costume - professional, polished, and utterly detached from what anyone actually thinks.
Quote Details
| Topic | Respect |
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