What If This Were Real? (I)

One of the things I learned from being in, and watching, merely competent musicals (as opposed to truly excellent ones) is the importance of doing what you would really do.

There's obviously a right way and a wrong way to do this.  For instance, in the (competent) production of Princess Ida here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9GRJESLQe4&t=2860s) there is a fair bit of the usual nodding and whispering among principals and chorus to convey the fact that we are Doing Something even when we don't have lines or notes because we are Real Characters--it is an attempt at doing "what you really would do."

In contrast, the (superb) production of Mikado here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbpUzCFCy_8&t=1813s) there is nodding, gesturing, whispering--but it is highly coordinated, stylized, and choreographed, limited to specific moments and places.

Maybe another way to put this is to say that the professional production is thoroughly blocked--the director(s) had a vision that entailed telling the actors (or more likely, determining with them) what they were to do at every single moment.  That overarching, all-determining vision is just not evident in the (I'm guessing) semi-pro production.

In both cases, the actors have been instructed to do "what you really would do," but in the case of the professional production, what one really would do is ordered to the whole.

It's an obvious metaphor for the spiritual life, no?  The capstone, the thing that takes you to the level of sanctity, is to order your doing to the whole.  The prior thing, the thing that gets you to level one, is to do "what you really would do."  You have to persuade yourself that this is important first, important enough not to just go through the motions--stand there and sing, survive your day--but to act as if this life you are in were real.