The actor's primary goal is:
To perform determined actions that are willfully directed toward attaining conscious desires.
To accomplish their goal the actor's primary tasks are:
- To determine what desires their character has at each moment.
- To determine what actions are required to successfully attain those desires.
- To convincingly perform those determined actions.
Both 'determine' and 'determined' here mean to intentionally choose something.
Associated with the concept of determined desires, the question "WHO AM I?" is THE essential question that an actor must ask about their character. You don't necessarily have to ANSWER it - often just ASKING is enough! After all, few people are truly able to answer such a question fully in real life!
As well as addressing the question, "WHO AM I?" the performer must, in every moment of acting, have justifiable and believable answers for these three questions:
1. What am I doing?
2. Why am I doing it?
3. How am I doing it?
People are motivated to action by a desire to attain a goal - a desire.
For example:
1. Someone desires to be accepted by people they like - so they dress in a similar fashion and behave in similar ways…
2. Someone desires to stand out from the crowd and so maybe they colour their hair wild colours and wear exotic, unusual clothing
3. Someone desires a new car - so they get a job and save money to qualify for credit to purchase that new car.
4. Someone swings their arms at an attacker's knife - so as to ward off the deadly stabbing blows.
5. Someone weeps deep, sobbing, tears - so as to express and alleviate the pain and grief over the sudden tragic death of a friend.
In the real world, our desires and actions are not always known to us consciously. Often our desires and actions are initially known only to our sub-conscious.For instance, in example 1, people probably do not consciously say to themselves: "Gosh, I seem to like those people. I want to be liked by them. I think I will dress and behave like them."
More likely is that their attraction to a particular group of people, their desire to be liked by them and their decision to dress and behave like them was initially not a part of their conscious awareness.
They might, in retrospect, have become aware of why they dress and behave like the group they belong to, but that is likely something that happened some time after their desire arose and they started dressing and behaving like them.
Of course, in the real world, desires and actions are also a part of our conscious awareness. For instance, in the fourth example, you could easily be consciously aware that you want to own a particular new car, and consciously decide to get a job and save your money so that one day you can purchase that car. The entire process would be a conscious effort.
So in the real world, desires and the actions, which attempt to fulfil those desires, can be both conscious AND subconscious.
In real life, emotions (or 'feelings') arise from the sub-conscious as a result of our ability to fulfil our desires.
For instance, let's say as in example 3 above, that you did colour your hair purple and pink and showed up at school or work the next day. You found that you indeed were quite different from your peers and everyone noticed you and commented on how wonderfully unique you were. Maybe you'd feel happy because your desire (whether determined or still in the realm of your sub-conscious) to stand out from the crowd has been gratified.
You did not plan to feel the emotion of happiness. You did not plan to smile broadly, walk with a light, carefree, bouncy gait and talk in an upbeat, cheerful tone. These actions came about as the emotion of happiness arose from your sub-conscious - a result of the fulfilment of your desire to stand out from the crowd.If, however, you coloured your hair purple and pink, only to find that ALL your friends or colleagues also showed up with purple and pink hair, you would likely feel frustrated, angry, perhaps even sad, because your desire to stand out from the crowd has not been gratified.
You did not plan to feel the emotions frustration or anger. You did not plan to frown, to walk with a heavy gait, and talk in a curt, abrupt manner. These actions came about as the emotions of frustration and anger arose from your sub-conscious - a result of the lack of fulfilment of your desire to stand out from the crowd.Acting, on the other hand, is not like real life. Acting is wilful (conscious). Actors have to determine and plan every desire, every action. When performing, an actor cannot depend upon sudden revelations of subconscious desires and spontaneous bursts of unrehearsed action - or there would be chaos as each member of the cast constantly trying to figure out and respond to the seemingly random actions of every other cast member.
Actually, their is a really useful REHEARSAL technique and is also the basis for IMPROVISATION and certain rehearsal exercises and games, which frequently use subconscious thoughts and spontaneous action. Improvisation is useful in the rehearsal process and has a place in certain performance situations.
However, here we are talking about working with scripted material - which is what most actors work with most of the time.In the process of developing a role, as part of the rehearsal process, the actor uses their sub-conscious mind and their interactions with the other actors and the director to explore possibilities of emotions and actions and to develop meaning and truthful justifications for actions.
Ultimately, however, it is the actor's wilful determination of specific desires, actions to perform and ways to perform those actions that are the actor's tasks - and the key to a successful performance.
So, how do you wilfully determine a character's desires and actions for every moment of the play?
You appeal to your sub-conscious mind and a lot of other things for help. An actor strives to make their character's desires their own desires. In other words, the actor must keep their full attention upon their character's desires.
The character's various desires must occupy the actor's thoughts at the appropriate time during the play. Not jumping ahead in one's mind, anticipating the next few determined thoughts, desires or actions, but instead, at the moment the character, if he were a real person, would have such a thought or perform such an action. Acting in the here-and-now.
This concept is important for the actor to master. By doing so, the actor will be able to convince the audience that the character's emotions are "real" - so the audience can also feel those emotions.
It is also extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do constantly! Even the most experienced and accomplished performers have lapses during a performance. It is very rare indeed to achieve a perfect performance in every aspect.
Many things can impair an actor's ability to act, for every moment, in the here-and-now: concentration can be momentarily broken, entire pages of script can be skipped by fellow actors, scenery and props can be uncooperative or missing... many things can interfere with total perfection.
It is, however, the actor's responsibility to do the absolute best they can - always.
|
