Acting Essential Theatre Ch.14Iris Tuan

Associate Professor, NCTU

Acting

Of all theatre workers, the actor most nearly personifies the stage for the general public, perhaps because the actor is the only theatre artist the audience normally sees. The actor’s function is to embody characters that otherwise exist only in the written imagination.

ActingActors are among the few artists (along with dancers and singers) whose basic means of expression cannot be separated from themselves; they must create roles by using their own bodies and voices.

In many ways, acting is an extension of everyday human behavior. Almost everyone speaks, moves, and interacts with others. We also play many “roles”, during the course of a day adjusting to changing contexts: home, business, school, recreation, and so on.

Acting

Acting skill is a mixture of three basic ingredients:

Innate ability (a special talent for acting)TrainingPractice (or experience)

Talent is perhaps most essential, but usually it is not enough in itself; it needs to be nurtured and developed through extensive training and repeated application in performance.

The Actor’s Training and Means

In acting training, through the process of acting as a whole is the ultimate concern, not all of its aspects can be addressed simultaneously.

Therefore, different aspects of acting are singled out for specialized attention even as attention is being paid to the interrelationship of the various parts. Ultimately the goal is to integrate all of the parts into a seamless whole.

The Actor’s InstrumentJust as it takes musicians many years of training and practice to master their instrument, actors spend years mastering their instrument.

One of the actor’s primary challenges is to understand how the body and voice function. Actors typically begin by learning how the body and voice operate in a general, physiological sense and then proceed to explore how one’s own body and voice actually are functioning.

The Actor’s Instrument

Because the body and voice are integral parts of a total system that includes psychological forces, it is difficult to achieve physical and vocal freedom and expressiveness without some concern for the psychological processes that may create tension or block creative expression.

The Actor’s Instrument

In addition to mastery of body and voice, actors usually seek more specialized training in dancing, fencing, singing, and other skills that increase their ability to play a wide range of roles in a variety of theatrical forms.

Observation and ImaginationActors require highly developed powers of observation and imagination. Because human beings learn about each other in large part through observation, actors need to develop the habit of watching other people.

Actors must also develop imagination in order to “feel their way” into the lives of others and into fictional situations.

Concentration

No matter how well actors have mastered the basic skills, they are unlikely to use these skills effectively onstage unless they have also learned to control, shape, and integrate them as demanded by the script and the director. Control is usually achieved only through daily practice and disciplined effort over a long period.

Concentration

One mark of control and discipline is concentration – the ability to immerse oneself in the situation and to shut out all distractions.

No matter how often they have performed the roles, actors should make each moment seem as if it were happening for the first time.

Stage VocabularyOver the centuries, actors have developed certain ways of doing things onstage because they have proven more effective than others. Many routine tasks have been reduced to a set of conventions that actors are expected to know.

Among the basic conventions is the division of the stage into areas, which facilitates giving directions.

Stage Vocabulary

Other terminology may supplement designations of area and bodily position. Some devices are commonly used to emphasize or subordinate stage business. An object (such as a letter) that is to be important later may need to be planted in an earlier scene.

Stage Vocabulary

In whatever they do, actors normally strive to be graceful, because gracefulness is usually unobtrusive, whereas awkwardness is distracting.

Actors are better prepared of they are familiar with all aspects of theatrical production, because the more they know about scenery, costumes, and lighting, the better they will be able to utilize these elements in their acting.

Scene Study

While actors are involved in gaining control over themselves as instruments, they are simultaneously involved in scene study, based either in scripts as a whole or scenes from the scripts.

Scene study and its embodiment in performance ultimately bring together all of the elements of actor training.

From Training to PerformingPrior to the twentieth century, would-be actors usually learned on the job. First, they had to be accepted into a company as “utility” actors, roughly equivalent to being apprentices.

Most training programs stage productions to provide students opportunities to apply what they are being taught.

From Training to Performing

Although a would-be actor may complete training programs and receive a degree certificate, there are no exams or boards as there are for a lawyer or doctor to certify an actor’s readiness to practice the profession.

From Training to PerformingWherever actors live or wish to work, they all face the problem of being cast. To work in the professional theatre, an actor usually must be a member of Actors Equity Association, the actors’ union.Many, perhaps most, aspiring actors spend more time working as waiters or in temporary office jobs while they make the rounds of auditions than they do performing for pay on the stage. Patience and persistence are necessary attributes of would-be actors.

Creating a Role

Each time actors undertake a new role, they are faced with a number of tasks. Perhaps the most basic is to understand the role.

Because a character may have been given many traits, it is also helpful to determine which among these traits are necessary within the dramatic action. Such inquires form a broad base for further explorations.

Creating a RoleThe most essential aspects of a role are what the character wants and what the character is willing to do to get it.

The actor also needs to examine how the role relates to all of the others in the play.

The actor needs to understand the script’s themes, implied meanings, and overall significance, which demands not only attention to observable relationships among characters and ideas but also sensitivity to subtext – the emotional undercurrents, unexpressed motivations, and attitudes that inform the underlying meaning of their lines.

Creating a Role

The actors also need to examine their roles in relation to the director’s interpretation of the script (the production concept).

Ultimately, however, the actors must make their roles fit whatever interpretation is being used to shape the production.

Psychological and Emotional Preparation

In addition to understanding the script and the way a role fits into the total concept, the actors must be able to project themselves imaginatively into the world of the play, the specific situations, and their individual characters’ feelings and motivations.

Movement, Gesture, and Business

Whether the director specifies much of the actors’ movement or, at least initially, lets the actors position themselves and move about as their responses impel them, actors need to feel comfortable with their blocking and movement.

Even if the director specifies much of the movement, the actor still must fill in many details – the character’s walk, posture, bodily attitudes, and gestures.

Vocal Characterization

Although actors cannot radically change their dominant vocal traits during a rehearsal period, they may, if they have well-trained voices, modify their vocal patterns considerably for purposes of characterization.

The variable factors in voice are pitch, volume, and quality, each of which may be used to achieve many different effects.

Vocal Characterization

The variable factors of speech are articulation, duration, inflection, and projection (or audibility).

Articulation involves the production of sounds, whereas pronunciation involves the selection and combination of sounds.

Vocal CharacterizationDuration refers to the length of time assigned to any sound, inflection to rising and falling pitch. Both duration and inflection are used to stress some syllables and subordinate others.

In performance, actors should be both audible (which depends on projection or volume) and intelligible ( which depends primarily on articulation and pronunciation), because the audience needs both to hear and to understand what the characters are saying.

Memorization and Line ReadingsA task that every actor faces is memorization. It is usually helpful to memorize speeches and movements simultaneously, because they reinforce each other. Furthermore, because blocking is done in relation to specific speeches, this conjunction ultimately becomes fused in the memory.

Memorization is aided by a few simple procedures. Because it is impossible to memorize everything at once, the script may be broken into beats and mastered one at a time.

Memorization and Line Readings

Once the actors have memorized or have become very familiar with their lines, they begin to color their understanding of the lines through the controllable factors of voice and speech to form distinctive line readings.

Refining a RoleThe foundation work (understanding the role; psychological and emotional preparation; movement, gesture, and business; vocal characterization; memorization)This phase is difficult to describe, because it varies with each actor, role, and production.

No single role (except those plays with one character) is complete itself. It is sometimes said that performing in a play is not acting so much as reacting.

Dress Rehearsals and Performance

Not until dress rehearsals are actors usually able to work with all properties, settings, costumes, makeup, and stage lighting.

Frequently, this is also the first time they have been able to work on the stage that will be used for performances. Thus, dress rehearsals may be occasions of considerable stress and exiting discoveries.

Dress Rehearsals and Performance

Of special importance to actors are their costumes, because they affect not only appearance but also movement and gesture.