Acting Essential Theatre Ch.14
Iris 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.
Acting
Actors 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)
Training
Practice (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 Instrument
Just 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 Imagination
Actors 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 Vocabulary
Over 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 Performing
Prior 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 Performing
Wherever 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 Role
The 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 Characterization
Duration 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 Readings
A 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 Role
The 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.