Many actors pretend the emotions that their characters are feeling while others bring the real thing to their performance.
When there is an actor who is faking the emotions that their characters are feeling, there is always an element of disbelief. Actors who pretend to feel what their characters are feeling are very apparent to the audience that is watching the performance. This can take a great deal of genuineness from the entire production when the actors use this approach in their performance.
When method acting is used, however, there is a feeling of realism that is created by the actors in the performance. There are many acting coaches that teach this style of acting to their students. This helps to create actors who understand the truth of real emotion in their performances.
In 1931, the Group Theater was created by Lee Strasberg, Cheryl Crawford and Harold Clurman. The Group Theater was designed to present a unified approach to performing the plays of that time. There was to be no star in the company and all of the actors were part of a movement that would achieve success for every member of the company.
Some of the other members of the Group Theater were Paul Strand, Lee J. Cobb, Paul Green, Kurt Weill, Clifford Odets, Joseph Bromberg, Michael Gordon, Franchot Tone, John Randolph, Will Geer, Howard Da Silva, Luther Adler, Elia Kazan and Stella Adler.
It is with this company of actors that Lee Strasberg developed the method of acting that later was to be called the Method. The inspiration for this style of acting came from the work of Konstantin Stanislavsky. The actors are taught during rehearsal to bring real emotion into their performance by calling up the experiences of their own life.
There are a number of acting schools and coaches who use the Method to teach budding actors how to bring emotion into their performances. The particular school or acting coach may add their personal touches to the technique, but they are all based on the Method.
Many actors who were previously guarded and giving stiff performances have been able to open up and use the emotions that are in their own experience. This method is a powerful tool for bringing those emotions out of the actor and into their performance.
The acting coach will generally teach a student exercises that are designed to help the student bring up the emotions that they will need to use in their performance. The actor is taught to get into a state of emotion through the exercises and then transfer it to their performance. Once the actor learns this, they can bring any kind of emotion into a performance that they want simply by tapping their own life experiences.
The Method approach to acting is a lifelong commitment to the process. The actor will always be learning about their own emotions and their response to the events of their life. They will always have a well of emotional experiences to draw upon whenever their performance demands it.
This is what separates an artist from an actor. The artist is willing to put their own emotions on the line for the sake of their art.
About the Author:
Roy is an experienced veteran of comedy and hidden camera reality television, acting coach and instructor, and has taught in Hollywood and abroad at the IAFT, a film school in the Philippines.
