In this brief list I endeavour to clear away the words which can lead to stress and muddle in the actor, replacing them with practical words of reliable do-able action.
The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to change one thought for another
-William James
The seven words are for you to consider in whatever order you choose.
What happens if you change the word?
Change the word, change the thought.
The thought changes the ACTION and the action changes the sensation of Doing, which we call ‘feeling’. What works is Doing.
‘Trust the power of the simplest physical action’ says Stanislavsky. What does not work is trying / preparing to ‘feel’, in order to find the impulse to take action later on.
‘…I have to feel right before I do anything. And I don’t know how to force myself to feel right, so I won’t do anything.’
You know that doesn’t work!
Say MEANING instead of FEELING
MEANING:
To have in the mind, to intend, signify, to think, believe; a psychological/moral purpose.
Using the word ‘meaning’ instead of the word ‘feeling’ gives us the power of choice — the intensity of how much this present moment matters to us. It needs to matter to the actor at that moment as much as it would matter at that moment to the imagined character in the scene.
Intensity of Meaning swings from Light to Strong in a constant dance, depending on changing situation.
MEANING is specific, where FEELING is so often generalised as a vague wash of manufactured emotion. Meaning centres the spoken word in action at this present moment. The text — the story — is active, living in the breath and muscle of the actor: the direct experience shared with others.
‘Being the character’ is to mean what Lady Macbeth says and to say what Lady Macbeth means. You are not Lady Macbeth (who does not exist). You are you, doing what the imagined person does and letting it matter to You.
This is the experience of play, which functions the same way that any game functions: within a stated time, in a particular place, with its own rules of behaviour from players and spectators. It is of less importance than daily life and can be interrupted at any time for a real-life emergency.
Think of any sport or game: how people need and enjoy the process of solving the planned problems of a football match, a thriller, ‘who-dun-it?’, a game of chess.
We soon get bored if the problem is too easy to solve but when it is difficult we become fully involved, excited, physically active, emotionally charged within the artificial rules of the game (which must be logical, clear and accepted by all players and spectators) which we have decide to play with those chosen people at a particular limited time in this special place.
I have always wanted to use a game of Monopoly with a group of actors who are having difficulties about ‘Feeling’! This would challenge their perception that they ‘can’t feel’ in a playful situation, like my cat playing with a ball of wool, she knows — and the actors know — that the playful object is not ‘real’ in terms of their daily life. The wool is not a mouse, the Monopoly money will not buy Park Lane, but when we have decided to play, THEN those toys have power and Meaning. We ‘have to’ to solve them, kill them, get the property we want.
So, we DECIDE to use the Magic IF, in that place for that time with full Meaning, all the time being aware that this is Truth of Imagination, running in quiet parallel with constant Truth of Daily Life.
It is like our right hand being the Truth of Daily Life and our left hand (nearer the heart) being the Truth of Imagination: both are real, like our two hands. We need both. We need to keep alive and safe, we choose to daydream, to use the Magic IF, to create stories, to act them out within chosen limits of time and place.
Daily life, like the autonomic nervous system that keeps us breathing, digesting, functioning even when unconscious, supports us when we decide to move into the world of play. For actors we say, ‘The play.’ We need both truths. They are simply like the two sides of one coin.
Actors, like footballers, work hard to develope the necessary physical, mental and emotional skills in order to be successful at their job and earn good money to play the game they love.
Stanislavsky warned against the ‘search for feelings inside oneself’ and he was clear that we ‘cannot prepare to feel.’
William James (American psychologist, b.1849 – d.1910) in his ’The Gospel of Relaxation’ says that ‘action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action which is under a more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate feeling, which is not.’
So, because it is not possible to speak the two words ‘action’ and ‘feeling’ at the same time (well, I can’t and I bet you can’t either, saying the 2 words very fast is still consecutive) it is useful to be aware that the word ‘action’ does come first; though, as professor James says, they do ‘go together,’
Why is that idea useful, not only for actors but for our daily life?
Because we cannot choose how we feel, but we can always choose what we do. As he says: ‘action is more under the direct control of the will.’ I can change how I feel by changing what I do.
When I am playing Lady Macbeth I decide to do and say things which I, as myself, would not do. In the rules of Play, for that limited time and place, I ‘behave as IF’ I am living the life of an imagined person in an imagined situation.
By doing the actions and speaking the words of the scene I am ‘playing the character,’ and as I do this the actions and words are creating emotional responses within me which sustain Meaning.
So, how to do acting? By taking action.
What the body does: the Task. This is that simple activity which might be speaking a word or a line:
action = movement = physical change. That is the Task. Here. Now.
Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness; while all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness completely different.
-William James
That is so exciting! All these new realms of understanding to be discovered through Playfull action which opens doors to imagination and connections to aspects of life, knowledge and experience!
Keep to the rules of the game. Time and place are limited. The scene ends, time for a cup of tea.
Be careful of the verb ‘to be’ as in ‘being the character’ in acting!
Actors and audience expect Romeo and Juliet to be alive and smiling at the curtain-call. It is unprofessional, though possibly good news for your understudy, for you to be lying dead on stage.
How about another word-change?
Say REVEAL instead of TRANSFORM
We often think of playing a role as a hiding of our real self: being completely ‘other,’ unrecognisable to our friends, and, indeed with clever make-up, costume (and for a few special actors like Daniel Day-Lewis playing Lincoln almost ‘living the part’ off camera between takes) this is possible and we admire it.
BUT for most of us I think this aim is not helpful. We are not always playing major roles, mostly we are cast close to our physical ‘type’ and age.
Is this extreme physical ‘transformation’ really the Task?
What is extraordinary about acting is that, in the freedom of behaving as IF I am another person, I can reveal unexplored aspects of my authentic Self. I can discover those unknown ‘new realms of understanding’ within myself as a kaleidoscope creates ever-new, unrepeatable patterns of beauty from a few little scraps of colour.
When I see someone being, as it were, ‘transparent’ (living completely within their authentic real Self) I am seeing Life, Beauty and Truth. We recognise it in little children, in animals, in Nature, .in the beloved when we are in love, in ourselves when we allow its presence. As actors, as artists, this is where we need to live.
Judi Dench says that we bring on stage who we are.
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination.
-John Keats
Say SITUATION instead of CHARACTER
SITUATION:
The circumstances that a person is in at a particular moment = the scene at the present moment.
This word SITUATION frees the actor to notice and respond to each changing present moment of the story, allowing the role to develope in the flow of life. The actor is able to live in the present moment, to be genuinely surprised, to react spontaneously to new events. Most of all, the actor is able to direct the attention outwards towards the Time, Place, people, objects, actions all around you — to be connected to life.
Whereas, trying to concentrate, to ‘be the character’ leads an actor to shut off the life around her, not to see and hear, touch and sense what is actually happening in the changing situation of the scene — awareness in both Truths: Daily Life and Imagination, both hands in action.
Play the situation and you get the character for free.
-Colin Cook
Say TASK instead of OBJECTIVE
TASK:
Any job to be done, especially one that is important.
A TASK is immediate, while an OBJECTIVE is always in the future. You want something that you have not yet got. With a Task approach you are active in the present moment, ‘solving the problem,’ which is Stanislavsky’s description of the actor’s experience when in the Creative State of the artist.
Stanislavsky describes the ‘two states of the actor’:
The Actor’s State feels like ‘I am trying to play the scene.’ I add the following feelings expressed by struggling actors:
- I have to feel something that I am not feeling.
- I have to ‘be’ someone else.
- I have to forget / I ignore what is actually happening and force myself to believe in another world.
- I have to try harder and play the scene better, while denying the fact that it is a scene in a play, which is not real daily life, to believe that the audience / camera is not there and at the same time to hit my mark, to be visible, audible as part of the story which people are paying to see.”
As opposed to the Creative State, which feels like ‘I am solving this problem.’
The Creative State gives us an experience of what Stanislavsky calls the state of ‘I AM.’ I am solving Hamlet’s problem. This is my continuous direct physical / mental / emotional sensation of the active process of Solving (the 5 physical senses + the 6th sense of comprehension/understanding). I am doing what the story tells me to do, saying the words that the playwright has given me to say, meaning them to the fullest extent and unobtrusively sharing them with the audience/the camera. That is the task of the actor.
Say ALLOW instead of TRY
ALLOW:
To let something enter or be present, to let yourself have something, often a benefit or pleasure of some kind. An expansion. Releasing of tension and expectation. Living in the present, no planning, free breathing, with attention outwards.
INSTEAD OF
Try:
To make an effort or an attempt to achieve something.
‘Try’ is always for the future, even if just the immediate future, so it misses the Now. The word ‘try,’ if it once comes into your consciousness, will put you into the miseries of the Actor’s State.
Replacing it with the word ‘Allow’ (or ‘Do’) brings us back to the fun and ease of Creative State.
The first response of people who move from their habitual Actors State to the Creative State is ‘this is so simple, so easy, such fun!’
Sadly, I find that some people are suspicious and afraid of enjoying acting after years of being told that it is so difficult, almost impossible, demands constant suffering, can never be achieved unless you follow exactly the painful staggering steps of a particular method or system. Stanislavsky said that his ‘method’ is there only to help when you are stuck, most of the time just follow your instinct and trust your talent.
Say UNDERSTANDING instead of OBJECTIVE
UNDERSTANDING:
To know or to be able to explain to yourself the nature, meaning or cause of something or someone.
You need only one word which applies to every situation: Understanding.
As I write I am ‘Solving This Present Problem’ of needing to communicate those ideas that I understand in a way that will help you, the reader, to understand them. At the same time I am ‘Solving This Physical Problem’ of hitting the correct button on the keyboard — difficult for me with my dyslexia!
The machine needs to understand what I want it to do and I need to understand the rules of the machine. So, even with an inanimate object, the dance of mutual understanding is happening as we both ‘solve this problem.’
The squirrel outside my window is Solving the Problem of getting bird-seed out of the ‘squirrel-buster’ feeder. (In this case the designer of the feeder has not fully solved HIS problem.)
Good acting is specific, bad acting is generalised: when I have a clear simple Task and Reason for doing it, then my action, whether in daily life or in a scene, is lively and effective in that moment. This is why I have changed Stanislavsky’s ‘the’ problem to ‘this’ problem. It is a Time word that keeps us in the real present, freeing us from Past and Future anxieties.
I need to keep my attention on ‘this.’ It is so easy for me to be planning that phone call while I am writing to you, or worrying that the previous paragraph was not good enough. When I am acting I slip into the Actor’s State, preparing my next line while I am speaking the present one, or kicking myself for fudging my last entrance.
The only Task, universal, inner and outer, is Solving this Problem.
Say ATTENTION instead of GETTING IT RIGHT
Attention:
Concentration, mental focus, serious consideration of the playful Problem and the imagined Situation of the scene.
INSTEAD OF
the words.
The decision to connect and understand.
GETTING IT RIGHT’.
The actor’s choice to live in the world of the scene, trusting the power of the problem, sustaining the Magic If.
Mindfulness, ‘being in the moment’, just and NOTICING what is actually happening in Time and Place around us, frees our attention from the anxious self.
William James found ‘a law of very deep and wide-spread importance in the conduct of our lives: that strong feelings about one’s self tend to arrest the free association of one’s objective ideas and motor processes.’ This means that feelings of self-doubt, inner pressure to ‘get it right,’ and even ‘a great and sudden pleasure’ may ‘paralyse the flow of thought.’
He advised the forming of a new habit:
When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all care and responsibility about the outcome. Unclamp, in a word, your intellectual and practical machinery and let it run free and the service it will do you will be twice as good. Prepare yourself in the subject so well that it shall always be on tap and then trust your spontaneity and fling way all further care.
-William James
So, learn your lines, Understand your Task, direct your Attention Outwards, be Ready and take action to Solve This Problem, and have fun doing it.
‘Become fascinated by the sensations of the moment’ Stanislavsky.
Say READINESS instead of PREPARATION
READINESS:
Finished and completed so able to be used immediately.
The words ‘Ready and Readiness liberates us from the cage of ‘I have carefully planned just how to play this scene / speech.’
When we Prepare, the cage looks like, ‘even if I don’t like and enjoy what I have planned to do, I must continue to repeat it because I have told myself that change is not possible.’
You see how the word Preparation pushes us both forward to a future that hasn’t arrived and backwards to a dead past that we cannot change. It takes us right out of the present Now, into the painful Actor’s State, where life is static and growth stifled.
The readiness is all.
-Hamlet
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