"When we are on stage, we are in the here and now." Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay “What is important to me is not the truth outside me, but the truth inside me.” – Constantin Stanislavsky The system It began, over a century ago, with a man named Constantin Stanislavsky. Considered the father of modern acting, he would revolutionize acting with the creation of his system, a grammar of acting that he began developing in 1906. The system relies on the actor being as fully "in the moment" as possible, while always remaining one. move away from complete faith. In its all-encompassing approach to convey truthful performance, the system exposes techniques and training deeply rooted in the practice of mindfulness. Used correctly, the effect was a deeply moving performance, the likes of which has rarely been seen before. Actors began to draw on their own emotional experiences to fully inhabit their character and solidify their presence on stage. These fascinating and, more recently, controversial methods used naturally raise existentialist questions about the compartmentalization, distinction and recreation of identity in both life and art. Before the widespread use of Stanislavski's system, the mode of acting prevalent in the 19th century was highly theatrical and unrealistic. melodramatic (i.e. in operatic mode, without music). These performances relied on large gesticulations and articulations that could wow audiences with the display of skill (e.g. Sarah Bernhardt's stylized performances), but were quite different from real-life mannerisms. At the same time, there were a handful of actors (e.g. Eleonora Duse) who aimed for a more naturalistic and realistic style of character interpretation, which somehow hypnotized the audience into hearing, rather than seeing. These actors fascinated Stanislavski. They blurred the distinction between acting and life – that is, they didn't seem to be “acting” – they seemed to truly embody their characters. He would often approach them after their surprisingly rude performances and ask, “How do you do that?” Their answers would influence the creation of Stanislavski's system of acting, which has since developed into several schools of thought, including the American growth of the better-known method of acting. The affected imitations of life seen in the earlier, more classical form of acting were based on actors “simulating thoughts and emotions through external means, such as vocal intonation or facial expression” (italics mine). Within the new system, however, actors were trained to create their characters' thoughts and emotions within themselves in an effort to develop realistic performances. Thus, sensitive actors were more successful and more convincing in this style than their extravagant counterparts. Stanislovsky had often noticed how great actors could, on certain nights, completely inhabit their character, that is, fully become a role. He later attributed these flashes of inspiration to the result of several factors coming together in perfect alignment. The actor must achieve emotional truth and psychological realism within his character while maintaining physical control, a combination that requires complete presence, or awareness, both on stage and in rehearsal. This naturalism was so simple that, in many ways, it is almost a default technique, or a technique without technique. Yet, reducing the performance to the simple basic elements required an awareness and asensitivity that many had to relearn. Stanislavski would essentially systematize this preparation process, providing actors with a codified means of recreating the magic of presence. Superficial acting vs. deep acting. In her book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, Arlie Russell Hochschild discusses a related aspect of this acting style distinction, applying it to life situations. In the chapter titled “Managing Feelings,” he explains how we all act to some extent in life, although he differentiates the two types with the more general terms, “surface acting” and “deep acting.” In surface acting, as in the classical form of acting, we simply try to change the way we appear on the outside. “…The action is in the body language, in the simulated grin, in the staid shrug, in the controlled sigh.” It is a type of process or technique from the outside. With deep acting, external manifestation is the natural result of feeling work: a process from the inside out. “The actor does not try to appear happy or sad but rather spontaneously expresses… a real feeling that was self-induced.” In deep acting, one “creates the internal form of a feeling” rather than “shaping its external appearance”. The main distinction between real-life and theatrical (or cinematic) deep acting is, the latter, the clear delineation of where illusion ends and reality begins. With deep acting in everyday life, you don't need a curtain drop or closing credits to signal the return of reality. Hochschild recounts the memories of a star high school halfback who, by his senior year, had begun to battle an encroaching apathy that pervaded both his play and his schoolwork. Wanting to regain his previous intensity and passion on the field and maintain his image as a motivated player in the eyes of coaches, he tried various ways to evoke emotions to get his adrenaline flowing again. “I did everything I could to get back up.” I tried to be outwardly rah-rah, I tried to be afraid of my opponents... I tried to appear nervous and intense before games so at least the coaches wouldn't notice... when in reality I was mostly bored... Before a game I remember wishing I was in the stands watching my cousin play for his school. What he experienced as an elusive sense of reality; he felt he should be pushed to win and believed he wanted to feel that way. When we look back at these internal conflict events of ours, we understand them in two ways: as a genuine and spontaneous feeling at the time, as well as as a secretly managed feeling. This leads us to question the sincerity and truth of our current feelings: “Am I taking action now? How do I know?" This is a more complex variation of the basic existentialist question that all actors must grapple with when building a character: "Who am I?" While the latter question applies to most of life, regardless of profession , the first: “Am I acting now?” differs in that for us it is always answered in the theater; we are told from the beginning who is acting. There are various parallels between deep acting techniques and mindfulness techniques to manage emotions and thoughts between one's essence, or pure being, and the roles of life in which one plays and identifies. In other words, I am not my occupation; I am not my past (or, to quote Sartre, I am not my facticity ). In life, seen through thelens of mindfulness-based philosophy, I am analogous to an actor, taking on imaginary roles and circumstances that are ultimately not real. I, as an actor, am not my character, just as I, as a pure being, am not my life situation. Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up visually echoes this sentiment in the closing mimed tennis scene organized around an invisible ball. The protagonist consciously participates in the illusory game, before walking away and disappearing himself. Life, Antonioni seems to say, is a game organized around an invisible ball in which we participate voluntarily. Mindfulness practice cultivates this distinction between truth and illusion in the mind as well: I am not my thoughts, but rather the awareness in the background, which can observe these thoughts. One is to notice the mind's running commentary without becoming attached to or experiencing the chatter with aversion or judgment. Thoughts are just thoughts, echoes practicing mindfulness are free to “free” a thought, that is, to let it go, when they realize that thoughts are not accurate reflections of concrete reality or absolute truth. Likewise, in performance, whether professional or everyday, an actor distances himself from his thoughts and emotions, treating them as malleable variables to be controlled internally to obtain an external and visible result. In essence, you do not identify with your emotions, but rather see them as mental tools with which to direct your outward performance. Of course, this objective understanding of emotions in deep action differs from mindfulness in that it is a means to an end: it is used with the general purpose of achieving convincing performance (although some might argue that mindfulness meditation is used by many with l intent to achieve relaxation, attainment of enlightenment, or even some other end result). Nonetheless, the hyper-attentive nature of nearly all creative types, be they writers, musicians, etc., inherently approaches these connected experiences with a more commercial intent to use them for later inspiration. Stanislavski trained actors to be completely in the moment, but he stressed that they always stay one step away from total faith, due to the obvious need to maintain the distinction between reality and illusion (we all know the controversy surrounding action of the Method when practiced improperly). Hochschild writes: “In surface acting, my facial expression or body posture seems 'put on.' It's not "part of me". In deep acting, my conscious mental work – the effort to imagine a tall surgeon looming over me, for example – maintains the sensation I evoke from being part of “myself.” Thus, in both methods, an actor can separate what it takes to act from the idea of ​​a central self” (italics mine). In other words, the actor should experience and show the emotions of his character, but still remain detached from them, maintaining a grip on his identity as a performer. Especially in deep acting, balancing this full immersion in the character with a latent awareness of the overall illusion is a precarious act. An actor must remain completely present in his character and set of imaginary circumstances, remembering to perform in front of his audience, or the camera angles and lighting. If he leaves himself, that is, his character, for too long, the quality of the acting becomes more artificial, less convincing. The brief loss of true internal motivation and focus creates a palpable change in external performance. Realistic acting requires oneextraordinary level of constant concentration to remain truly present on stage or in front of the camera. Stanislavski decried the results of superficial acting in 19th-century comedies. He saw actors who were not truly attuned to their character's experience because they would be more concerned with the reaction of the audience they were performing for, and he mockingly described them as looking out of the corner of their eye to gauge the audience's reaction after each beat. . It could be said that such actors did not authentically coexist with each other's gaze, but rather let the knowledge of surveillance dictate their performance, which became, as a result, false. In Sartre's philosophy, these actors, quite literally, act in bad faith. The self-consciousness of these actors is a prison; self-awareness for an actor is freedom. Stanislavski criticized these past performances for "[indicating] the outward form of a scene without any attempt to give it life or depth." In surface acting, or classical acting, form is more important than content. Artists try to amaze rather than truly communicate. It is “less profound than beautiful… It acts more on the sense of hearing and sight than on your soul. As a result, you are more likely to be delighted than moved. You can receive great impressions through this art. But they will neither warm your soul nor penetrate deeply into it. Their effect is strong but not long-lasting. Your amazement is aroused more than your faith." Concerning deep acting, however, Stanislavski declared: “…delicate and deep human feelings are not subject to such technique. They require natural emotions the moment they appear before you in the flesh. They require the direct collaboration of nature itself." In her book Style: Acting in High Comedy, Maria Aitken corroborates this view, explaining that powerful performances require energy, which is not necessarily physical. Energy is all about immediacy. It is achieved “with concentration and, as in almost every other field, concentration proves to be its own reward: an actor's concentration attracts the audience's concentration. In high comedy, or any other kind of play… there is only one moment and that moment is now. You have to engage in that moment, half-thinking the thought as you say it. "An actor prepares Late in life, Stanislavski would claim that the art of performance cannot be learned from literature, but only from action, performance and observation. His emphasis on direct experience also espoused an intense concentration and awareness of all the smallest components of that same experience, with the aim of subsequently recreating it as accurately and truthfully as possible in a performance. Like the mindfulness exercises of an extremely slow walk or an excessively prolonged process of eating a simple grape passes, for example, an actor studying under the system would immerse himself in every sensual, physical and mental component of the seemingly mundane activity, as if learning and experiencing for the first time Just as life is a storehouse of memories from which l As an actor can tap into, he must experience it with the same heightened awareness with which he hopes to perform. The most compelling acting requires an intense awareness of every aspect of one's performance: one's body, vocal inflections, emotions, and more. As with the use of body scan exercises in mindfulness meditation, an actor cultivates a connection with every part of his or her body (many actors practice some variation of a body scan exercise during training), to physically perform in the most effective. Aitken points out inparticular importance of awareness in a double act, or a comic couple. Actors must have an intense awareness of each other's physical presence and must listen to each other with their whole bodies to interact with the best chemistry and interpret each other's lines. Their sense of comedic timing in interaction is directly linked to their mutual awareness, how attuned they are to each other's subtle reactions. Aitken warns against familiarity with the text making an actor "too fast" in reciting lines, i.e. acting on autopilot and losing a natural sense of timing by not thinking about the lines as he delivers them, even if for the hundredth time . . “You can never interrupt the thought process and you have to receive or extend each [line] as if it were the first time, every time. This means listening. If you listen correctly, without allowing your mind to race ahead and without distractions, you will always have good timing. Paying attention allows you to pick up certain signals in a natural way, both from your co-protagonists and from the audience. Greater focus translates to greater connections. A comedic performance, as described by Aitken, will naturally match the audience's pace of understanding as long as the actor is listening and not anticipating his lines, rather, "[allowing one's] idea to form when [one has] heard enough data. " The idea of ​​anticipation destroys the initial illusion of the performance, as well as taking the actor out of the moment. If you are active and present at all times on stage, then everything will pass naturally. The performance, and therefore its preparation, must be exquisitely and completely in the present. Stanislavski's insistence on analyzing the qualities of a given phenomenon was intended to “give the actor an awareness of the complexities of human behavior and how easily falsehoods – aspects of behavior that an audience can detect without knowing it – are assumed by an untrained or inexperienced actor during the performance.” . All the actions a person must perform – walking, speaking, even sitting on stage – must be broken down and relearned, Stanislavski once insisted. The housewife who mindfully washes dishes to relax, paying attention to the cool sensation of the water running over her hands and noticing her thoughts coming and going, is practicing the same mindful preparation as the actress who feels for a scene in which she has to wash the dishes in character. The actress takes note of every physical and mental sensation to prepare to recreate the scene as truthfully and convincingly as possible during the performance. The details of this action are especially important if the target character is very different from the actress herself. General actions are broken down into their smallest components, analyzed and practiced down to the smallest detail in the character's mannerisms, in order to be recomposed and performed in real time. The actress is now aware of and in control of even the smallest aspects of her performance, freeing herself to express the character more creatively and improvise or react more spontaneously in the safety and trust of this now controlled environment. Emotional Memory In deep acting, one can either directly exhort feelings or make indirect use of a trained imagination (the essence of Method Acting). The latter requires a more complex understanding of how feelings work. Stanislavski emphasized the causal relationship between feelings and situations: feelings are the result of something that happened before. He invites the actor to think about that event that happened before, with the confidence that the emotional result will be produced later. In: 2007.