What happens when someone acts on stage, are they really experiencing it, or is it the art of faking it right/wrong. Remember, Breathless by Godard - remember his experimental treatment of narratives? What about Von Trier, Danny Boyle, and Inarritu? Don't they pull you by your ears and remind you every time; you are watching a film made for a spectacle.
Yet practical acting is so well blended, it's hard to notice. I think ACTING is ought to be 'invisible'. If your audience hates you, despises you, or just becomes a fanatic for you, you have done your job as a successful actor, right? But, is all that possible by mimicking life as it is seen? Like, for practical?
Theorists, analysts, and scholars have studied different ways and lectured volumes of training content for actors, but here are some quirky little exercises nope, you don't have to break the gym for this :)
Observing
This is one of my favorite textbooks- observing and learning! Most of the traits that we acquire are through a response to a stimulus. A response to a feeling, a visual- a photographic memory. It is important to cultivate that through our exercises of observation.
Notice how a cup of tea is made, what all are the ingredients, what is the smell of each and every object, how do you identify with the freshness, do you touch, taste, or just see and hear the leaves rustle with the warm water.
Actionable daydreaming is fun. I love to replay my scenarios in my head. It helps in seeing through many other distractions in life.
Perhaps, when you are being asked to redo these actions in front of the lights and camera. It would be easy to achieve.
I think the secret here is to understand that observing what others consider unimportant is the ley to excel in your game!
Reduce Screentime
This one is easier said than done. But, it really does help you live in the existential being. I mean look at what is happening around you and find the cues for ingenuity on the next trait of emotions and actions!
I think acting up is really bad, the idea is to shine without being conscious. So, I believe it's important that the balance between the conscious self and the bridge to deeper recesses of the mind, is well maintained.
Once Lenore Dekoven the celebrated director and the acting teacher asked her actors to perform the entire play in one go. The actors had visible signs of change in their bodily gestures. An actor, in fact, asked Dekoven to stop scribbling the notes on the pad. The sharp noise of the pen was distracting the actor from remembering the (mugged-up) lines of the script.
You can see how being overtly conscious and unduly aware of your actions, can hurt so much. such that he feared that he was making a lot of mistakes. Don't be your own screen, divert attention where it matters!
©Souvik Chakraborty
Photo Credit: Pexels