Is Acting ‘just being yourself’?

I suggest in my book Truth in Action and many times on my blog that character is a myth and we should just give up on it, character to my mind leads to more problems than opportunity, and often than not, a great deal of self indulgence, for me it leads to a few similar email queries each week.

People are reticent to give up their romantic notion of the actor’s job as the creation of character. They seem disappointed that I should suggest otherwise, even when what I say makes sense to them.

I’m not quite of the simplistic belief that you just get up and be yourself, that wouldn’t be very engaging. But we can only ever be ourselves. The job is to truthfully bring the character to life for the audience.

But there are two sides that to process. One is that the audience must see an illusion called character. The other is that the actors must produce an illusion called character. The problem comes when the actors confuse their side of the process with the audience’s side.

In other words, the production of the illusion is not the same job on either side of the process. The audience wilfully create character, who goes to the theatre with ‘go on, convince me’ on their minds? They paid their small fortune for a theatre ticket, now they want to believe in the fiction.

And as long as the illusion is consistent with the audience’s sense of that character, they accept it and go along with it. The audience by wilful presumption go along with you. Just as if I bring my friend along when I meet you in the pub after the show and say ‘this is Dan, he works in the Genius Bar at Apple’, if Dan behaves consistently with your idea of an Apple Genius called Dan, then you will be willingly believe it. When his actions (or words) are not consistent with Dan the Apple Genius, then we question the veracity of Dan.

The audience do a lot of the work. They see the actor and attribute what they do to the illusion called character. They pretend and the illusion comes to life in the fiction.

Then there is the author. They take a bunch of lines and through habitual repetition create this fictional thing called a character. The words of the script help further to create the illusion of character.

Then comes the actor, they create illusion, but their part of the process contains no fictional element. What they do is create an illusion, but as they are not the part of the process that needs to pretend anything, they do it by living truthfully under the restrictions of the given circumstances. In other words, I speak and act in line with the requirements of the scene, but I act as myself. I cannot act any differently, I can only be myself.

But am I just myself? It depends what you mean. I cannot become Hamlet, there is no Hamlet, there is no such person, Hamlet only exists when my actions, combined with Shakespeare’s words are combined with the imagination of a willingly complicit audience.

I think when people read when I say ‘there is no character, there is only you’ they think I mean, it’s you, hanging out right now in your jeans, drinking a diet coke and maybe saying Hamlet’s lines.

That’s not at all what I mean.

I mean that the actor understands the script and scene so well, that they boiled down the essence of the scene into something that they can do in that scene that creates the illusion of Hamlet. The actor does not put themselves into the character’s shoes or situation, they put themselves in personal analogous circumstances that bring out the right behaviour for the scene. This creating the illusion of Hamlet without every pretending to be him.

In the scene, the character is pleading with Drake not to sell the farm. In the real world, the actor has translated that into ‘to prevent someone making a terrible mistake’. Drake is your character’s brother. In analogous circumstances, your brother, sister or other family is about to make a terrible mistake. Giving up Uni, quitting their job etc, you work out how you would behave and then you do that to the actor playing Drake. When you truthfully do those things to the actor playing Drake, the audience, the author and your actions combine and the character is born.

But on your side of the process, it is just you, doing something real to another actor that produces the illusion of your character pleading with Drake not to sell the land. By finding a parallel ‘doing’ and really doing that to the real actor, the audience see character represented before them.

So while yes, you are being yourself, it is yourself plus audience’s imagination and willingness to be complicit, plus fictional character from the script and carrying out actions that when done truthfully with the other actors, give the illusion of being the character.

COACH