Getting into Character is Being in “Flow”
In my previous blog article on Getting into Character, I spoke of the feeling of being in character being generated from the repetition of psychophysiological actions. This feeling that we experience is described as “being in character”. It’s when we feel connected to the role and completely in the moment.
Since reading Sharon Marie Carnicke’s book Stanislavsky in Focus, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of “flow”. My own research leads me to connect the sense of an actor feeling “in character” to actually being “in flow”.
Wikipedia, the great source of all net-savvy knowledge describes “Flow” as “the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus.” This idea was proposed and explore by the now highly regarded psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Click to view his TED talk on FLOW.
Within many fields, we seem the sense of flow repeated represented by different terms such as “in the zone”, “on the ball” and for actors, let’s add one more “in character”.
There are 7 conditions that are present with an individual experiencing “flow”. These seem to be present regardless of cultural or educational differences.
(This taken directly from Csikszentmihalyi’s TED presentation)
CONDITION 1: Completely involved what they are doing – focused, concentrated.
CONDITION 2: A sense of ecstasy (being outside of everyday reality).
CONDITION 3: Great inner clarity, knowing what needs to be done, and how well we are doing it.
CONDITION 4: Knowing that the activity is doable and that I have skills that are adequate to the task.
CONDITION 5: A sense of serenity, no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego.
CONDITION 6: Timelessness, thoroughly in the present time (what we call ‘being in the moment’).
CONDITION 7: Intrinsic Motivation – whatever produces the flow becomes its own reward.
All of these conditions chime with me. As you work your way through, I think that you will recognise yourself, and those moments when you felt that you were ‘in character’. These are times when you felt at one with the character, well, you weren’t. The character isn’t real. You are real, and you were mid-Flow.
I’m going to blog quite a bit about Flow in the coming weeks, so if you’re interested, stick around. I’m really seeing the relationship between Flow and Creativity, and Flow and the teaching (and therefore the learning) of acting.
Click the link if you wish to get a copy of Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow.
Best Wishes
Mark Westbrook