Delving Into the Immersive Dramatic Discipline actors use a variety of strategies and approaches when it comes to honing their craft. The goal is always the same: to convincingly express the character to the audience. That is the primary mechanism that allows film viewers to lose themselves in the story.
There are many disciplines that actors can employ to effectively practice their dramatic art. For many years, even preceding cinema, there was what was called classical acting. Refined for those performing in theater, in classical acting, the focus was to use the body and voice in an exaggerated way to reach audiences often seated far from the stage.
In the film age, a whole new raft of techniques would arise. All of them began with a Russian acting teacher named Konstantin Stanislavski (as we shall see). His legacy would help reinforce the proposition that acting for cinema is a decidedly different skill than acting on stage.
Method acting in film has become one of the most well-known and controversial approaches for performers and their strive for creating an authentic performance. Stories can sometimes trickle out of how a movie star’s descent into the method school’s approach has caused real-life drama on sets. Some actors reject the entire process, but nobody can deny the results at the end of the day.
1.Before Method Acting
As already mentioned, the precursor to method acting was the Stanislavski method. His actors’ training techniques were the launchpad for what would come after. As he wrote about in his classic educational tomes, An Actor Prepares, Building a Character, and Creating a Role, his idea was to craft realism in performance by asking these questions about the character:
These are the same questions a screenplay writer must ask their character when scripting a narrative. The actor has to make the words real: they have to not only answer those questions, but they must also take on aspects of the character. When acting in character, it is they who make the decisions that bring those answers about.
When the actor immerses themselves in the character’s circumstances, they adopt the emotional processes that the character goes through. To achieve this, they have to apply their own emotions to serve the character’s authenticity. Stanislavski’s techniques were a revelatory breakthrough. His work would inspire the nascent method school of acting.
2.Method Acting: Definition
The development of method acting in the 20th Century can be attributed to three influential teachers: Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner, who collaborated at the famed Actors Studio in New York City to define this transformative technique. Method acting is a systematic approach that taps into an actor’s real-life emotions and history, using them as a powerful tool to breathe life into a character. Through a series of exercises, character actors undergo a deep acting process, drawing on their own experiences, from childhood trauma to mundane moments like last night’s dinner, as an emotional filter for their roles.
Affective Memory, also known as emotion memory, plays a crucial role in this method, infusing performances with genuine feelings emanating from the character’s thoughts and actions. The desired outcome is an all-encompassing psychological transformation, where the actor truly becomes the character, manifesting in every aspect of their behavior. This immersion can be so profound that actors may spend hours daily, or even months during production, supplanting their own personalities with those of their characters, leading to periods of excessive fatigue and even erratic behavior.
Such dedication to the process of method acting may also involve strict diets or lifestyle changes to better align with the character’s traits, all in pursuit of creating a truthful and emotionally charged performance. While demanding, this technique has become ubiquitous in the acting world, producing memorable portrayals that resonate deeply with audiences, and solidifying method acting as a powerful and enduring force in the world of acting.
3.Method Acting: Preparation
Delving Into the Immersive Dramatic Discipline there are three basic preparation strategies in the method acting technique, each focusing on a different aspect of performance. By combining all three aspects, the actor can transform into the character, delivering work that will compel and convince at every level.