10 Chapter 10: The Actor’s Craft
Before ever setting foot on the stage, actors must understand their characters and prepare to play them onstage. As with the technical areas, this requires both mental and physical groundwork that helps them to transform into the character that transports us during performance. Actors never work inside a bubble; because theater is collaborative, they must work within parameters set by others and interact with one another, the audience, and their environment.
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As we continue through this section, consider what the role of an actor is and how they go about personifying another. What might some of the challenges be?
We’re All Actors!
Regardless of what we think about acting as a profession or as an art form, we have to realize that as human beings, we are all actors. The nature of acting is part of our human experience, often in many more ways than we might imagine! For example, consider that as children we often learn how to be grown-ups through imitating our parents or other role models. We “play” by pretending or play-acting to be the characters we see in movies and on TV. This type of play-acting or role-playing is part of our nature. We take on roles to learn.
In addition to the role-playing we do as children, we continue to act as we get older. We take on different roles in different social situations. Often these are not totally different personas but are instead parts of our true selves that we emphasize in particular situations. For example, we take on the roles of “teacher” and “student” in the classroom. We may have distinct roles that we take on when at a party with close friends and another when sitting in church or talking with a grandparent. We may have many roles in our lifetimes: father, mother, daughter, son, boss, employee, student, teacher, etc. In each of these situations there are specific expectations that we have for ourselves and for others. How we choose to comply with or go against those expectations is part of our “character” in that moment.
Speaking of character, we often define ourselves and others by mentioning a person’s character. What does that mean? Clearly, it comes, in part, from our history of recognizing differences in behavior in different situations. For example, someone might have the character trait of being a braggart, or a show-off, or a liar, or a cheat. Who among us can identify the “class clown”? These personal roles are adaptations that we tack on to our basic personal traits in given situations; these personal roles tend to become identified as our character or our identity.
Acting on Stage
In the 21st century, acting on stage is distinctly different than it was at the beginning of theater in ancient Greece, or even throughout much of the history of theater. In fact, it wasn’t until the very early 20th century that acting came to be what it is today, essentially a realistic mirror of true human behavior. That type of acting has three significant challenges, and