Tuesday, June 27, 2006

ON ACTING: "Working Backwards"

A great performance is a combination inner feeling and outer form. They are actually two sides of the same coin, aspects of the same thing: which is nothing more or less than the totality of a human life.

How an actor arrives at their living integration of form and feeling in final performance is up to them. Some actors work from feelings: they find in rehearsal how they (as the character) truly emotionally respond to the situations and events they encounter in the piece, and subsequently work outward to give those feelings the most impactive shape; others work from a perceived sense of outer shape, a physical aesthetic, and work inward to activate the real feelings that normally give those outer actions birth in exciting everyday living.

"Working backwards" is the second process: working backwards from the outer physical manifestations of dialogue and voice, physical movement, 'prop' choices and facial reactions and finding the emotional inner reality that can give them exciting reality in performance. It is called that phrase, "working backwards" ('external to internal' is another term), because in the everyday real world, the normal "forward" operative process is: our inner emotions initially occur, then proceed to outer actions; we are stimulated, we feel, and we subsequently "feel" like saying and doing.

However, since form and feeling are inextricably bound in any geshalt of human life, and the connection between emotions and their resultant shapes are wired in a continuity into our neural circuits, in rehearsal deciding to push someone hard can help make us feel angry, slumping our shoulders can help make us feel sad, laughing out loud can help make us feel happy, wearing a tuxedo can help make us feel elegant, wearing a tight skirt and a low-slung blouse can help make us feel sexy.

So either working forwards from felt emotion to subsequent molded shape, or working backwards from chosen shapes to logical activated inner feelings is a matter of an actor's individual working choice, his/her chosen "process" as it were. But one element of an actor's process is beyond choice: in performance that independently activated prior rehearsed form and feeling must be interdependently co-joined. Both sides of the coin must be present or there will be (and can be) no coin!!


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