When most think of acting, they think about contorting one's emotions into big expressions, memorizing lines to a script, and people, for a time, becoming something that they are not. It is these misunderstandings of the art of acting, however, that make it appear silly and trivial. Acting itself transcends much deeper than temporary, surface-level emotions.
When I first began acting, I also believed that all you had to do to elicit a laugh from the audience was put on a silly face or use a stupid voice. Then, two years into my acting career, I was forced to perform an entire 180. I found myself at a summer acting camp, presented with a simple story:
A play critic arrived at one of my evening shows. He sat down to take notes on the performance, the set, the character development- basically anything that should make a good show. Toward the end of the show, he noticed something peculiar. The leading actress was on stage with another character, and when the other character performed an act blatantly intended to embarrass the leading actress, she blushed.
The critic was blown away. How could this woman contort the blood in her body to swell up and fill her cheeks at that precise time? In utter shock, the critic attended the play the next night and specifically focused on the actress during the same scene. Yet again, she blushed. Absolutely astounded, the critic was baffled by how she did this.
Well, it comes down to this: The actress was not acting embarrassed. She was genuinely embarrassed by the words which were spoken toward her, and therefore able to produce a genuine blush out of genuine embarrassment.
You see, acting is not about imitating emotions but rather truly feeling them. To do this, though, an actor must let the words which are spoken towards him actually affect him. In life, we are conditioned to let words or phrases bounce right off of us, and people who are overly emotional are branded as weird and even psychotic at times. In acting, we are trained to be that emotional, to learn how to express what we are really feeling.
Like I said before, it was my summer acting camp experience that dragged me out of my ignorance. It was there where I practiced the acting technique developed by Sanford Meisner. The Meisner technique is a series of levels originally based on repetition, the destruction of defense mechanisms, and the ability to let one’s true and current emotions to flow out of oneself. Even though it sounds cliché, the funny thing about Meisner is that you can not really tell someone how to do it. You can tell them if they did it wrong. You can tell them if they are doing it right. But you cannot tell someone what to do to make them do it right. Does that make sense? Probably not. But hopefully after we are done here, it will.
I have found that the easiest way to explain this is to take someone through a set of scenarios.
The first Meisner level (or at least the short, introductory version I took) begins with the repetition of a single word, maybe a phrase. Here, either you or your partner makes an observation about the other’s physical appearance. For example I might say to my partner, “I like your shirt.” My partner now must repeat back to me that same phrase but adjusted to their perspective: “You like my shirt.” I then say, “I like your shirt.” They then say, “You like my shirt.” And so on…
Think about this. If I say the words, “I like your shirt” to you, you are going to have some sort of reaction toward what I am saying. Maybe your reaction is that you are glad that I said that and you want to thank me. If this is the case, you return the phrase in a grateful way. I then would interpret your gratefulness and reply with “I like your shirt” in a way that conveys my appreciation for your appreciation. The point of the Meisner exercises is to teach us how to truly let other's emotions affect us and how we can truly and genuinely return those emotions.
Now, say for instance that when I compliment you on your shirt originally, there is something in you that takes my compliment the wrong way. Maybe it is in the way that I said it. Maybe you have already been complimented on your shirt a gazillion times today and you are getting annoyed with the compliments. It does not matter. You respond in a way that showcases your annoyance or the offense you have taken towards me, even though you know that I complimenting you. The way that we are taught to respond socially in these scenarios is to respond with gratitude, but this is acting. Here, you respond exactly how you feel. Maybe you snip back to me, “You like my shirt…”
You don't condition your response to what you think I meant or what you think you should say. You respond exactly how you feel, with your true emotions. If you do, if you successfully respond with how you truly feel, then you have just acted for the first time.
