Question to Theater Doc?

Question

You wrote this:
In brief, I teach that by reacting to the stimuli of the scene the way the character would react, you will automatically have the right response. If you don't it is because you are getting between the character and the response, ..."

Does that mean the actor has no (or relatively little) control over the character they're playing?

Earl, I think you forgot to mention Brechtian acting in which the actor is a sort of machine that does what they know will trigger emotion in the audience.
But then again, let's just wait for the Doc's answer

what I mean by being in control of the character is to be perfectly conscious of what you're doing at the time you're doing it. With the Method you don't have any control since you're like in transe.

You say : "To paste things onto the character that are not part of what the playwright has created is wrong"
I think that's not completely true. You can extrapolate things. Welles did an Othello with a gay Iago although this is never mentioned in the representation. This can give a dimension the author did not necessarily think of but that could possibly fit in the play. All must tend toward the dramatic impact of the play.
As to Brecht, you're probably right. About the John Wayne thing, Welles (again) said you play yourself and take out of yourself everything that's not the character you're playin since we got everything in us. My main point is you must have rehearsed every response that must only look as though it's spontaneous but in fact it's all premeditated. Make sense Doc? regards

Answer 1

The actor is in control of his performance at all times. But I am not sure what you mean by the actor in control of the character. I would say from my supposition that you think an actor "creates" a character that the answer is yes. The playwright is the creator of the character and it is the actor's job to present that character and not make up a new one. Does that leave room for "interpretation" of the character? Of course, within the imaginary circumstances (time and place and events) of the script. To paste things onto the character that are not part of what the playwright has created is wrong and does disservice to the play and the playwright.
Now, the actor must make his responses creative and dynamic, which is to say that the actor chooses how the response is done. Loudly, softly, with such and such a nuance, whatever, that makes his presentation of the character different (besides in look) from another actor's presentation of the character.

I must address your previous answerer. I don't think he understands Stanislavski or the Method at all, you do not improvise while you perform, that would create all sorts of things that had nothing to do with the play. (I forget the second way of acting-- was that his misinterpretation of Brecht?) No that is your error. Brecht wanted actors to be a machine to create emotional responses in the audience? Hardly. He was anti-emotion and pro-intellect. He did not want the audience mesmerized by emotions, hence the ailienation theory. He wanted the actors to comment on the characters they played, adding what he considered an important new level to acting, a kind of editorializing that the actor added to his performance. Finally, since your answerer (Earl, is it?) does not understand what acting is, he does not realize what an accomplished actor John Wayne was. To say he or any other actor simply plays himself is a dead giveaway to a lack of knowledge of acting. A review of Wayne's filmography from Stagecoach to Rooster Cogburn to The Shootist will reveal a wealth of different characters.
As David Mamet points out in True and False, an actor does not create a character, the playwright does that. The whole misinterpretation of Stansilavski on what Building a Character was all about gave rise to the idea that the actor was some sort of co-author of the play. Sorry, but acting is much simpler than that. The actor should mind his own business, and that is performing the role the author wrote.

Regarding your additonal details: That is what I meant about knowing little or nothing about The Method. Method actors are not "like in a transe[sic.]" My first statement in response to your question is that the actor is always in control of his perforamce. It is completely true that it is wrong to put things into the play that the playwright had no intention of being there. Wells' gay Iago included. There was an all male cast version of Claire Luce's The Women, but that doesn't mean it was right. (There was nothing in the script that indicated that all the roles should be played in drag). Things must not "possibly fit" the play, they must "absolutely fit." Brecht kept a motto on his wall, "die warheit ess konkrit" (possilbe spelling errors) "The truth is concrete." In spite of what some people would have you think there are things that are right and things that are wrong. One of my professors was the foremost disciple of Brecht in the US and member of the Group Theatre, Mordecai Gorelik, so I think I may, indeed, be right about Brechtian acting. Gorelik taught us how to discover what was fitting for a production of a play and what was not. Wells' comment about the actor's self and acting is exactly what Method actors are supposed to do. I say that the script + the actor = the character. John Wayne remains a great actor, because playing himself would not be a cowboy hero, or bandit or cattle baron or sheriff or gunfighter for he was not those things. He had such a powerful screen persona, that you thought he was the same in everything, when in fact, he was quite different. Now, your premeditation only makes sense up to a point in a stage play that is carefully blocked and rehearsed so the directors' interpretaton of the script is communicated to the audience. Every response is rehearsed in the repetitions of the rehearsals, but premeditated down to the finest detail, I don't think so. The director is the one whose work is premeditated, not the actor's. This is especially true in film acting where you usually have very little rehearsal prior to your perfomance (the takes). It used to be the actor's job to make his rehearsed performance look spontaneous. But now it is essential that it is spontaneious. What better way to do that than have it spontaneous every time he does it, 4 weeks of rehearsal and 2 years of performance, or one run through for lights and camera, and as many takes as needed to get it right? Acting should be spontaneous within the framework of the rehearsal. Are you familiar with a book by Erik Morris called No Acting, Please? Actor's responses can not be pre-planned and then covered with pretense that they are spontaneous. They must be real, spontaneous reactions that the character has in that situation. No fakery, but honesty. The actor still is in control. He would not want to risk harming a fellow actor. Have you read The Paradox of Acting by Denis Diederot (sp? and hopefully accurate in my memory)? Back in the 18th C they were concerned with just that problem of actor control in emotional scenes as we are today. So, no, you do not make sense to me. I hope you and our readers can see our divergent points of view and decide which they think will be more effective.
If we continue this let's do it out side of the forum, I don't want to violate their rules. Doc

Answer 2

There are two primary views on acting.

Improve, which is spontanious and somewhat Freudian (say the first thing that pops into your head) and method acting, the Stanislavky approach where you become the character and then do things as the character would do not as you would normally do.

Since acting IS reacting in Improve you would be like a jazz musician and never necessarily give the same performance. In method acting you would decide how the character would react to things.

You would know your character. So you would react in character.

There is also the third an lesser concept of acting known as the John Wayne school in which you play yourself all the time, but that's a form of character acting.

As an example, let's take Bogart, who many people feel is a John Wayne type, but really isn't. Cassablanca he's the in control, rough, tough nice guy who shelters his love rival when he's wounded, keeps the young newlywed girl from committing adultery to get papers out and sends Bergman on her way because it's the right thing to do.

In Caine Mutinty he's "Old Yellow Stain" Still rough and gruff, but his reactions are paranoid, people are out to get him, he's a coward who runs and he uses those ball bearings as stuffed animal or baby blanket. A comforter.

Give the wrong reaction as a character and you break the character.

The idea behind acting is to build a character that drives the story the intent of the writer. Your pieces on a chess board and you have to move and react as those pieces. A Rook can't move like a Knight.

Answer 3

Cider picks his nose and says "Huh?"

But seriously folks, Doc is, albeit rather long-windedly, correct.

You use what you have to imbue the character with dimensionality within the strictures of the script. The character reacts, you interpret.