In the history of human civilisation, theatrical performance was one of the ways of sending a message from authors to a target audience. The mean of sending this message was an actor and his ability to create a contact with the audience, to make his acting credible and understandable for the target audience in a specific context of performance. The aim of this essay is to explain what it means to perform on stage and how our perception of it has changed under the influence of the contemporary theatre-makers.
Looking through critical reviews of different plays, one can come to a conclusion that the success of this or that play is highly situational, and depends on the totality of factors which can be overcome only by one – actor’s performance. The setting might be poor, structure of acts could be more balanced, but if the actor, in fact, performs and relates with his audience than the initial purpose of sending a message to the audience is achieved (Chambers 37). In order to understand the difference between on-stage acting, real-life hypocrisy and skilled acting Kirby’s model of acting and not-acting needs to be addressed. In this regard, Kirby develops a four-stage continuum of acting. The main distinctive feature between acting and not-acting is the degree to which a performer remains himself. In other words, when a performer acts pretty much like himself and does not need to personify entirely different character then he is not acting. This is what Kirby called not-acting or non-matrixed performing (Kirby 9). In this regard, he suggests that a matrix consists of the elements of the setting, clothes, gestures, accents which could contextualise the act into specific temporal or cultural frame. In other words, matrix makes the act more customised and understandable for the audience (Kirby 10). For instance, if any person would start narrating Hamlet in the middle of the room without decorations, the lack of intonation or any facial expression, not knowing what it is all about, who the character is and his drama, and the audience knew nothing about Hamlet or its context, this would be the example of not-acting.
While on the lower edge of Kirby’s continuum an actor remains himself in relatively ordinary settings without context, on the upper edge there is simple acting and complex acting. In this regard, the main means of contextualisation and customisation of the target message is the actor and his performance. Acting on stage is about actor’s ability to transform into a character in a physical or emotional way. Kirby writes “if the performer does something to stimulate, represent, impersonate and so forth; he is acting the simplest acting is that in which only one element or dimension of acting is used” (Kirby 6). Therefore, the main distinction between simple and complex acting is that complex acting requires both physical and emotional personification of a fictional character in real-life actor. Personally, I consider that complex acting on stage requires not only learned skills of acting and physical representation of a character but also a talent and an inborn ability to impersonate someone else. It can be said that a brilliant actor can play any role and make it credible for the audience, but an epic actor has his own roles that are only his to impersonate. The best example of complex acting would be Shakespeare’s plays, where in order to combine physical and emotional states of the character one needs to know the historical context, to be able to imitate British accent of the time, gestures and also feel a character one plays. That is why performing Hamlet on stage is a true challenge for any actor.
In any case, performing on stage requires not only artificial settings, knowledge of all lines and their accurate reproduction in the right time with the right moves, acting on stage is about expressing feelings and emotions. Based on Stanislavski’s approach to acting, Arlie Hochschild divides acting into two categories: surface and deep acting (Hochschild 30). The nature of the surface acting is in making other believe in what you are demonstrating; thus, surface acting is aimed at deceiving others, but not yourself. On the other hand, in the case of deep acting “display is a natural result of working feeling, the actor does not try to seem happy or sad but rather expresses spontaneously a real feeling that has been self-induced” (Hochschild 35). In other words, in order for the audience to believe and relate with a character, the actor has to believe in what he is performing and pass it on to the audience. The crucial point in performing on stage is the understanding of the act through the credibility of actor’s performance. This credibility becomes the focal point in the success of a play and its overall ability to fulfil the initial purpose – to send a message to the audience and receive a feedback, a certain reflection in audience’s opinion or actions.
An important aspect to consider is that no matter how important realism is in performance on stage, it is different from acting in the real life. In this regard, Kirby makes an example of a public speech, where the speaker knows his audience and acts accordingly (Kirby 12). The main essence of acting in this case is in knowing your audience and the ways of influencing it. As Kirby emphasises, it is not about telling lies or pretending to be someone else, acting in life is conditioned by situational requirements and social rituals we all need to follow in this or that way (Cull 54). For instance, the best example of everyday life acting is when teenage or elder grandchildren visit their grandparents. No matter how good relationship in the family is, inevitably grandchildren will need to change their language and the way they tell their life stories to their grandparents. The rationale for this acting is not in telling lies but in making the story more acceptable and reachable for a different generation. Another consideration in this case is also the desire of approval, which requires understanding. In its turn understanding is achieved is means of narration are clear and credible.
Having realised that acting on stage is about one’s ability to impersonate a certain character physically and emotionally, it is essential to realise that modern theatre-makers challenge this ability with every new trend in the modern theatre. For instance, one of the recent trends in modern theatre is making the performance as interactive as possible. In this regard, Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, where the audience is an active participant of the performance, becomes a challenge for the classic balance of feeling one’s character and expressing it to the audience. The challenge is that actions of the audience are unpredictable and so the actor needs to remain within the framework of his character and answer to the arising situations accordingly (Leach 119). Therefore, the problem is whether the reaction to the new situation is performing on stage or is it a performance in real life. In other words, the closer the modern theatre is coming to the reality, the more vague the line between acting on stage and in real life seems to be. In this regard, Kirby was very exact suggesting that complex acting is possible only on stage and the main distinctive feature between two would be skills and techniques of performing on stage.
Unlike in the real life, where emotions can be fully spontaneous, and the course of events is very much situational, on the stage the performance is planned and fully prepared. In this case, one of the most crucial contributions would be the work of Anne Bogart and viewpoint technique, where the author’s message of the play is transferred to the audience through the unity of six elements: storyline, space, time, movement, shape and emotion (Leach 76). Unlike Boal’s approach, Bogart’s ideas are directed towards detailing of the message behind the performance, the responsibility for the clarity and credibility is shared between the actor and his surrounding environment (Chambers 67). Thus, to an extent, Bogart returns to the classical meaning of the surroundings of a performance, but she emphasises on different aspects of physical part of playing, yet she does not leave emotions out of it.
Works Cited
Chambers, Colin. Continuum Companion to twentieth Century Theatre. New York:
Continuum. 2002. Print.
Cull, Laura. Theatres of Immanence: Deleuze and the Ethics of Performance. London:
Palgrave Macmillan. 2013. Print.
Hochschild A.R. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkley:
Kirby, Michael. “On Acting and Not-Acting” The Drama Review: TDR 16.1 (1972): 3-15.
Print.
Leach, Robert. Makers of Modern Theatre: An Introduction. Oxon: Routledge. 2004. Print.
