There is no way I can continue living my life with this on my chest. So I'm writing this blog as a means of ventilation. You can read it if you want to but I just needed to know that this was said/written in public so I can stop thinking about it.
So, as many of you know (or will know by the end of this blog) I am an actress. I dedicate my life to Acting so much that its no longer become something that I do, but a part of who I am. Of course I don't want to be just the actress! I do want to move past that; but just know that Acting is a big part of my life.
Well, I'm sure you're aware that some people in this world could care less for the arts. And some people in this world frown their noses upon actors and acting majors because, "it's not a real major," "it's not a real career", "actors don't have to be smart, they just read from a text." Sometimes I find myself getting offended at statements like these. Who are they to judge what we do? But that's just it! They're ignorant of what actors do and ignorant people tend to fall towards the negative more than the positive. So it's really not their faults. They're not able to see what we see when we're acting. They don't think like actors do. They think with the left-brain more than the right brain so they try to "calculate" what actors do when really, the only way to know is to be one.
But this is not what I want to get off of my chest. It's part of it, but not the whole story. See, at the beginning of this year someone called actors phony. If you don't know what that means it's another word for fake. I was REALLY offended when I heard this. More offended at this statement than any of the other ones? Why? Because I could prove that acting was a real career; I mean look at all the successful actors out there. I could prove actor's had to be intelligent. Again, it comes down to pointing this actors out who are. But, I couldn't prove that actors weren't fake. How could I do that?
So I thought about it over and over again. The more I thought about it the more it made me angry. Then finally I decided that I was going to explain what acting is from the mind of an actress because that's the only way I can say that we aren't fake. To see it from our point of view you might think a little differently. And if after reading it you still think actors are fake well then fuck it, it's your opinion. But you can't judge something or someone until you've experienced what they're going through.
So this is what I want to say. Acting is the art of living through someone else's point of view; to win a fight by embodying THEIR point of view through YOUR elements of behavior. Acting is not working from the outside in. We're not trying to turn ourselves into people we're not. We're trying to incorporate ourselves into who these people are. It's working from the inside out. If that doesn't make sense....it won't.
My professors use the term "your stuff" all of the time. "Your stuff" is everything you've ever experienced in life. It's your senses, it's your point of view, it's your beliefs. Whenever I'm getting ready to do a scene my professors don't say to me:
"Become this person"
That's not what we're doing. We're not becoming someone else. We're using our stuff to understand the character. We're using OUR analogous emotions. We're using OUR memories. We're using OUR sensory images to understand who this person is and then once we connect OUR stuff into a tight link with how they may have felt, we're then able to step in this person's shoes...see we're they're comng from. We can't become this person. It's impossible because they have their stuff we have ours! It's different.
Say if you and your friend were in an argument and you didn't understand why she was disagreeing with you, you would go back to a situation where you weren't being understood properly. You would go back to how you felt, what you believed, how that made you and them feel. Then and ONLY then can you understand where your friend is coming from and then and only then are you two able to come to terms about the argument. You still have your own point of view but now you have a better understanding of who they are by connecting it to a situation that YOU'VE experienced.
We're not becoming someone else...that's impossible. In simple terms, we're using what we got, to create a chain that leads us to where this character is when they say these lines. In the end, the character and the actor still have their own point of view but now instead, we have a better understanding of who they are, just like you and your friend in an argument.
So to use the word fake or phony is incorrect. You can only be fake or phony if you're trying to imitate someone. We don't imitate, we understand and convey a message. We're a conduit for information. We're not tofu. We don't take on a persona and keep it. We simply pass it on through our behavior/through the understanding of another person.
So if you still believe we're fake...I can't change your mind. Just try to see if from our point of view...try to understand.
Sincerely,
An Actress
0 comments:
Post a Comment