Don’t Play the Mood
Have you ever heard someone say that about your acting before? And if so have you found it confusing? Maybe you’ve thought, “What exactly do they mean? Should I not be emotional when I act? Isn’t acting all about accessing your feelings and letting them out?”
Well, yes and no.
Of course emotions in acting are very important. Being able to genuinely access your feelings as an actor is something to be sought after. But what is more important are the feelings you are evoking in your audience. In other words, it’s not about if the actor cries, it’s about if the audience cries.
Art makes us feel. That’s one of the reasons it’s so important. People go to the theatre, movie house, turn on the TV so they can FEEL something, be transported away from their boring lives, escape the burden of consciousness, as Eckhart Tolle phrases it.
That is why our ancient ancestors Ug and Glug started telling the story of the mammoth hunt around the campfire. Because people wanted to be transported, entertained, experience something outside of their everyday life.
Because we have the superpower of imagination, we as human beings have the unique ability to transport ourselves to new worlds, experiences, and ways of seeing things. And to help us experience things out of our normal life we created art.
So back to “playing the mood”. When an actor is playing the mood they are doing something very unhuman. They are trying to portray an emotion for the sake of portraying it. (We humans don’t do that in real life.) They may think, oh, my character is sad, so I’m going to play this sad. I’m going to see if I can squeeze out some tears, be glum, look down a lot and put a sad expression on my face. When an actor does that it reads as fake. They’re in their heads. They’re manufacturing their feelings. It’s all false and has nothing to do with being a real human being.
Sanford Meisner, the great acting teacher, defines good acting as honest human behavior in imaginary circumstances. What that means is you, the actor, having a real experience (not showing, or manufacturing or faking) while you are living in an imaginary circumstance—while you are behaving like a real human being.
In real life we don’t manufacture our emotions (unless, say, we are a child throwing a calculated tantrum to get some ice cream). In real life we lead with behavior and behavior triggers our emotions. We want something and we take action to get it. That action causes us to feel something, something real. And if there is an obstacle in our way we may start feeling deeply, especially if we have to fight to get what we want.
That is what acting is based on. The structure of the literary form called drama (both comedy and tragedy) is simply taking action on your desire against an obstacle. All plays, screenplays, TV scripts are written in that form.
Action stirs emotion.
Emotion cannot be accessed directly.
If you try to, it will look fake.
So what about emotional preparation? Emotional preparation is just that – preparation. It’s the back work you do so when you are in the scene your emotions will be more easily triggered by your action. Don’t sit there in a scene trying to drum up the emotion you “worked on” beforehand, take the action of the character (do what the character needs to do to get what they want) and allow that to release the well of emotion inside of you.
The cure for moody acting is action. DO something. If the character is begging their fellow character to give them something—you as the actor really beg the other actor in the scene. Don’t pretend to beg, don’t act out an emotion, just go for what you want and then your acting will be brilliant, deeply felt, nuanced and move the audience to tears.
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