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Powerful Acting

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As an actor, we tend to stay in touch with our emotional side for dramatic/sad scenes. And the best actors know that part of the process involves truly understanding your character’s motivation and inner thoughts. 

One of the most effective ways to learn acting is knowing never to accept just the facts when it comes to relationships. The ability to tap into the emotions of your character is the foundation of great acting. That foundation is, in turn, constructed upon the bedrock of understanding your character’s relationship to everybody else.

You don’t learn acting by facts, remember that you should never accept a simple factual statement as the answer to the following question. No actor ever successfully tapped into a character’s emotions by providing answers to that question along the lines of “She’s my boss that I can’t stand” or “I’m the daughter he never knew he had ” or even “I’m a hired assassin and he’s the person I’m supposed to kill.” Facts don’t tell you anything about the emotional tenor of a relationship. If you discover nothing else on your lifelong journey to learn acting, you need to uncover the buried treasure that is realizing the power of finding the emotional tenor of relationships.

As humans, we don’t like to openly express emotions. We work to protect and hide our true feelings. We are always in conflict with ourselves in not letting our emotions take a hold of us.  We try to be in control.  So when playing emotions as actors, if we freely express ourselves, such as openly displaying the sadness or fears of a character –  THEN WE ARE NOT BEING REAL.  

Instead of playing the emotion, you need to play the conflict the character is having to NOT express that emotion outwardly.  There is an internal struggle going on between that character’s need for control over that emotion and it coming out anyway.   As an actor you are always playing your objective and then the inevitable obstacle to obtaining that objective.  True emotional resonance lives on the razor’s edge of those two things coming together.

Rather than believe in their own feelings, actors often look outside themselves, asking for suggestions and recommendations on how to play a character. And while feedback can be useful, there’s a strong likelihood that the advice these actors get will have no connection to their own feelings about the material…which means that taking the advice makes their work impersonal and therefore, ineffective.

Actors too often find comfort in choices that aren’t their own, but thinking someone else knows what’s right for you means you don’t trust yourself, that you flinch from your own thoughts.
So how can you overcome these feelings of self-doubt? This reliance on opinions that aren’t your own? You need to risk going with your real, true feelings, thoughts and instincts.
Of course this is easier said than done, so it’s crucial to be aware of ways to recognize a gut feeling and find a way to trust it. TRUTH IS THE KEY TO MORE POWERFUL ACTING!!
Be bare, be neutral, be real and be you. No one ever asks more than the truth, from anyone! Start portraying it on your acting!