Though actors practice their craft in an arena of emotion, emotion itself has zero theatrical value. You can cry and scream and pound your fists on the floor with all of your heart, and it won't keep the audience in their seats. To the contrary, if you do that kind of thing too much, you will hasten their exit to the lobby concession stand.
The study of acting begins not with an exploration of ones emotions but with an understanding of the theatrical transaction. If you want to be an actor, start by asking yourself why. What's in it for you? If fame and fortune and dreams of your own lovely emoting self on a movie screen are near the top of the list, I recommend going over to Starbucks for a nice warm latte and some reconsideration of your goals. People who come into acting because of a self-esteem deficit are asking for trouble. If your motivation for acting is self-flattery, then it might make more sense to try to get on the next edition of Fox-TV's "American Idol" or "The It Factor".
Acting as an art form is an ancient and honorable way to spend your life, and it has nothing whatever to do with fame. Its roots are in religion and shamanism. It is about helping the tribe get through a tough winter. When you act, you are helping the tribe understand its humanity. There is a purity and integrity of purpose to it. An actor traffics in stories, intelligence and emotion, but not to feed his own needy ego.
HOW EMOTION IS USED IN ACTING
Artonin Artaud correctly observed that "actors are athletes of the heart." An actor must have access to the full range of his emotions if he expects to affect the audience on an emotional level. Audiences empathize with emotion, not with thinking. Indeed, the audience will put up with thinking just so they can get to the emotion. As a paradigm, thinking tends to lead to conclusions, and emotion tends to lead to action, but the emotion must be connected to the story being told. The fact that an actor may be able to cry on cue or work up a good sweat is neither here nor there to an audience.
If an actor lacks access to his emotions, he will have trouble acting, it's as simple as that. If he is out of touch with his own emotions, then he ought to work that out in therapy. An acting class is where you learn acting as an art form. While it is therapeutic and liberating to act, it is also true that acting workshops ought not to be a substitute for psychotherapy.
Not too long ago one of my Chicago students told me that he had never been angry enough to hit another person. That is of course not true. We have all been angry enough to hit someone. If he clings to that false notion, he will damage himself as an actor. I pointed this out to him, and that is as far as I'm going. I will not have this man throwing pillows around the studio, recalling childhood traumas and beating his breast in raw exercises so that he can get a hold on the truth that he does in fact feel anger.
I remember a young actress I taught in Los Angeles who claimed never to have experienced profound love. She had the quickest smile and whitest teeth I have ever seen, and she was extra intelligent. She also turned out to be anorexic and almost died not too long after she told me about not feeling love. Her issues went way beyond anything that an acting teacher should touch.
Emotions are automatic value responses. One person may be afraid of a mouse when the next person is not. One person will be terrified of walking on a dark street at night, and the next person will not. One person may be delighted by the Christmas season, and the next person may approach it with foreboding. (Ebinezer Scrooge maybe?) It is a factor of values. Emotions do not hover in space in a causeless manner. Emotion is connected to reason like the thighbone is to the hipbone. Emotions go off all the time. They are common currency for us humans. An actor needs to be in touch with his own feelings and those of the character. You may be portraying a character that is woefully out of touch with her emotions, but you can't do her justice unless you can access your own emotions.
EMOTIONAL EXERCISES IN WORKSHOP
In my own classes, I don't have my students do disconnected emotional exercises. We get on to the scene work because, in my view, actors act. If an actor hits an emotional block during the scene work, then we talk about it and try again. Maybe I'll have the actors in a scene do an improvisation that might shake loose emotion, but it will be an improv that is connected to the scene.
This whole subject of emotion and acting is on my mind because of a conversation I had yesterday. A Chicago actor walked into my studio and told me about an unfortunate experience he had in a Meisner Technique class. He said he had participated in a repetition exercise that escalated out of control. Back and forth the actors went, increasingly hot under the collar. Then the other guy spiked and picked up a stage prop, hurling it across the room. The alarmed teacher immediately called a time-out, and fortunately nobody was injured.
Meisner technique is good stuff and so is the repetition exercise, within defined parameters. Good acting requires that we listen and respond, and Meisner himself would probably have had a heart attack if watching an actor toss a chair across the room like that. I want to be careful not to impugn Meisner qua Meisner. The thing that bothers me about this story is that the actor was evidently indulging in unfettered emotional indulgence in an acting class. I don't see what possible value this kind of thing has to acting in the real world, and I can see many ways it can be harmful.
Yes, we are emotional beings. And yes we traffic in emotions when we act. But acting is an art form, a discipline, heightened reality. It is not a place where we just let it all hang out.
