At the end of the day, a character is fully created when it is no longer seen as a character, but as a person. But how do we make this change? Where do we get the necessary information and tools to make this possible?
A)from our own experience.
B)from observation.
C)from research.
D)from our imagination.
This is the beginning of a four week series in which we will look at all these in due time but today we focus on the first tool: our own experience.
EXPERIENCE
The human being accumulates information even before it is born. That is why living through experience it is so important for actors. It’s about accumulating energy in a body from which it must later emanate , continuously, to portray the motives and actions of the imaginary characters.
Here I would like to remind of the importance both of sense memory and emotional memory exercises. The accumulation of these experiences must always be ready for use because it is the base of creation. Its like experience is our own psychic library, if you will.
But it is dangerous to believe that inside to one’s self is all the necessary experience, because you can fall into narcissism, and removing your self or distancing your self from society. And that is something that can sterilize you in an art-form that consists above all on collaboration. Other actors around you stimulate your interior processes and vice a versa.
Also, experience may not be enough. Sometimes because of the actors’ young age, it is not rich enough, or simply due to a lack of it.
Obviously, even in his entire life an actor could not experience ALL human possible actions. He will probably not kill royalty such as Richard III, or Macbeth, or prostitute themselves like Ana Christie, or kill their kids like Medea, or fly like Superman nor will he have died, become invisible, been blinded, a vampire or a murder.
But they can, by approximation, understand the experiences. It’s possible for them not to have lived them but to have seen them in movies, in television, have read books on it, and maybe even had to met someone in those circumstances.
There is a misconception that must be clarified. With too much frequency we hear people say that actors must have plenty of experiences to be able to use them in order to create their characters. There is obviously a danger to this method in learning. You must not take it literally. To interpret a heroine addict, you don’t need to take drugs. To interpret a prostitute you need not sell your self for money. to play a murderer, is not necessary for you to kill. Obviously. That is where we used books, movies, newspaper articles, interviews, and conversations that can help us fictitiously create a crime. And that is where observation comes into play, but that is the subject of next weeks post: OBSERVATION.
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