ACTORS / ACTING

Acting, the representation of a character on stage, in a motion picture, or in a television production. Acting is a formalization of play. Its symbol-making process predates writing and is thought to be a universal cultural phenomenon. Most societies have designated special times and places where make-believe activities are presented before spectators. The performers who entertain the audience by transforming themselves into human, animal, or divine characters are called actors.

The impulse to act appears to be instinctive in humans. It is related to the natural development of the imagination and of social skills in children. Mimicry, disguise, imitation, fantasy, and transformation are the sources of most play activity and complex games. Learning to pretend and mastering different roles allow children to find their place in the family and among their peers.

Each theatrical tradition has its own rules and conventions as to what constitutes good acting. Essentially, an actor's talents are judged by his or her ability to effectively communicate dialogue and a sense of character to the spectator. This is normally accomplished through voice, movement, and the registration of emotion. But other artistic qualities—often difficult to describe or define—such as charm, depth of feeling, originality, plausibility, and physical attractiveness also affect the audience's judgment.

Acting is a complex art. The professional actor's mastery of voice projection, elocution (speaking style), diction (clarity of pronunciation), gesture, stage movement, and other abilities is only the first component of the craft. Other basic skills include the memorization of lines and cueing; manipulation of masks, costumes, and stage properties; and the embodiment of character through the expression of class status, gender, age, nationality, and temperament. Learning these skills generally takes several years. For traditional forms of Asian theater, training is often arduous. Most forms of Indian dance-drama, for example, require dedicated study beginning in early childhood to master a complex, stylized system of gestures, movements, and facial expressions.

In theater productions the actor speaks and moves in the imaginary environment of the stage, and so his or her powers of pretense must be sharply focused over an extended period of time or the entire dramatic atmosphere may collapse. Achieving a believable transformation into the character and entry into the play's circumstances requires a constant stream of inspiration from the actor's psyche. In many cultures, this ability to awaken the creative centers of the brain and achieve vibrant expression is the foundation of great acting. Only when the performer is properly stimulated internally can the spectator also be stirred deeply and propelled into the moment-by-moment reality of the play.

The controlled production of emotions is the actor's special creative problem. Other artists—such as painters, sculptors, composers, or novelists—are not expected to complete a new masterpiece every night, or even every year; yet the working stage actor must perform creatively on command at an announced time and place before a live audience. Or put another way, the performing artist is forced to inhabit a character even when he or she may feel no special inspiration or artistic impulse. And since theater performances are normally repeated over several evenings or months, actors, even when successful one night, must constantly replenish, or reinspire, themselves artistically. The performer's fear of losing certain psychic and physical energies—or growing stale in a role—has been articulated since the 1st century ad. The need to overcome this obstacle differentiates actor training from all other forms of artistic study.

Aristotle undertook the first theoretical discussion of acting in the West in his Poetics (about 330 bc). Actors in the classical Greek theater wore larger-than-life masks and heavy garments to represent mythological and historical characters. They communicated temperament and feeling primarily through speech and stylized gestures whose meaning was clear to spectators. Professional performers underwent a rigorous regimen of speech training and vocal exercise. According to Aristotle, the human voice alone could register passion and delight. He also wrote that the most convincing portrayals of distress and anger, for example, were produced by performers who truthfully felt those emotions at the moment they expressed them. Finding the true feeling in the proper place and time on stage, however, was a problem that Aristotle addressed less well. He concluded that acting was an occupation for the gifted or insane.

How to cross the artistic boundary beyond feigned emotions and flat imitation obsessed many Greek actors. In 315 bc the tragedian Polus carried the real ashes of his recently deceased son in an urn to stimulate a sense of genuine grief when he played the mythological character Electra mourning her dead brother Orestes. (At that time and for hundreds of years afterward, male actors played the parts of women.) In doing so, he moved his Athenian audience deeply, but Polus's experiment was not easily duplicated and remained a historical curiosity.

With the decline of the Greek theater by the 3rd century bc, the art of acting almost disappeared for a thousand years in the West. Theater existed and flourished during the Roman Empire (1st century bc to 5th century ad) and in European courts and cities during the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), but actors themselves were normally regarded as unreliable vagabonds or social outcasts. Rarely were they accorded the status of true artists or professional interpreters of dramatic texts. Only in the 17th and 18th centuries did the perception of theater and acting change.