Emotional Preparation

Forcing Doing in Acting

MANY acting techniques force their realities onto the other actors. Force = sucky acting. In the moment of pushing your own weight around the Actor will think they have out won the other. This is a pandemic in acting.

Forcing a reality upon another or limiting their choices in life or acting is pure abuse. Abusive restriction is the acting pandemic that reflects the realities of life. Restricting another to upstage them is a sign of terrible art and acting technique.

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How Common is This?

This is very common. Often times you will find in acting scenes in classes and on sound stages the Empathetic Actor being eaten alive by the Narcistic Actors. IF the Director does not step in and change the dynamics the outcome of the acting will be straight performance. Forcing Doing in Acting is actually common.

Performance is not a friend when it lacks interaction. Many Actors whom work this way will force their will on others while stuck in their logic. Their acting will not look real because the only reality that they are participating in is abuse. Many audiences don’t want to spend time seeing the undercurrent of unlabeled abuse.

Typical growing pains are finding out how and what you are needing to be in order to adjust to the other. The types of actors that thrive on consistently setting up others to fail so they can look good are the same individuals that only get parts because they back end deals to get their Roles for Actors. They will often have a mindset that they are the winners and the others are losers.

What Happens when you Limit the Other Actor?
You will live sometimes a lifetime of regret once you realize that because you limited the other you missed out on the experience of their collaboration with you.

What happens is that after that Actor that you ignored so you could over perform and compete with them gains natural success you regret the ways that you treated them. But the truth is that they will move on from working with you and never work with you again.

In an Acting class environment the same dynamics does occur. The Actors who force their moments think they are doing better than the other actors and may even have more reactions from those watching in class. In the end however, the work of the Empathetic Actors will shine through and the reality will only be a learning step for those involved.

The more you learn to let go of yourself in your work to instead trying to Trump the other Actor you cooperate with them the longer term relationships you will build.

It is far better to work with Actors in Acting by Receiving rather than Demanding or trying to Control. The only career that you are training for is a narcistic controller when trying to control the situation (imaginary Circumstances) or the other Acting Partner.

The MYTH that Acting is Reacting

Of Course reacting is misunderstood in acting. The reason is because the Being side of work has been put down by all the major teachers for decades.

Being is the essence behind any Doing. Many learn that they need to ingrain the concept that ‘Acting is Doing’. The Reality is that ANY acting that is Doing an Implementation is a forced action. ANY Forced action without Interaction is Performance Based and missing the essence of reality which is interaction.

Acting must include the Being side in order to baseline the emotional life of the Actor. If the Actor acts only out of the doing of implementation they will look very ‘acty’ and will be difficult for audiences to watch or learn from.

Reacting is not a proactive Interaction!

It is vital to the life of your acting technique that you gain the insight of proactive interaction.

Proactive interaction will amplify the involvement of yourself in your acting work. Adding your own involvement puts you into a first person perspective which adjusts yourself to be able to receive the other actor more.

Being able to receive the other Actor is critical to the life that is internal inside of you.

Your ability of receiving is prepared by Emotional Preparation AND Emotional Activation. It is not the job of the Actor to self activate an Emotion and then use that as an excuse not to receive the other actor.

What is Self Activation for in acting?

Self Activation is a preparation to be able to receive the other actors reality. When Emotional Preparation works you first activate your own Emotion with Emotional Activation then you are only successful when you are still able to receive the other Actor!

This is critical acting technique to achieve the abilities and insights of the other actor , even when you yourself are Activated in a specific Emotional Range.

An Emotional Range is another ingredient of Emotional Preparation and Emotional Activation. Emotional Ranges hit the mark of a DESIRED range of emotions that the writer intended. Being talented enough to naturally self activate your own emotion in a specific range takes the time of being patient and being willing to develop with self experimentation.

Self Activation is the Last Step of an Emotional Preparation process. It is the step where the emotional key is turned. Where you turn that emotional key will directly start the outpour of an emotional realization.

An Emotional Realization sparks the outpour of emotion, which can be a striking experience or a subtle experience.

An Actor could feel a slight tingle when Emotional Activation occurs or they could want to drop to their knees because the emotion has a sensation that weighs on them or ‘feels heavy’

What you miss when Forcing and Acting?

There is a stark missing piece within your acting work that is missed when forcing. You miss both the other Actor and you miss the Reality of the Real-Time Experience.

When you force your timing in acting will be off. This is critical.

Acting when forcing will leave you in an expressed rage but empty. You will do the Doing but the Doing will not have a meaning. The meaningfulness of the work the more you rehearse it will be empty.

Ask yourself, Do you want to do Empty Acting work?
or Do you want the rehearsals to get richer and richer in receiving the real-time experience and the other actor?

The Choice is Yours to Make in Acting!

The last point to this article is the most important one.

The Choice is Yours to make in How you discover and improve your own Acting. Listening to and reading suggestions about acting technique will further your abilities if you consider if the ideas apply to you.

Learn by doing , but know that just doing alone will be an empty approach to your work if interaction does not spontaneously occur. Sometimes the Spontaneous real-time happens in improvisational rehearsals which create all sorts of interesting experiences.

The more you are willing to explore the other persons reality by receiving even when you are emotionally active yourself the stronger your talent will build.

Learn to achieve BOTH the Being and the Doing in your Acting!

Copyright 2022 Simon Blake

ACTING CLASSES INFO LINK: HERE!

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