THE ACTORS TRAP!

How do you experience shame, love, or murderous rage through the character if you reject them in your own life?

 Many actors act, try to "be someone else." The limitation here, besides being impossible, is you're divorcing yourself from reality in some attempt to create reality. The circumstances of the play are fictional, but the actor's job is to bring reality to them.

The "trapped" actor says, " ‘I am' is not enough. I need to be more." However, if you're shut down to experiencing an uncomfortable aspect of life, you can't expect to be open to it in front of a camera or onstage. 

The domino effect of another actor trap begins: The actor believes she cannot deliver organically, and she tries to reach an emotion rather than reacting to the stimuli in the scene. The focus then becomes result-driven and not reaction-driven. "I hope I can cry at the end of Act 2," she says to herself. 

When was the last time you were going to a party and thought, "Gee, if Mike talks about his wife leaving him, I hope I can show him compassion by crying"? Most people will do anything to run from uncomfortable experiences. Just go to your local pharmacy, and you'll see more than a thousand drugs that stop you from feeling.

Our job as actors is to be instrumentally open for an experience to happen. If we are open, we can then approach the craft part of the work—the process of fulfilling the author's intent.