As art performance can save your life
The truly beautiful art is the ability to save your life. Recently, I read an Internet publication that made me think a lot;The publication raised this question: what are artists for? Because if we think about it, artists are not strictly practical: doctors cure wounds and heal diseases, lawyers help us with our legal problems, accountants help us with our financial problems.
Then, and the artists? Doesn’t they work at all?
The answer is quite simple, artists fill your soul and cure your heart, artists paint your days and make your reality a little more bearable, artists make you laugh, cry, experiment from the most abject and dirty feelingsto the most sublime feelings with a song, a painting, a poetry, a show;Because artists themselves, are a show, a show that makes you vibrate, makes you feel alive and makes you spill tears of blood, if it is true art.
And to all this, what is true art?
Stanislavsky, in his book "An actor prepares", tells us about this task with respect to one of the arts that I most admire for his way of telling stories, of criticizing, of telling truths, of lying … but everything related in a way in a wayThat makes us feel sincerity, in a pure way that makes us believe in it strongly, yes, I am talking about theater.
The truth is that apparently being a theater actor is quite easy, you need a little costume, learn the librettos, put some emotion and act natural;But with this we cannot be more wrong;That is, this is valid to pretend to be an actor, but not to be. An actor needs passion, loving what he does and living what he does, but sometimes this is neither easy nor enough.
You cannot always create subconsciously with inspiration. Worldwide there is no genius capable of it. That is why our art teaches us first to create consciously and concretely, because we better prepare the flowering of the subconscious, which is inspiration.
And it is that to think that being an actor simply consists of inspiration when working on his character is a fairly common mistake, because working seriously in a character implies much more work than that and getting inspiration even more.
In the art of theater and in art in general one builds the trajectory from 0 to 100, one learns that he first needs to understand basic things, academic things and then reach the point of being able to burn all that and do what his true beingHe sends him, what his inspiration dictates to him, because those moments of wonderful inspiration are counted and to achieve this high point in which inspiration allows us to represent a beautiful and almost indescribable way a character, he first needs to work on it.
With this, Stanislavsky does not deny that inspiration is essential in the art of theater, because it is absurd to think this, an actor who does not have inspiration, creativity, emotion and feels his role in the skin, becomes one of the biggest problemsFor his fellow actors and is to be a mechanical actor.
It is that type of actor that can even represent everything correctly from its entrance to its exit on stage but that the heart of its spectators will not touch because each of its movements are practical, cold and although it tries to hide them behindConventionalisms of the theater that will do it a little warmer, finally it does not remain strong enough to make a person shed tears of emotion, tears of laughter or get an ovation of foot. And if at first I mentioned that the objective of the theater was to touch the heart of the people, an actor as pragmatic as this will not achieve that or much less;Enter, that’s safe, but that’s not art.
And this Stanislavsky raises it with quite wise words: “With the help of his face, mimicry and gestures, the mechanical actor offers the public only a dead mask of a varied assortment of picturesque effects that intend to portray all kinds of feelings by external means"
Precisely the same external means that will not be very useful if it does not complement them with pure and real feelings, and instead marks them so strongly that it ends not being credible to anyone, and if the public is not able to believe in that realityThat the actors present him, so what is the objective of the function?
Because the viewer needs to be able to see through the actor’s body a reality that he wants to show him for what is essential that the actor be a good observer. At the time of the show, a spectator is not interested in the person who is playing the role but the character that gives life to the story that came to see the theater. But for the spectator to perceive this reality (perhaps true, perhaps fictitious, but reality at last, that he wants to believe, that he wants to enjoy and wants to feel) it is necessary that the actor possess the ability to let another person in himself, physically and spiritually, become that character at the time that takes the stage and gives his best.
However, on the way to become an actor, many of these people forget it, forget that the wonderful thing about acting is that you can be someone else being yourself at the same time, leave the loads behind, leave everything behind only for aephemeral moment, live someone else’s life and experience all kinds of emotions just letting himself be carried and allowing this new person to guide you.
But as I mention before, they forget and pretend to be this character when they are still just "the person who is acting";And it is such a terribly tremendous mistake to remain the same person when someone else is intended to be, because feeling it so makes them evidence and come to light from the stage that imply that whoever is on stage is a person whoHe does not feel his role and an actor who wants to shine with his own person, highlight the beautiful and good of himself, leaving aside his true goal. And wanting to highlight your virtues in the end it has nothing to do with the world of acting.
Unfortunately our art is used for personal purposes. You do it to show your beauty, others to achieve external advertising or success or to have a career. In our profession these phenomena are common, and I beg you to refrain from them. Because trying to take advantage of the theater that is created, trying to market it or try to use it for selfish purposes makes you not deserve to take the actor’s qualifier, moreover, art repudiates you for trying to do so, because that way you make itSomething dirty, in something without value.
And most artists are called "artists" precisely because of thoughts contrary to those, because they know that, if the theater will not leave them too many economic income, they will leave them a reward and much greater, which are those moments ofhappiness and experimentation so difficult to find in the life of races or jobs more sober.
Acting without feeling in a work should be considered a crime, an offense for theater, as well as acting without purpose, because in the long run the purpose and intention of each movement and of each gesture of the actor is what generates the true veracity of theshow. And it is that Stanislavsky told us that there was something we should fix in our memory:
On stage there can be no circumstances, any action to arouse a feeling for the mere fact of doing so. Ignoring this rule only induces the most hateful artificiality. When they choose some part of the action they put aside the feeling and spiritual content. Never try to be jealous or make love or suffer for the fact itself.
Because when the actor gives each of his actions, the scenes become more authentic, because the artist has entered the fascinating world of imagination and spectators can believe it without too much effort.
How interesting to be able to do this task and that it flows naturally, that the assumptions begin for each minimum movement that occurs in the work, because as in real life, situations feel empty and trivial if they do not have aobjective to achieve. Without a doubt, the work of an actor is admirable and at all simple. Now I understand the importance of assumptions in the theater and why it is so important to build the life of the character and the character himself through his psychology.
Consequently, the secret of the effect of the SI lies mainly in the fact that it does not use strength or fear, nor obliges the actor to do anything. On the contrary, he gives confidence through his honesty and encourages him to trust an alleged situation. The best weapon of the actors is surely their imagination, I cannot imagine an actor without imagination, because it is definitely the one that determines what kind of actor it is and what their limits and capabilities are.
Particularly, there is one of the lessons that the director gave to his apprentices in the book that I liked enough. I will quote a small fragment below to better understand what I am talking about:
– What can a tree do when it is rooted to the earth and unable to move?
– For me, his excite is enough- said the director with obvious satisfaction.
The effect that this lesson produced in me was incredible, especially since I related it to my first experience, acting, exactly in the class of acting last period. And maybe it seems a bit absurd to relate this invaluable lesson with an action in which he was a relatively passive character that appeared on stage for half a minute to say three words, but it is and is as like what I felt and also what I hopethat has been reflected on stage.
And I managed to understand that even the simplest and shortest scenes are full of life, the simple fact of standing on a stage causes your interior to turn on and that emotions such as excitement and ecstasy take over you;And it is at that time that the performance of that character ceases to be passive, because all that he is feeling inside, is reflected in his eyes, in that window of the soul we possess. Because every little act in the scene by tiny, will remain in the memory of the actor and those who observed the scene, if it is executed with feeling and mainly, reflecting truth. However, so that the public can believe me while I act, I need to believe in me before and faithfully believe in what I want to show, stop seeing it as a scene to start seeing it as a truth, my truth.
“The truth in the scene, is everything we can believe with sincerity, be it in ourselves, be in our colleagues. The truth cannot be separated from faith or faith of truth."
At this point in the trajectory, the actor needs to take root strongly in the character’s thinking, it is necessary that he even believes in his lies, because in this way, even if it is triggers, these lies will be credible to everyone.
But one thing must be clear, and although it is true that it is necessary that the actor liveFind the balance between what you can best get from your person and your character. He melts these two personalities in a representation that will allow a real character to contemplate, but which still keeps the flame of its essence on.
An actor needs to have peace and be nervous at the same time, it is easy to say it, but achieving this contradiction requires arduous mental, spiritual and physical effort. Yes, physicist too, because the construction of an actor is a set of steps to reach a unit, to a whole;And because each external situation will alter the actor’s inner state.
“The tension of a single muscle at a unique point had been able to alter the entire organism, both spiritually and physically.”Stanislavsky mentions in his book.
Honestly, this was an issue with which I discussed myself, mainly because I did not understand what I would work for all that exercise, throughout the acting and assembly classes, at the time of acting.
At the end of this experience I began to understand it and with this book I see a little more foundation in these practices. Having good physical condition, breathing properly, vocalization exercises, warming … all this served and although I did not see it immediately, I did notice its importance at the end;Because unconsciously prepare one inside and particularly in my case it helped me with my voice when my voice by nature has always been low.
When you do not have peace and you are not physically prepared, when you feel tension in the body, when you are not comfortable with the propInterior, like a stone on the road.
The best thing that can happen is that the actor is completely dragged by the work. So, without intervention of his will, the character lives without noticing as he feels, without thinking about what everything does harmonically, subconsciously and intuitively.
To conclude this text, I will quote a phrase that returns to the beginning of everything and that summarizes this essay in a few words: “Our type of creation is the conception and birth of a new being: the character in the paper. It is a natural act, similar to the birth of a human being."
If three different people interpreted Hamlet, the same audience witnessed it and subsequently asked their opinion on each of the actions that the three perceptions would undoubtedly be different and this is because the actor is not a character,An actor is simply that: "Actor". And being an actor means living the character, feeling it and reaching that climax, to that liminal state in which he can have the power to reach the stage and leave everything there;Enjoy the role of him so much that the loads are melted, that he forgets the problems, that he forgets him to his name for that excellent moment, for that state in which he will only see light and truth.
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