The actors’ play beyond performance

People get entertained watching others adapt to roles, sitting close and observe them, understand who they are, what they are capable of personally. Of course, acting is a procedure in which abilities and conduct get hard to pick apart as it’s being unfolded. Yet it’s possible to imagine that an actor can behave more brazenly when within a role — like they are cunning, lustful, or mad, for example. Brazen, prideful flair, presentable, poetic, proving, probing, questioning, daring, seeking…

With that, they can pierce, grip and shake the onlookers and colleagues more deeply, more closely, even when the actors are spurred on through the performance with their own emphasis and words and carried quite separately from the script they perform, as if in a real-time negation.

Playing is a good medium during which to try to reach an understanding with the others on stage, from the utmost inside, a reasonable acceptance, pleading, exposition of issues, argumentation all interjected within the frame of the play, as it is in fact turning into a silent discussion of urgent interpersonal relations, with scripted words and motioning all over it, more possible then it’d be if they were not on a stage, especially because adopting the air of a character enables one to approach life’s situations in a slightly more outgoing, more offbeat manner.

Which feels sort of like exploring that character’s demeanour in situations that eventually reach beyond the stage, in situations of approach to life, simply because of the distinct complexity, and specific intoning of the character that is being played, characteristics which, when carried over, enable even us to come across somewhat distant with the way we’d carry, and present ourselves then. In a role, it is sometimes possible, during times of heightened visibility and contrast, to perceive certain places and simpler, more exotic, and therefore more easily surpassable, more deterministic and nicer than they are.

Yet there exists a ferocious methodology of acting for the sake of someone’s bygone aspirations, and with their behalf in mind, which a sidelined actress then indirectly defends them against in her enchantingly powerful way of interacting with others during her delivery, when they misunderstand this actor as being scornful.

Her performance then, when she is aware of this perception of herself, is of course highly charged. It has the privately implicating, the clingy distasteful air for her, of others having attained a kind of extrapolated form of responsibility that they, as such not fully privy to, cannot at the moment abide or comprehend as a reproach, and would be unable to defend against, or discern this outlook of hers much regardless, because they are in some way already quite remote from the given person who happens to be close to, and who is hence the one precious unrealised soul which occupies the actor’s own troubled conscience in life every passing moment, and especially during interactions with sidestepping, oblivious colleagues.

But the mournfully dulled, reclusive attitude that other stage participants see in her face is only an attitude of painful disgust and resentment on the behalf of the unfulfilled aspirations of a friend that has never been fulfilled, due to a prior dismissive, patronising approach to this person’s dreams.

But this is conveyed in a play as such, that this actresses every embodiment of a role, her every interaction is silently, while directly infused with this demeanour of really invested, far reaching and deeply clung emotions on behalf of an unfulfilled relative, frustrated emotions that are relevant to the given moment which is playing out on the stage, while it comes out perceived as an attitude marked with a resolute determination and resolve to embody the character, the audience seeing her act as a powerfully spirited involvement in the performance, when it is a very specific and real communication instead.

The fact of it is, that on stage negating of real problems, sorrows and misunderstood relations is easier, since understanding and resolving of confusion, and empathy after the exhaustive dramatic exposition of the concerned actors’ troubles in each scene, with is spread throughout the play, so that slowly the animosity is then resolving into an atonement exactly with those colleagues, who were unsympathetic at first, the exposition of struggle slowly turning with them into a sort of flabbergasted primal simplicity and sympathy of feeling towards them at once, as their old perception immediately brings them to the end of their wits after they understand, it suddenly shakes them and baffles their mind, before turning into innermost support.

The phenomenon of wilful belief, this notion of heightened sympathy to the scene of a performance, or be it in the song at hand, a wish for an aching resolution is already somewhat inherently understood with the audience as a process that happens, as well as profoundly understood with fellow actors who can recognise a genuine life concern being included, each time that a performance goes on, because it usually really takes them aback and they feel like seeing real effects of corrosive behaviour in the lives of some of their co-stars alters their thinking. Fellow actors take the impact of some real behaviours and the effects they lead to on stage in more slowly and more astonishedly then how it is scripted.

So a real appeal to emotions that is to be an act at the same time, is received more softly, and more considerately by other actors, than it wold be even by the drawn-in sympathetic audience driven by the scripted story.

This kind of exposition that unfolded between the actors during the play, then really transcends into a gentle, heartfelt approach and suddenly affects them, as they are released now a bit, eased, balanced out and changed with understanding even after the play ended, relieved and naturally compassionate between them from then on.

Not being taken point-blank seriously allows for some wiggle room to experiment in one’s confidence, insofar as the script of the play is open thus. In such cases, there is a difference between the ongoing performance and the important message conveyed in the background at the same time to someone. And so even with a familiar play the strong reaction of the recipient to it is however quite new and original once it completely manifests on their face as the story being told, which they thought they knew takes on a life and a significance that touches deeply and is unforgettable, even when imperfect to the original, but the actor, or the singer stirs, scorns, condemns, explains.

When one’s being tasked to perform a heart-pulsing, heroic action role, my underlying assumption here does not necessarily mean that the relevant actor is suddenly tougher, and can withstand more physical stress conditions in other aspects of life, because of having portrayed the role in question.

And what is to the possibility of carrying a character’s role beyond the designated stage, insofar as a character’s manner of speaking and behaving enriches the real person who adopts it in other situations from than on too.

Not necessarily in a way that they become much more than they really are. But at least the real actor learns to extract everything there is possible to be had with that role of a character, in the sense of what the character alludes.

Even though no person can defy what is intrinsic in them, that person can at least seek to find out at what exact stage they do exhaust their character’s opportunities, as they come to different territories with it, and may then still find that their real selves are kind of not able to be fulfilled with it, as such.

But a person can at least seek to find out whether by undertaking of an adopted role they now have at their disposal still quite little for the experience of life, or whether they have already experienced enough as is. For what’s most certainly a known phenomenon is that they cannot, and will not, understand the pleasures that acting role entices on them, as being objectively altogether unnecessary, hence burdensome to human experience, but merely as specific, additional manifestations of nothing eccentric, nothing obsolete, but clearly infeasible.

An attitude like that has to entail an unexpressed fact: the actor would not inevitably arrive at the feeling of passion and desire around even many women on a given set, and would not really conceive of such things being projected at him there, so would not seek it either, merely because he has a romantic role with the actresses, so they would just be interpreted as a boasting, mockingly free-spirited, highbrow, childishly unserious matter, but that being of the same importance and standing to hm as himself. They may create some sort of serene tenure and pleasantry around him that he then goes for beyond the immediate, something independent of the the script, and of the characters they perform for the overseeing spectator.

It may be that their bodies are close, to create warmth, but he does view such things on external basis, and produces no trembling due to her ass, for a personal deepening of atmosphere, that environment of instinct goes between, if the male is on set reservedly timid around the female gender.

It can be a scandalous, salacious romantic character scenario, relying on overemphasis in sex, yet by nature he may just not find it integral to achieve the ecstatic experience of tenderness in his life, find no entirely new feeling.

For example, an actor who happens to adapt to the popular premise of Casanova’s many impulsive relationships and boastfulness, then the actor would essentially speak their wishes loudly instead of keeping them private the more, although he would not necessarily direct them towards anyone in particular, or anything other than what they already have nearby.

If, on the other hand, the actor in his role is speaking to someone at home directly, they could probably easily learn to speak about feelings rather than actions as such.

Meaning that in all and whichever situations, they imply what their overarching problem is, and watch it picked up willingly by those who want to do so. To the question of whether you’re hungry, a response of something like — “I ache in the wake of sturdy lakes, as bees fly on by.” — this sounds romantic, if you want to see it that way, or melancholic, but also hungry.

There is almost no research to be found on the issue of acting intimately, and how this really affects the acting participants. What I mean is that when an actor performs a role, it is not assumed that she herself undertakes personal negation between herself and the other actors, or the audience.

It is not normally assumed that the actor on stage may use it as sort of a canvas to make appeals, or to challenge difficult resolutions that are in principle completely unrelated to the character’s ark, and maybe even completely unrelated to the production, but rather related to her own world, aimed to be establishing of a pattern beyond acting, but of necessities in life, if only subtle nudging then, not to break the scope of possibility within the play.

Which can in fact be anything, almost — like help with moving, rationalising choices to parents, or something as little as adjust the heating, or come for a meeting in regular hours, or move ahead with consulting, to not induce the practicing of lines in areas near her childhood memories because she is a different person now, or not to bend too much because it is in fact not easy to do, or to come in regular hours, not just anytime — a negation, hopefully sufficiently explained, of serious matters, concurrently with the performance.

Performance functions like a canvas on which certain difficulties are resolved better, because they have to be expressed subtly, almost invisibly, and in a manner that wouldn’t abruptly break the tone of the play on stage. Now, a certain degree of this already happens before a play, or a filming starts, where the actor makes clear what are they willing, or unwilling to perform, like if they are willing to lay in bed.

However, such ordinary understanding of communication and alternation of a role, or script between a particular actor and director is not done on stage, and it does not alter a situation outside of acting either.

We can of course understand that a character who was originally supposed to get naked, and now they won’t because actor who won’t participate in such a scene — then the actor is certainly transferring a little bit of their own attitudes onto the character in question, and this has a theoretical resemblance to our concern here, but practically is different, for it’s an attitude to be judged before even entering the stage at all, based on the role’s script. This attitude of the actor does no longer matter when resolved.

An uncomfortable actor will not get the uncomfortable role, and that is a known fact, that will, after establishing, not get brought up more. It is not something to be resolved, certainly not otherwise then in relation to the role, rather it is a matter of fact, meaning, that the issue is not a question.

One thing remains to be considered, and that is a somewhat overarching look at the fact that resolving life as someone plays is already going on in practice, more in the sense that if a horror scene is being put on, and the actress knows about it, nevertheless, her heart-rate well accelerates in that banal moment, and this hazardous effect is often not something the audience seeks to inflict, but it is a scare so momentary and so internal that, in fact it is one of but few individual, unplanned traits that leak into the performance, even if few people notice it.

An acting role being presumed no different from any other when an expectation of spontaneous intimacy is agreed to be preformed, are there still bound to be very spontaneous, and somewhat tangible differences regardless of the fact that the actor playing the part is as confident, as they can be in their attitude and body from any real scrutinising direction, that doesn’t do any imposing, so to go ahead with this:

'…research focuses on the use of gesture that accompanies speech, and the ways in which the two are not separate as previously thought. He suggests that gestures are closely linked to speech, and yet present meaning in a form fundamentally different from that of speech… (Kemp Richard, in 2010)’.

What these differences are indisputably, becomes hard to detect, because though real, they may not then be erased when fount out, as these are ‘ticks’ that could not get replicated, maybe replaced with time, although certainly not eliminated, or brought to a halt, when it’s a case of bodily impulses having a charge, and commanding the otherwise in-control mind.