I’ve just finished re-reading one of my favourite books: True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor, by playwright and director David Mamet.
At first glance, it’s a trenchant attack by an experienced and opinionated drama teacher on Stanislavsky and the whole theory of ‘Method Acting’. Method Actors try to get inside the mind and heart of the characters they are playing. The more they ‘become’ the character they are playing, and the more they identify with the experience of the fictional person they are trying to bring to life, then the more authentic – so the theory goes – their portrayal will be.
Mamet says this is just nonsense. The actor just needs to act. Their inner experience has nothing to do with the effectiveness of their acting. The good actor, as opposed to the ‘Great Method Actor’, simply plays the part, using all his or her skills and experience of the stage. The success comes through the strength of the writing, and the extent to which the actor can communicate the ‘practical’ intentions and concerns of the character: what they want, where they are going, what they are worrying about, why they are excited, etc.
It’s this dynamism that makes a character interesting. This is what makes drama dramatic. We are not moved by a character’s emotion (that’s a cheap response); we are moved by the dramatic situation that causes the emotion in the character. So the primary task of the actor is not to simulate the inner experience or emotion of the character, but to put his or her dramatic situation onstage in front of us. They are quite different tasks.
You can apply this to so many different situations, and not just to acting – which is why I find the book so inspiring. It’s about discovering a different kind of authenticity from that which is normally on offer in our culture. To be authentic is not to go inwards, to summon up great depths of emotion, to express ourselves without self-restraint: this is authenticity as ‘sincerity’. To be truly authentic is simply to act for something worthwhile, to live a life worth living. It’s more objective, more matter-of-fact.
There is still a kind of transparency (which has a great currency in our culture), but this is because when you see what someone is striving for, it helps you to understand who they truly are. You don’t always need to go inward; you don’t need to get them on Oprah.
This is basically Aristotle. It’s the telos (the end, the purpose) that defines a person’s actions; and it’s the telos that defines the person. I don’t discover who you are by having you pour out your heart to me (although that might, in some situations, be an important moment in our relationship!); I discover who you are by seeing how you live and what you care about and who you love and what you would die for.
It’s the action, the life, that makes you the person you are, and makes you interesting or not so interesting. The inner commentary that you may offer me, or the emotions that you may experience, may help me to understand you a little bit better, but they won’t actually show me who you are. I need to discover that by the way you act. This is what Manet and Aristotle know.
Here are a few of my favourite quotations from the book:
Nothing in the world is less interesting that an actor on the stage involved in his or her own emotions. The very act of striving to create an emotional state in oneself takes one out of the play. It is the ultimate self-consciousness…
The good play does not need the support of the actor, in effect, narrating its psychological undertones, and the bad play will not benefit from it…
In ‘real life’ the mother begging for her child’s life, the criminal begging for a pardon, the atoning lover pleading for one last chance – these people give no attention whatever to their own state, and all attention to the state of that person from whom they require their object. This outward-directedness brings the actor in ‘real life’ to a state of magnificent responsiveness and makes his progress thrilling to watch…
Great drama, onstage or off, is not the performance of deeds with great emotion, but the performance of great deeds with no emotion whatever…
The simple performance of the great deed, onstage or off, is called ‘heroism’…
Preoccupation with effect is preoccupation with the self, and not only is it joyless, it’s a waste of time… Only our intention is under our control. As we strive to make out intentions pure, devoid of the desire to manipulate, and clear, directed to a concrete, easily stated end, our performance becomes pure and clear…
There is much, much more to this simple book – 127 pages, large print. Do take a peak.
Bridges and Tangents 
“The inner commentary that you may offer me, or the emotions that you may experience, may help me to understand you a little bit better, but they won’t actually show me who you are. I need to discover that by the way you act. This is what Manet and Aristotle know.” Please permit me to add that Aristotle referred to this as ‘epagogo’ – going from the known to the unknown. Bravo, Fr. Stephen for this awesome piece!
Father, Mamet’s book is really important and (therefore?) little known: is it because he puts the author before the actor?
(BTW, I’ll just take a peek if that’s OK. Too many mountains to climb … ;-))
I used to use a journal to ‘go inwards’. I stopped after about 5 years and switched to blogging. I realised the journaling wasn’t achieving anything. The blog is more transparent (all the world can read it). This forced me to stop writing about how I was feeling, but still allowed me to arrange some of my thoughts, ideas and opinions into words. The blog is certainly a truer reflection of who I am and what I care about.
I had a twofold problem response to parts of this post; apart from the fact that I wear my heart on my sleeve, I also began my teens acting.
I think your first two paragraphs prove that there is more than one way to skin a cat. I have known both method actors and non methods actors. Brilliant ones using both techniques.
‘We are not moved by a character’s emotion (that’s a cheap response); we are moved by the dramatic situation that causes the emotion in the character.’ disagree they are inseparable. And some monologues and soliloquy’s are brilliant. So if its acting were talking about then I disagree.
On a personal level for me being authentic is about being absolutely true to what I feel in the deepest part of my being, and when all that lines up with whats happening outside then that for me is perfect alignment. Its hard ~ and its the lining up which is the greatest pilgrimage. The way I respond, express, react, behave, act is authentically and intrinsically linked to the emotions I am feeling inside. To behave other is to be inauthentic. I choose to write about that inner and outer journey. How God see that struggle in me is absolutely relevant, the response of how others see it is not my business.
C S Lewis writes about authenticity here ‘True Christian discipleship, Lewis would have us understand, is first a matter of the heart—the inner life: the recognition, acceptance, and surrender to God’s absolute authority over all the affairs of one’s life in a way that leaves no place to which one may call one’s own. But the surrendered heart, Lewis taught, must also express itself in active obedience to the claims placed upon the believer by the New Covenant. The heart and will of a disciple are, in fact, inextricably bound together.’
He also says ‘We don’t think of authenticity at all unless we think of it as a problem, and it presents itself as a problem at the very time it enters our conscious awareness. It is a problem tied to our awareness of ourselves as selves.’
Isn’t that why children were so Loved by Jesus, for they are so unselfconscious.
Brilliant article!
I think both are needed. Right brain, left brain. Mags’ ‘alignment.’ Integration. Although I’m not an acting singer…..all songs have to be inhabited. The audience can tell whether or not you’re ‘feeling’ it! The technical side feels very telos, very left brain. The feeling side feels very right brain. My thoughts about this are reinforced by the experience of technically correct renditions that have felt soulless, and heart and soul renditions that have lost the plot technically! Either of these may satisfy some audiences some of the time…..but no one is in any doubt on those magical occasions when a musician has made time stand still. I think that what virtuoso musical performances have in common is this alignment, this integration. I would have thought that acting was the same.
My sister’s life couldn’t be about action because she was severely disabled; all that was left for her was the quality of her being. It was clear that she ‘felt’ and responded emotionally with complete normality. So I will never be dissuaded of the value of feeling! Rachel’s speciality was love. She evoked great love and she responded to being loved and she loved!
Anna isn’t that the very core of it all.
When it comes down to everything, Loving, Loved and Love is our very beginning and our very end. It is the essence of what remains beyond it all.
God is Love & Spirit.