Acting emotions: Shaping emotions on stage

210 Pages·2000·25.321 MB·English

by  Elly Konijn

ACTI NG EMOTIONS

Acting Emotions
shaping Emotions on stage
ELLY A. KONIJN
TRANSLATED BY BARBARA LEACH WITH DAVID CHAMBERS
AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS
Original title: Actmn en Emoties (AmsterdamIMeppel, Boom, 1997)
The translation oft his book from Dutch into English has been made possible by a grant from the
Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).
Cover illustration: Bakchanten (Euripides), directed by Jiirgen Gosch,Toneeigroep Amsterdam 1999.
Photo: Serge Ligtenberg
Cover design: Crasborn Grafisch Ontwerpers bno, Valkenburg aan de GeuI
Lay·out: Magenta, Amsterdam
ISBNgo53S64446
© E. A. Konijn and Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, woo
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this
book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without
the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of this book.
Contents
Acting Emotions - An American Context 8
Preface by David Chambers
Acting emotions: Introduction , 3
LI Introduction; Does Dustin Really Cty? What About Meryl? 13
1.2 Editing Acrin,ll Emotions 14
1.3 WhatThis Book is About: Acting and Emotions IS
1.4 What This Book is Not About: Limiting the Subject 17
1.5 Acknowledgments 19
2 The Paradox Considered 11
2.r Introduction: From Paradox to the Actor's Dilemma 21
2.2 Diderot's Paradoxe 22
2.3 A Short History ofParadoxe sur Ie Comidien 24
2·4 Problematic Terms 29
2.5 The Actor's Dilemma 30
2.6 Levels of Enactment and Emotions 33
2·7 Summary 34
3 Acting Styles 36
3.1 Introduction: Different Views on Acting 36
3.2 The Style ofInvolvement 36
3.3 The Style of Detachment 39
3.4 The Style of Self-Expression 41
3.5 Solutions for the Dilemma 45
3.6 Acting Tasks 47
3.7 Emotions ofthe Actor-Craftsman 51
3.8 Actor and Audience 53
3·9 Summary 54
5
4 Emotions and Acting 56
4.1 Introduction: General Human Emotions 56
4.2 Sadness is Contained in the Situation 56
4.3 The Emotions of Characters 58
4-4 Task-Emotions and Task Concerns 61
4.5 Components in the Task Situation 64
4.6 A Precarious Balance 67
4.7 Impulses and Control Precedence 70
4.8 Expressions ofT ask-Emotions 72
4.9 Regulation by Design 75
4.10 Summary 77
5 Imagination and Impersonation 79
5.1 Introduction: Character Representation 79
5.2 Acting Character-Emotions 80
5.3 InvolvingOneseJfin Characters-Emotions 84
5-4 Opposing Concerns, Components, and Impulses 88
5.5 Spontaneous and Imagined Emotions 93
5.6 Believability of Emotional Expressions 96
5.7 Imitation and Physiological Reactions 98
5.8 Double Consciousness During Acting WI
5.9 Summary 102
6 Actors in Practice 104
6.1 Introduction: From Theory to Practice 104
6.2 Overview ofField Studies with Actors 104
6.3 The Questionnaire Mixed PurinEs III
6.4 Hypotheses and General Expectations III
6.5 Research Method II4
6.6 From Theory to Questionnaire 116
6,7 Structure of the Questionnaire II7
6.8 Summary 121
7 Professional Actors, Emotions, and Performing Styles 123
7.1 Introduction: Assimilating the Answers 123
7.2 Characteristics of Responding Actors and Performances 124
7.3 Emotions Pretended on Stage 126
7-4 Emotions of Actors and Characters 129
7.5 Acting Styles and Emotions 131
7.6 Professional Actors and Task-Emotions 134
7.7 Emotions, Impulses, and Physical Reactions 137
7.8 Personal Acting Styles and Acting Styles ofTop Actors 140
7.9 Preparation, Public, and Believability 142
7.10 Summary 144
6
INHOUD
8 Attors Have Emotions and Act Emotions 146
8.1 Introduction: Development ofT heory on Acting Emotions 146
8.2 Evaluation oft he Research Method 147
8.3 Actors Have Task-Emotions 150
8.4 Actors Act Character-Emotions 152
8.5 The Function ofT ask-Emotions 154
8.6 Aspects ofA cting Styles 157
8.7 AModei of the Acting Process 161
References '77
Appendix '93
Glossary 195
List of Illustrations 201
Index 203
About the Author 209
7
Acting Emotions" An American Context
Fog banks of sanctimonious mystification, pyscho-jargoo, and charlatanism obscure
the craft of acting in both Europe and the US. With Acting Emotions, Dr. Elly Konijn, once
an actress-in-training, now a research psychologist, intends to burn off the mysteries,
misapprehensions, and pseudo-theories that obfuscate the actor's art. Her focus, from
a cognitive scientist's viewpoint, is on Diderot's 'actor's paradox': Should the emotions
of the actor coincide with the emotions of the character, or should they not? More fun
damentally, can they coincide? If not, what then? Currently in its second Dutch print
ing, Actin,g Emotions brings welcome lucidity, exhaustive research, and a structural para
digm to these and other questions about an art that has been analyzed, for the most
part, by self-aggrandizing anecdote (cE. Actors on Artin,g, The Actor Speaks, etc.).
This English-language edition of Actin,g Emotions contains previously unpublished on
site research undertaken in the United States, including investigations deep inside the
jaws of the lion: The Actor's Studio. While Dr. Konijn's investigations are by no means
limited to practitioners of Stanislavskian acting principles, it is inside Stanislavsky's
'system' and later Strasberg's 'Method' that the model of the actor's real and the char
acter's supposed emotions dynamically coinciding is idealized. In mainstream Ameri
can acting, the enmeshing of actor and character into a unified emotional complex is
the primary - all too often the only - goal. It is the extraordinary achievement of Dr.
Konijn to prove that for the actor onstage in front of an audience, no such thing as
'character empathy' occurs - many other things do occur, but not that. A near-century
of misconceptions about acting and associated bad training techniques is here recti
fied. The foundation for a much-needed new theory ofa cting is here laid.
But why is a new perspective on acting necessary? Because in America, acting is the
only artistic undertaking that has not experienced generational renaissance during the
past century. Music, dance, poetry, painting - any art popularly practiced in the US in
modern times - has undergone frequent aesthetic renewal, even revolution. Except act
ing. Acting in America looks pretty much the same as it did in the mid-1930'S - no
other American artistic practice has remained so pridefully resistant to change. In its
inherent conservatism, American acting has held captive much of playwrighting, stage
directing, film and television, and the ever-aging, diminishing audiences at live thea-
8
ACTI NG EMOTIONS - AN AMERICA,N CONTEXT
ters. The talon-like grip of emotionally 'realistic' acting on the American theater (and
cinema) urgently needs prying loose.
Some history. As imperiously as Freud, Darvvin, Marx, or Mendel stand in their respec
tive fields, Konstantin Stanislavsky looms as the towering progenitor of his. In com
mon with these aforementioned brethren, Stanislavsky's theories grew out of the lib
eral humanist, rationalist intellectual culture of Europe in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Seeking 'a science of acting' based on 'inner truth,' Stanislavsky
set off on a lifetime of evolutionary theorizing and attendant experiments. While his
sole objective of seeking 'truth on stage' never varied, Stanislavsky made numerous
tactical adjustments in technique as he obsessively pursued his elusive goal. Ultimately
he gave up directing plays altogether; his rehearsals became a pretext for exploring the
actor's quest for emotional truth. By his final years, as he developed his 'method of
physical actions' (1936-38), Stanislavsky was blithely renouncing his former experi
ments with affective recollection.
But it was indeed his early work, particularly that involving 'emotion memory' that
grafted so tenaciously in the United States. The first of Stan islav sky's disciples to arrive
in the US, Richard Boleslavsky, emigrated to New York in 1922, saturated in the inten
sive work on emotional recall that The Master was later to reject and abandon. The
following year, the Moscow Art Theater itself arrived in America for a nation-wide
barnstorm lasting several months. The repertoire consisted ofrwenty year-old, emo
tion-laden productions ofChekov's The Three Sisters and The Chmy Orchard, followed by
Gorky's The Lawer Depths. In 1924, Stanislavsky's rambling autobiography My Life in Art
was published in the US; the book is overburdened with the author's self-excoriation
for his inability to consistently capture and bottle the elusive vapors of emotional truth
onstage.
Cultural temperament played a major role in America's impassioned embrace of these
Russian experiments. Stanislavsky's system, in whatever variant (and despite its con
stant call for collaboration), is finally resolutely focused on the American topic: The in
dividual and his/her autonomous will. Moreover, underlying the system and its pre
sumed 'universality' is the premise of democratic essentialism: Yeoman or aristocrat,
immigrant or gentry, pale or dark we are all composed of the same immaterial
essences, spirimal and emotional. In short, the American narrative ofa utonomous in
dividualists pressing ever forward in a classless humanist society is reinforced. The
added fact that much of Stan islav sky's vocabulary included pseudo-sacred nomencla
ture such as 'communion' and 'spiritual' helped to sanctifY the system in America.
Sitting in Boleslavsky's classes, studying vintage Stanislavsky tenets such as 'inner
concentration' and 'memory of emotion,' were Stella Adler, Harold Clurman, and Lee
Strasberg, the three prime founders of The Group Theater which self-consciously
modeled itself on The Moscow Art Theater. From the outset, Strasberg served as both
instructor of acting and principal director of The Group. In both pursuits his singular
9