Presentational acting

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Representational acting is a concept in theatre which holds that actors should strive to, in some sense, become their characters, rather than simply portraying them. For instance, rather than thinking about what would be entertaining for the audience, or what would fit symbolically or abstractly with the character, the actor strives to feel what the character feels and think what the character thinks, with the end result that they do what the character would do.

Renowned acting theorist and practitioner, Konstantin Stanislavski, later in his career, developed his "Method of Physical Action," which described how, actually, the actor may play the actions of the character truthfully, in order to portray that character realistically to the audience. In other words, the "actions" come first; there is no "striving to feel" the condition of the character. Acting is simply doing, never feeling. This later development--which Stanislavsky used in his rehearsals--is often misunderstood or ignored by actors trained in the American Method, espoused by Lee Strasberg and others. Acting teacher Stella Adler, who is the only American to actually work with Stanislavski himself (in Paris in the mid-1930's), believed that ACTIONS played truthfully in the circumstances of the play, using one's IMAGINATION, was the proper road to playing a role. Others, including Bobby Lewis, Sanford Meisner, Phoebe Brand, Morris Carnovsky, and Russian practitioners agree. The idea that character is based on "action,"--and not feelings--comes to us originally from Aristotle in his Poetics.

This is challenging for many reasons. The actor must still adhere to the script in traditional theatre, although not so in improvisational acting or roleplaying.

Presentational acting, on the other hand, is an approach to stage performance where the actor presents more of a character idea to an audience without regard to representation of realistic characterization at all, using Bertolt Brecht's "alienation" idea in performance serves as a clear example. In presentational theatre the actor can directly address the audience with stage dialogue.