Week VI — The Actor

"Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself."
— Rodney Dangerfield

I believe that that is true. Actors often have to show cry, show fury, be joyous, etc. onstage; and to do so, they have to channel real emotions and use them as tools. As Mario Vargas Llosa put it in his book Cartas a un Novelista: "el novelista se alimenta de sí mismo, como el catoblepas", meaning "the novelist feeds of himself, as the catoblepas" (the catoblepas is a mythological being that eats itself bit by bit). This, I believe, is true for any artist.

However, in the school play this year masks will be used. Literally. This will render face expressions useless and thus force the actors to use voice, body movements and actions (among other things) more than the normal thing. Which reminds me of something; there are different styles of acting and thus different kinds of actors. For example, yesterday in the rehearsal for the school play, I helped direct a dance for the first scene, and all the actresses did was dance, yet they are actresses. This leads me to the key question: What is an actor?

What is an actor?

For myself, an actor is a person that represents something onstage and produces an effect on the audience. What does this mean? Well, a person acts as a character (represents something) and keeps the audience's attention (produces an effect) as well as making them laugh, cry, feel identified...

Yesterday, I saw a  play with my grandmother and great-grandmother (by the way, my Curse of Analysis is in a low degree; I was able to enjoy the play). This play, El Próximo año a la misma hora, talked about a man and a woman during an affair that lasted between the sixties and eighties; but they only saw themselves once a year. In class, during the hardcore warm-up the others probably talked about, we saw some key points to get the attention of the audience; amongst them were opposition and disequilibrium. My point is, I didn't see opposing gestures in the play; and the actors were just occasionally in disequilibrium. What do we mean with this? There is no defined way of acting, as Constantin Stanislavski prove it more than a hundred years ago. So, there are different ways of being an actor.

So, until next time. But before I leave, I want you to ask yourself a question, which I promise I'll do my best to answer next week: Who is the actor, the puppeteer or the puppet?