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Technique: Truth in the Moment

© Eric Prescott

Maybe you’ve been there before. In a play, or in a film. It doesn’t matter. You were expected to be devasted by the loss of loved one, either through death or through a horrible break-up. Maybe you hadn’t yet experienced such a thing, and had no frame of reference from which to create some semblance of reality in your performance. Worse yet, maybe you had been through such an experience but still didn’t know how to create a truthful performance without falling apart emotionally.

For all the technical details that can show up when you make a mistake on camera or in front of an audience, the hardest thing to forgive is a phony performance. Some directors are content simply to set the camera on a tripod and let it roll as the actors create lifelike performances. That’s a lot of pressure, so how do you make the moment happen every time the camera rolls?

The early concept of sense memory, as envisioned by Stanislavsky, required you to conjure up a previous experience that was at least similar to what the character experiences, in order that you might passably create a performance that served the moment in a role you are playing. There are some drawbacks to this method, however.

For one, you are dredging up past experiences that perhaps are better left where they belong: in the past. Your dead father is buried, and you’ve grieved and moved on. Going back into the frame of mind you were in when you buried him is only going to put you through that hell again, and that’s not going to help your sanity. And what if you never had someone close to you die, and you don’t know how it feels?

As Stanislavski’s System developed in the hands of Adler and Meisner, imagination became more important to the process of creating truth in imaginary circumstances, i.e., acting. If you are currently in the process of breaking up with your girlfriend, and the role you’re playing eerily emulates your life, using your current life in the role may make it easier to get there emotionally, but you may lose the dividing line between reality and fantasy somewhere down the line. While it may make for a fascinating performance, this can be highly destructive to your psyche. This may be unavoidable for those actors who revel in letting their feelings play out in an attempt to find some sort of catharsis. But while this is certainly an ecstatic feeling, it is not reliable. What happens when the catharsis has been reached? What do you draw on then? A true technique requires consistency.